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Title: The Social History of Smoking

Author: G. L. Apperson

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THE

SOCIAL HISTORY

OF SMOKING



_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

BYGONE LONDON LIFE




THE

SOCIAL HISTORY

OF SMOKING

BY G.L. APPERSON, I.S.O.




LONDON
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI




_First published 1914_


PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON




TO

J.H.M. AND R.W.B.

GOOD FRIENDS AND

GOOD SMOKERS

BOTH




PREFACE


This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this
country from the social point of view. There have been many books
written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's "History of Tobacco," 1859, and
the "Tobacco" (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable
authorities--but hitherto no one has told the story of the
fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking.

Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's
"History" is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine
myself strictly to the changes in the attitude of society towards
smoking, and to such historical and social sidelights as serve to
illuminate that theme.

The tobacco-pipe was popular among every section of society in this
country in an amazingly short space of time after smoking was first
practised for pleasure, and retained its ascendancy for no
inconsiderable period. Signs of decline are to be observed during the
latter part of the seventeenth century; and in the course of its
successor smoking fell more and more under the ban of fashion. Early
in the nineteenth century tobacco-smoking had reached its nadir from
the social point of view. Then came the introduction of the cigar and
the revival of smoking in the circles from which it had long been
almost entirely absent. The practice was hedged about and obstructed
by a host of restrictions and conventions, but as the nineteenth
century advanced the triumphant progress of tobacco became more and
more marked. The introduction of the cigarette completed what the
cigar had begun; barriers and prejudices crumbled and disappeared with
increasing rapidity; until at the present day tobacco-smoking in
England--by pipe or cigar or cigarette--is more general, more
continuous, and more free from conventional restrictions than at any
period since the early days of its triumph in the first decades of the
seventeenth century.

The tracing and recording of this social history of the smoking-habit,
touching as it does so many interesting points and details of domestic
manners and customs, has been a task of peculiar pleasure. To me it
has been a labour of love; but no one can be more conscious of the
many imperfections of these pages than I am.

I should like to add that I am indebted to Mr. Vernon Rendall, editor
of _The Athenæum_, for a number of valuable references and
suggestions.

    G.L.A.

   HAYWARDS HEATH.
  _September 1914._




CONTENTS


                                                             PAGE

   I. THE FIRST PIPES OF TOBACCO SMOKED IN ENGLAND             11

  II. TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT: SMOKING FASHIONABLE AND UNIVERSAL    25

 III. TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT (_continued_): SELLERS OF
      TOBACCO AND PROFESSORS OF THE ART OF SMOKING             39

  IV. CAVALIER AND ROUNDHEAD SMOKERS                           57

   V. SMOKING IN THE RESTORATION ERA                           69

  VI. SMOKING UNDER KING WILLIAM III AND QUEEN ANNE            83

 VII. SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE: EARLY GEORGIAN DAYS               99

VIII. SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE (_continued_):
      LATER GEORGIAN DAYS                                     119

  IX. SIGNS OF REVIVAL                                        137

   X. EARLY VICTORIAN DAYS                                    155

  XI. LATER VICTORIAN DAYS                                    179

 XII. SMOKING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY                        193

XIII. SMOKING BY WOMEN                                        205

 XIV. SMOKING IN CHURCH                                       225

  XV. TOBACCONISTS' SIGNS                                     235

      INDEX                                                   251




I

THE FIRST PIPES OF TOBACCO SMOKED IN ENGLAND

    Before the wine of sunny Rhine, or even Madam Clicquot's,
    Let all men praise, with loud hurras, this panacea of Nicot's.
    The debt confess, though none the less they love the grape and barley,
    Which Frenchmen owe to good Nicot, and Englishmen to Raleigh.

          DEAN HOLE.


There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various
kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long
before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But
whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social.
Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling
those used for tobacco-smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and
in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity
of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these
finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them,
and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted
for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for
them. In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to
smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in
mediæval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social
point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of
dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped
funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco
for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside
the scope of this book.

It may further be added that though the use of tobacco was known and
practised on the continent of Europe for some time before smoking
became common in England--it was taken to Spain from Mexico by a
physician about 1560, and Jean Nicot about the same time sent tobacco
seeds to France--yet such use was exclusively for medicinal purposes.
The smoking of tobacco in England seems from the first to have been
much more a matter of pleasure than of hygiene.

Who first smoked a pipe of tobacco in England? The honour is divided
among several claimants. It has often been stated that Captain William
Middleton or Myddelton (son of Richard Middleton, Governor of Denbigh
Castle), a Captain Price and a Captain Koet were the first who smoked
publicly in London, and that folk flocked from all parts to see them;
and it is usually added that pipes were not then invented, so they
smoked the twisted leaf, or cigars. This account first appeared in one
of the volumes of Pennant's "Tour in Wales." But the late Professor
Arber long ago pointed out that the remark as to the mode of smoking
by cigars and not by pipes was simply Pennant's speculation. The
authority for the rest of the story is a paper in the Sebright MSS.,
which, in an account of William Middleton, has the remark: "It is
sayed, that he, with Captain Thomas Price of Plâsyollin and one
Captain Koet, were the first who smoked, or (as they called it) drank
tobacco publickly in London; and that the Londoners flocked from all
parts to see them." No date is named, and no further particulars are
available.

Another Elizabethan who is often said to have smoked the first pipe in
England is Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Virginia, who came home
with Drake in 1586. Lane is said to have given Sir Walter Raleigh an
Indian pipe and to have shown him how to use it. There is no original
authority, however, for the statement that Lane first smoked tobacco
in England, and, moreover, he was not the first English visitor to
Virginia to return to this country. One Captain Philip Amadas
accompanied Captain Barlow, who commanded on the occasion of Raleigh's
first voyage of discovery, when the country was formally taken
possession of and named Virginia in honour of Queen Elizabeth. This
was early in 1584. The two captains reached England in September 1584,
bringing with them the natives of whom King James I, in his
"Counter-blaste to Tobacco," speaks as "some two or three Savage men,"
who "were brought in, together with this Savage custome," _i.e._ of
smoking. It is extremely improbable that Captains Amadas and Barlow,
when reporting to Raleigh on their expedition, did not also make him
acquainted with the Indian practice of smoking. This would be two
years before the return of Ralph Lane.

But certainly pipes were smoked in England before 1584. The plant was
introduced into Europe, as we have seen, about 1560, and it was under
cultivation in England by 1570. In the 1631 edition of Stow's
"Chronicles" it is stated that tobacco was "first brought and made
known by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after." There is only one reference to
tobacco in Hawkins's description of his travels. In the account of his
second voyage (1564-65) he says: "The Floridians when they travel have
a kinde of herbe dryed, which with a cane, and an earthen cup in the
end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together do smoke thoro the
cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and
therewith they live foure or five days without meat or drinke."
Smoking was thus certainly known to Hawkins in 1565, but much reliance
cannot be placed on the statement in the Stow of 1631 that he first
made known the practice in this country, because that statement
appears in no earlier edition of the "Chronicles." Moreover, as
opposed to the allegation that tobacco was "not used by Englishmen in
many years after" 1565, there is the remark by William Harrison, in
his "Chronologie," 1588, that in 1573 "the taking in of the smoke of
the Indian herbe called Tobacco, by an instrument formed like a little
ladell, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach,
is gretlie taken up and used in England." The "little ladell"
describes the early form of the tobacco-pipe, with small and very
shallow bowl.

King James, in his reference to the "first Author" of what he calls
"this abuse," clearly had Sir Walter Raleigh in view, and it is
Raleigh with whom in the popular mind the first pipe of tobacco smoked
in England is usually associated. The tradition is crystallized in the
story of the schoolboy who, being asked "What do you know about Sir
Walter Raleigh?" replied: "Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into
England, and when smoking it in this country said to his servant,
'Master Ridley, we are to-day lighting a candle in England which by
God's blessing will never be put out'"!

The truth probably is that whoever actually smoked the first pipe, it
was Raleigh who brought the practice into common use. It is highly
probable, also, that Raleigh was initiated in the art of smoking by
Thomas Hariot. This was made clear, I think, by the late Dr.
Brushfield in the second of the valuable papers on matters connected
with the life and achievements of Sir Walter, which he contributed
under the title of "Raleghana" to the "Transactions" of the Devonshire
Association. Hariot was sent out by Raleigh for the specific purpose
of inquiring into and reporting upon the natural productions of
Virginia. He returned in 1586, and in 1588 published the results of
his researches in a thin quarto with an extremely long-winded title
beginning "A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia"
and continuing for a further 138 words.

In this "Report" Hariot says of the tobacco plant: "There is an herbe
which is sowed a part by itselfe and is called by the inhabitants
Vppówoc: In the West Indies it hath divers names, according to the
severall places and countries where it groweth and is used: The
Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried
and brought into powder: they use to take the fume or smoke thereof by
sucking it through pipes made of claie into their stomacke and heade:
from whence it purgeth superfluous fleame and other grosse humors,
openeth all the pores and passages of the body: by which meanes the
use thereof, not only preserveth the body from obstructions: but if
also any be, so that they have not beane of too long continuance, in
short time breaketh them: wherby their bodies are notably preserved in
health, and know not many greevous diseases wherewithall wee in
England are oftentimes afflicted."

So far Hariot's "Report" regarded tobacco from the medicinal point of
view only; but it is important to note that he goes on to describe his
personal experience of the practice of smoking in words that suggest
the pleasurable nature of the experience. He says: "We ourselves
during the time we were there used to suck it after their maner, as
also since our returne, and have found maine [? manie] rare and
wonderful experiments of the vertues thereof: of which the relation
woulde require a volume by itselfe: the use of it by so manie of late,
men and women of great calling as else, and some learned Physitians
also, is sufficient witness."

Who can doubt that Hariot, in reporting direct to Sir Walter Raleigh,
showed his employer how "to suck it after their maner"?

All the evidence agrees that whoever taught Raleigh, it was Raleigh's
example that brought smoking into notice and common use. Long before
his death in 1618 it had become fashionable, as we shall see, in all
ranks of society. He is said to have smoked a pipe on the morning of
his execution, before he went to the scaffold, a tradition which is
quite credible.

Every one knows the legend of the water (or beer) thrown over Sir
Walter by his servant when he first saw his master smoking, and
imagined he was on fire. The story was first associated with Raleigh
by a writer in 1708 in a magazine called the _British Apollo_.
According to this yarn Sir Walter usually "indulged himself in
Smoaking secretly, two pipes a Day; at which time, he order'd a Simple
Fellow, who waited, to bring him up a Tankard of old Ale and Nutmeg,
always laying aside the Pipe, when he heard his servant coming." On
this particular occasion, however, the pipe was not laid aside in
time, and the "Simple Fellow," imagining his master was on fire, as he
saw the smoke issuing from his mouth, promptly put the fire out by
sousing him with the contents of the tankard. One difficulty about
this story is the alleged secrecy of Raleigh's indulgence in tobacco.
There seems to be no imaginable reason why he should not have smoked
openly. Later versions turn the ale into water and otherwise vary the
story.

But the story was a stock jest long before it was associated with
Raleigh. The earliest example of it occurs in the "Jests" attributed
to Richard Tarleton, the famous comic performer of the Elizabethan
stage, who died in 1588--the year of the Armada. "Tarlton's Jests"
appeared in 1611, and the story in question, which is headed "How
Tarlton tooke tobacco at the first comming up of it," runs as follows:

"Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco,
did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a
roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing
the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's
nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's
face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if
the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And
drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I
am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a
little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco
whiffes made them leave him to pay all."

In the early days of smoking, the smoker was very generally said to
"drink" tobacco.

Another early example of the story occurs in Barnaby Rich's "Irish
Hubbub," 1619, where a "certain Welchman coming newly to London," and
for the first time seeing a man smoking, extinguished the fire with a
"bowle of beere" which he had in his hand.

Various places are traditionally associated with Raleigh's first pipe.
The most surprising claim, perhaps, is that of Penzance, for which
there is really no evidence at all. Miss Courtney, writing in the
_Folk-Lore Journal_, 1887, says: "There is a myth that Sir Walter
Raleigh landed at Penzance Quay when he returned from Virginia, and on
it smoked the first tobacco ever seen in England, but for this I do
not believe that there is the slightest foundation. Several western
ports, both in Devon and Cornwall, make the same boast." Miss Courtney
might have added that Sir Walter never himself visited Virginia at
all.

Another place making a similar claim is Hemstridge, on the Somerset
and Dorset border. Just before reaching Hemstridge from Milborne Port,
at the cross-roads, there is a public-house called the Virginia Inn.
There, it is said, according to Mr. Edward Hutton, in his "Highways
and Byways in Somerset," "Sir Walter Raleigh smoked his first pipe of
tobacco, and, being discovered by his servant, was drenched with a
bucket of water."

At the fifteenth-century Manor-House at South Wraxall, Wiltshire, the
"Raleigh Room" is shown, and visitors are told that according to local
tradition it was in this room that Sir Walter smoked his first pipe,
when visiting his friend, the owner of the mansion, Sir Henry Long.

Another tradition gives the old Pied Bull at Islington, long since
demolished, as the scene of the momentous event. It is said in its
earlier days to have been a country house of Sir Walter's, and
according to legend it was in his dining-room in this house that he
had his first pipe. Hone, in the first volume of the "Every Day Book"
tells how he and some friends visited this Pied Bull, then in a very
decayed condition, and smoked their pipes in the dining-room in memory
of Sir Walter. From the recently published biography of William Hone
by Mr. F.W. Hackwood, we learn that the jovial party consisted of
William Hone, George Cruikshank, Joseph Goodyear, and David Sage, who
jointly signed a humorous memorandum of their proceedings on the
occasion, from which it appears that "each of us smoked a pipe, that
is to say, each of us one or more pipes, or less than one pipe, and
the undersigned George Cruikshank having smoked pipes innumerable or
more or less," and that "several pots of porter, in aid of the said
smoking," were consumed, followed by bowls of negus made from "port
wine @ 3s. 6d. per bottle (duty knocked off lately)" and other
ingredients. Speeches were made and toasts proposed, and altogether
the four, who desired to "have the gratification of saying hereafter
that we had smoked a pipe in the same room that the man who first
introduced tobacco smoked in himself," seem to have thoroughly enjoyed
themselves.

Wherever Raleigh is known to have lived or lodged we are sure to find
the tradition flourishing that there he smoked his first pipe. The
assertion has been made of his birthplace, Hayes Barton, although it
is very doubtful if he ever visited the place after his parents left
it, some years before their son had become acquainted with tobacco;
and also with more plausibility of his home at Youghal, in the south
of Ireland. Froude, in one of his "Short Studies," quotes a legend to
the effect that Raleigh smoked on a rock below the Manor House of
Greenaway, on the River Dart, which was the home of the first husband
of Katherine Champernowne, afterwards Raleigh's wife; and Devonshire
guide-books have adopted the story.

Perhaps the most likely scene of Raleigh's first experiments in the
art of smoking was Durham House, which stood where the Adelphi Terrace
and the streets between it and the Strand now stand. This was in the
occupation of Sir Walter for twenty years (1583-1603), and he was
probably resident there when Hariot returned from Virginia to make his
report and instruct his employer in the management of a pipe. Walter
Thornbury, in his "Haunted London," referring to the story of the
servant throwing the ale over his smoking master, says: "There is a
doubtful old legend about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may
be not unfairly laid at Durham House, where Raleigh lived." The ale
story is mythical, but it is highly probable that Sir Walter's first
pipes were smoked in Durham House. Dr. Brushfield quotes Hepworth
Dixon, in "Her Majesty's Tower," as drawing "an imaginary and yet
probable picture of him and his companions at a window of this very
house, overlooking the 'silent highway':

"'It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men
[Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham
House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the
highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds
and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the
distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.'" This is a pure
"effort of the fancy" so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned.
Shakespeare's absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that
he smoked; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house
had, as Aubrey tells us, "a little turret that looked into and over
the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any
in the world"; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the
noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of
that pleasant turret.

