Smoke signals

David Twitchett presents a potted history of the bicycle, illustrated with carved Meerschaum cigar-holders and pipes. The intricate engravings and sculptures perfectly demonstrate how smoking and cycling captured the Zeitgeist

When cycling and tobacco rode in tandem in the popular imagination

DURING THE YEAR 1817 in Mannheim, Germany, one Karl von Drais is first recorded as riding his “Draisienne”, as the French were later to call it, and by which name the machine is known today.

Two years later Denis Johnson introduced the vehicle to England where it seems to have made more of an impact, inspiring much newsprint and many prints by caricaturists of the day.

The hobby-horse, as it became more generally known in England, was a simple device – basically a wooden bar supported by two wheels, the front one steerable. Motion was gained by the rider striking the ground with his feet. Its popularity was short-lived and it had to be admitted that the caricaturist had a point when describing it as a conveyance by which one could “go for a ride and walk in the mud at the same time!”

It was to be 45 years before anybody had the idea of attaching cranks to the front wheel of the old hobby-horse and transforming it into a simple bicycle with front wheel drive. I never cease to marvel that man had been crossing the Atlantic in steam ships for 20 years, and steam railways were all around the globe before anyone thought of the bicycle, surely one of mankind’s simplest pieces of engineering.

Two Parisians claimed credit for this method of removing the rider’s feet from the mud. One was Michaux, the other Lallement. We shall probably never know which of these two claimants was first but really it doesn’t matter, for the world was big enough for them both. The Michaux family produced these early machines in France, and Lallement went to America and lodged his patent there.

The Michaux machines were copied by many English makers, producing a velocipede craze from February to October 1869, before, as fashions do, it petered out.

A few stalwarts, however, persevered and tried to improve the design. Perhaps they just had faith in the invention, but they could not have foreseen the transport revolution they’d initiated. The diameter of the front drive-wheel was increased so that a greater distance would be covered by each turn of the pedals, but this advantage was negated by the resultant increase in weight. These transitional machines of 1870 were the shape of things to come even though the technology had not progressed.

Soon the first high machine appeared, constructed from metal tubes, with and rubber-tyres and wire-spoked wheels. The old high-bicycle was refined over the next 20 years, and for much of this time was the fastest vehicle on the roads. The agile young men of the day greeted the new machines enthusiastically so that the sport and pastime of cycling evolved quickly. By 1874 English cycling handbooks were giving advice on touring in Switzerland! The cycling way of life – the racing, touring, club runs, the favoured pubs and cafes – had arrived.

The old high bicycle’s superiority was challenged in the mid-1880s by, firstly, the safety bicycle, which in many respects still resembled the established or “ordinary” bicycles, but with smaller front wheels. These in turn were superseded by “dwarf safety” bicycles, which had wheels of equal size and were chain-driven to the back wheel. Many and varied were the frames designed to accommodate the new system, but all eventually evolved into the diamond frame with which we are all familiar.

By the early 1890s, the pneumatic tyre was sufficiently efficient for use on the road and the modern bicycle had arrived.

These new, safe, fast and comfortable machines inspired a new type of rider. Cycling became fashionable – with the aristocracy taking to the wheel. Ladies were able to ride them too, when frames were adapted to accommodate the long skirts of the period. Some avant-garde young ladies chose to ignore ridicule and rode in knickerbockers.

Women had ridden solid-tyre, high-wheeled tricycles on private roads from the 1880s, and on the front of tandem-tricycles on public roads. A

Cheroot holder with Parisian velocipede

Cheroot holder with hobby-horse

A double-gents tandem with a ‘New Woman’ taking the front seat around 1898

A pair of high-wheelers feature of 19th century tandems is that the lady went in front, the steering being coupled to the rear handlebars.

From its bone-shaking inception in the 1860s, the bicycle was also popular with music-hall artists and circus folk.

MINING MEERSCHAUM

The literal translation of Meerschaum, from the German, is “sea foam” – in recognition of the clay’s paleness. It was prized for its carving properties, especially for tobacco products like pipes, cigar and cigarette-holders in Victorian times. The clay is rare – found only in a few places on earth – the best coming from an area of modern-day Turkey.

In view of our illustrations it is appropriate that one of the early cycle tourists has left us a description of the mining of the clay. Hugh Callan’s book, From the Clyde to the Jordan, was published in 1895. He made the trip on his Singer bicycle in the late 1880s. After leaving Istanbul, Callan headed south-east, where he came upon “a great heap of the pure white light stone drying in the sun. No matter where one digs, some blocks are always found. It does not run in veins, but occurs in nodules or kidneys, like huge white potatoes.”

When smoked, the nicotine stained the pipe clay yellow, then brown and ultimately black. If a Meerschaum is white it has never been smoked.