This Week In Cigar History: Dec 24-30

Regarded as one of England's most beloved writers, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, winner of the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature and devoted cigar smoker, was born on December 30th, 1865.

Raised in India and England, the prolific Kipling was a world traveler, visiting far-flung locales such as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Rangoon, Singapore, South Africa and the United States. In 1889 he reportedly met--and was in awe of--fellow cigar fanatic Mark Twain, on a jaunt to the latter’s home in Elmira, New York. Later on, the American humorist was “hunted down and corralled as a witness” for a hearing on Kipling’s copyright infringement lawsuit against publishers R.F. Fenno and Co., according to a March 14, 1901 published report. Fortunately, Twain’s garrulous testimony for the plaintiff, Kipling, was effective, having been delivered under clouds of tobacco smoke, courtesy of a fine cigar graciously proffered by the United States Commissioner John A. Shields.

Although Kipling’s best-remembered oeuvres include the Just So Stories, the Jungle Books, The Light That Failed, The Man Who Would Be King, and poems Gunga Din and The White Man’s Burden, it is his dramatization of matrimony gone sour, The Betrothed, that is familiar territory for many cigar lovers. As Kipling’s inspiration, he begins the poem with a citation:

“You must choose between me and your cigar.”

–Breach of Promise, circa 1885.

The verse goes on to set the stage for a precarious marital relationship:

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,

For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarreled 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.

Kipling’s protagonist then rationalized the end of married life:

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;

And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba–I hold to my first-sworn vows.

If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!”

news@doubledownmedia.com

12/24/07

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