We have been trading in fine tobacco and smokers'
accessories from 19 St James's Street for over 225 years and our customers have
included discriminating smokers from all walks of life – from commoners to
kings. Among them have been Sir Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, British and
Foreign Royalty, the officer's mess of famous British regiments, and the
leading lights of the stage, film, sport, tv, radio, music and literature.
Our world famous tobacco business started with Robert Lewis,
who began trading fine tobacco in St James's Street in 1787. James J Fox was
formed in Dublin in 1881 and opened its first tobacco shop in London in 1947.
Fox acquired the business of Robert Lewis on 14 September 1992, uniting two of
the most respected names in the cigar world. Both companies now trade as JJ Fox
(St James's) Ltd and run the cigar departments of Harrods and Selfridges.
FREDERIC JAMES FOX
1913-1990
Born in 1913, Frederic (Freddie) was the fourth of five
children and the youngest of James Fox’s three sons.
He found himself in charge of the family business, a single
cigar shop on Dublin’s Grafton Street, after the untimely death of his two
brothers. Stanley Fox was shot dead by armed thieves thought to be members of
the IRA in 1926, while Ronald (Biffy) was missing in action over the Dutch
coast in 1942 during an RAF mine laying mission.
Freddie, not content with just one shop, took the business
from strength to strength. He established a successful import and wholesale
business in Ireland alongside the world’s first Duty Free outlet which expanded
the retail cigar business into London.
He developed numerous brands including Punch Nectares,
Bolivar Amado, Hoyo Royal Hunt and La Corona Policromia, and established the
Astor Tobacco Company.
His enterprising nature also saw Freddie acquire and develop
a successful import and wholesale business in the Channel Islands; and he
oversaw the origin of the business’s entry into the property markets,
developing several high profile office buildings in St Helier, Jersey including
Sir Walter Raleigh House on the Esplanade.
Freddie Fox died in 1990. He is still sorely missed by his
family, friends and colleagues from the cigar industry.
Were he to be asked to comment on his career achievements,
he might say :
“Not bad for a beginner.”
We would agree.
THE FREDDIE FOX MUSEUM
During our many years of trading at 19 St James's Street, we
have collected a vast array of historic pieces and memorabilia. We chose to
dedicate our museum space to the late and great Freddie Fox. The Museum is
located in the basement of our flagship store and is open Monday to Saturday
during the store's opening hours.
Please take the time to have a look at some of our pieces
displayed here and the many more visible in the museum.
Remember your grandfather had always seemed to be smoking a
pipe, or you happened to notice your neighbor was contemplating a deep thought
while enjoying his tobacco pipe. I have two fond memories. The first was always
seeing my uncle with his pipe. Whether he was working in the garage, his wood
shop, or working outside, he was smoking his tobacco pipe. Then there was my
father. As a young boy I can recall the times that my dad would sit on the
porch in the evenings, smoking his pipe, reading the newspaper, and then
drifting off into his own thoughts while relaxing. Pipe smoking is returning to
a place of popularity among gentlemen. It’s no longer reserved for the older
men who lived before us. The enjoyment of tobacco pipes and pipe smoking is
classic.
We see that tobacco pipes and processing are considered to
be a great partnership. Men spend that past time sitting, smoking, and
processing. It causes us to slow down and “be present” within the moment.
Smoking a pipe just isn’t about blowing smoke. It’s about waiting and watching
the beauties of life unfold around us. The world of tobacco pipes has gained a
synergy of more than just smoking and enjoying a pipe and its aroma. Some men
have become avid pipe smokers, collectors of fine pipes, tobacco blending, and
even creating pipes for others to appreciate.
If you took the time, you will begin to see that tobacco
pipes have a rich history attached to their creation. History tells us that the
Native Americans brought about the use of the tobacco pipe, but the growing and
mass production of tobacco came from an Englishman. Pipes have been unearthed
with the discoveries of animal carvings and decorative markings. Most of these
pipes were made from porphyritic and other hard stone materials.
Types of Pipes. Another type of earlier tobacco pipe was
known as the “clay tavern pipe. This type of pipe was popular among the English
and Europeans. The tavern pipe is a long stemmed tobacco pipe, but at the time
was mostly crafted from clay. The clay pipes were fragile and broke often. This
called for greater craftsmanship and creativity.
