You are currently viewing 249. Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes Smokes a Peterson Churchwarden

249. Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes Smokes a Peterson Churchwarden

I am honored this week to proffer R. Dixon Smith’s short memoir
documenting the Peterson churchwarden Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes smoked
in the acclaimed Granada Television series (1984-94).

I’m an American, but I lived in England—in Cambridge—for a number of years, and Jeremy Brett and I were good friends. I have some information about the Peterson churchwarden Jeremy smoked in the Granada Television Sherlock Holmes series, which aired between 1984 and 1994.

Much of the information concerning Jeremy’s pipes I picked up not from Jeremy but from David Round, Granada’s props buyer. JB was left-handed, by the way. Sherlock Holmes was not—all the major illustrators, starting with Sidney Paget, depicted Holmes as being right-handed. As a result, Jeremy had to learn to smoke his pipes and cigarettes right-handed. Jeremy had never smoked a pipe before he became Holmes. His older brother, John Huggins, a clergyman, was a lifelong pipe smoker. When Jeremy was named Pipe Smoker of the Year in 1989 and appeared on the cover of Pipe Smokers Welcome! magazine, his brother teased him mercilessly for being a non-pipe-smoker who wound up on the cover of Pipe Smokers Welcome!

Michael Cox offered Jeremy the role of Sherlock Holmes in 1982.  After some hesitation, Jeremy finally accepted the part later that year.  The series went into production in mid-1983, before which time Jeremy and David Round, Granada’s property buyer, went out shopping for pipes.  David bought several, and Jeremy, who’d never before smoked a pipe, was immediately drawn by the Peterson churchwarden.

(This shot from “A Scandal in Bohemia” shows Sherlock Holmes’s pipe collection to advantage: the gourd calabash he will smoke in “The Final Problem,” the 124 churchwarden (with oxidized stem and new bend), and in the pipe rack a second Peterson 124 Calabash with unmodified black stem (bowl and stem taken apart), a Peterson XL315 Calabash System, a long white clay and a straight pipe that might be a Dunmore Classic Range. And let’s not forget the persian slipper tobacco pouch hanging from the mantelpiece!)

Neither Jeremy nor David ever told me precisely which churchwarden they found.  What we know now is that Jeremy began the series smoking a slender canted Peterson Dublin (the 124) just as it was, but very soon was rebent by the property department.

This was the smooth Dublin calabash offered at the time of the series, from the 1979-80 Peterson-Glass catalog.

David bought two identical Peterson churchwardens that day, the second a back-up in case the first was dropped and broken.  It wasn’t, but they eventually began using the second pipe after the first disappeared.  Jeremy told me that two groups had toured the set the week the first churchwarden went missing, one of which was the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.  He felt certain that it was not one of their members who nicked it.  Some years later, David Round told me that “we aged both of them,” the “we” implying that it was the props department that performed the magic.  The stem, remember, wasn’t black; it was the same tan [oxidized] color as the bowl.

Note the aging effect (oxidation of the stem) performed by the property department.

I bought my own rusticated 124 churchwarden in 1987. I once told Jeremy that whenever I smoked mine, I imagined that I was JB as SH.  (A friend, but still a fan.)  He laughed and said simply, “That’s nice.”  I only found out that he wasn’t really a pipe smoker (he smoked cigarettes) when I remarked that we should smoke our pipes together.  He told me that Holmes’ pipes were at Granada in Manchester (some two-and-a-half hours north of London), and that he only smokes them when he’s filming.  He was, however, immensely proud of having been named “Pipe Smoker of the Year” in 1989.  When he appeared on the cover of Pipe Smokers Welcome!, they used the shot of him smoking the gourd calabash at Reichenbach.  He and Michael Cox thought it would make a clever in-joke, and it did.  In the close-up, he looks at the bowl and smiles, as if to say, “I know I don’t smoke this kind of pipe, and I know that you know that I don’t, but we’ve included it as a bit of a joke nonetheless!”

At the base of the Reichenbach Falls in “The Final Problem.”