The only mention made of tobacco by Raleigh himself occurs in a
testamentary note made a little while before his execution in 1618.
Referring to the tobacco remaining on his ship after his last voyage,
he wrote: "Sir Lewis Stukely sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of
which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also
a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself ... I desire that
hee may give his account for the tobacco." As showing how closely Sir
Walter's name was associated with it long after his death, Dr.
Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl
of Cork: "Sept. 1, 1641. Sent by Travers to my infirme cozen Roger
Vaghan, a pott of Sir Walter Raleighes tobackoe."

In the Wallace Collection at Hertford House is a pouch or case
labelled as having belonged to and been used by Sir Walter Raleigh.
This pouch contains several clay pipes. It was perhaps this same pouch
or case which once upon a time figured in Ralph Thoresby's museum at
Leeds, and is described by Thoresby himself in his "Ducatus
Leodiensis," 1715. Curiously enough, a few years ago when excavations
were being made around the foundations of Raleigh's house at Youghal a
clay pipe-bowl was dug up which in size, shape, &c., was exactly like
the pipes in the Wallace exhibit. Raleigh lived and no doubt smoked in
the Youghal house, so it is quite possible that the bowl found
belonged to one of the pipes actually smoked by him. In the garden of
the Youghal house, by the way, they used to show the tree--perhaps
still do so--under which Raleigh was sitting, smoking his pipe, when
his servant drenched him. Thus the tradition, which, as we have seen,
dates from 1708 only, has obtained two local habitations--Youghal and
Durham House on the Adelphi site.

In November 1911 a curiously shaped pipe was put up for sale in Mr.
J.C. Stevens's Auction Room, Covent Garden, which was described as
that which Raleigh smoked "on the scaffold." The pipe in question was
said to have been given by the doomed man to Bishop Andrewes, in whose
family it remained for many years, and it was stated to have been in
the family of the owner, who sent it for sale, for some 200 years. The
pipe was of wood constructed in four pieces of strange shape, rudely
carved with dogs' heads and faces of Red Indians. According to legend
it had been presented to Raleigh by the Indians. The auctioneer, Mr.
Stevens, remarked that unfortunately a parchment document about the
pipe was lost some years ago, and declared, "If we could only produce
the parchment the pipe would fetch £500." In the end, however, it was
knocked down at seventy-five guineas.

The form and make of the first pipe is a matter I do not propose to go
into here; but in connexion with the first pipe smoked in this country
Aubrey's interesting statements must be given. Writing in the time of
Charles II, he said that he had heard his grandfather say that at
first one pipe was handed from man to man round about the table. "They
had first silver pipes; the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell
and a straw"--surely a very unsatisfactory pipe. Tobacco in those
earliest days, he says, was sold for its weight in silver. "I have
heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to
Malmesbury or Chippenham Market, they culled out their biggest
shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco."




II

TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT: SMOKING FASHIONABLE AND UNIVERSAL

    Tobacco engages
    Both sexes, all ages,
      The poor as well as the wealthy;
    From the court to the cottage,
    From childhood to dotage,
      Both those that are sick and the healthy.

          _Wits' Recreations_, 1640.


This chapter and the next deal with the history of smoking during the
first fifty years after its introduction as a social habit--roughly to
1630.

The use of tobacco spread with extraordinary rapidity among all
classes of society. During the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign
and through the early decades of the seventeenth century tobacco-pipes
were in full blast. Tobacco was triumphant.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about smoking at this period, from
the social point of view, was its fashionableness. One of the marked
characteristics of the gallant--the beau or dandy or "swell" of the
time--was his devotion to tobacco. Earle says that a gallant was one
that was born and shaped for his clothes--but clothes were only a part
of his equipment. Bishop Hall, satirizing the young man of fashion in
1597, describes the delicacies with which he was accustomed to
indulge his appetite, and adds that, having eaten, he "Quaffs a whole
tunnel of tobacco smoke"; and old Robert Burton, in satirically
enumerating the accomplishments of "a complete, a well-qualified
gentleman," names to "take tobacco with a grace," with hawking,
riding, hunting, card-playing, dicing and the like. The qualifications
for a gallant were described by another writer in 1603 as "to make
good faces, to take Tobacco well, to spit well, to laugh like a
waiting gentlewoman, to lie well, to blush for nothing, to looke big
upon little fellowes, to scoffe with a grace ... and, for a neede, to
ride prettie and well."

A curious feature of tobacco-manners among fashionable smokers of the
period was the practice of passing a pipe from one to another, after
the fashion of the "loving cup." There is a scene in "Greene's Tu
Quoque," 1614, laid in a fashionable ordinary, where the London
gallants meet as usual, and one says to a companion who is smoking:
"Please you to impart your smoke?" "Very willingly, sir," says the
smoker. Number two takes a whiff or two and courteously says: "In good
faith, a pipe of excellent vapour!" The owner of the pipe then
explains that it is "the best the house yields," whereupon the other
immediately depreciates it, saying affectedly: "Had you it in the
house? I thought it had been your own: 'tis not so good now as I took
it for!" Another writer of this time speaks of one pipe of tobacco
sufficing "three or four men at once."

The rich young gallant carried about with him his tobacco apparatus
(often of gold or silver) in the form of tobacco-box,
tobacco-tongs--wherewith to lift a live coal to light his pipe, ladle
"for the cold snuffe into the nosthrill," and priming-iron. Sometimes
the tobacco-box was of ivory; and occasionally a gallant would have
looking-glass set in his box, so that when he took it out to obtain
tobacco, he could at the same time have a view of his own delectable
person. When our gallant went to dine at the ordinary, according to
the custom of the time, he brought out these possessions, and smoked
while the dinner was being served. Before dinner, after taking a few
turns up and down Paul's Walk in the old cathedral, he might look into
the booksellers' shops, and, pipe in mouth, inquire for the most
recent attack upon the "divine weed"--the contemporary tobacco
literature was abundant--or drop into an apothecary's, which was
usually a tobacco-shop also, and there meet his fellow-smokers.

In the afternoon the gallant might attend what Dekker calls a
"Tobacco-ordinary," by which may possibly have been meant a
smoking-club, or, more probably, the gathering after dinner at one of
the many ordinaries in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's Cathedral of
"tobacconists," as smokers were then called, to discuss the merits of
their respective pipes, and of the various kinds of tobacco--"whether
your Cane or your Pudding be sweetest."

Of course he often bragged, like Julio in Day's "Law Trickes":
"Tobacco? the best in Europe, 't cost me ten Crownes an ounce, by this
vapour."

An amusing example of the bragging "tobacconist" is pictured for us in
Ben Jonson's "Bobadil." Bobadil may perhaps be somewhat of an
exaggerated caricature, but it is probable that the dramatist in
drawing him simply exaggerated the characteristic traits of many
smokers of the day. This hero, drawing tobacco from his pocket,
declares that it is all that is left of seven pounds which he had
bought only "yesterday was seven-night." A consumption of seven pounds
of tobacco in eight days is a pretty "tall order"! Then he goes on to
brag of its quality--your right Trinidado--and to assert that he had
been in the Indies, where the herb grows, and where he himself and a
dozen other gentlemen had for the space of one-and-twenty weeks known
no other nutriment than the fume of tobacco. This again was tolerably
"steep" even for this Falstaff-like braggart. He continues with more
bombast in praise of the medicinal virtues of the herb--virtues which
were then very firmly and widely believed in--and is replied to by
Cob, the anti-tobacconist, who, with equal exaggeration on the other
side, denounces tobacco, and declares that four people had died in one
house from the use of it in the preceding week, and that one had
"voided a bushel of soot"!

The properly accomplished gallant not only professed to be curiously
learned in pipes and tobacco, but his knowledge of prices and their
fluctuations, of the apothecaries' and other shops where the herb was
sold, and of the latest and most fashionable ways of inhaling and
exhaling the smoke, was, like Mr. Weller's knowledge of London,
"extensive and peculiar." It was knowledge of this kind that gained
for a gallant reputation and respect by no means to be acquired by
mere scholarship and learning.

The satirical Dekker might class "tobacconists" with "feather-makers,
cobweb-lawne-weavers, perfumers, young country gentlemen and fools,"
but he bears invaluable witness to the devotion of the fashionable
men of the day to the "costlye and gentleman-like Smoak."

It was customary for a man to carry a case of pipes about with him. In
a play of 1609 ("Everie Woman in her Humour") there is an inventory of
the contents of a gentleman's pocket, with a value given for each
item, which displays certainly a curious assortment of articles. First
comes a brush and comb worth fivepence, and next a looking-glass worth
three halfpence. With these aids to vanity are a case of tobacco-pipes
valued at fourpence, half an ounce of tobacco valued at sixpence, and
three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, "in money and
golde." Satirists of course made fun of the smoker's pocketful of
apparatus. A pamphleteer of 1609 says: "I behelde pipes in his pocket;
now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to
his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast
from his mouth."

It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about
smoking in the presence of ladies. Gostanzo, in Chapman's "All Fools,"
1605, says:

    _And for discourse in my fair mistress's presence
    I did not, as you barren gallants do,
    Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco._

And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious
Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to
his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of
ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date,
gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of
tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.

When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the
stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and
embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.

    _It chaunc'd me gazing at the Theater,
    To spie a Lock-Tabacco Chevalier
    Clowding the loathing ayr with foggie fume
    Of Dock Tobacco friendly foe to rhume_--

says a versifier of 1599, who did not like smoking in the theatre and
so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked--though admitting its
medicinal virtue. Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one
reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the
stage, notwithstanding "the mewes and hisses of the opposed
rascality"--the "mewes" must have been the squeals or whistles
produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call--was
the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of
"the best and most essential parts of a gallant--good cloathes, a
proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable
beard." Apparently, too, serving-boys were within call, and thus
lights could easily be obtained, which were handed to one another by
the smokers on the points of their swords.

Ben Jonson has given us an amusing picture of the behaviour of
gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this
scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am
one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at
the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I
have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus
I begin. 'By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to
see these rascally tits play here--they do act like so many wrens--not
the fifth part of a good face amongst them all--and then their musick
is abominable--able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten--pillories,
and their ditties--most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows
that make them--poets. By this vapour--an't were not for tobacco--I
think--the very smell of them would poison me, I should not dare to
come in at their gates. A man were better visit fifteen jails--or a
dozen or two hospitals--than once adventure to come near them.'" And
the young rascal, who at each pause marked by a dash had puffed his
pipe, no doubt blowing an extra large "cloud" when he swore "by this
vapour," turns to his companions and says: "How is't? Well?" and they
pronounce his mimicry "Excellent!"

Smoking was not confined to the auditors on the stage, who paid
sixpence each for a stool. There was the "lords' room" over the stage,
which seems to have corresponded with the modern stage boxes, the
price of admission to which appears to have been a shilling, where the
pipe was also in full blast. Dekker tells how a gallant at a new play
would take a place in the "twelve penny room, next the stage, because
the lords and you may seem to be hail fellow, well met"; and Jonson,
in "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, speaks of one who pretended
familiarity with courtiers, that he talked of them as if he had "taken
tobacco with them over the stage, in the lords' room."

Among the general audience of the theatre smoking seems to have been
usual also. The anti-tobacconists among those present, few of whom
were men, must have suffered by the practice. In that admirable
burlesque comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Knight of the Burning
Pestle," 1613, the citizen's wife, addressing herself either to the
gallants on the stage, or to her fellow-spectators sitting around her,
exclaims: "Fy! This stinking tobacco kills men! Would there were none
in England! Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking
tobacco do you? Nothing, I warrant you; make chimneys a' your faces!"
But many women viewed tobacco differently, as we shall see in the
chapter on "Smoking by Women." Moreover, this good woman herself, in
the epilogue to the burlesque, invites the gentlemen whom she has
before abused for smoking, to come to her house where she will
entertain them with "a pottle of wine, and a pipe of tobacco."

Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited London in 1598, speaks of
smoking being customary among the audience at plays, who were also
supplied with "fruits, such as apples, pears and nuts, according to
the season, carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine." He was
struck with the universal prevalence of the tobacco-habit. Not only at
plays, but "everywhere else," he says, the "English are constantly
smoking tobacco," and then he proceeds to describe how they did it:
"They have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the further end of
which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder; and
putting fire to it, they draw the smoak into their mouths, which they
puff out again through their nostrils, like funnels, along with it
plenty of phlegm and defluxions from the head." This suggests that
the unpleasant and quite unnecessary habit of spitting was common with
these early smokers, a suggestion which is amply supported by other
contemporary evidence.

Tobacco was smoked by all classes and in almost all places. It was
smoked freely in the streets. In some verses prefixed to an edition of
Skelton's "Elinour Rumming" which appeared in 1624, the ghost of
Skelton, who was poet-laureate to King Henry VIII, was made to say
that he constantly saw smoking:

    _As I walked between
    Westminster Hall
    And the Church of Saint Paul,
    And so thorow the citie,
    Where I saw and did pitty
    My country men's cases,
    With fiery-smoke faces,
    Sucking and drinking
    A filthie weede stinking._

Tobacco-selling was sometimes curiously combined with other trades. A
Fleet Street tobacconist of this time was also a dealer in worsted
stockings. A mercer of Mansfield who died at the beginning of 1624,
and who apparently carried on business also at Southwell, had a
considerable stock of tobacco. In the Inventory of all his "cattalles
and goods" which is dated 24 January 1624, there is included "It. in
Tobacco 19.li 0. 0." Nineteen pounds' worth of tobacco, considering
the then value of money, was no small stock for a mercer-tobacconist
to carry.

But the apothecaries were the most usual salesmen, and their shops
and the ordinaries were the customary day meeting-places for the more
fashionable smokers. The taverns and inns, however, were also filled
with smoke, and taverns were frequented by men of all social grades.
Dekker speaks of the gallant leaving the tavern at night when "the
spirit of wine and tobacco walkes" in his train. On the occasion of
the accession of James I, 1603, when London was given up to rejoicing
and revelry, we are told that "tobacconists [_i.e._ smokers] filled up
whole Tavernes."

King James himself is an unwilling witness to the popularity of
tobacco. He tells us that a man could not heartily welcome his friend
without at once proposing a smoke. It had become, he says, a point of
good-fellowship, and he that would refuse to take a pipe among his
fellows was accounted "peevish and no good company." "Yea," he
continues, with rising indignation, "the mistress cannot in a more
mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair
hand a pipe of tobacco."

Smoking was soon as common in the country as in London. On Wednesday,
April 16, 1621, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons, Sir
William Stroud, who seems to have been a worthy disciple of that
tobacco-hater, King James I, moved that he "would have tobacco
banished wholly out of the kingdom, and that it may not be brought in
from any part, nor used amongst us"; and Sir Grey Palmes said "that if
tobacco be not banished, it will overthrow 100,000 men in England, for
now it is so common that he hath seen ploughmen take it as they are at
plough." Perhaps this terrible picture of a ploughman smoking as he
followed his lonely furrow did not impress the House so much as Sir
Grey evidently thought it would; at all events, tobacco was not
banished.

Peers and squires and parsons and peasants alike smoked. The parson of
Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, was so devoted to tobacco that when his
supply of the weed ran short, he is said to have cut up the bell-ropes
and smoked them! This is dated about 1630. In the well-known
description of the famous country squire, Mr. Hastings, who was
remarkable for keeping up old customs in the early years of the
seventeenth century, we read of how his hall tables were littered with
hawks' hoods, bells, old hats with their crowns thrust in, full of
pheasants' eggs; tables, dice, cards, and store of tobacco-pipes.