The majority of today’s pipes are fashioned from briar. The
wood was called “bruyere” and through the years has become known as briar.” From
our studies and understanding, briar is as close to the perfect material for
the pipe bowl. Plus it is far more durable than clay or meerschaum. We also
have to realize that tobacco pipes are work of art or masterpieces of great
artisans. Each pipe that is crafted contains specific pieces that allow the
pipe to properly function. Elements like the tobacco chamber, the draft hole,
smoke channel, and slot are all part of the working pieces of a tobacco pipe.
They are important because they determine the smoking qualities of the pipe.
Another form of tobacco pipe is Corncob pipes also known as
“cobs.” These are way cheaper to purchase and have been quite popular with a
long history of use in the U.S. “Cobs” are made from actual dried corncobs and
then crafted into pipe bowls. Once that is done, they are inserted with a wood
shank attached with either a plastic or acrylic stem. Most cobs are machine
made. Watch this video to see how they are made.
How Corn Cob Pipes are Made
When you first begin to explore the world of tobacco pipes
it’s easy for an individual to get lost, frustrated, and eventually give up.
There are so many shapes and variations of pipes that they cannot even be
listed. The simplest way to understand the world of pipes is to understand that
pipes fall into two broad categories that are defined by the course of the
smoke channel. They are straight and curved.
Over the years the creativity for the shapes of pipes have
expanded extensively. Some have stayed and some have gone, but it all comes
back to your personal taste to start with. Purchase something that feels good
in your hand, catches your eye, and within your financial budget.
Buying a Pipe. Purchasing a pipe is like any other product
out there. There are cheap ones and quality made ones. Before you go and buy a
tobacco pipe please keep in mind
there are two main categories of pipes offered for sale: new
and estate pipes. New pipes are just that…brand new, un-smoked and have never
sold. Pipes like this will be found at a regular tobacco store for cigars and
tobacco pipes. Estate pipes are pre-owned, smoked and usually offer you a great
opportunity to get an amazing crafted tobacco pipe for half the price than what
you would normally pay.
Cleaning Your Pipe.
Follow these simple steps and you shouldn’t have any issues
when it comes to cleaning your tobacco pipe. Begin by purchasing some pipe
cleaners. You should have soft ones and hard ones. Be sure to lay an old rag or
cloth down on the work surface before proceeding. Next, make sure you buy
sanitizing grain alcohol, NOT isopropyl alcohol. Thirdly, separate the
components of the pipe by sliding or unscrewing the stem from the bowl. Fourth,
dunk a hard pipe cleaner into the alcohol and clean the pipe stem by running it
back and forth. Once you perceive that it is clean, insert the dry pipe
cleaner. If the pipe cleaner comes out clean, you are finished. If it isn’t
then just repeat this step. Please be sure to never reuse pipe cleaners. That is
unsanitary and they are inexpensive.
Fifth, remove the resin and tar that has built up on the
inside of the bowl with a scraping tool. Then fold an alcohol soaked pipe
cleaner (that has been drained) in half and clean the bowl and the tenon (the
air hole inside the bowl of the pipe). Do this by gently rubbing the sides of
the bowl and sticking the pipe cleaner into the tenon. When you do this all of
the residue should be wiped off with a dry pipe cleaner. Finally, rub and wipe
the outside of the bowl with alcohol on a cloth and let it dry completely.
We hope you have enjoyed our post on tobacco pipes. Do you
smoke a pipe? If so tell us how long, and what type of tobacco pipe you have.
During the 1950s, Bogarde was a matinee idol under extended
contract to the Rank Organisation. His Rank contract began following his
appearance in Esther Waters (1948), his first credited role, replacing Stewart
Granger .[10] Another early role was in The Blue Lamp (1950), playing a hoodlum
who shoots and kills a police constable (Jack Warner) while in So Long at the
Fair (1950), a film noir, he played a handsome artist who comes to the rescue of
Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris. He also had roles as an
accidental murderer in Hunted (a.k.a. The Stranger in Between, 1952); a young
wing commander in Bomber Command in Appointment in London (1953) and a wrongly
imprisoned man who regains hope in clearing his name when he learns his
sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive in Desperate Moment (1953).
