1881 drawing of a New York opium den from Harper’s Weekly. Several people sit and lie on cots smoking opium. An Asian man has entered the room carrying a tray.
25 February 2022
A pipe dream is an unrealizable hope or plan, a fantasy. The underlying metaphor is straightforward and, once you think about it, rather obvious. A literal pipe dream is an opium-induced hallucination.
The phrase is an Americanism that first appears in print on 11 December 1890, but co-locations of the two words can be found earlier describing literal opium-induced hallucinations. For instance, there is this article, dateline 28 August 1832, in the New-York Commercial Advertiser:
If, then, morning slumbers and day-dreams are so pleasant, what a charming life a Turk must lead, with his pipe, his opium, and his houris! Happy dog! He is never really awake, but passes his life in visions of beauty and glory;—but stay:—his visions perchance may end where he might rather wish them to begin!
And there is this in a letter by naturalist Henry Mouhot to his sister-in-law, dated 21 December 1861:
I have blank paper, which I fill as I best can; it is an amusement, at least; and if it turn out of no other use than to serve to amuse you all, I shall be satisfied, for I am not ambitious. I dream as I smoke my pipe, for I must confess that I smoke more than ever.
And this item, “Sensations After an Opium Smoke,” was reprinted in a number of American newspapers starting on 16 November 1879:
De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater” do not describe those of an opium smoker, although the feeling must be somewhat similar. The strongest dreams overtake the unconscious sleeper, the pipe falls from his hands, his face becomes livid, and the visions that pass before his drugged fancy are simply delicious. No dream of pleasure, no fancied beauty, can equal the scenes and forms called up in the visions of the opium smoker.
But as stated, the phrase with its metaphorical meaning appears on 11 December 1890. Coincidentally, two Chicago papers use pipe dream, in different contexts, on that day. Primacy must go to the article in the Daily Inter Ocean, which while printed on 11 December, carries a dateline of 7 December:
The Herald has been busy grinding out poetry, which the Bee, Journal and Tribune sing. It is worse than fighting Indians to listen to—
“All silent lies the village on the bosum of the vale,
So I’ll squeeze another pipe dream, and grind out another tale.”
The lines of poetry given here appear to be original to the Daily Inter Ocean. They are a commentary on poetry printed in the other newspapers, not a quotation from them.
The second 11 December 1890 article is about aviation in the Chicago Daily Tribune:
“When a man begins to talk about aerial navigation,” said E.J. Pennington of Mount Carmel, Ill., at the Grand Pacific yesterday, “he might just as well own up that he is crazy and a fit subject for the strait-jacket. It has been regarded as a pipe-dream for a good many years, yet people don’t seem to be aware that it is an accomplished fact, and has been since 1852. There was a man of the name of Gifford in England who arranged an oiled silk balloon with a lifting power sufficient to counterbalance the weight of a steam engine, with boiler, coal, and all. The engine weighed 300 pounds to the horse power, and the propeller was relatively small. Yet, even with that, he made seven and one-half miles an hour.”
While it is of limited utility today, Pennington wasn’t far off in his prediction about lighter-than-air aviation. Ferdinand von Zeppelin would go on to patent the first of his airships in 1893, and the heyday of zeppelins and blimps would last into the 1930s, before being supplanted by the airplane. He was right; by 1890 aviation was no longer a pipe dream.
Sources:
“Building Airships of Aluminum.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 11 December 1890, 9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“From Our Correspondent” (28 August 1832). New-York Commercial Advertiser, 31 August 1832, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“The Hostiles” (7 December 1890). Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 11 December 1890, 6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Mouhot, Henri. Letter to Madame Charles Mouhot, 21 December 1861. Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos, vol 2. London: William Clowes and Sons, 1864, 253–54. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2006, s.v. pipe dream, n.
Image credit: J.W. Alexander, “American Opium-Smokers—Interior of a New York Opium Den.” Harper’s Weekly, 8 October 1881, 684. Public domain image.