Sir Francis Vere, in the account of his services by sea and land which
he wrote about 1606, mentions that on an expedition to the Azores in
1597, the Earl of Essex, waiting for news of the enemy at St. Michael,
"called for tobacco ... and so on horseback, with those Noblemen and
Gentlemen on foot beside him, took tobacco, whilst I was telling his
Lordship of the men I had sent forth, and orders I had given."
Presently came the sound of guns, which "made his Lordship cast his
pipe from him, and listen to the shooting."

Another famous nobleman, Lord Herbert of Cherbury--

    _All-virtuous Herbert! on whose every part
    Truth might spend all her voice, fame all her art!--_

was a smoker, as we know from a very curious passage in his well-known
autobiography. He appears to have smoked not so much for pleasure as
for supposed reasons of health. "It is well known," he wrote, "to
those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other
garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily
be believed, or hath been observed in any else, which sweetness also
was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take
tobacco, which towards my latter time I was forced to take against
certain rheums and catarrhs that trouble me, which yet did not taint
my breath for any long time." The autobiography was written about
1645, so as Lord Herbert did not smoke till towards the latter part of
his life--he died in 1648--he clearly was not one of those who took to
tobacco in the first enthusiasm for the new indulgence.

When Robert, Earl of Essex, and Henry, Earl of Southampton, were tried
for high treason in Westminster Hall on February 19, 1600-1, the
members of the House of Lords, who with the Judges formed the Court,
if we may believe the French Ambassador of the time, behaved in a
remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the
Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were
pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave
their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and
"yvres de tabac"--drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue
as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly
have been written had smoking not been a common practice among noble
lords.

Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, would appear
to have been a smoker. In a letter addressed to him, John Watts, an
alderman of London, wrote: "According to your request, I have sent
the greatest part of my store of tobaca by the bearer, wishing that
the same may be to your good liking. But this tobaca I have had this
six months, which was such as my son brought home, but since that time
I have had none. At this period there is none that is good to be had
for money. Wishing you to make store thereof, for I do not know where
to have the like, I have sent you of two sorts. Mincing Lane, 12 Dec.
1600."

A curious scene took place at Oxford in 1605 when King James visited
the University. Two subjects were debated by learned dons before his
Majesty, and one of them, at his own suggestion, was, "Whether the
frequent use of tobacco is good for healthy men?" Among those who
spoke were Doctors Ailworth, Gwyn, Gifford and Cheynell. The
discussion, needless to say, being conducted in the presence of the
author of the "Counterblaste to Tobacco," was not favourable to the
herb. The King summed up in a speech which hopelessly begged the
question while it contained plenty of strong denunciation. After his
Majesty had spoken, one learned doctor, Cheynell, who is described by
the recorder, Isaac Wake, the Public Orator of the University, as
second to none of the doctors, had the courage to rise and, with a
pipe held forth in his hand, to speak both wittily and eloquently in
favour of tobacco from the medicinal point of view, praising it to the
skies, says Wake, as of virtue beyond all other remedial agents. His
wit pleased both the King and the whole assembly, whom it moved to
laughter; but when he had finished, his Majesty made a lengthy
rejoinder in which he said some curious things. He objected to the
medicinal use of tobacco, and quite agreed with previous speakers
that such a use must have arisen among Barbarians and Indians, who he
went on to say had as much knowledge of medicine as they had of
civilized customs. If, he argued, there were men whose bodies were
benefited by tobacco-smoke, this did not so much redound to the credit
of tobacco, as it did reflect upon the depraved condition of such men,
that their bodies should have sunk to the level of those of Barbarians
so as to be affected by remedies such as were effective on the bodies
of Barbarians and Indians! His Majesty kindly suggested that doctors
who believed in tobacco as a remedial agent should take themselves and
their medicine of pollution off to join the Indians.




III

TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT (_continued_)--SELLERS OF TOBACCO AND PROFESSORS OF
SMOKING--ABUSE AND PRAISE OF TOBACCO

    This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow;
    He lets me have good tobacco.

          BEN JONSON, _The Alchemist._


The druggists and other tradesmen who sold tobacco in Elizabethan and
Jacobean days had every provision for the convenience of their
numerous customers. Some so-called druggists, it may be shrewdly
suspected, did much more business in tobacco than they did in drugs.
Dekker tells us of an apothecary and his wife who had no customers
resorting to their shop "for any phisicall stuffe," but whose shop had
many frequenters in the shape of gentlemen who "came to take their
pipes of the divine smoake." That tobacco was often the most
profitable part of a druggist's stock is also clear from the last
sentence in Bishop Earle's character of "A Tobacco-Seller," one of the
shortest in that remarkable collection of "Characters" which the
Bishop issued in 1628 under the title of "Micro-Cosmographie."

"A Tobacco-Seller," says Earle, "is the onely man that findes good in
it which others brag of, but do not; for it is meate, drinke, and
clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousnesse, or
challenges your judgement more in the approbation. His shop is the
Randevous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their
communication is smoake. It is the place onely where Spaine is
commended, and prefer'd before England itselfe. He should be well
experienc'd in the world: for he ha's daily tryall of mens nostrils,
and none is better acquainted with humors. Hee is the piecing commonly
of some other trade which is bawde to his Tobacco, and that to his
wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke."

This brief "Character" is hardly so pointed or so effective as some of
the others in the "Micro-Cosmographie," but it would seem that the
Bishop was not very friendly to tobacco. In the character of "A
Drunkard" he says: "Tobacco serves to aire him after a washing [_i.e._
a drinking-bout], and is his onely breath, and breathing while." In
another, a tavern "is the common consumption of the Afternoone, and
the murderer, or maker away of a rainy day. It is the Torrid Zone that
scorches the face, and Tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up."

The druggist-tobacconists were well stocked with abundance of
pipes--those known as Winchester pipes were highly popular--with maple
blocks for cutting or shredding the tobacco upon, juniper wood
charcoal fires, and silver tongs with which the hot charcoal could be
lifted to light the customer's pipe. The maple block was in constant
use in those days, when the many present forms of prepared tobacco and
varied mixtures were unknown. In Middleton and Dekker's "Roaring
Girl," 1611, the "mincing and shredding of tobacco" is mentioned; and
in the same play, by the way, we are told that "a pipe of rich smoak"
was sold for sixpence.

The tobacco-tongs were more properly called ember-or brand-tongs. They
sometimes had a tobacco-stopper riveted in near the axis of the tongs,
and thus could be easily distinguished from other kinds of tongs. An
example in the Guildhall Museum, made of brass, and probably of late
seventeenth-century date, has the end of one of the handles formed
into a stopper. In the same collection there are several pairs of
ember-tongs with handles or jaws decorated. In one or two a handle
terminates in a hook, by which they could be hung up when not required
for use. In that delightful book of pictures and gossip concerning old
household and farming gear, and old-fashioned domestic plenishings of
many kinds, called "Old West Surrey," Miss Jekyll figures two pairs of
old ember-or brand-tongs. One of these quite deserves the praise which
she bestows upon it. "Its lines," says Miss Jekyll, "fill one with the
satisfaction caused by a thing that is exactly right, and with
admiration for the art and skill of a true artist." These homely tongs
are fashioned with a fine eye for symmetry, and, indeed, for beauty of
design and perfect fitness for the intended purpose. The ends which
were to pick up the coal are shaped like two little hands, while "the
edges have slight mouldings and even a low bead enrichment. The
circular flat on the side away from the projecting stopper has two
tiny engraved pictures; on one side of the joint a bottle and tall
wine-glass, on the other a pair of long clay pipes crossed, and a bowl
of tobacco shown in section." This beautiful little implement bears
the engraved name of its Surrey maker, and the date 1795.

Country-folk nowadays often light their pipes in the old way, by
picking up a live coal, or, in Ireland, a fragment of glowing peat,
from the kitchen fire, with the ordinary tongs, and applying it to the
pipe-bowl; but the old ember-tongs are seldom seen. They may still be
found in some farmhouses and country cottages, which have not been
raided by the agents of dealers in antique furniture and implements,
but examples are rare. This is a digression, however, which has
carried us far away from the early years of the seventeenth century.

It is pretty clear that not a few of the druggists who sold tobacco
were great rascals. Ben Jonson has let us into some of their secrets
of adulteration--the treatment of the leaf with oil and the lees of
sack, the increase of its weight by other artificial additions to its
moisture, washing it in muscadel and grains, keeping it in greased
leather and oiled rags buried in gravel under ground, and by like
devices. Other writers speak of black spice, galanga, aqua vitæ,
Spanish wine, aniseeds and other things as being used for purposes of
adulteration.

Trickery of another kind is revealed in a scene in Chapman's play "A
Humorous Day's Mirth," 1599. A customer at an ordinary says: "Hark
you, my host, have you a pipe of good tobacco?" "The best in the
town," says mine host, after the manner of his class. "Boy, dry a
leaf." Quietly the boy tells him, "There's none in the house, sir," to
which the worthy host replies _sotto voce_, "Dry a dock leaf." But the
diner's potations must have been powerful if they had left him unable
to distinguish between the taste of tobacco and that of dried
dock-leaf.

Sometimes coltsfoot was mixed with tobacco. Ursula, the pig-woman and
refreshment-booth keeper in Bartholomew Fair, in Ben Jonson's play of
that name, says to her assistant: "Threepence a pipe-full I will have
made, of all my whole half-pound of tobacco and a quarter of a pound
of coltsfoot mixt with it too to eke it out."

The fumes of dried coltsfoot leaves were used as a remedy in cases of
difficulty of breathing, both in ancient Roman times and in Tudor
England. Lyte, in his translation, 1578, of Dodoens' "Historie of
Plants," says of coltsfoot: "The parfume of the dryed leaves layde
upon quicke coles, taken into the mouth through the pipe of a funnell,
or tunnell, helpeth suche as are troubled with the shortnesse of
winde, and fetche their breath thicke or often, and do [_sic_] breake
without daunger the impostems of the breast." The leaves of coltsfoot
and of other plants have often been used as a substitute for tobacco
in modern days. A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, in 1897, said
that when he was a boy he knew an old Calvinist minister, who used to
smoke a dried mixture of the leaves of horehound, yarrow and "foal's
foot" intermingled with a small quantity of tobacco. He said it was a
very good substitute for the genuine article. Similar mixtures, or the
leaves of coltsfoot alone, have often been smoked in bygone days by
folk who could not afford to smoke tobacco only.

The number of shops where tobacco was sold in the early days of its
triumph seems to have been extraordinary. Barnaby Rich, one of the
most prolific parents of pamphlets in an age of prolific writers,
wrote a satire on "The Honestie of this Age," which was printed in
1614. In this production Rich declares that every fellow who came into
an ale-house and called for his pot, must have his pipe also, for
tobacco was then a commodity as much sold in every tavern, inn and
ale-house as wine, ale, or beer. He goes on to say that apothecaries'
shops, grocers' shops, and chandlers' shops were (almost) never
without company who from morning to night were still taking tobacco;
and what a number there are besides, he adds, "that doe keepe houses,
set open shoppes, that have no other trade to live by but by the
selling of tobacco." Rich says he had been told that a list had been
recently made of all the houses that traded in tobacco in and near
about London, and that if a man might believe what was confidently
reported, there were found to be upwards of 7000 houses that lived by
that trade; but he could not say whether the apothecaries', grocers'
and chandlers' shops, where tobacco was also sold, were included in
that number. He proceeds to calculate what the annual expenditure on
smoke must be. The number of 7000 seems very large and is perhaps
exaggerated. Round numbers are apt to be over rather than under the
mark.

Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of the new habit is to
be found in the fact that by the seventeenth year of the reign of
James I--the arch-enemy of tobacco--that is, by 1620, the Society of
Tobacco-pipe-makers had become so very numerous and considerable a
body that they were incorporated by royal charter, and bore on their
shield a tobacco plant in full blossom. The Society's motto was
happily chosen--"Let brotherly love continue."

A further witness to the prevalence of smoking and to the enormous
number of tobacco-sellers' shops is Camden, the antiquary. In his
"Annales," 1625, he remarks with curious detail that since its
introduction--"that Indian plant called Tobacco, or Nicotiana, is
growne so frequent in use and of such price, that many, nay, the most
part, with an insatiable desire doe take of it, drawing into their
mouth the smoke thereof, which is of a strong scent, through a pipe
made of earth, and venting of it againe through their nose; some for
wantownesse, or rather fashion sake, and other for health sake,
insomuch that Tobacco shops are set up in greater number than either
Alehouses or Tavernes."

One result of the herb's popularity was found in frequent attempts by
tradesmen of various kinds to sell it without being duly licensed to
do so. Mr. W.G. Bell, in his valuable book on "Fleet Street in Seven
Centuries," mentions the arrest of a Fleet Street grocer by the Star
Chamber for unlicensed trading in tobacco. He also quotes from the St.
Dunstan's Wardmote Register of 1630 several cases of complaint against
unlicensed traders and others. Four men were presented "for selling
ale and tobacco unlicensed, and for annoying the Judges of Serjeants
Inn whose chambers are near adjoyning." Two other men, one of them
hailing from the notorious Ram Alley, were presented "for annoying the
Judges at Serjeants Inn with the stench and smell of their tobacco,"
which looks as if the Judges were of King James's mind about smoking.
The same Register of 1630 records the presentment of two men of the
same family name--Thomas Bouringe and Philip Bouringe--"for keeping
open their shops and selling tobacco at unlawful hours, and having
disorderly people in their house to the great disturbance of all the
inhabitants and neighbours near adjoining." The Ram Alley, Fleet
Street, mentioned above, was notorious in sundry ways. Mr. Bell
mentions that in 1618 the wardmote laid complaint against Timothy
Louse and John Barker, of Ram Alley, "for keeping their
tobacco-shoppes open all night and fyers in the same without any
chimney and suffering hot waters [spirits] and selling also without
licence, to the great disquietness and annoyance of that
neighbourhood." There were sad goings on of many kinds in Ram Alley.

It is uncertain when licences were first issued for the sale of
tobacco. Probably they were issued in London some time before it was
considered necessary to license dealers in other parts of the country.
Among the Municipal Records of Exeter is the following note: "358.
Whitehall, 31 August 1633. The Lords of the Council to the Chamber.
'Whereas his Ma^tie to prevent the excesse of the use of Tobacco, and
to set an order to those that regrate and sell or utter it by retayle,
who observe noe reasonable rates or prizes [prices], nor take care
that it be wholsome for men's bodyes that shall use it,' has caused
letters to be sent to the chief Officers of Citties and towns
requiring them to certify 'in what places it might be fitt to suffer
ye retayleing of Tobacco and how many be licenced in each of those
places to use trade'; and the City of Exeter having made a return the
Lords sent a list of those which are to be licensed, and order that no
others be permitted to sell."

In the neighbouring county of Somerset the Justices of the Peace sent
presentments to the Council in 1632 of persons within the Hundred of
Milverton and Kingsbury West thought fit to sell tobacco by retail;
and for Wiveliscombe, Mr. Hancock says in his book on that old town, a
mercer and a hosier were selected.

It would seem, from one example I have noted, as if in some places
smoking were not allowed in public-houses. In the account-book of St.
Stephen's Church and Parish, Norwich, the income for the year 1628-29
included on one occasion 20s. received by way of fine from one Edmond
Nockals for selling a pot of beer "wanting in measure, contrary to the
law," and another sovereign from William Howlyns for a like offence.
This is right and intelligible enough; but on another occasion in the
same year each of these men, who presumably were ale-house keepers,
had to pay 30s.--a substantial sum considering the then value of
money--for the same offence and "for suffering parishioners to smoke
in his house." I have been unable to obtain any information as to why
a publican should have been fined an additional 10s. for the heinous
offence of allowing a brother parishioner to smoke in his house.