Bogarde featured as a medical student in Doctor in the House
(1954), a film that made him one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s.
The film co-starred Kenneth More and Donald Sinden, with James Robertson
Justice as their crabby mentor. The production was initiated by Betty Box, who
picked up a copy of the book at Crewe during a long rail journey, and saw its
possibility as a film. But Box and Ralph Thomas had difficulties convincing
Rank executives that people would go to a film about doctors, and that Bogarde,
who up to then had played character roles, had sex appeal and could play light
comedy. They were allocated a modest budget, and were only allowed to use
available Rank contract artists. The film was the first of the Doctor film
series based on the books by Richard Gordon.
In The Sleeping Tiger (1954), Bogarde played a neurotic
criminal with co-star Alexis Smith. It was Bogarde's first film for American
expatriate director Joseph Losey. He did his second Doctor film, Doctor at Sea
(1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles; as a
returning colonial who fights the Mau-Mau with Virginia McKenna and Donald Sinden
in Simba (1955); Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), as a man who marries women for
money and then murders them; The Spanish Gardener (1956), with Michael Hordern,
Jon Whiteley, and Cyril Cusack; Doctor at Large (1957), again with Donald
Sinden, another entry in the Doctor film series, with later Bond-girl Shirley
Eaton; the Powell and Pressburger production Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)
co-starring Marius Goring as the German General Kreipe, kidnapped on Crete by
Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor (Bogarde) and W. Stanley Moss (David
Oxley) and a fellow band of Cretan resistance fighters based on W. Stanley
Moss' real-life account, (Ill Met by Moonlight), of the Second World War
abduction; A Tale of Two Cities (1958), a faithful retelling of Charles
Dickens' classic; as a flight lieutenant in the Far East who falls in love with
a beautiful Japanese teacher Yoko Tani in The Wind Cannot Read (1958);The
Doctor's Dilemma (1959), based on a play by George Bernard Shaw and co-starring
Leslie Caron and Robert Morley; and Libel (1959), playing three separate roles
and co-starring Olivia de Havilland.
Later roles
After leaving the Rank Organisation in the early 1960s,
Bogarde abandoned his heart-throb image for more challenging parts. He starred
in the film Victim (1961), playing a London barrister who fights the
blackmailers of a young man with whom he has had a deeply emotional
relationship. The young man commits suicide after being arrested for
embezzlement, rather than ruin his beloved's career. In exposing the ring of
extortionists, Bogarde's character risks his reputation and marriage in order
to see that justice is done. Victim was the first British film to portray the
humiliation gay people were exposed to via discriminatory law, and as a
victimized minority; it is said to have had some effect upon the later Sexual
Offences Act 1967 ending the illegal status of male homosexual activity.
Other later roles included decadent valet Hugo Barrett in
The Servant (1963), which garnered him a BAFTA Award, directed by Joseph Losey and
written by Harold Pinter; The Mind Benders (1963), a film ahead of its times in
which Bogarde plays an Oxford professor conducting sensory deprivation
experiments at Oxford University (precursor to Altered States (1980)); the
anti-war film King & Country (1964), directed by Joseph Losey, in which he
played an army officer at a court martial, reluctantly defending deserter Tom
Courtenay; a television broadcaster-writer Robert Gold in Darling (1965), for
which Bogarde won a second BAFTA Award, directed by John Schlesinger; Stephen,
a bored Oxford University professor, in Losey's Accident, (1967) also written
by Pinter; Our Mother's House (1967), an off-beat film-noir and British entry
at the Venice Film Festival, directed by Jack Clayton, in which Bogarde plays a
ne'er-do-well father who descends upon "his" seven children on the
death of their mother; German industrialist Frederick Bruckmann in Luchino
Visconti's La Caduta degli dei, The Damned (1969) co-starring Ingrid Thulin; as
ex-Nazi, Max Aldorfer, in the chilling and controversial Il Portiere di notte
(a.k.a. The Night Porter) (1974), co-starring Charlotte Rampling, directed by
Liliana Cavani; and most notably, as Gustav von Aschenbach in Morte a Venezia,
Death in Venice (1971), also directed by Visconti; as Claude, the lawyer son of
a dying, drunken writer (John Gielgud) in the well-received, multi-dimensional
French film Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais; as industrialist
Hermann Hermann who descends into madness in Despair (1978) directed by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder; and as Daddy in Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgie,
(a.k.a.These Foolish Things) (1991), co-starring Jane Birkin as his daughter,
Bogarde's final film role.
