While visiting Gloucester, MA James Pringle, of the Boston Globe, who met RK on one of his visits to the fishing port of Gloucester, Mass., found him friendly and unpretentious. He wrote:
...he affected no fine raiment or sought notice by distinctive attire. While here he wore a suit of brownish tweed which might have been picked out from a lot on a ready-made counter at the prevailing price for a suit of that quality in those days, $15... Inseparable was the pipe of French briar.."
Although Kipling was well know for smoking a pipe, he was often photographed with a cigar and is the author of well know quote: "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."
(The following is borrowed from BBC.co.uk Historic Figures )
Kipling was an English writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is best known for his poems and stories set in India during the period of British imperial rule.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, on 30 December 1865. His father was an artist and teacher. In 1870, Kipling was taken back to England to stay with a foster family in Southsea and then to go to boarding school in Devon. In 1882, he returned to India and worked as a journalist, writing poetry and fiction in his spare time. Books such as 'Plain Tales from the Hills' (1888) gained success in England, and in 1889 Kipling went to live in London.