What happened to the churchwarden after Jeremy’s death?  After completing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with David Burke in 1984, Jeremy’s wife, Joan Wilson, the producer of WGBH-TV’s PBS series Mystery!, died of cancer.  Jeremy suffered an emotional collapse and was diagnosed with manic depression.  (The term bipolar is not used in England.  Even the bipolar foundation is called the Manic Depression Fellowship.)  Jeremy began taking lithium and soon began filming The Return of Sherlock Holmes with Edward Hardwicke.  About three years later Jeremy met Linda Pritchard, who became his girlfriend and companion for the rest of his life.  Several years after Jeremy died—he was only 61—David Round called me and asked if I could put him in touch with Linda.  He told me that he had come across the churchwarden and thought that Linda should have it.  I gave him Linda’s phone number and David sent her the pipe.  Linda eventually sold it.  She never told me who’d bought it, and I felt it inappropriate to ask.

 The original Rupert Press edition of  A Study in Celluloid.

I was well known in Sherlockian circles, for, although my principal occupation was that of bluegrass musician, I also ran Rupert Books, the UK’s leading specialist in Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle.  The business was founded in 1983, and I added a publishing imprint to it in 1997, later publishing Linda Pritchard’s book, The Jeremy Brett-Linda Pritchard Story:  On the Wings of Paradise, as well as Michael Cox’s award-winning book on the creation and production of the series, A Study in Celluloid:  A Producer’s Account of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes.  When I told Linda that I would have bought Jeremy’s churchwarden for my own collection, she told me that she knew that but had feared that I might have sold it through Rupert Books.  She was concerned that if it got out that she’d sold the pipe, she’d have faced heavy criticism from the Sherlockian world.

When I published A Study in Celluloid in 1999, I held the book launch at Murder One, London’s leading crime- and detective-fiction bookshop.  There I was, all the books on display, when I received a call from Sandra Cox, Michael’s wife, telling me that Michael had taken suddenly ill; his doctor had warned him not to travel by train to London, lest she have to hospitalize him the following day for pneumonia.  The launch had been given a lot of publicity, and numerous members of the Granada team were coming to celebrate.  Amongst those present that evening were John Hawkesworth, the commissioning script editor, who’d worked on David Lean’s The Third Man in 1948; Jeremy Paul, who’d written many of the scripts, including “The Speckled Band,” “The Naval Treaty,” and “The Musgrave Ritual”; Patrick Gowers, who composed the theme and incidental music; John Bruce, who directed several early episodes, including “The Speckled Band” and “The Dancing Men”; and David Burke.  Both Watsons were to have been there, but I’d received a call from Ted Hardwicke in France the day before; he wasn’t going to be able to make it, because the film he was shooting had run behind schedule.  All those books and no author.  And then I thought of Dr. Watson.  I called David [who played Watson first in the series], who immediately asked me what he could do to help.  I asked him if he would autograph the books, and so he did.  That’s the story of how Dr. Watson saved the book launch!

Isn’t it fascinating that Jeremy fell under the spell of the 124 churchwarden that had been in the Peterson catalogue since 1945?  To me it almost suggests inevitability—the perfect actor in the perfect Sherlock Holmes series, at least the only series to be completely faithful to Conan Doyle’s stories—smoking the perfect Peterson pipe!

The first series was shot in 1983 and 1984, and was televised in the UK in 1984 and 1985 and in the States in 1985 and 1986.  I was a member of the Norwegian Explorers, the University of Minnesota chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars.  After giving a talk on the series’ first season to the Explorers, I was commissioned by the curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota—the largest institutional collection of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle material in the world—to write a monograph on the subject, to be published by the University of Minnesota Libraries Special Collections.  In the course of my research, I wrote to Michael Cox at Granada Studios in Manchester (this before the advent of the internet).  Michael sent me loads of information and many stills, including the order in which the first thirteen episodes were shot, and this led to a friendship that lasted until Michael’s death.