Penalties for "offences" of this fanciful kind were not common in
England; but in Puritan New England they were abundant. In the early
days of the American Colonies the use of the "creature called Tobacko"
was by no means encouraged. In Connecticut a man was permitted by the
law to smoke once if he went on a journey of ten miles, but not more
than once a day and by no means in another man's house. It could
hardly have been difficult to evade so absurd a regulation as this.

It has been already stated that the Elizabethan gallant was
acquainted with the most fashionable methods of inhaling and exhaling
the smoke of tobacco. A singular feature of the enthusiasm for tobacco
in the early years of the seventeenth century was the existence of
professors of the art of smoking.

Some of the apothecaries whose shops were in most repute for the
quality of the tobacco kept, took pupils and taught them the
"slights," as tricks with the pipe were called. These included
exhaling the smoke in little globes, rings and so forth. The
invaluable Ben Jonson, in the preliminary account of the characters in
his "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, describes one Sogliardo as
"an essential clown ... yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman
that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to
learn to take tobacco and see new motions." Sogliardo was accustomed
to hire a private room to practise in. The fashionable way was to
expel the smoke through the nose. In a play by Field of 1618, a
foolish nobleman is asked by some boon companions in a tavern: "Will
your lordship take any tobacco?" when another sneers, "'Sheart! he
cannot put it through his nose!" His lordship was apparently not well
versed in the "slights."

Taking tobacco was clearly an accomplishment to be studied seriously.
Shift, a professor of the art in Jonson's play, puts up a bill in St.
Paul's--the recognized centre for advertisements and commercial
business of every kind--in which he offers to teach any young
gentleman newly come into his inheritance, who wishes to be as exactly
qualified as the best of the ordinary-hunting gallants are--"to
entertain the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco; as first, to give it
the most exquisite perfume; then to know all the delicate sweet forms
for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of
the Cuban ebolition, euripus and whiff, which he shall receive, or
take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it
please him."

Taking the whiff, it has been suggested, may have been either a
swallowing of the smoke, or a retaining it in the throat for a given
space of time; but what may be meant by the "Cuban ebolition" or the
"euripus" is perhaps best left to the imagination. "Ebolition" is
simply a variant of "ebullition," and "ebullition," as applied with
burlesque intent to rapid smoking--the vapour bubbling rapidly from
the pipe-bowl--is intelligible enough, but why Cuban? "Euripus" was
the name, in ancient geography, of the channel between Euboea
(Negropont) and the mainland--a passage which was celebrated for the
violence and uncertainty of its currents--and hence the name was
occasionally applied by our older writers to any strait or sea-channel
having like characteristics. The use of the word in connexion with
tobacco may, like that of "ebolition," have some reference to furious
smoking, but the meaning is not clear.

If one contemporary writer may be believed, some of these early
smokers acquired the art of emitting the smoke through their ears, but
a healthy scepticism is permissible here.

The accomplished Shift promises a would-be pupil in the art of taking
tobacco that if he pleases to be a practitioner, he shall learn in a
fortnight to "take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the
Tiltyard, if need be, in the most popular assembly that is." The
Tiltyard adjoined Whitehall Palace and was the frequent scene of
sports in which Queen Elizabeth took the greatest delight. Here took
place, not only tilting properly so called, but rope-walking
performances, bear- and bull-baiting, dancing and other diversions
which her Majesty held in high favour. Consequently the Tiltyard was
constantly the scene of courtly gatherings; and if smoking were
permitted on such occasions--as Shift's boasting promises would appear
to indicate--then it may be reasonably inferred that Queen Elizabeth
did not entertain the objections to the new practice that her
successor, King James, set forth with such vehemence in his famous
"Counterblaste to Tobacco." There is, however, no positive evidence
one way or the other, to show what the attitude of the Virgin Queen
towards tobacco really was. A tradition as to her smoking herself on
one occasion is referred to in a subsequent chapter--that on "Smoking
by Women."

Although tobacco was in such general use it yet had plenty of enemies.
It was extravagantly abused and extravagantly praised. Robert Burton,
of "Anatomy of Melancholy" fame, like many other writers of his time,
was prepared to admit the medicinal value of the herb, though he
detested the general habit of smoking. Tobacco was supposed in those
days to be "good for" a surprising variety of ailments and diseases;
but to explore that little section of popular medicine would be
foreign to my purpose. Burton believed in tobacco as medicine; but
with regard to habitual smoking he was a worthy follower of King
James, the strength of whose language he sought to emulate and exceed
when he denounced the common taking of tobacco "by most men, which
take it as tinkers do ale"--as "a plague, a mischief, a violent purger
of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the
ruin and overthrow of body and soul." No anti-tobacconist could wish
for a more whole-hearted denunciation than that.

Thomas Dekker, to whose pictures of London social life at the opening
of the seventeenth century we are so much indebted for information
both with regard to smoking and in respect of many other matters of
interest, was himself an enemy of tobacco. He politely refers to "that
great Tobacconist, the Prince of Smoake and Darkness, Don Pluto"; and
in another place addresses tobacco as "thou beggarly Monarche of
Indians, and setter up of rotten-lungd chimney-sweepers," and proceeds
in a like strain of abuse.

One of the most curious of the early publications on tobacco, in which
an attempt is made to hold the balance fairly between the legitimate
use and the "licentious" abuse of the herb, is Tobias Venner's tract
with the long-winded title: "A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning
The taking of the Fume of Tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe
too licenciously use. In which the immoderate, irregular, and
unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best
manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated." Venner described
himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in
London in 1637. Venner says that tobacco is of "ineffable force" for
the rapid healing of wounds, cuts, sores and so on, by external
application, but thinks little of its use for any other purpose. Like
others of his school, he attacks the "licentious Tobacconists
[smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their
health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie
fume." He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own
personal objection to the "detestable savour or smack that it leaveth
behind upon the taking of it"; from which one is inclined to surmise
that the doctor's first pipe was not an entire success. With an
evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the
"savour," refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what he
considers its valuable medicinal qualities, and he goes so far as to
give "10 precepts in the use of" tobacco. The sixth is "that you drink
not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie
Tobacconists are wont"--there must be no alliance, in short, between
the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that
you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the
taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an
houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The
suggestion that the smoker, when he has finished his pipe, shall wait
for half an hour or so before he ventures into the outer air is very
quaint.

Venner goes on to give a terrible catalogue of the ills that will
befall the smoker who uses tobacco "contrary to the order and way I
have set down." It is a dreadful list which may possibly have
frightened a few nervous smokers; but probably it had no greater
effect than the terrible curse in the "Jackdaw of Rheims."

Another tract which may be classed with Venner's "Treatise" was the
"Nepenthes or the Vertues of Tobacco," by Dr. William Barclay, which
was published at Edinburgh in 1614. This is sometimes referred to and
quoted, as by Fairholt, as if it were a whole-hearted defence of
tobacco-taking. But Barclay enlarges mainly on the medicinal virtues
of the herb. "If Tabacco," he says, "were used physically and with
discretion there were no medicament in the worlde comparable to it";
and again: "In Tabacco there is nothing which is not medicine, the
root, the stalke, the leaves, the seeds, the smoake, the ashes." The
doctor gives sundry directions for administering tobacco--"to be used
in infusion, in decoction, in substance, in smoke, in salt." But
Barclay clearly does not sympathize with its indiscriminate use for
pleasure. "As concerning the smoke," he says, "it may be taken more
frequently, and for the said effects, but always fasting, and with
emptie stomack, not as the English abusers do, which make a smoke-boxe
of their skull, more fit to be carried under his arme that selleth at
Paris _dunoir a noircir_ to blacke mens shooes then to carie the
braine of him that can not walke, can not ryde except the Tabacco Pype
be in his mouth." He goes on to say that he was once in company with
an English merchant in Normandy--"betweene Rowen and New-haven"--who
was a merry fellow, but was constantly wanting a coal to kindle his
tobacco. "The Frenchman wondered and I laughed at his intemperancie."

It is a little curious, considering the devotion of latter-day men of
letters to tobacco, that in their early days so many of the men who
wrote on the subject attacked the social use of tobacco with violence
and virulence. Perhaps, courtier-like, they followed the lead of the
British Solomon, King James I. Their titles are characteristic of
their style. A writer named Deacon published in 1616 a quarto entitled
"Tobacco tortured in the filthy Fumes of Tobacco refined"; but Joshua
Sylvester had easily surpassed this when he wrote his "Tobacco
Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize
so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a
Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon," 1615.
Controversialists of that period rejoiced in full-worded titles and in
full-blooded praise or abuse.

Deacon, as the title of his book just quoted shows, was very fond of
alliteration, and one sentence of his diatribe may be quoted. He
warned his readers that tobacco-smoke was "very pernicious unto their
bodies, too profluvious for many of their purses, and most pestiferous
to the publike State." Much may be forgiven, however, to the
introducer of so charming a term of abuse as "profluvious." Deacon's
book takes the form of a dialogue, and after nearly 200 pages of
argument, in which the unfortunate herb gets no mercy, one of the
interlocutors, a trader in tobacco, is so convinced of the iniquity of
his trade, and of his own parlous state if he continue therein, that
he declares that the two hundred pounds' worth of this "beastly
tobacco" which he owns, shall "presently packe to the fire," or else
be sent "swimming down the Thames."

Many good folk would seem to have associated smoking with idling. In
the rules of the Grammar School at Chigwell, Essex, which was founded
in 1629, it is prescribed that "the Master must be a man of sound
religion, neither a Papist nor a Puritan, of a grave behaviour, and
sober and honest conversation, no tippler or haunter of alehouses, no
puffer of tobacco." A worthy Derbyshire man named Campbell, in his
will dated 20 October 1616, left all his household goods to his son,
"on this condition that yf at any time hereafter, any of his brothers
or sisters shall fynd him takeing of tobacco, that then he or she so
fynding him, shall have the said goods"--a testamentary arrangement
which suggests to the fancy some amusing strategic evasions and
manoeuvres on the part of the conditional legatee and his watchful
relations.

A converse view of smoking may be seen in Izaak Walton's "Life" of Sir
Henry Wotton, who died in 1639. Walton says that Wotton obtained
relief to some extent from asthma by leaving off smoking which he had
practised "somewhat immoderately"--"_as many thoughtful men do_." The
italics are mine.

Tobacco, as has been said, was praised as well as abused
extravagantly. Much absurdity was written in glorification of the
medicinal and therapeutic properties of tobacco, but a more sensible
note was struck by some lauders of the weed. Marston wrote in 1607:

    _Musicke, tobacco, sacke and sleepe,
    The tide of sorrow backward keep._

An ingenious lover of his pipe declared ironically in the same year
that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a
thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a
niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he
continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for
he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part
with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays,
1606, calls tobacco "the gentleman's saint and the soldier's idol." A
little-known bard of 1630--Barten Holiday--wrote a poem of eight
stanzas with chorus to each in praise of tobacco, in which he showed
with a touch of burlesque that the herb was a musician, a lawyer, a
physician, a traveller, a critic, an ignis fatuus, and a whiffler,
_i.e._ a braggart. The first verse may suffice as a specimen:

    _Tobacco's a musician,
    And in a pipe delighteth,
      It descends in a close
      Through the organ of the nose
    With a relish that inviteth._

These are merely a few examples of both the praise and the abuse which
were lavished upon tobacco at this early stage in the history of
smoking. It would be easy to fill many pages with the like
testimonials and denunciations, especially the latter, from writers of
the early decades of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the most curious
thing in connexion with the immense number of allusions to smoking in
the literature of the period is that there is no mention whatever of
tobacco or smoking in the plays of William Shakespeare. As Edmund
Spenser, in the "Faerie Queene," speaks of

      _The soveraine weede, divine tobacco_,

it may be presumed that he was a smoker.




IV

CAVALIER AND ROUNDHEAD SMOKERS

     "A custom lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose,
     harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the
     blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the
     horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is
     bottomelesse."--JAMES I, _A Counterblaste to Tobacco._


The social history of smoking from the point of view of fashion,
during the period covered by this and the next two chapters may be
summarized in a sentence. Through the middle of the seventeenth
century smoking maintained its hold upon all classes of society, but
in the later decades there are distinct signs that the habit was
becoming less universal; and it seems pretty clear that by the time of
Queen Anne, smoking, though still extensively practised in many
classes of society, was to a considerable extent out of vogue among
those most amenable to the dictates of Fashion.

It is certain that the armies of the Parliament were great smokers,
for the finds of seventeenth-century pipes on the sites of their camps
have been numerous. A considerable number of pipes of the Caroline
period, with the usual small elongated bowls, were found in 1902 at
Chichester, in the course of excavating the foundations of the Old
Swan Inn, East Street, for building the present branch of the London
and County Bank.

We know also that the Roundhead soldiers smoked in circumstances that
did them no credit. In the account of the trial of Charles I, written
by Dr. George Bates, principal physician to his Majesty, and to
Charles II also, we read that when the sentence of the Court presided
over by Bradshaw, condemning the King "to death by severing his Head
from his Body," had been read, the soldiers treated the fallen monarch
with great indignity and barbarity. They spat on his clothes as he
passed by, and even in his face; and they "blew the smoak of Tobacco,
a thing which they knew his Majesty hated, in his sacred mouth,
throwing their broken Pipes in his way as he passed along."

Time brought its revenges. The dead Protector was not treated too
respectfully by his soldiery. Evelyn, describing Cromwell's "superb
funeral," says that the soldiers in the procession were "drinking and
taking tobacco in the streets as they went."

Whether the use of tobacco prevailed as generally among the Cavalier
forces is less certain; but as King Charles hated the weed, courtiers
may have frowned upon its use. One distinguished cavalier, however,
either smoked his pipe, or proposed to do so, on a historic occasion.
In Markham's "Life of the Great Lord Fairfax" there is a lively
account of how the Duke, then Marquis, of Newcastle, with his brother
Charles Cavendish, drove in a coach and six to the field of Marston
Moor on the afternoon before the battle. His Grace was in a very bad
humour. "He applied to Rupert," says Markham, "for orders as to the
disposal of his own most noble person, and was told that there would
be no battle that night, and that he had better get into his coach and
go to sleep, which he accordingly did." But the decision as to battle
or no battle did not rest with Prince Rupert. Cromwell attacked the
royal army with the most disastrous results to the King's cause. His
Grace of Newcastle woke up, left his coach, and fought bravely, being,
according to his Duchess, the last to ride off the fatal field,
leaving his coach and six behind him.

So far Markham: but according to another account, when Rupert told him
that there would be no battle, the Duke betook himself to his coach,
"lit his pipe, and making himself very comfortable, fell asleep." The
original authority, however, for the whole story is to be found in a
paper of notes by Clarendon on the affairs of the North, preserved
among his MSS. In this paper Clarendon writes: "The marq. asked the
prince what he would do? His highness answered, 'Wee will charge them
to-morrow morninge.' My lord asked him whether he were sure the enimy
would not fall on them sooner? He answered, 'No'; and the marquisse
thereupon going to his coach hard by, and callinge for a pype of
tobacco, before he could take it the enimy charged, and instantly all
the prince's horse were routed."

Gardiner evidently follows this account, for his version of the story
is: "Newcastle strolled towards his coach to solace himself with a
pipe. Before he had time to take a whiff, the battle had begun." The
incident was made the subject of a picture by Ernest Crofts, A.R.A.,
which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888. It shows the Duke
leaning out of his carriage window, with his pipe in his hand.

