Wholly Smokes (7 page)

It lacks substance. It says very little about what I call “the Zeppelin Experience.” We need to tell people what it must be like up there, floating through the sky, drinking and playing bridge with earls and princesses, all the swells, while the map unrolls down below. Gliding along far above the cares of the world, above the clouds. Like being God. The Zeppelin brochures make it sound just peachy.

Somehow we need to convey all that in our cigar ads. I think I must give it a whirl myself. I’ll take passage on the Hindenburg and keep a detailed journal.

May 3
. Boarded the great ship at Frankfurt-am-Main. They keep it in a huge hangar, with the tail sticking out. The tail fins are decorated with huge swastikas. The steward tells me the Nazi Party paid the company a lot of money to put them up there. The great airship was
flown on propaganda flights over Germany, dropping pamphlets and showing the flag. I wonder if we couldn’t pay more, and get them to take the big swastikas off the tail fins and put up
GST
instead. It’s a thought…

You just walk up a gangplank and there you are. They make you hand over your matches and lighter when you come aboard. That irritated me – the Germans are good at giving irritating orders – so I kept back one box of matches – how would it look, the president of a tobacco company not having a light! Evidently this has something to do with the ship being filled with hydrogen, not helium as planned. I don’t understand all that chemical mumbo-jumbo. There was some problem about buying helium from America. Political stuff again. I don’t understand all that political mumbo-jumbo, either. I’ll wager the big swastikas didn’t help. Anyway, they assure me we will be able to smoke in the Smoking Saloon.

They also make you hand over your camera, but the steward says we’ll get them back after we get past the three-mile limit and head out to sea. Mean-while, we watch from the windows while a hundred little men pull ropes and somehow
back us out of the hangar. They play some music for the occasion. It really is all very smooth, no bumps or noises at all. Nothing like a ship. Then we are on our way!

My cabin is tiny, but adequate. I took a stroll around the ship, looking over the rather luxurious Dining Saloon, Drawing Room, and Reading and Writing Room. Then I descended a wide staircase to the Smoking Saloon. I thought to myself, this airship has everything you might expect on a luxury liner, but I will be in New York in two and a half days.

May 4
. In the morning, took a tour of the ship. We were shown the bridge with all its fascinating controls. The braver souls were taken up a ladder to walk along a dim corridor and look at the huge gas bags.

At lunch, met a pretty Bavarian woman named Diesl, an English tennis player named Hatney, and a large, red-bearded fellow with a monocle who introduced himself as Count Exon Waldiz. Some kind of Ruritanian aristocrat or something.

Count Waldiz joined me later in the Smoking Saloon, where I was enjoying a
perfecto and a glass of whiskey. He seemed to be drinking absinthe. “Two days of boredom,” he said, and suggested we play cards for money. I explained that I know no games but “SlapJack.” We played that for an hour, and I lost over $800.

In the evening, I watched the stars with Fräulein Diesl. She says she lost over 4,000 marks to Count Waldiz, betting on the relative speeds of two ships down below.

May 5
. Read a few cables in the morning and sent off replies. In the afternoon, I took a brisk walk with Mr. Hatney. He says he lost over £750 to Count Waldiz. The Count had bet he could seduce Fräulein Diesl before we landed. This morning, Hatney had seen her come out of Waldiz’s cabin. I wonder about Waldiz. Is he really a count, and not some kind of swindler who preys on airship passengers?

In the evening, Count Waldiz again drank absinthe. He was up to no good. First he bet me a thousand dollars he could name more cigar types than I. This he didby cheating. After I had named the Claro, Corona, Corona Gorda, Double Corona, Figurado, Giant, Grand Corona,

Long Corona, Lonsdale, Maduro, Panatela, Perfecto, Petit Corona, Pyramide, Robusto, Simple Corona, Toro, Torpedo, and Triangular, he named the Valdez.

“The Valdez?” I asked.

“Named after my family. Valdez is the Spanish version of Waldiz,” he explained.

After I paid up, he showed me a pistol and suggested a sporting game of Russian roulette. When I refused, he suggested we try “taking the bridge.” We could force the captain to make the ship do some “dives and loops and things. Great fun, what?” I again refused.

“But LeRoy, my old friend, does it not drive you mad, all these German rules and regulations? Do you not feel like doing something, making something happen? I mean, here we have to sit in this room to enjoy a smoke. It is an insult to you as a cigar tycoon! Don’t you feel like having a cigar in your cabin?”

I said yes indeed, and I had hidden a box of matches for that very purpose.

“Capital! And did you do it? Did you smoke a cigar in your cabin?”

I explained that I was afraid the steward would smell the smoke or find the ash.

“Afraid of the steward. LeRoy, you
have a sad case of German-itis! But I will think of some cure, fear not.” There was a mad gleam in his monocle. I’m glad we land tomorrow.