Jeremy & Dixon

Once I completed the monograph, I sent it to Michael prior to publication, and after reading it he passed it on to Jeremy.  At that point Michael put me in touch with Jeremy, and we corresponded now and again until we finally met in 1989, after a performance of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.  We hit it off and spent the following afternoon together, until he had to get ready for that night’s performance.  He told me that he’d re-read my monograph that morning and had called Michael and discussed it.  The result was that he urged me to continue and write the definitive history of the Granada series.  I didn’t, but David Stuart Davies and Michael Cox did.  We kept in touch by post until, several years later, I moved to England and we resumed our friendship.  By then Jeremy’s health had become precarious, but we managed the occasional lunch and visits to pubs, plus glorious, rambling telephone conversations.  And then, suddenly, in 1995, Jeremy went to sleep and never woke up.

I’ve always hoped I might be able to interest Kapp & Peterson in issuing a stamped, numbered Jeremy Brett commemorative churchwarden, replicating the bend, the unbanded 124 bowl and even the tan-colored mouthpiece. If you’re at all interested, please leave a comment as this will help Mark and I know the feasibility of such a project.

R. Dixon Smith

For Further Reading

Dixon: For those interested in pursuing the creation and making of the Granada Series, may I suggest A Study in Celluloid, still available from Gasogene, as well as  David Stuart Davies’ Bending the Willow:  Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, both indispensable studies of the Granada series.  [Mark: I would also recommend Dixon’s own monograph, Jeremy Brett and David Burke:  An Adventure in Canonical Fidelity, which is a wonderful story-to-cinema comparison of the first Granada series as well as selected earlier cinematic portrayals of Holmes and Watson.]

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Steven Hersey
Steven Hersey
2 years ago

Thank you for this fascinating article. I loved the TV series and always felt that JB made the perfect Holmes in his nuanced depiction of the sleuth. He made pipe smoking look natural despite his new introduction to it for the role. I was always intrigued that the great fictional detective kept his tobacco in a slipper…
The churchwarden is an elegant design and the calabash is a fun shape, but neither could be described as handy pocket pipes for when you’re out and about…
A great article.
S

Rolf Öttking
Rolf Öttking
2 years ago

Thank you very much for this story, which really is a gem for the Peterson Pipes, as well as the JB-as-SH- lovers. I am delighted to match both descriptions 😉 and enjoyed the story very much.
As to being interested in a 124 pipe commemorating JB’s performance: count me in! Maybe, this could even be extended into a series commemorating the famous pipe smokers, enjoying Peterson Pipes, like JB, GG, AE, MT, (like above) … thus promoting the pipe these celebrities made famous.
Would love to hear the continuation 🙂

Andy McDowell
Andy McDowell
2 years ago

As usual a very informative blog and even more so since it was about two of my favourite things: Peterson Pipes and Sherlock Holmes. I thoroughly enjoyed Jeremy Brett’s rendering of Holmes in the Granada series when I lived in the UK; so much so I have it all on DVD (which is just as well as I now live in Brazil so I’m highly unlikely to find it on television!).

Now if you could convince K&P in producing the Jeremy Brett commemorative churchwarden… ..I’ll buy one

Charlie Atkins
2 years ago

Jeremy Brett was certainly the best actor to play the role of Sherlock Holmes. I actually knew nothing of the Granada series until I took up the pipe again in 2013. Watching the Granada series while smoking a pipe… well, it doesn’t get any better. Thank you for sharing your Experiences to us Pete-geeks Dixon, it is great to hear the back story.

And yes, count me in on a commemorative church warden if it materializes!

Jack
2 years ago

What a great article! Thank you for sharing it with us. I stumbled upon the Granada series a number of years ago and loved every minute of it! So good all the way around. And — YES!!! — put me down for a JB pipe!

James
James
2 years ago

I met Jeremy Brett on an elevator (lift I should say) in London. I pressed the button, waited and when the doors opened he was standing there looking right at me. I was totally taken aback. This was the actor I most wanted to meet and there he was, he smiled and said to me in the distinctive voice “are you going to get in”, I mumbled something incomprehensible and got in and all I could say was “I love your Holmes”, “thank you you are most kind”. I held out a scrap of paper and a pencil in total… Read more »

R. Dixon Smith
R. Dixon Smith
2 years ago
Reply to  James

James, what a delightful story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. All best wishes, Dixon

Bob Cuccaro/TLIP
Bob Cuccaro/TLIP
2 years ago

Great story!! I would certainly support another Sherlock LE pipe, but my opinion is that Rathbone was the premier and perhaps why Peterson named a pipe after him 🙂

Marlowe
Marlowe
2 years ago

Very interesting article Mark. JB was the best SH. I’m sure this winter we’ll start watching the series again – 3rd time through! Happy Thanksgiving fellow Peterson Geeks from Canada!