Among the documents in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland there is a letter patent under the great seal of Charles I,
in 1634, granted for the purpose of correcting the irregular sales and
restraining the immoderate use of tobacco in Scotland. The letter
states that tobacco was used on its first introduction as a medicine,
but had since been so largely indulged in and was frequently of such
bad quality, as not only to injure the health, but deprave the morals
of the King's subjects. These were sentiments worthy of King James.
Mr. Matthew Livingstone, who has calendared this document, says that
the King therein proceeds, in order to prevent such injurious results
of the use of tobacco, to appoint Sir James Leslie and Thomas Dalmahoy
to enjoy for seven years the sole power of appointing licensed vendors
of the commodity. These vendors, after due examination as to their
fitness, were to be permitted, on payment of certain compositions and
an annual rent in augmentation of the King's revenue, to sell tobacco
in small quantities. The letter further directs that the licensees so
appointed shall become bound to sell only sound tobacco--an admirable
provision, if a trifle difficult to enforce--and to keep good order in
their houses and shops. "The latter clause," adds Mr. Livingstone,
"would almost suggest that the tobacco was to be sold for consumption
on the premises,"--as I have no doubt it was--"and that the smokers
were probably in the habit at their symposiums of using, even as they
may still, I dare say, other indulgences not so soothing in their
effects as the coveted weed"--a suggestion for which there seems
little foundation in the clause to which Mr. Livingstone refers.

One inference at least may be fairly drawn, I think, from this
document, and that is that smoking was very popular north as well as
south of the Tweed.

Tobacco was certainly cheap in Scotland. The following entries are
from a MS. account of household expenses kept by the minister of the
parish of Eastwood, near Glasgow, the Rev. William Hamilton. They
cover two months only and show that the minister was a furious smoker.
The prices given are in Scots currency, the pound Scots being worth
about twenty pence sterling:

  Maii, 1651

  It. to Andro Carnduff for 4 pund of Tobacco             £1.  0. 0.
  It. to Robert Hamilton Chapman for Tobacco               0. 18. 0.
  It. 9 June to my wife to give for sax trenchers
        and tobacco                                        1. 13. 4.
  It. 10 June, The sd day for tobacco and stuffes          0. 14. 4.
      28 June, It. for tobacco                             0. 13. 9.

It may perhaps be interesting to compare with these prices, from
which, apparently, it may be inferred that near Glasgow tobacco could
be bought for some 5d. a pound, which seems incredibly cheap, the
occasional expenditure upon tobacco of a worthy citizen of Exeter some
few years earlier. Extracts from the "Financial Diary" of this good
man, whose name was John Hayne, and who was an extensive dealer in
serges and woollen goods generally, as well as in a smaller degree of
cotton goods also, were printed some years ago, with copious
annotations, by the late Dr. Brushfield.

In this "Diary," covering the years 1631-43, there are some forty
entries concerning the purchase of what is always, save in one case,
called "tobacka." These entries give valuable information as to the
prices of the two chief kinds of tobacco. One was imported from
Spanish America, which up to 1639 Hayne calls "Varinaes," and after
that date "Spanish"; the other was imported from English
colonies--chiefly from Virginia. The "Varinaes" kind, Dr. Brushfield
suggests, was obtained from Varina, near the foot of the range of
mountains forming the west boundary of Venezuela, and watered by a
branch of the Orinoco River. Hayne also notes the purchase of
"Tertudoes" tobacco, but what that may have been I cannot say. From
the various entries relating respectively to Varinaes or Spanish
tobacco, and to Virginia tobacco, it is clear that the former ranged
in price from 8s. to 13s. per lb., while the latter was from 1s. 6d.
to 4s. per lb. There is one entry of "perfumed Tobacka," 10 oz. of
which were bought at the very high price of 15s. 6d.

The variations in price of both Spanish and Virginia tobacco were
largely due to the frequent changes in the amount of the duty thereon.
In 1604 King James I, newly come to the throne, and full of
iconoclastic fervour against the weed, raised the duty to 6s. 8d. per
lb. in addition to the original duty of 2d. On March 29, 1615, there
was a grant to a licensed importer "of the late imposition of 2s. per
lb. on tobacco"--which shows that there must have been considerable
fluctuation between 1604 and 1615--while in September 1621 the duty
stood at 9d. Through James's reign much dissatisfaction was expressed
about the importation of Spanish tobacco, and the outcome of this may
probably be seen in the proclamations issued by the King in his last
two years forbidding "the importation, buying, or selling tobacco
which was not of the proper growth of the colonies of Virginia and the
Somers Islands." These proclamations were several times confirmed by
Charles I, the latest being on January 8, 1631; but they do not seem
to have had much effect.

Hayne's "Diary" contains one or two entries relating to smokers'
requisites. In September 1639 he spent 2d. on a new spring to his
"Tobacka tonges." These were the tongs used for lifting a live coal to
light the pipe, to which I have referred on a previous page. On the
last day of 1640 Hayne paid "Mr. Drakes man" 1s. 5d. for "6 doz:
Tobacka-pipes."

From the various entries in the "Diary" relating to the purchase of
tobacco, it seems clear that there was no shop in Exeter devoted
specially or exclusively to the sale of the weed. Hayne bought his
supplies from four of the leading goldsmiths of the city, who can be
identified by the fact that he had dealings with them in their own
special wares, also from two drapers, one grocer, and four other
tradesmen (on a single occasion each) whose particular occupations are
unknown.

But to turn from this worthy Exeter citizen to more famous names: I do
not know of any good evidence as to whether or not Cromwell smoked,
although he is said to have taken an occasional pipe while considering
the offer of the crown, but John Milton certainly did. The account of
how the blind poet passed his days, after his retirement from public
office, was first told by his contemporary Richardson, and has since
been repeated by all his biographers. His placid day ended early. The
poet took his frugal supper at eight o'clock, and at nine, having
smoked a pipe and drunk a glass of water, he went to bed. Apparently
this modest allowance of a daily evening pipe was the extent of
Milton's indulgence in tobacco. He knew nothing of what most smokers
regard as the best pipe of the day--the after-breakfast pipe.

It is somewhat singular that the Puritans, who denounced most
amusements and pleasures, and who frowned upon most of the occupations
or diversions that make for gaiety and the enjoyment of life, did not,
as Puritans, denounce the use of tobacco. One or two of their writers
abused it roundly; but these were not representative of Puritan
feeling on the subject. The explanation doubtless is that the practice
of smoking was so very general and so much a matter of course among
men of all ranks and of all opinions, that the mouths of Puritans were
closed, so to speak, by their own pipes. A precisian, however, could
take his tobacco with a difference. The seventeenth-century diarist,
Abraham de la Pryme, says that he had heard of a Presbyterian minister
who was so precise that "he would not as much as take a pipe of
tobacco before that he had first sayed grace over it." George Wither,
one of the most noteworthy of the poets who took the side of the
Parliament, was confined in Newgate after the Restoration, and found
comfort in his pipe.

Some of the Puritan colonists in America took a strong line on the
subject. Under the famous "Blue Laws" of 1650 it was ordered by the
General Court of Connecticut that no one under twenty-one was to
smoke--"nor any other that hath not already accustomed himself to the
use thereof." And no smoker could enjoy his pipe unless he obtained a
doctor's certificate that tobacco would be "usefull for him, and
allso that he hath received a lycense from the Courte for the same."
But the unhappy smoker having passed the doctor and obtained his
licence was still harassed by restrictions, for it was ordered that no
man within the colony, after the publication of the order, should take
any tobacco publicly "in the streett, highwayes, or any barn-yardes,
or uppon training dayes, in any open places, under the penalty of
six-pence for each offence against this order." The ingenuities of
petty tyranny are ineffable. It is said that these "Blue Laws" are not
authentic; but if they are not literally true, they are certainly well
invented, for most of them can be paralleled and illustrated by laws
and regulations of undoubted authenticity.

Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, in her interesting book, abounding in curious
information, on "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," says that the
use of tobacco "was absolutely forbidden under any circumstances on
the Sabbath within two miles of the meeting-house, which (since at
that date all the houses were clustered round the church-green) was
equivalent to not smoking it at all on the Lord's Day, if the law were
obeyed. But wicked backsliders existed, poor slaves of habit, who were
in Duxbury fixed 10s. for each offence, and in Portsmouth, not only
were fined, but to their shame be it told, set as jail-birds in the
Portsmouth cage. In Sandwich and in Boston the fine for 'drinking
tobacco in the meeting-house' was 5s. for each drink, which I take to
mean chewing tobacco rather than smoking it; many men were fined for
thus drinking, and solacing the weary hours, though doubtless they
were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four
Yarmouth men--old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe--were in
1687 fined 4s. each for smoking tobacco around the end of the
meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape
detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that
the tithing-man had no nose when he was so Argus-eyed."

On weekdays many New England Puritans probably smoked as their friends
in old England did. A contemporary painting of a group of Puritan
divines over the mantelpiece of Parson Lowell, of Newbury, shows them
well provided with punch-bowl and drinking-cups, tobacco and pipes.
One parson, the Rev. Mr. Bradstreet, of the First Church of
Charlestown, was very unconventional in his attire. He seldom wore a
coat, "but generally appeared in a plaid gown, and was always seen
with a pipe in his mouth." John Eliot, the noble preacher and
missionary to the Indians, warmly denounced both the wearing of wigs
and the smoking of tobacco. But his denunciations were ineffectual in
both matters--heads continued to be adorned with curls of foreign
growth, and pipe-smoke continued to ascend.

In this country tobacco is said to have invaded even the House of
Commons itself. Mr. J.H. Burn, in his "Descriptive Catalogue of London
Tokens," writes: "About the middle of the seventeenth century it was
ordered: That no member of the House do presume to smoke tobacco in
the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do
not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no
doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In
"Mercurius Pragmaticus," December 19-26, 1648, the writer says on
December 20, speaking of the excluded members: "Col. Pride standing
sentinell at the door, denyed entrance, and caused them to retreat
into the Lobby where they used to drink ale and tobacco."

There is a curious entry in Thomas Burton's diary of the proceedings
of Cromwell's Parliament, which suggests that there may then have been
the luxury of a members' smoking-room. Burton was a member of the
Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659, and made
a practice--for which historical students have been and are much his
debtors--of taking notes of the debates as he sat in the House.
Members sometimes objected to and protested against this note-taking,
but Burton quietly went on using his pencil, and though his summaries
of speeches are often difficult to follow, argument and sense
suffering by compression, he has preserved much very valuable matter.
Referring to a debate on January 7, 1656-57, on an attempt to go
behind the previously passed Act of Oblivion, the diarist records that
"Sir John Reynolds had numbered the House, and said at rising there
were 220 at the least, besides tobacconists." This can only mean that
there were at least 220 members actually present in the House when it
rose, not counting the "tobacconists" or smokers, who were enjoying
their pipes, not in the Chamber itself, but in some conveniently
adjoining place, which may have been a room for the purpose, or may
simply have been the lobby referred to above in the extract from
"Mercurius Pragmaticus."

It seems likely that Richard Cromwell was a smoker. In 1689, long
after he had retired into private life and had ample leisure for
blowing clouds, he sent to a friend a "Boxe of Tobacco," which was
described as "A.J. Bod (den's) ... best Virginnea." In a letter to
his daughter Elizabeth, dated 21 January 1705, there is a reference to
this same dealer, whom he describes as "Adam Bodden, Bacconist in
George Yard, Lumber [Lombard] Street." The allusion is worth noting as
a very early instance of the colloquial trick of abbreviation familiar
in later days in such forms as "baccy" and "bacca" and their
compounds.




V

SMOKING IN THE RESTORATION PERIOD

    The Indian weed withered quite
    Green at noon, cut down at night,
      Shows thy decay--
      All flesh is hay:
          Thus think, then drink tobacco.

          GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667).


The year 1660 that restored Charles II to his throne, restored a
gaiety and brightness, not to say frivolity of tone, that had long
been absent from English life. The following song in praise of
tobacco, taken from a collection which was printed in 1660, is touched
with the spirit of the time; though it is really founded on, and to no
small extent taken from, some verses in praise of tobacco written by
Samuel Rowlands in his "Knave of Clubs," 1611:

    _To feed on flesh is gluttony,
      It maketh men fat like swine;
    But is not he a frugal man
      That on a leaf can dine?

    He needs no linnen for to foul
      His fingers' ends to wipe,
    That has his kitchin in a box,
      And roast meat in a pipe.

    The cause wherefore few rich men's sons
      Prove disputants in schools,
    Is that their fathers fed on flesh,
      And they begat fat fools.

    This fulsome feeding cloggs the brain
      And doth the stomach choak
    But he's a brave spark that can dine
      With one light dish of smoak._

There is nothing to show that King Charles smoked, nor what his
personal attitude towards tobacco may have been.

His Majesty was pleased, however, in a letter to Cambridge University,
officially to condemn smoking by parsons, as at the same time he
condemned the practice of wig-wearing and of sermon-reading by the
clergy. But the royal frown was without effect. Wigs soon covered
nearly every clerical head from the bench of bishops downwards; and it
is very doubtful indeed whether a single parson put his pipe out.

Clouds were blown under archiepiscopal roofs. At Lambeth Palace one
Sunday in February 1672 John Eachard, the author of the famous book or
tract on "The Contempt of the Clergy," 1670, which Macaulay turned to
such account, dined with Archbishop Sheldon. He sat at the lower end
of the table between the archbishop's two chaplains; and when dinner
was finished, Sheldon, we are told, retired to his withdrawing-room,
while Eachard went with the chaplains and another convive to their
lodgings "to drink and smoak."

If the restored king did not himself smoke, tobacco was far from
unknown at the Palace of Whitehall. We get a curious glimpse of one
aspect of life there in the picture which Lilly, the notorious
astrologer, paints in his story of his arrest in January 1661. He was
taken to Whitehall at night, and kept in a large room with some sixty
other prisoners till daylight, when he was transferred to the
guardroom, which, he says, "I thought to be hell; some therein were
sleeping, others swearing, others smoaking tobacco. In the chimney of
the room I believe there was two bushels of broken tobacco pipes,
almost half one load of ashes." What would the king's grandfather, the
author of the "Counterblaste," have said, could he have imagined such
a spectacle within the palace walls?

General Monk, to whom Charles II owed so much, is said to have
indulged in the unpleasant habit of chewing tobacco, and to have been
imitated by others; but the practice can never have been common.

Tobacco was still the symbol of good-fellowship. Winstanley, who was
an enemy of what he called "this Heathenish Weed," and who thought the
"folly" of smoking might never have spread so much if stringent "means
of prevention" had been exercised, yet had to declare in 1660 that
"Tobacco it self is by few taken now as medicinal, it is grown a
good-fellow, and fallen from a Physician to a Complement. 'He's no
good-fellow that's without ... burnt Pipes, Tobacco, and his
Tinder-Box.'"

At the time of the Restoration tobacco-boxes which were considered
suitable to the occasion were made in large numbers. The outside of
the lid bore a portrait of the Royal Martyr; within the lid was a
picture of the restored king, His Majesty King Charles II; while on
the inside of the bottom of the box was a representation of Oliver
Cromwell leaning against a post, a gallows-tree over his head, and
about his neck a halter tied to the tree, while beside him was
pictured the devil, wide-mouthed. Another form of memorial tobacco-box
is described in an advertisement in the _London Gazette_ of September
15, 1687. This was a silver box which had either been "taken out of
the Bull's Head Tavern, Cheapside, or left in a Hackney Coach." It was
"ingraved on the Lid with a Coat of Arms, etc., and a Medal of Charles
the First fastened to the inside of the Lid, and engraved on the
inside 'to Jacob Smith it doth belong, at the Black Lyon in High
Holborn, date August 1671.'"

