What Would Happen if You Were to Keep Your Cigars & Pipe Tobacco as Sherlock Holmes Kept His? (Sherlock Holmes Day 2021)
Sherlock Holmes Day. You'd really think it would fall on 2/21 in homage to 221b Baker Street. Or maybe that's just me. Nevertheless, it falls on tomorrow, May 22. That's fine, it's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. Still, how about September 26th to mark the end of The Great Hiatus via the publication of The Adventure of the Empty House? A hero back from the dead! A bit too Easter-ish?
I digress.
Holmes was a man who smoked wisely. Meaning Doyle was a man who knew how to smoke. An accurate portrayal of vice, say. I mean, of course, of lifestyle. In loose-broad strokes, it went like this: pipes while contemplating, cigarettes while agitated, cigars while Brandy or Whisky and Soda. All good there. However, the care & maintenance of his premium tobaccos was... weird & shitty. Or was it? dotdotdot
"But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper," Watson on Holmes, [edit 3/25/22 The Musgrave Ritual]. This is all very odd. But how long & well would the leaf last? You may ask--at least I hope you may--because answering that is pretty much the crux of whatever this is.
Bear in mind Sherlock didn't fuck aro*nd when it came to burning thru his stash. "My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco." (Hound of the Baskervilles.) Elsewhere in the book, he mentions smoking a pound of shag in a marathon sitting of elementary deducing. So perhaps long-term keeping wasn't the goal.
Nevertheless, I'll now employ my own powers of deduction to handicap some shelf-life timeframes & therefore measure the successes of these apparently outrageous methods. We'll begin with his cigars. Might I also begin with an aside? Sherlock's era straddled two eras--the Victorian & Edwardian, to be precise. During the Victorian era, smoking was banned other than in private clubs and homes. No public smoking. Then came King Edward and his immortal "Gentlemen, you may smoke."
OK. They were Cubans. Holmes smoked Cubans. That's right, we're back on track here. Important to realize is that he did so before humidors existed as we know them to exist today. He smoked even prior to what would now be considered antique humidors... which were lined in either copper or tin. This because inert metals imparted no flavor and also inhibited the growth of mildews & molds. Wait for it...
Coal-scuttles were made of metal & our man looks less odd, maybe. Also, we don't know how many smokes he kept on-hand. Too, we don't know how many he smoked a day. But I did do some online window shopping & found that coal-scuttles and 10ct. travel humidors are in the same ballpark size-wise. So, 10 cigars, say two a day, is five days in the (perchance)copper bucket & I daresay no worse for wear than when first purchased. Probably because they were dry as a bone already.
Smart. Sherlock Holmes is super smart. I'm envious. Now onto his shag pipe tobacco. In short, it was dark, & well-coarser than today's shag, and of fairly low quality. He smoked pipes more often than cigars, in canon. When we learn he smoked that aforementioned pound, I feel he smoked his cellar. I do recall him, at other times, asking Dr. Watson to buy a pound of the stuff when he ran low. Let's again look at his consumption. A typical smoker gets 3 months off a pound. Holmes had been known to smoke a pound in a pondering.
Holmes knows his needs, not the needs of others. I mean the guy was strong-maybe a sociopath, after all. He could put down a pound in not months, not weeks, but days. Days would be how long pipe tobacco lasts in a cloth or leather tobacco pouch. Cloth or leather is what Persian slippers are made out of AND I, LIKE SHERLOCK HOLMES, AM A BLOODY GENIUS. Let's go a step further in ideating. The pointed toe of a Persian slipper really packs in the freshness & jamming some new shag down atop old, adds moisture.
Now it's time for a breakdown. Tobacco storage is always a topic of discussion amongst imbeciles. Here's my suggestion: stop worrying so much about what's good for your tobacco & what other imbeciles might think. Let your tobacconist handle the former and simply drop the latter. Start worrying about what's good for you. Have a good for you amount on-hand, stored humbly. You know where you can get more. Stop letting your habit, by which I of course mean hobby, keep you up at night.
What Would Happen if You Kept Your Cigars & Pipe Tobacco as Sherlock Holmes Did His? Maybe you'd be a bit happier. I really impressed myself with this one, Gentlepersons. I'm glad you got to read it, as I'm sure you are as well. Happy Sherlock Holmes Day!
@kaplowitzmedia
PS: I speculate Holmes was a two cigar a day smoker, then I say he smoked more pipe tobacco than cigars. Let me clarify. In canon--in the writings--we are shared into more scenarios where a pipe fits just right. However, Holmes the fictional man probably had a lot more downtime than readers are privy to. Thus the two daily cigars, on guesstimated average. thx
PPS: Remember: Doyle wrote Sherlock to be smarter than Watson; expertly-so here.
::: very :::