James DeCicco
James DeCicco
2 years ago

What a wonderful article! JB is the quintessential Holmes, for me anyway. My family and I have watched the Granada series many times. It’s now a tradition to watch as many as we can once Autumn begins. We usually make it through most of them! Several years ago, I was able to acquire a Peterson 124 from the 80’s, unsmoked. I did my best to match the bend to the one Jeremy Brett used in the series. I think it turned out fairly well. I could never get the stem to match the color of his though… if K&P would… Read more »

Jonathan Gifford
Jonathan Gifford
1 year ago
Reply to  James DeCicco

I just stumbled across this page, but I’d follow suit easily and buy a JB 124. Someone tell Peterson!

Linwood
Linwood
2 years ago

YES!
A wonderful post! As I try to enjoy the entire series thru the winter nights in my smoking room (you can imagine what pipes I smoke whilst). In fact isn’t this an opportunity to print and expanded monograph of this post (including pictures and catalog pages) to include with the new pipe! What great stuff!
Thank you for bringing this to us Mark!

David F M
David F M
2 years ago

Yes. Definitely interested in a churchwarden Jeremy Brett commemorative.

2023 will be the 90th anniversary of his birth.

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

I would like the see the tan stem (acrylic) so that the color matches the original, but a black stem would not be a deal-breaker for me. However, I would not want a pre-antiqued vulcanite stem.

The real question (as far as I’m concerned) is what to stamp on the leather pipe stand?

I say, in honor of the original Sherlock, how about VR as in Queen Victoria’s initials? If he shot it onto the wall, why not stamp it onto a leather stand?

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

Could you explain, please? I can see that having different meanings. Peterson says that they won’t make the tan stem, so if customers say “it has to be tan” they won’t do it. Or it could mean that Peterson is willing to do tan, but they think the customers will be turned away by that? I understand that they’re willing to make it in black, but I just don’t understand what you mean about the tan. And are they unwilling to do acrylic? I have mixed feelings about that myself. The look would be right, but the material would not… Read more »

Eri Billing
Eri Billing
2 years ago

Thank You SO Much for your Article on Sherlock Holmes and Jeremy Brett it was Wonderful I always had a Hard Time Deciding with whom was Better Brett or Rathbone it the end I came to the conclusion they are Both Very Good
Once again Thank You

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

Coincidence? I think not. Elementary is more like it. Just about 2 years ago now, we had Mark’s blog post #150, a tribute to Basil Rathbone and his 4AB (later, 309, XL20, &c.) I seem to recall someone at Peterson saying that’s just about how long it takes from concept to release for a POY or holiday pipe. It seems they’re paying attention.

So Mark: thank you for giving Pete Geeks a forum to express support and ideas.

Now, if they ever release a “Mark Irwin” pipe, we will know it goes way beyond coincidence.

Martin
Martin
2 years ago

On the last blog I say not my cup of tee, but today a very nice churchwarden shows up with a awesome bent. So I purchased it and give it a try. Nice info on the POTY thanks for sharing.

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin

Martin: What shape specifically? (Your new churchwarden)

Martin
Martin
2 years ago
Reply to  David F M

Good Morning David. I bought the D16 with a bend never seen before. My ulterior motive, when it´s not work for me I have a nice decoration over the pipe rack.

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin

I like the D16. I don’t have any, but I’ve been thinking about one. I had bad luck with a churchwarden calabash, so I’m a bit shy about another churchwarden, but the D16 is my choice, if I ever get to it. Now, a Jeremy Brett commemorative? Likewise, even if it just sits on the rack, it’ll be a nice addition. “Jeremy Brett, meet Carroll of Carrollton.”

So, have you smoked that D16 yet? Thoughts?