Smokers of the period were often curious in tobacco-boxes. Mr. Richard
Stapley, gentleman, of Twineham, Sussex, whose diary is full of
curious information, was presented in 1691 by his friend Mr. John Hill
with a "tobacco-box made of tortoise." Seven years earlier Stapley had
sold to Hill his silver tobacco-box for 10s. in cash--the rest of the
value of the box, he noted, "I freely forgave him for writing at our
first commission for me, and for copying of answers and ye like in our
law concerns; so yt I reckon I have as good as 30s. for my box: 5s. he
gave me, and 5s. more he promised to pay me ... and I had his steel
box with the bargain, and full of smoake." Apparently Mr. Hill's
secretarial labours were valued at 20s. This same Sussex squire bought
a pound of tobacco in December 1685 for 20d., which seems decidedly
cheap, and in the following year a 5 lb. box for 7s. 6d.--which was
cheaper still.

A Sussex rector, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, in 1656 and
again in 1662, paid 1s. for two ounces of tobacco, _i.e._ at the rate
of 8s. per lb. Presumably the rector bought the more expensive
Spanish tobacco and the squire the cheaper Virginian. At the annual
parish feast held at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London, on May 24,
1666, the expenses included 3d. for tobacco for twenty or more adults.
This too was doubtless Virginian or colonial tobacco. The North Elmham
Church Accounts (Norfolk) for 1673 show that 12s. 4d. was paid for
"Butter, cheese, Bread, Cakes, Beere and Tobacco and Tobacco Pipes at
the goeing of the Rounds of the Towne." On the occasion of a similar
perambulation of the parish boundaries in 1714-15 the churchwardens
paid for beer, pipes and tobacco, cakes and wine. The account-books of
the church and parish of St. Stephen, Norwich, for 1696-97 show 2s. as
the price of a pound of tobacco. These entries, and many others of
similar import, show that at feasts and at social and convivial
gatherings of all kinds, tobacco maintained its ascendancy. Pipes and
tobacco were included in the usual provision for city feasts, mayoral
and other; and smoking was made a particular feature of the Lord
Mayor's Show of 1672. A contemporary pamphleteer says that in the Show
of that year were "two extreme great giants, each of them at least 15
foot high, that do sit, and are drawn by horses in two several
chariots, moving, talking, and taking tobacco as they ride along, to
the great admiration and delight of all the spectators." Among the
guests at a wedding in London in 1683 were the Lord Mayor, Sheriff and
Aldermen of the City, the Lord Chief Justice--the afterwards notorious
Jeffreys--and other "bigwigs." Evelyn records with grave disapproval
that "these great men spent the rest of the afternoon till 11 at
night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath
the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr.
Algernon Sidney."

Although smoking was general among parsons, yet attacks on tobacco
were occasionally heard from pulpits. A Lancashire preacher named
Thomas Jollie, who was one of the ministers ejected from Church
livings by the Act of Uniformity, 1662, has left a manuscript diary
relating to his religious work. In it, under date 1687, he mentions
that he had spoken "against the inordinate affection to and the
immoderate use of tobacco which did caus much trouble in some of my
hearers and some reformation did follow." He then goes on to record
two remarkable examples of such "reformation"--examples, he says,
"which did stirr me up in that case more than ordinary. The one I had
from my reverend Brother Mr. Robert Whittaker, concerning a professor
[_i.e._ a person who professed to have been "converted"] who could not
follow his calling without his pipe in his mouth, but that text Isaiah
55, 2, coming into his mind hee layd aside his taking of tobacco. The
other instance was of a profane person living nigh Haslingdon (who was
but poor) and took up his time in the trade of smoking and also spent
what should reliev his poor family. This man dreamed that he was
taking tobacco, and that the devill stood by him filling one pipe upon
another for him. In the morning hee fell to his old cours
notwithstanding; thinking it was but a dream: but when hee came to
take his pipe, hee had such an apprehension that the devill did indeed
stand by him and doe the office as hee dreamed that hee was struck
speechless for a time and when hee came to himself hee threw his
tobacco in the fire and his pipes at the walls; resolving never to
meddle more with it: soe much money as was formerly wasted by the week
in to serving his family afterward weekly."

Among the many medicinal virtues attributed to tobacco was its
supposed value as a preservative from contagion at times of plague.
Hearne, the antiquary, writing early in 1721, said that he had been
told that in the Great Plague of London of 1665 none of those who kept
tobacconists' shops suffered from it, and this belief no doubt
enhanced the medical reputation of the weed. I have also seen it
stated that during the cholera epidemics of 1831, 1849, and 1866 not
one London tobacconist died from that disease; but good authority for
the statement seems to be lacking. Hutton, in his "History of Derby,"
says that when that town was visited by the plague in 1665, that at
the "Headless-cross ... the market-people, having their mouths primed
with tobacco as a preservative, brought their provisions.... It was
observed, that this cruel affliction never attempted the premises of a
tobacconist, a tanner or a shoemaker." Whatever ground there may have
been for the belief in the prophylactic effect of smoking, there can
be no doubt that in the seventeenth century it was firmly held. Howell
in one of his "Familiar Letters" dated January 1, 1646, says that the
smoke of tobacco is "one of the wholesomest sents that is against all
contagious airs, for it overmasters all other smells, as King James
they say found true, when being once a hunting, a showr of rain drave
him into a Pigsty for shelter, wher he caus'd a pipe full to Be taken
of purpose." But here Mr. Howell is certainly drawing the long-bow.
One cannot imagine the author of the "Counterblaste" countenancing
the use of tobacco under any circumstances.

At the time of the Great Plague all kinds of nostrums were sold and
recommended as preservatives or as cures. Most of these perished with
the occasion that called them forth; but the names of some have been
preserved in a rare quarto tract which was published in the Plague
year, 1665, entitled "A Brief Treatise of the Nature, Causes, Signes,
Preservation from and Cure of the Pestilence," "collected by W. Kemp,
Mr. of Arts." In the list of devices for purifying infected air it is
stated that "The American Silver-weed, or Tobacco, is very excellent
for this purpose, and an excellent defence against bad air, being
smoked in a pipe, either by itself, or with Nutmegs shred, and Rew
Seeds mixed with it, especially if it be nosed"--which, I suppose,
means if the smoke be exhaled through the nose--"for it cleanseth the
air, and choaketh, suppresseth and disperseth any venomous vapour."
Mr. Kemp warms to his subject and proceeds with a whole-hearted
panegyric that must be quoted in full: "It hath singular and contrary
effects, it is good to warm one being cold, and will cool one being
hot. All ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old, Men and
Women, the Sanguine, the Cholerick, the Melancholy, the phlegmatick,
take it without any manifest inconvenience, it quencheth thirst, and
yet will make one more able, and fit to drink; it abates hunger, and
yet will get one a good stomach; it is agreeable with mirth or
sadness, with feasting and with fasting; it will make one rest that
wants sleep, and will keep one waking that is drowsie; it hath an
offensive smell to some, and is more desirable than any perfume to
others; that it is a most excellent preservative, both experience and
reason do teach; it corrects the air by Fumigation, and it avoids
corrupt humours by Salivation; for when one takes it either by Chewing
it in the leaf, or Smoaking it in the pipe, the humors are drawn and
brought from all parts of the body, to the stomach, and from thence
rising up to the mouth of the Tobacconist, as to the helme of a
Sublimatory, are voided and spitten out."

When plague was abroad even children were compelled to smoke. At the
time of the dreadful visitation of 1665 all the boys at Eton were
obliged to smoke in school every morning. One of these juvenile
smokers, a certain Tom Rogers, years afterwards declared to Hearne,
the Oxford antiquary, that he never was whipped so much in his life as
he was one morning for not smoking. Times have changed at Eton since
this anti-tobacconist martyr received his whipping. It is sometimes
stated that at this time smoking was generally practised in schools,
and that at a stated hour each morning lessons were laid aside, and
masters and scholars alike produced their pipes and proceeded to smoke
tobacco. But I know of no authority for this wider statement; it seems
to have grown out of Hearne's record of the practice at Eton.

The belief in the prophylactic power of tobacco was, however, very
generally held. When Mr. Samuel Pepys on June 7, 1665, for the first
time saw several houses marked with the ominous red cross, and the
words "Lord, have mercy upon us" chalked upon the doors, he felt so
ill at ease that he was obliged to buy some roll tobacco to smell and
chew. There is nothing to show that Pepys even smoked, which
considering his proficiency in the arts of good-fellowship, is perhaps
a little surprising. Defoe, in his fictitious but graphic "Journal of
the Plague Year in London," says that the sexton of one of the London
parishes, who personally handled a large number of the victims, never
had the distemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and
was sexton of the parish to the time of his death. This man, according
to Defoe, "never used any preservative against the infection other
than holding garlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco."

When excavations were in progress early in 1901, preparatory to the
construction of Kingsway and Aldwych, they included the removal of
bodies from the burying-grounds of St. Clement Danes and St.
Mary-le-Strand; and among the bones were found a couple of the curious
tobacco-pipes called "plague-pipes," because they are supposed to have
been used as a protection against infection by those whose office it
was to bury the dead. These pipes have been dug up from time to time
in numbers so large that one antiquary, Mr. H. Syer Cuming, has
ventured to infer that "almost every person who ventured from home
invoked the protection of tobacco."

These seventeenth-century pipes were largely made in Holland of
pipe-clay imported from England--to the disgust and loss of English
pipe-makers. In 1663 the Company of Tobacco-Pipe Makers petitioned
Parliament "to forbid the export of tobacco pipe clay, since by the
manufacture of pipes in Holland their trade is much damaged." Further,
they asked for "the confirmation of their charter of government so as
to empower them to regulate abuses, as many persons engage in the
trade without licence." The Company's request was granted; but in the
next year they again found it necessary to come to Parliament, showing
"the great improvement in their trade since their incorporation, 17
James I, and their threatened ruin because cooks, bakers, and
ale-house keepers and others make pipes, but so unskilfully that they
are brought into disesteem; they request to be comprehended in the
Statute of Labourers of 5 Elizabeth, so that none may follow the trade
who have not been apprentices seven years."

Tobacco-pipe making was a flourishing industry at this period and
throughout the seventeenth and following century in most of the chief
provincial towns and cities as well as in London.

"Old English 'clays,'" says Mr. T.P. Cooper, "are exceedingly
interesting, as most of them are branded with the maker's initials.
Monograms and designs were stamped or moulded upon the bowls and on
the stems, but more generally upon the spur or flat heel of the pipe.
Many pipes display on the heels various forms of lines, hatched and
milled, which were perhaps the earliest marks of identification
adopted by the pipe-makers. In a careful examination of the monograms
we are able to identify the makers of certain pipes found in
quantities at various places, by reference to the freeman and burgess
rolls and parish registers. During the latter half of the seventeenth
century English pipes were presented by colonists in America to the
Indians; they subsequently became valuable as objects of barter or
part purchase value in exchange for land. In 1677 one hundred and
twenty pipes and one hundred Jew's harps were given for a strip of
country near Timber Creek, in New Jersey. William Penn, the founder
of Pennsylvania, purchased a tract of land, and 300 pipes were
included in the articles given in the exchange."

The French traveller, Sorbière, who visited London in 1663, declared
that the English were naturally lazy and spent half their time in
taking tobacco. They smoked after meals, he observed, and conversed
for a long time. "There is scarce a day passes," he wrote, "but a
Tradesman goes to the Ale-house or Tavern to smoke with some of his
Friends, and therefore Public Houses are numerous here, and Business
goes on but slowly in the Shops"; but, curiously enough, he makes no
mention of coffee-houses. A little later they were too common and too
much frequented to be overlooked. An English writer on thrift in 1676
said that it was customary for a "mechanic tradesman" to go to the
coffee-house or ale-house in the morning to drink his morning's
draught, and there he would spend twopence and consume an hour in
smoking and talking, spending several hours of the evening in similar
fashion.

Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen.
In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas
Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring "to be remembered by the witty
smoakers of Hawsted." A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a
"History and Antiquities of Hawsted," and in describing Hawsted Place,
which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment
called the smoking-room--"a name," he says, "it acquired probably soon
after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as
it stood." I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum
could have made the assertion that the room was called the
smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century.
No mention in print of a smoking-room has been found for the purposes
of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689. In Shadwell's "Bury Fair"
of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves
to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary
heroes of a bygone day, "While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter
says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred,
witless drunkards with you in your smoking-room." As Mr. Oldwit
himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends,
"We'll into my smoking-room and sport about a brimmer," there was
probably some excuse for his wife's remark. These country
smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor
being flagged for safety's sake; and the "stone-parlour" in many a
squire's house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no
doubt, abundant smoking.

The arrival of coffee and the establishment of coffee-houses opened a
new field for the victories of tobacco. The first house was opened in
St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652. Others soon followed, and in a
short time the new beverage had captured the town, and coffee-houses
had been opened in every direction. They sold many things besides
coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were
temples of talk and good-fellowship. The buzz of conversation and the
smoke of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of
the club-houses of a much later day.




VI

SMOKING UNDER KING WILLIAM III AND QUEEN ANNE

    Hail! social pipe--thou foe of care,
    Companion of my elbow-chair;
    As forth thy curling fumes arise,
    They seem an evening sacrifice--
    An offering to my Maker's praise,
    For all His benefits and grace.

          SIR SAMUEL GARTH (1660-1718).


After King William III was settled on the throne the sum of £600,000
was paid to the Dutch from the English exchequer for money advanced in
connexion with his Majesty's expedition, and this amount was paid off
by tobacco duties. Granger long ago remarked that most of the eminent
divines and bishops of the day contributed very practically to the
payment of this revolutionary debt by their large consumption of
tobacco. He mentions Isaac Barrow, Dr. Barlow of Lincoln, who was as
regular in smoking tobacco as at his meals, and had a high opinion of
its virtues, Dr. Aldrich, "and other celebrated persons who flourished
about this time, and gave much into that practice." One of the best
known of these celebrated persons was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of
Salisbury from 1689, and historian of his own times. He had the
reputation of being an inveterate smoker, and was caricatured with a
long clay stuck through the brim of the shovel hat, on the breadth of
which King William once made remark. The bishop replied that the hat
was of a shape suited to his dignity, whereupon the King caustically
said, "I hope that the hat won't turn your head."

Thackeray pictures Dryden as sitting in his great chair at Will's
Coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, tobacco-pipe in hand; but
there is no evidence that Dryden smoked. The snuff-box was his symbol
of authority. Budding wits thought themselves highly distinguished if
they could obtain the honour of being allowed to take a pinch from it.
Of Dr. Aldrich, who was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and who wrote a
curious "Catch not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear, to
be sung by four men smoaking their pipes," an anecdote has often been
related, which illustrates his devotion to the weed. A bet was made by
one undergraduate and taken by another, that at whatever time, however
early, the Dean might be visited in his own den, he would be found
smoking. As soon as the bet had been made the Dean was visited. The
pair explained the reason for their call, when Aldrich, who must have
been a good-tempered man, said, "Your friend has lost: I am not
smoking, only filling my pipe."

John Philips, the author of "Cyder" and the "Splendid Shilling," was
an undergraduate at Christ Church, during Aldrich's term of office,
and no doubt learned to smoke in an atmosphere so favourable to
tobacco. In his "Splendid Shilling," which dates from about 1700,
Philips says of the happy man with a shilling in his pocket:

    _Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
    Or Pun ambiguous or Conundrum quaint._

But the poor shillingless wretch can only

                              _doze at home
    In garret vile, and with a warming puff
    Regale chill'd fingers; or from tube as black
    As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet,
    Exhale Mundungus, ill-perfuming scent._

The miserable creature, though without a shilling, yet possessed a
well-coloured "clay."

