This Week In Cigar History: May 19-23

Prolific raconteur and tobacco connoisseur Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, this week on May 22, 1859.

Acclaimed for his crime fiction featuring the pipe- and cigar-smoking Sherlock Holmes and his esteemed side kick -- the Havanas puffing Dr. John Watson -- Doyle began his professional career as a practicing physician whose lack of patients afforded him hours of free time to write. Doyle’s first significant published effort, “A Study In Scarlet,” recounted the adventures of the famed detective who always carried a cigar case while examining locales for overlooked clues.

Another example of Holmes’ memorably knowledge is found in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” -- where the 221B Baker Street resident commented on evidence mistakenly left by another stogy lover, the assassin.

“I found the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enabled me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco. Having found the ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety that are rolled in Rotterdam.”

Another Doyle classic, “The Sign of the Four,” makes use of Holmes’ encyclopedic mind with the observation that: “To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly {cigar rolled in Holland with strong Indian tobacco} and the white fluff of bird’s eye {pipe tobacco} as there is between a cabbage and the potato.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s decision to have Holmes plunge to his death (with arch enemy Dr. Moriarty) in “The Final Adventure” caused a massive public outcry. Heeding their pleas, Doyle resurrected his not dead but hiding out obsessive Holmes character -- who stored his smokes in a coal scuttle -- in order to have him puff away and outwit more dangerous doers of evil deeds.

news@doubledownmedia.com

5/19/08

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