Topic 202: Smoke Wreaths

Carol:

       Smokin’ Words

I worry a little bit.  What we’re going to do for daily theme topics when the basket is empty now that we have used up 202 out of the 250 provided by Mr. William Tanner in his book Essays and Essay Writing (rev 1927). How are we going to come up with new subjects to write about? Today’s topic was a head-scratcher. What the heck is a smoke-wreath? What gave Mr. Tanner the idea for this topic? Where does any author find inspiration?

 

Rudyard Kipling smokes a cigar

Rudyard Kipling found a subject by reading a court case. Apparently, he wrote “The Betrothed” after reading about a breach of promise case. A young woman had given her fiancé a “me or the cigars” ultimatum. Kipling imagines the young man’s thoughts:
 

“We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
 

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space;In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.”

Does the narrator form smoke wreaths out of that “soft blue veil of the vapour” while thinking about his betrothed?  A funeral wreath perhaps? By the end of the 50-plus lines of rhyme, we hear the the death knell on Maggie’s bridal hopes, “A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.” Kipling’s poem paints a picture of a rather blasé bachelor whose “breach of promise” probably saved the young Maggie from a very unhappy marriage.
 

Kipling began writing and publishing poems and short stories while working for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, India during the 1880’s. He must have spent countless hours smoking cigars and drinking pints at the bars where the young British soldiers congregated, listening to their tales of homesickness and fatigue, capturing their variegated accents and songs in his verses. 
 

“The Betrothed” found its way into another collection published in 1895 by the Joseph  Knight Company in 1895. The book was Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry.  Kipling’s poem is in the “B” section of the book, which includes “The Ballad of the Pipe” and “The Ballad of Tobacco.”  The selections include writings by well-known writers such as James Russell Lowell, James Whitcomb Riley, and Lord Byron.”  Some are sober, some are whimsical, some are excessive:
 

In the smoke of my dear cigarito

cloud castles rise gorgeous and tall;

And Eros, divine muchachitoWith smiles hovers over it all (p. 92 “To a Pipe of Tobacco”)

One selection in Knight’s collection, “Smoking Song” (p. 78), lists no author or source other than the label “college song.” Its words are unusually poetic and evoke a sense of anticipated loss:

Chorus:Then drown the fears of the coming yearsAnd the dread of change before us;The way is sweet to our willing feet,With the smoke-wreaths twining o’er us.” (p. 78)

Perhaps puffing a Meerschaum pipe was an indulgence of William Tanner,  the editor of the 1927 text that provides our daily theme topics. Maybe he chomped on a cheroot while prepping for his English classes at Boston University and writing his 1922 Composition and Rhetoric. Or maybe, like me, he didn’t smoke at all but was a connoisseur of poetry, whose personal library included Pipe and Pouch. Did that odd little collection of smokin’ words give him the idea for a writing topic on “smoke-wreaths” ?

Sources:

Kipling, Rudyard. “The Betrothed.”
Knight, Joseph, ed. Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry. Gutenberg. 
“Rudyard Kipling.”

Megan:

I have a friend who can blow smoke rings. 

 Back when I was smoking (and had purple hair), she tried to show me how to do it. 

I don't remember exactly what she said, but I do remember that the explanation wasn't very helpful.

Nor was her criticism very constructive when I couldn't figure it out.

The smoke went up my nose and I choked. 

I don't have purple hair anymore, and I also do not smoke. But my friend is still my friend. 

Believe it or not, she used to be a teacher.