It is significant that the writer of a life of Philips, which was
prefixed to an edition of his poems which was published in 1762, after
mentioning that smoking was common at Oxford in the days of Aldrich,
says apologetically, "It is no wonder therefore that he [Philips] fell
in with the general taste ... he has descended to sing its praises in
more than one place." By 1762, as we shall see, smoking was quite
unfashionable, and consequently it was necessary to explain how it was
that a poet could "descend" so low as to sing the praises of tobacco.

Other well-known men of the late seventeenth century were
"tobacconists" in the old sense of the word. Sir Isaac Newton is said
to have smoked immoderately; and a familiar anecdote represents him as
using for the purposes of a tobacco-stopper, in a fit of
absent-mindedness, the little finger of a lady sitting beside him,
whom he admired, but the truth of this legend is open to doubt. Thomas
Hobbes, who lived to be ninety (1588-1679), was accustomed to dine at
11 o'clock, after which he smoked a pipe and then lay down and took a
nap of about half an hour. No doubt he would have attributed the
length of his days to the regularity of his habits. Izaak Walton, who
also lived to be ninety, as the lover of the placid and contemplative
life deserved to do, loved his pipe, though he seldom mentions smoking
in the "Compleat Angler." Sir Samuel Garth, poet and physician, once
known to fame as the author of "The Dispensary," was another
pipe-lover, as is shown by his verses quoted at the head of this
chapter. Dudley, the fourth Lord North, began to smoke in 1657, and,
says Dr. Jessopp, "the habit grew upon him, the frequent entries for
pipes and tobacco showing that he became more and more addicted to
this indulgence. Probably it afforded him some solace in the dreadful
malady from which he suffered so long."

Even the staid Quakers smoked. George Fox's position in regard to
tobacco was curious. He did not smoke himself; but on one occasion he
was offered a pipe by a jesting youth who thought thereby to shock so
saintly a person. Fox says in his "Journal," "I lookt upon him to bee
a forwarde bolde lad: and tobacco I did not take: butt ... I saw hee
had a flashy empty notion of religion: soe I took his pipe and putt it
to my mouth and gave it to him again to stoppe him lest his rude
tongue should say I had not unity with ye creation." The incident is
curious, but testifies to Fox's tolerance and breadth of outlook.

Many of his followers smoked, sometimes apparently to such an extent
as to cause scandal among their brethren. The following is an entry in
the minutes of the Friends' Monthly Meeting at Hardshaw, Lancashire:
"14th of 4th mo. 1691. It being considered that the too frequent use
of smoking Tobacco is inconsistent with friends holy profession, it is
desired that such as have occasion to make use thereof take it
privately, neither too publicly in their own houses, nor by the
highways, streets, or in alehouses or elsewhere, tending to the
abetting the common excess." Another Lancashire Monthly Meeting,
Penketh, under date "18th 8th mo. 1691" suggested that Friends were
"not to smoke during their labour or occupation, but to leave their
work and take it privately"--a suggestion which clearly proceeded from
non-smokers. The smug propriety of these recommendations to enjoy a
smoke in private is delightful.

At the Quarterly Meeting of Aberdeen Friends in 1692 a "weighty paper
containing several heads of solid advyces and Counsells to friends"
sent by Irish Quakers, was read. These counsels abound with amusingly
prim suggestions. Among them is the warning to "take heed of being
overcome with strong drink or tobacco, which many by custome are
brought into bondag to the creature." The Aberdeen Friends themselves
a little later were greatly concerned at the increasing indulgence in
"superfluous apparell and in vain recreations among the young ones";
and in 1698 they issued a paper dealing in great detail with matters
of dress and deportment. Among a hundred other things treated with
minutest particularity, the desire is expressed that "all Idle and
needless Smoaking of Tobacco be forborn."

William Penn did not like tobacco and was often annoyed by it in
America. Clarkson, his biographer, relates that on one occasion Penn
called to see some old friends at Burlington, who had been smoking,
but who, in consideration for his feelings, had put their pipes away.
Penn smelt the tobacco, and noticing that the pipes were concealed,
said, "Well, friends, I am glad that you are at last ashamed of your
old practice." "Not entirely so," replied one of the company, "but we
preferred laying down our pipes to the danger of offending a weaker
brother."

Many of the tobacco-boxes used in the latter part of the seventeenth
century were imported from Holland. They were long or oval and were
usually made of brass. They can be easily identified by their engraved
subjects and Dutch inscriptions. An example in the Colchester Museum
is made of copper and brass, with embossed designs and inscriptions,
representing commerce, &c., on the base and lid. It has engraved on
the sides the name and address of its owner--"Barnabas Barker,
Wyvenhoe, Essex." The similar boxes later made in England usually had
embossed ornamentation.

The local authorities in our eastern counties seem to have had some
curious ideas of their own as to where tobacco should or should not be
smoked. In a previous chapter we have seen that at Norwich, ale-house
keepers were fined for permitting smoking in their houses. At
Methwold, Suffolk, the folk improved upon this. The court-books of the
manor of Methwold contain the following entry made at a court held on
October 4, 1695: "We agree that any person that is taken smoakeinge
tobacco in the street shall forfitt one shillinge for every time so
taken, and itt shall be lawfull for the petty constabbles to distrane
for the same for to be putt to the uses abovesaid [_i.e._ "to the use
of the town"]. Wee present Nicholas Baker for smoakeinge in the
street, and doe amerce him 1s." The same rule is repeated at courts
held in the years 1696 and 1699, but no other fine is mentioned at any
subsequent courts. The good folk at Methwold may have been adepts at
petty tyranny, but such an absurd regulation must soon have become a
dead letter. While we are in the eastern counties we may note that in
1694 there died at Ely an apothecary named Henry Crofts, who owned,
among some other unusual items in his inventory, casks of brandy and
tobacco, which shows that even at that date, when regular
tobacconists' shops for the sale of tobacco had long been common, the
old business connexion between apothecaries and tobacco still
occasionally existed.

The clay pipes called "aldermen," with longer stems than their
predecessors, tipped with glaze, came into use towards the end of the
seventeenth century. They must not be confused with the much longer
"churchwarden" or "yard of clay" which was not in vogue till the early
years of the nineteenth century.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century signs may be detected of
some waning in the universal popularity of tobacco. There are hints of
change in the records of City and other companies. Tobacco had always
figured prominently in the provision for trade feasts. In 1651 the
Chester Company of Barbers, Surgeons, Wax and Tallow Chandlers--a
remarkably comprehensive organization--paid for "Sack beere and
Tobacco" at the Talbot on St. Luke's Day, October 18, on the occasion
of a dinner given to the Company by one Richard Walker; and similar
expenditure was common among both London and provincial Companies.
The court-books of the Skinners Company of London show that in
preparation for their annual Election Dinner in 1694, the cook
appeared before the court and produced a bill of fare which, with some
alterations, was agreed to. The butler then appeared and undertook to
provide knives, salt, pepper-pots, glasses, sauces, &c., "and
everything needfull for £7. and if he gives content then to have £8.
he provides all things but pipes, Tobacco, candles and beer"--which
apparently fell to the lot of some other caterer.

But so early as 1655 there is a sign of change of custom--a change,
that is, in the direction of restricting and limiting the hitherto
unbounded freedom granted to the use of tobacco. The London Society of
Apothecaries on August 15, 1655, held a meeting for the election of a
Master and an Upper Warden; and from the minutes of this meeting we
learn that by general consent it was forbidden henceforward to smoke
in the Court Room while dining or sitting, under penalty of half a
crown.

The more fashionable folk of the Restoration Era and later began to
leave off if not to disdain the smoking-habit. Up to about 1700
smoking had been permitted in the public rooms at Bath, but when Nash
then took charge, tobacco was banished. Public or at least fashionable
taste had begun to change, and Nash correctly interpreted and led it.
Sorbière, who has been quoted in the previous chapter, remarked in
1663 that "People of Quality" did not use tobacco so much as others;
and towards the end of the century and in Queen Anne's time the
tendency was for tobacco to go out of fashion. This did not much
affect its general use; but the tendency--with exceptions, no
doubt--was to restrict the use of tobacco to the clergy, to country
squires, to merchants and tradesmen and to the humbler ranks of
society--to limit it, in short, to the middle and lower classes of the
social commonwealth as then organized. In the extraordinary record of
inanity which Addison printed as the diary of a citizen in the
_Spectator_ of March 4, 1712, the devotion of the worthy retired
tradesman to tobacco is emphasized. This is the kind of thing: "Monday
... Hours 10, 11 and 12 Smoaked three Pipes of Virginia ... one
o'clock in the afternoon, chid Ralph for mislaying my Tobacco-Box....
Wednesday ... From One to Two Smoaked a Pipe and a half.... Friday ...
From Four to Six. Went to the Coffee-house. Met Mr. Nisby there.
Smoaked several Pipes."

There was indeed no diminution of tobacco-smoke in the coffee-houses.
A visitor from abroad, Mr. Muralt, a Swiss gentleman, writing about
1696, said that character could be well studied at the coffee-houses.
He was probably not a smoker himself, for he goes on to say that in
other respects the coffee-houses are "loathsome, full of smoke like a
guardroom, and as much crowded." He further observed that it was
common to see the clergy of London in coffee-houses and even in
taverns, with pipes in their mouths. A native witness of about the
same date, Ned Ward, writes sneeringly in his "London Spy," 1699, of
the interior of the coffee-house. He saw "some going, some coming,
some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others
jingling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot,
or a boatswain's cabin.... We each of us stuck in our mouths a pipe of
sotweed, and now began to look about us." Ward's contemporary, Tom
Brown, took a different tone: he wrote of "Tobacco, Cole and the
Protestant Religion, the three great blessings of life!"--as strange a
jumble as one could wish for.

Even children seem to have smoked sometimes in the coffee-houses.
Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary, tells a strange story. He
declares that, one evening which he spent with his brother at
Garraway's Coffee-house, February 20, 1702, he was surprised to see
his brother's "sickly child of three years old fill its pipe of
tobacco and smoke it as _audfarandly_ as a man of three score; after
that a second and a third pipe without the least concern, as it is
said to have done above a year ago." A child of two years of age
smoking three pipes in succession is a picture a little difficult to
accept as true. As this is the only reference to tobacco in the whole
of his "Diary," it is not likely that Thoresby was himself a smoker.

At the coffee-house entrance was the bar presided over by the
predecessors of the modern barmaids--grumbled at in a _Spectator_ as
"idols," who there received homage from their admirers, and who paid
more attention to customers who flirted with them than to more
sober-minded visitors. They are described by Tom Brown as "a charming
Phillis or two, who invited you by their amorous glances into their
smoaky territories." Admission cost little. There you might see--

    _Grave wits, who, spending farthings four,
    Sit, smoke, and warm themselves an hour._

The allusions in the _Spectator_ to smoking in the coffee-houses are
frequent. "Sometimes," says Addison, in his title character in the
first number of the paper, "sometimes I smoak a pipe at Child's and
whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Post-man_, over-hear the
conversation of every table in the room." And here is a vignette of
coffee-house life in 1714 from No. 568 of the _Spectator_: "I was
yesterday in a coffee-house not far from the Royal Exchange, where I
observed three persons in close conference over a pipe of tobacco;
upon which, having filled one for my own use, I lighted it at the
little wax candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in
two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the
company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the
same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to
conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has
induced and fostered a spirit of comradeship.

Sir Roger de Coverley, as a typical country squire, was naturally a
smoker. He presented his friend the Spectator, the silent gentleman,
with a tobacco-stopper made by Will Wimble, telling him that Will had
been busy all the early part of the winter in turning great quantities
of them, and had made a present of one to every gentleman in the
county who had good principles and smoked. When Sir Roger was driving
in a hackney-coach he called upon the coachman to stop, and when the
man came to the window asked him if he smoked. While Sir Roger's
companion was wondering "what this would end in," the knight bid his
Jehu to "stop by the way at any good Tobacconist's, and take in a Roll
of their best Virginia." And when he visited Squire's near Gray's Inn
Gate, his first act was to call for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco,
a dish of coffee, a newspaper and a wax candle; and all the boys in
the coffee-room ran to serve him. The wax candle was of course a
convenience in matchless days for pipe-lighting. The "paper of
tobacco" was the equivalent of what is now vulgarly called a "screw"
of tobacco.

The practice of selling tobacco in small paper packets was common, and
moralists naturally had something to say about the fate of an author's
work, when the leaves of his books found their ultimate use as
wrappers for the weed. "For as no mortal author," says Addison, "in
the ordinary fate and vicissitude of things, knows to what use his
works may, some time or other, be applied, a man may often meet with
very celebrated names in a paper of tobacco. I have lighted my pipe
more than once with the writings of a prelate."

Addison and Steele smoked, and so did Prior, who seems to have had a
weakness at times for low company. After spending an evening with
Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope and Swift, it is recorded that he would go
"and smoke a pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier
and his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed." Some of Prior's
poems, as Thackeray caustically remarks, smack not a little of the
conversation of his Long Acre friends. Pope for awhile attended the
symposium at Button's coffee-house, where Addison was the centre of
the coterie--he describes himself as sitting with them till two in the
morning over punch and Burgundy amid the fumes of tobacco--but such a
way of life did not suit his sickly constitution, and he soon
withdrew. It is not likely that he smoked.

The attractions and the atmosphere of provincial coffee-houses were
much the same as those of the London resorts. A German gentleman who
visited Cambridge in July and August 1710 remarked that in the Greeks'
coffee-house in that town, in the morning and after 3 o'clock in the
afternoon, you could meet the chief professors and doctors, who read
the papers over a cup of coffee and a pipe of tobacco. One of the
learned doctors took the German visitor to the weekly meeting of a
Music Club in one of the colleges. Here were assembled bachelors,
masters and doctors of music of the University--no professionals were
employed--who performed vocal and instrumental music to their mutual
gratification, though, apparently, not to the satisfaction of the
visitor, who records his opinion that the music was "very poor." "It
lasted," he says, "till 11 P.M., there was besides smoking and
drinking of wine, though we did not do much of either. At 11 the
reckoning was called for, and each person paid 2s."

There was clearly no prejudice against smoking at Cambridge. Abraham
de la Pryme notes in his diary for the year 1694 that when it was
rumoured in May of that year that a certain house opposite one of the
colleges was haunted, strange noises being heard in it, several
scholars of the college said, "Come, fetch us a good pitcher of ale,
and tobacco and pipes, and wee'l sit up and see this spirit." The ale
was duly provided, the pipes were lit, and the courageous smokers
spent the night in the house, sitting "singing and drinking there till
morning," but, alas! they neither saw nor heard anything.

Smoking was still popular also at Oxford. A. D'Anvers, in her
"Academia; or the Humours of Oxford," 1691, speaks, indeed, of
undergraduates who, when they could not get tobacco, did much as the
parson of Thornton is reputed to have done, as already related in
Chapter II, _i.e._ they condescended to smoke fragments of mats. With
this may be compared the macaronic lines:

                                    _At si_
    Mundungus _desit: tum non_ funcare _recusant_
    Brown-Paper _tostâ, vel quod fit arundine_ bed-mat.

