Maigret smiled around his pipe. — Simenon
A great many men
Many of them great
In word and deed, in flesh and fantasy
Were pipe smokers;
These men
Favoured the noble pipe to the shabby gasper
A trusty Briarwood to the shifty cigar;
Many great men
Men of distinction
Of standing, or standing up (without falling down)
Of bearing and tailoring
Men with grey at the temples, compos mentis, concupiscent
Sound sleepers, daydreamers, pipe-dreamers
Sherlock Holmes
Jean-Paul Sartre
Joseph Stalin
Took pains to prepare a pipe instead of fiddling around with cellophane
(Actually, now that I remember it, Uncle Joe smoked ciggies like so many dead souls between bowls of his favourite shag, but then genius makes its own rules)
My wife says to me
‘My father smoked a pipe’;
Women always say that with a demure sense of approval,
Così fan tutte,
Not least my wife,
Who hated her father and could be a parricide for all I know, we’ve never sat down and had a proper chat about her past, or I wasn’t listening, that and I never met the dingus (I’m going by what she doesn’t say, which says it all);
Maybe he joined the French Foreign Legion
Women never say this stuff about a beau
A backdoor man
A lover man,
A roustabout or a stud;
It’s always some tweedy old bore,
A bow-tied, buttonholed fraud;
Here, come sit on my knee
A pipe does lend a certain gravitas, even to the queerest of coves
It can turn shit into Shinola, lead into gold
Just ask Sherlock
Jean-Paul
Or Uncle Joe
~
Julian George’s writing has appeared in Postbox, New World Writing, Slag Glass City, McSweeney’s, Panoplyzine, Ambit, The Journal of Music, Film Comment, Cineaste, The London Magazine and Salon. He’s been in the wine trade, translated and interpreted at the UN, flogged upmarket junk at an auction house and was, ever so briefly, the ceremonial president of a postage stamp country. He is working on a novel.