In some of his other roles during the 1960s and 1970s,
Bogarde played opposite renowned stars, yet several of the films were of uneven
quality, due to demands or limitations set by the studio or their scripts: The
Angel Wore Red (1960), playing an unfrocked priest who falls in love with
cabaret entertainer Ava Gardner during the Spanish Civil War; Song Without End
(1960), as Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, a flawed film
made under the initial direction of Charles Vidor (who died during shooting),
and completed by Bogarde's friend George Cukor, the actor's only disappointing
foray into Hollywood; the campy The Singer Not the Song (1961), as a Mexican
bandit co-starring John Mills as a priest; H.M.S. Defiant (a.k.a. Damn the
Defiant!) (1962), playing sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padget, co-starring Sir Alec
Guinness; I Could Go On Singing (1963), co-starring Judy Garland in her final
screen role; Hot Enough for June, (a.k.a. "Agent 8¾") (1964), a James
Bond-type spy spoof co-starring Robert Morley; Modesty Blaise (1966), a campy
spy send-up playing archvillain Gabriel opposite Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp
and directed by Joseph Losey; The Fixer (1968), based on Bernard Malamud's
novel, co-starring Alan Bates;Sebastian (1968), as Sebastian, a mathematician
working on code decryption, who falls in love with Susannah York, a decrypter
in the all-female decoding office he heads for British Intelligence, also
co-starring Sir John Gielgud, and Lilli Palmer, co-produced by Michael Powell;
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), co-starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier
and directed by Richard Attenborough; Justine (1969), directed by George Cukor;
Le Serpent (1973), co-starring Henry Fonda and Yul Brynner; A Bridge Too Far
(1977), in a controversial performance as Lieutenant General Frederick
"Boy" Browning, also starring Sean Connery and an all-star cast and
again directed by Richard Attenborough.
Bogarde claimed he had known General Browning from his time
on Field Marshal Montgomery's staff during the war and took issue with the
largely negative portrayal of the General that he played in the 1977 film A
Bridge Too Far. General "Boy" Browning's widow, the author Daphne du
Maurier, ferociously attacked his characterisation and "the resultant
establishment fallout, much of it homophobic, wrongly convinced [Bogarde] that
the newly ennobled Sir Richard [Attenborough] had deliberately contrived to
scupper his own chance of a knighthood."
In 1977, Bogarde embarked on his second career as an author.
Starting with a first volume A Postillion Struck by Lightning (an allusion to
the phrase My postillion has been struck by lightning), he wrote a series of 15
best-selling books; nine volumes of memoirs, six novels, as well as essays,
reviews, poetry and collected journalism. As a writer Bogarde displayed a
witty, elegant, highly literate and thoughtful style.
The Servant: a 60s masterwork that hides its homosexuality
in the shadows
Joseph Losey's superb 1963 film about class and sex is once
again in cinemas – but to locate its elusive gay gene, you have to revisit its
source in Robin Maugham's extraordinary and disturbing novella
Peter Bradshaw
@PeterBradshaw1
Wed 27 Mar 2013 16.21 GMT First published on Wed 27 Mar 2013
16.21 GMT
Homosexuality is everywhere and nowhere in The Servant.
Harold Pinter's superbly controlled, elliptical, menacing dialogue is able to
hint, to imply, to seduce, to repulse, in precisely the manner that gay men
were forced to adopt in 1963, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence,
and when representing homosexuality on screen was forbidden. To locate the gay
gene in The Servant, you have to go back to its source, the 1948 novella
written by Robin Maugham, the nephew of W Somerset Maugham. The Servant has its
spark in an extraordinary event in Maugham's own life, to be treasured by
connoisseurs of British sex and class.
Maugham had rented a house, which came with its own servant,
a man who unnerved him by gliding about almost invisibly. One evening, Maugham
went on a date with Mary Soames, the daughter of Winston Churchill. He took her
back to his flat and she asked for a drink: a cold lager from the fridge, as
opposed to warm ale. (Interestingly, this drink recurs in the movie, but not
the novel.) The fridge was just next to the manservant's room in the basement,
the door of which was open; Maugham glanced in and saw a naked teenage boy on
the bed. The servant appeared from nowhere and said in his odd drawl: "I
see you are admiring my young nephew, sahr. Would you like me to send him up to
you to say goodnight, sahr?" Maugham pretended he hadn't heard and simply
went away without replying.