Joe Marti
Joe Marti
2 years ago

What a sweet elixir this article was! Many, many thanks to you, Mark, and Mr. Smith. I had just read the entire canon of Holmes in the late ’90s when I discovered the Granada series. Watching it for the first time, so fresh from reading all the stories, was an unparalleled joy. I must admit, I never really connected with Basil Rathbone‘s depiction. I need to revisit it and see if I can’t update my prejudices. Not only was Jeremy Brett’s version a delight in so many ways, I often say that the series was one of the most faithful… Read more »

Joe Marti
Joe Marti
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

So what you’re saying is I do have the right one, unless there’s another Dublin churchwarden?

Isabelle Chevalier
Isabelle Chevalier
2 years ago

I would be totally in for a stamped, numbered Jeremy Brett commemorative churchwarden!
But remember to tell Peterson to put down that goose… 😉

Marcel
Marcel
2 years ago

What a lovely article this was! I just found it shared in a pipe smoking group on Facebook. I’ve always loved the Granada series, especially the pairing of Jeremy Brett and David Burke (though I also loved Hardwicke’s Watson, it must be said). I try to watch it regularly, and would certainly join the chorus here clamouring for a special edition Jeremy Brett-as-Holmes pipe if Peterson released such a thing.

Jeff Ashley
Jeff Ashley
2 years ago

Jeremy Brett will always be the quintessential Holmes for me. I own the DVD collection in a beautiful emerald green box set and is my prize British mystery collection along with Poirot and Cadfael. I also have a hardback copy of Bending the Willow. I am a pipe smoker myself and Jeremy drew into it. Peterson is my favorite brand and I have several in my collection of over fifty at this point. I also wanted a black oiled clay Jeremy smoked but I can’t find which was used or a reasonable facsimile. Markus Fohr makes pipes similar but not… Read more »

David F M
David F M
2 years ago

Mark, an extended question. I’ve currently watching the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series (found it in a complete box-set at Amazon). In the episode “Resident Patient” Brett is smoking that “other” Peterson churchwarden–the one that still had the black non-oxidized stem. At about 8 mins 8 secs into the episode, there’s a decent (but not great) closeup of the pipe; again at about 8:22 ff. That pipe is certainly not (what we now call) the 120 shape. It’s closer to the D15 shape. It certainly has that inverted pyramid shape of a Dublin. Might there have been three churchwardens used… Read more »

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

Aah, the 124. I misread it above.

So what shape would that be in the current nomenclature? Would it be the (not-numbered) Dublin?

I’m having a difficult time matching JBs 124 to what I see on Peterson.ie and the retail sites (such as SPC). I can’t find anything labeled as 124 churchwarden. It must be there, I just can’t make the match.

David F M
David F M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

There is a THIRD churchwarden; not a Peterson. In the episode “The Priory School” at 19:07, Holmes sets his pipe down on a map. There is a very brief shot of the entire pipe in profile. Something is stamped on the pipe. It looks somewhat familiar, but I can’t make out what it is, even in zoom. However, it is certainly not a Peterson P. Maybe a Chacom? That’s the closest I can find in contemporary brands.

Jonathan Gifford
Jonathan Gifford
1 year ago

A JB 124 seems like a very natural addition to the Sherlock series of K&P pipes. We already have the Basil, after all. I for one would buy two such pipes faster than you could say Jack Robinson.

R. Robert Reddington
R. Robert Reddington
1 year ago

If so interested do make contact

MARK BROWN
MARK BROWN
7 months ago

I for sure would be in for a pipe like this. Was this ever completed?

Terry Holmes
Terry Holmes
6 months ago
Reply to  Mark Irwin

A great fan of the original Canon & of the Granada series & of Mr. Brett’s Holmes. Just ran across this article late last night & I am saddened to hear that no action has been taken by Peterson on a Jeremy Brett Churchwarden (my favorite style of pipes). I most certainly would purchase one if it is ever offered.

Richard Flyger
Richard Flyger
5 months ago

A replica church warden pipe – a great idea. I’m interested for sure. Please get in contact if this project is ‘green-lit.’