May 6
. Towards evening, we approached our destination, Lakehurst, New Jersey. I had not seen Count Waldiz all day. Then all at once he popped up in the corridor and grabbed my lapels. “LeRoy, my old friend, come and have a final cigar. I’ve found a place where the steward won’t bother you!” He indicated the ladder leading aloft, to the gas envelope – an area expressly forbidden to unaccompanied passengers. I murmured something about seeing to my suitcases.

The Mad Count leaned towards me, his breath reeking of absinthe (I will henceforth forever hate licorice). “LeRoy, my old friend, you must not be a coward! Imagine, a tobacco czar, afraid to light up! Come up and have a last smoke with me!”

I followed him up the ladder to the dimly-lit corridor. We found ourselves on a catwalk running the length of the air-ship, past these rows of great cylinders of oiled silk – the gas bags.

“Just think, LeRoy! These big sausages
contain the clouds of hydrogen that hold us up in the sky! Marvelous!” Waldiz bit the end off a grand corona. “Got a light?”

I did not feel like a smoke myself, but I handed him my matches. He was about to light it, when a crewmen appeared. “Verboten. This deck is off-limits to passengers! What do you make here, gentlemen?”

Waldiz looked at him. “We came up because I smell gas.”

The crewman started, then smiled. “You make a joke, sir. Hydrogen gas has no smell. No smell at all.”

“Not for ordinary people, but I have a very sensitive nose.” The Count pointed to his nose, which was red and bulbous. “Years of absinthe have sharpened my senses. I tell you, I smell gas! There is a leak!”

The crewman chuckled indulgently. “Really? Where is this so-called gas leak?”

Count Waldiz pointed to a dark corner between two gas bags. “Over there, I believe. Let’s have a closer look.”

He struck a match and lunged forward.

That’s all I recall until this moment. I am lying on the ground, and my leg seems
to be broken. There’s burning stuff falling all around me – falling, I fear, from the mighty
Hindenburg
. The ship itself is still intact in the air above me, though ablaze.

Miraculously, my journal and fountain pen have fallen with me, so I can continue my chronicle. No sign of Count Waldiz. Not that I want to see him again. [No one ever did see the Count again]. Damn him! He’s created a disaster! There go all our hopes for a decent, upmarket stogie!

I’d better wind this up now, for the
Hindenburg
seems to be falling towards me! Evidently if the hydrogen burns up, the darned thing can’t stay aloft! It sinks to earth as surely as a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea! I wish I’d paid more attention in chemistry class. If only –

Our new cigarette, X, must be closely identified with the modern young aristocrats: men and women who are rich and suave, tough and coolly sophisticated.

For example, the man who smokes X might spend the day hunting foxes, then put on evening clothes to go to a boxing match, ending up at a low dive in Harlem where all the waiters know him.

Or the man who smokes X might return from hunting big game in Nairobi, then spend a season relaxing at Monte, where he enjoys making substantial bets – a king’s ransom on a turn of the wheel.

Let us not forget the woman who
smokes X. She might spend the day racing her own plane, then give a dinner party for a select circle of friends including the Prince of Wales.

Or the woman who smokes X might play a chukker of polo, then get up a theatre party to see the Lunts in a new Noel Coward play. Later she would include the Lunts and Coward in her party, as she moved on to the newest nightclub.

The name we choose for X must suggest something English and aristocratic, such as those used by our competitors: KingEdward, Prince Albert, Chesterfield, Tareyton, &c. Possible candidates are Lord Byron, Ring James, Ivanhoe, Montrose, or aristocratic place names like Hampshire, York, Lancashire, Kent, Marlborough, Somerset, Devonshire.

AUGUSTUS: We don’t need no Lord Fauntleroys or polo popsies in tight breeches. We can always count on our old standbys, Lady Fantasy, Bull Pouch, and Cairo.

BOARD MEMBER (laughs): Just look at the sales figures. No one still smokes Lady Fantasy but a handful of old veterans – half of them missing a lung.

AUGUSTUS: That’s from poison gas! You can’t blame cigarettes for lung problems!

BOARD MEMBER: Maybe not. Nevertheless, the public associates our products with broken-down, bronchitic invalids. Is that what we want? As for Bull Pouch tobacco and Cairo Cut Plug, nobody uses them but a few old-timers out west. Is that the kind of image we want? Tom Mix trying to hit a spittoon? We don’t need to call up
the ghosts of sunburned yahoos with dirty necks, squatting around a campfire. No sir. The fact is, cowboys are dying out, and if we don’t move with the times, so are we.

AUGUSTUS: Death! Damn you, I know all about death. Lost my son to this High Society nonsense. Le-Roy just had to get on the damned Hindenburg and mingle. Well, I’m not going to suffer any further losses. Damn it, I’ll die out myself before I let you tarnish the good name of General Snuff and Tobacco!