The trap was plainly set for blackmail – financial or moral,
or both. In the book, of course, Maugham heterosexualises the trap. Barrett
brings in a young woman he describes as his "niece"; in the film it
is his sister, and the misplaced suspicion of incest between Barrett and Vera
becomes the "unnatural" act. It is a woman who seduces Tony. But it
is Barrett who is pulling the strings. It is Barrett who effects the seduction
at one remove, in the hope that he can use this as leverage over the master. In
the film, it is as much about power as pleasure, but this manipulation is
replete with sexuality.
Maugham's book is far more candid about the homosexual act.
He has a character, Richard Merton, who does not appear in the film: a
concerned friend of Tony who is the narrator (Maugham even implies that it is
their relationship that is the bond of true love). Merton asks Tony outright if
he and Barrett have sex, and Tony laughingly denies it, though without being
offended or shocked. His passions are to become centred on Vera, who is
absurdly and rather naively depicted as a nymphomaniac. But students of
linguistic history might be interested in the use of the word "gay"
in the book. After Barrett's redecoration, Tony's "chairs had been covered
in a gay yellow chintz". Tony is asked by his friend if he is at heart a
roving bachelor or a "gay wolf". "Moderately gay" is how Tony
replies. The word did not yet mean "homosexual" but is in the process
of transition. Harold Pinter avoids it entirely. His movie is about more than
sex.
What did audiences make of this extraordinary, disturbing
and compelling story? They may well have been alive to its literary echoes.
Everyone adored PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster. They understood how Jeeves
had the upper hand. But Jeeves was entirely benign and discreet. He knew his
place. JM Barrie's play The Admirable Crichton showed a butler taking power
because he is the only one with practical knowhow when his aristocratic
employers are shipwrecked with him on a desert island: but the status quo is
ultimately restored.
Insidious and insinuating, Barrett is more like a subtler
Uriah Heep, and in their claustrophobia and hysteria, Tony and Barrett have
something of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or perhaps Lord Henry Wootton and Dorian
Gray, or even Edward II and Gaveston in Christopher Marlowe's play.
As far as movies go, Joseph Losey's previous film with Dirk
Bogarde had a similar cuckoo-in-the-nest theme. The Sleeping Tiger (1954)
starred Bogarde as Frank, a criminal who is invited by a trendy psychotherapist
to come and live in the family house, believing that a stable environment will
help him. Frank makes himself at home and begins an affair with the therapist's
troubled wife. In later years, when live-in servants are less common, parallels
with The Servant are less common also, but there is Curtis Hanson's The Hand
That Rocks the Cradle (1992) featuring Rebecca De Mornay as the nanny who tries
to take over the household. And a mention should go to Tinge Krishnan's
social-realist drama Junkhearts (2011), which features Eddie Marsan as the
ex-soldier who befriends a young homeless teen and gives her a platonic bed for
the night in his council flat, only to discover she wants to bring in her
boyfriend, who has been planning from the outset to take over his property.
Even in context, however, The Servant looks unique: its
formal, theatrical elegance, combined with the ugliness of its emotions and
fears, looks sharper and fiercer than ever. With its dark shadows, and faces
distorted in convex mirrors, it looks like a scary movie, which is what it is.
In Britain in 2013, even with Old Etonians in charge, the master/servant
dialogue of 50 years ago seems impossibly arrogant. It was not unusual for
instructions to be brusque, and the word "please" to be avoided, and
a sentence rounded off with a curt "… would you?" And so the servant
classes might well take refuge in an enigmatic mask, or take revenge with
little gestures of pique or cheek, and generally store up resentment. In
Britain the rhetoric of class, like that of sex, was largely in code. This is
what the outsider Losey orchestrates, what Pinter writes and what Bogarde
embodies.
• This is an edited extract from Peter Bradshaw's essay on
The Servant included in the film's DVD booklet. The Servant is out now in
cinemas, and will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 8 April.