Tobacco, in Queen Anne's time, still maintained its hold over large
classes of the people, and was still dominant in most places of public
resort; but there were signs of change in various directions as we
have seen, and smoking had to a large extent ceased to be fashionable.
Pepys has very few allusions to tobacco; Evelyn fewer still. There is
little evidence as to whether or not the gallants of the Restoration
Court smoked; but considering the foppery of their attire and manners,
it seems almost certain that tobacco was not in favour among them. The
beaux with their full wigs--they carried combs of ivory or
tortoiseshell in their pockets with which they publicly combed their
flowing locks--their dandy canes and scented, laced handkerchiefs,
were not the men to enjoy the flavour of tobacco in a pipe. They were
still tobacco-worshippers; but they did not smoke. The Indian weed
retained its empire over the men (and women) of fashion by changing
its form. The beaux were the devotees of snuff. The deftly handled
pinch pleasantly titillated their nerves, and the dexterous use of the
snuff-box, moreover, could also serve the purposes of vanity by
displaying the beautiful whiteness of the hand, and the splendour of
the rings upon the fingers. The curled darlings of the late
seventeenth century and the "pretty fellows" of Queen Anne's time did
not forswear tobacco, but they abjured smoking. Snuff-taking was
universal in the fashionable world among both men and women; and the
development of this habit made smoking unfashionable.




VII

SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE: EARLY GEORGIAN DAYS

    Lord Fopling smokes not--for his teeth afraid;
    Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade.

          ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740.


With the reign of Queen Anne tobacco had entered on a period, destined
to be of long duration, when smoking was to a very large extent under
a social ban. Pipe-smoking was unfashionable--that is to say, was not
practised by men of fashion, and was for the most part regarded as
"low" or provincial--from the time named until well into the reign of
Queen Victoria. The social taboo was by no means universal--some of
the exceptions will be noted in these pages--but speaking broadly, the
general, almost universal smoking of tobacco which had been
characteristic of the earlier decades of the seventeenth century did
not again prevail until within living memory.

Throughout the eighteenth century the use of tobacco for smoking was
largely confined to the middle and humbler classes of society. To
smoke was characteristic of the "cit," of the country squire, of the
clergy (especially of the country parsons), and of those of lower
social status. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that
then, as since, the dictates of fashion and the conventions of
society were little regarded by many artists and men of letters.

In the preceding chapter I quoted from Addison's diary of a retired
tradesman in the _Spectator_ of 1712. The periodical publications of a
generation or so later paid the great essayist the flattery of
imitation in this respect as in others. In the _Connoisseur_ of George
Colman and Bonnell Thornton, for instance, there is, in 1754, the
description of a citizen's Sunday. The good man, having sent his
family to church in the morning, goes off himself to Mother Redcap's,
a favourite tavern--suburban in those days--or house of call for City
tradesmen. There he smokes half a pipe and drinks a pint of ale. In
the evening at another tavern he smokes a pipe and drinks two pints of
cider, winding up the inane day at his club, where he smokes three
pipes before coming home at twelve to go to bed and sleep soundly.

The week-end habit was strong among London tradesmen in those days.
Another _Connoisseur_ paper of 1754 refers to the citizens'
country-boxes as dusty retreats, because they were always built in
close contiguity to the highway so that the inhabitants could watch
the traffic, in the absence of anything more sensible to do, where
"the want of London smoke is supplied by the smoke of Virginia
tobacco," and where "our chief citizens are accustomed to pass the end
and the beginning of every week." In the following year there is a
description of a visit to Vauxhall by a worthy citizen with his wife
and two daughters. After supper the poor man sadly laments that he
cannot have his pipe, because his wife, with social ambitions, deems
that it is "ungenteel to smoke, where any ladies are in company."

Again, in the _Connoisseur's_ rival, the _World_, founded and
conducted by Edward Moore, there is a letter, in the number dated
February 19, 1756, from a citizen who says: "I have the honour to be a
member of a certain club in this city, where it is a standing order,
That the paper called the _World_ be constantly brought upon the
table, with clean glasses, pipes and tobacco, every Thursday after
dinner."

The country gentlemen of the time followed the hounds and enjoyed
rural sports of all kinds, drank ale, and smoked tobacco. They had
their smoking-rooms too. Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield,
Sussex, noted in his Journal under date March 26, 1751: "I went to Mr.
Baker's for the list of scholars, and found him alone in the
smoaking-room; he ordered a pint of mild beer for me, an extraordinary
thing." Gale himself was a regular smoker, and too fond of pints of
ale.

Fielding has immortalized the squire of the mid-eighteenth century in
his picture of that sporting, roaring, swearing, drinking, smoking,
affectionate, irascible, blundering, altogether extraordinary owner of
broad acres, Squire Western. We may shrewdly suspect that the portrait
of Western is somewhat over-coloured, and cannot fairly be taken as
typical; but there is sufficient evidence to show that in some
respects at least--in his enthusiasm for sport and love of ale and
tobacco--Western is representative of the country squires of his day.

In a _World_ of 1755 there is a description of a noisy, hearty,
drinking, devil-may-care country gentleman, in which it is said, "he
makes no scruple to take his pipe and pot at an alehouse with the very
dregs of the people." In a _Connoisseur_ of 1754 a fine gentleman
from London, making a visit in a country-house, is taking his
breakfast with the ladies in the afternoon, when they had their tea,
for, says he, "I should infallibly have perished, had I staied in the
hall, amidst the jargon of toasts and the fumes of tobacco." When
Horace Walpole was staying with his father at his Norfolk
country-seat, Houghton, in September 1737, Gray wrote to him from
Cambridge: "You are in a confusion of wine, and roaring, and hunting,
and tobacco, and, heaven be praised, you too can pretty well bear it."
But Gray had no objection to tobacco. He lived at Cambridge, and the
dons and residents there (as at Oxford), not to speak of the
undergraduates, were as partial to their pipes as the men who went out
from among them to become country parsons, and to share the country
squire's liking for tobacco. Gray wrote to Warton from Cambridge in
April 1749 saying: "Time will settle my conscience, time will
reconcile me to this languid companion (ennui); we shall smoke, we
shall tipple, we shall doze together"--a striking picture of
University life in the sleepy days of the eighteenth century. Gray's
testimony by no means stands alone. In November 1730 Roger North wrote
to his son Montague, then an undergraduate at Cambridge, saying: "I
would be loath you should confirm the scandal charged upon the
universities of learning chiefly to smoke and to drink."

At Oxford in early Georgian days a profound calm--so far as study was
concerned--appears to have prevailed. Little work was done, but much
tobacco was smoked. In 1733 a satire was published, violently
attacking the Fellows of various colleges. According to this satirist
the occupation of the Magdalen Fellow was to

                                _drink, look big,
    Smoke much, think little, curse the freeborn Whig--_

from which it may not unreasonably be surmised that the author was a
Tory; and however little enthusiasm there may have been at Oxford in
those days for learning and study, there was plenty of life in
political animosities.

Another witness to the dons' love of tobacco is Thomas Warton. In his
"Progress of Discontent," written in 1746, he plaintively sang:

    _Return, ye days when endless pleasure
    I found in reading or in leisure!
    When calm around the Common Room
    I puff'd my daily pipe's perfume!
    Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
    At annual bottlings, corks selected:
    And dined untax'd, untroubled, under
    The portrait of our pious Founder!_

Warton and another Oxford smoker of some distinction--the Rev. William
Crowe, who was Public Orator from 1784 to 1829--are both said to have
been, like Prior, rather fond of frequenting the company of persons of
humble rank and little education, with whom they would drink their ale
and smoke their pipes.

Mr. A.D. Godley, in his "Oxford in the Eighteenth Century," gives an
excellent English version of the Latin original of one of the Christ
Church "Carmina Quadragesmalia," which affords much the same picture
of the daily life of an Oxford Fellow in the days when George I was
king. This good man lives strictly by rule, and each returning day--

    _Ne'er swerves a hairbreadth from the same old way.
    Always within the memory of men
    He's risen at eight and gone to bed at ten:
    The same old cat his College room partakes,
    The same old scout his bed each morning makes:
    On mutton roast he daily dines in state
    (Whole flocks have perished to supply his plate),
    Takes just one turn to catch the westering sun,
    Then reads the paper, as he's always done;
    Soon cracks in Common-room the same old jokes,
    Drinking three glasses ere three pipes he smokes:--
    And what he did while Charles our throne did fill
    'Neath George's heir you'll find him doing still._

It seems to have been taken for granted that country parsons smoked.
Smoking was universal among their male parishioners from the squire to
the labourer (when he could afford it), so that it was only natural
that the parson, with little to do, and in those days not too much
inclination to do it, should be as fond of his pipe as the rest of the
world around him. In a _World_ of 1756 there is an account of a
country gentleman entertaining one evening the vicar of the parish,
and the host as a matter of course proceeds to order a bottle of wine
with pipes and tobacco to be placed on the table. The vicar forthwith
"filled his pipe, and drank very cordially to my friend," his host.
One cannot doubt that Laurence Sterne, that most remarkable of country
parsons, smoked. His "My Uncle Toby" is among the immortals, and Toby
without his pipe is unimaginable.

The most famous of country clergymen of the early Georgian period is,
of course, Fielding's lovable and immortal Parson Adams. Throughout
"Joseph Andrews" the parson smokes at every opportunity. At his first
appearance on the scene, in the inn kitchen, he calls for a pipe of
tobacco before taking his place at the fireside. The next morning,
when he fails to obtain a desired loan from the landlord, Adams,
extremely dejected at his disappointment, immediately applies to his
pipe, "his constant friend and comfort in his affliction," and leans
over the rails of the gallery overlooking the inn-yard, devoting
himself to meditation, "assisted by the inspiring fumes of tobacco."
Later on, in the parlour of the country Justice of the Peace, who
condemned his prisoners before he had taken the depositions of the
witnesses against them, and who, by the way, also lit his pipe while
his clerk performed this necessary duty, Adams, when his character has
been cleared, sits down with the company and takes a cheerful glass
and applies himself vigorously to smoking. A few hours later, when the
parson, Fanny, and their guide are driven by a storm of rain to take
shelter in a wayside ale-house, Adams "immediately procured himself a
good fire, a toast and ale, and a pipe, and began to smoke with great
content, utterly forgetting everything that had happened." In the same
inn, after Mrs. Slipslop has appeared and disappeared, Adams smokes
three pipes and takes "a comfortable nap in a great chair," so leaving
the lovers, Joseph and Fanny, to enjoy a delightful time together.

At another inn a country squire is discovered smoking his pipe by the
door and the parson promptly joins him. Again, he smokes before he
goes to bed, and before he breakfasts the next morning; and when he
goes into the inn garden with the host who is willing to trust him,
both host and parson light their pipes before beginning to gossip.
Farther on, when the hospitable Mr. Wilson takes the weary wayfarers
in, Parson Adams loses no time in filling himself with ale, as
Fielding puts it, and lighting his pipe. The menfolk--Wilson, Adams
and Joseph--have to spend the night seated round the fire, but
apparently Adams is the only one who seeks the solace of tobacco. It
is significant that Wilson, in telling the story of his dissipated
early life, classes smoking with "singing, holloaing, wrangling,
drinking, toasting," and other diversions of "jolly companions."

There is no mention of Parson Trulliber's pipe, but that pig-breeder
and lover can hardly have been a non-smoker. Both the other clerical
characters who appear in the book, the Roman Catholic priest who makes
an equivocal appearance in the eighth chapter of the third book, and
Parson Barnabas, who thinks that his own sermons are at least equal to
Tillotson's, smoke their pipes. The other smokers in "Joseph Andrews"
are the surgeon and the exciseman who, early in the story, are found
sitting in the inn kitchen with Parson Barnabas, "smoking their pipes
over some syderand"--the mysterious "cup" being a mixture of cider and
something spirituous--and Joseph's father, old Gaffer Andrews, who
appears at the end of the story, and complains bitterly that he wants
his pipe, not having had a whiff that morning.

Fielding himself smoked his pipe. When his play "The Wedding Day" was
produced by Garrick in 1743, various suggestions were made to the
author as to the excision of certain passages, and the modification of
one of the scenes. Garrick pressed for certain omissions, but--"No,
damn them," said Fielding, "if the scene is not a good one, let them
find that out"; and then, according to Murphy, he retired to the
green-room, where, during the progress of the play, he smoked his pipe
and drank champagne. Presently he heard the sound of hissing, and when
Garrick came in and explained that the audience had hissed the scene
he had wished to have modified, all Fielding said was: "Oh, damn them,
they _have_ found it out, have they!"

Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the crafty old Jacobite who took part in the
rising of 1745 and who was executed on Tower Hill in 1747, was a
smoker. The pipe which he was reported to have smoked on the evening
before his execution, together with his snuff-box and a canvas
tobacco-bag, were for many years in the possession of the Society of
Cogers, the famous debating society of Fleet Street.

It has sometimes been said that Swift smoked; but this is a mistake.
He had a fancy for taking tobacco in a slightly different way from the
fashionable mode of taking snuff. He told Stella that he had left off
snuff altogether, and then in the very next sentence remarked that he
had "a noble roll of tobacco for grating, very good." And in a later
letter to Stella, May 24, 1711, he asked if she still snuffed, and
went on to say, in sentences that seem to contradict one another: "I
have left it off, and when anybody offers me their box, I take about a
tenth part of what I used to do, then just smell to it, and privately
fling the rest away. I keep to my tobacco still, as you say; but even
much less of that than formerly, only mornings and evenings, and very
seldom in the day." One might infer from this that he smoked, but this
Swift never did. His practice was to snuff up cut and dried tobacco,
which was sometimes just coloured with Spanish snuff. This he did all
his life, but as the mixture he took was not technically snuff, he
never owned that he took snuff.

Another cleric of the period, well known to fame, who took snuff but
also loved his pipe, was Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth,
Lincolnshire, from 1697 to 1735. He not only smoked his pipe, but sang
its praises:

    _In these raw mornings, when I'm freezing ripe,
    What can compare with a tobacco-pipe?
    Primed, cocked and toucht, 'twould better heat a man
    Than ten Bath Faggots or Scotch warming-pan._

Samuel's greater son, John Wesley, did not share the parental love of
a pipe. He spoke of the use of tobacco as "an uncleanly and
unwholesome self-indulgence," and described snuffing as "a silly,
nasty, dirty custom."

The London clergy seem to have smoked at one time as a matter of
course at their gatherings at Sion College, their headquarters. An
entry in the records under date February 14, 1682, relating to a Court
Meeting, runs: "Paid Maddocks [the Messenger] for Attendinge and Pipes
6d." How long pipes continued to be concomitants of the meetings of
the College's General Court I cannot say; but smoking and the annual
dinners were long associated. At the anniversary feast in 1743 there
were two tables to provide for, the total number of guests being about
thirty, and two "corses" to each. The cost of the food, as Canon
Pearce tells us in his excellent and entertaining book on the College
and its Library, was £19 15s., or rather more than 13s. a head. The
bill for wines and tobacco amounted to five guineas, or about 3s. 6d.
a head, and for this modest sum the thirty convives enjoyed eleven
gallons of "Red Oporto," one of "White Lisbon," and three of
"Mountain," to the accompaniment of two pounds of tobacco (at 3s. 4d.
the pound) smoked in "half a groce of pipes" (at 1s.).

The examples and illustrations which have been given so far in this
chapter relate to tradesmen and merchants, country gentlemen and the
clergy. Other professional men smoked--we read in Fielding's "Amelia"
of a doctor who in the evening "smoked his pillow-pipe, as the phrase
is"--and among the rest of the people of equal or lower social
standing smoking was as generally practised as in the preceding
century. Handel, I may note, enjoyed his pipe. Dr. Burney, when a
schoolboy at Chester, was "extremely curious to see so extraordinary a
man," so when Handel went through that city in 1741 on his way to
Ireland, young Burney "watched him narrowly as long as he remained in
Chester," and among other things, had the felicity of seeing the great
man "smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange
Coffee-house," which was under the old Town Hall that stood opposite
the present King's School, and in front of the present Town Hall.

Gonzales, in his "Voyage to Great Britain," 1731, says that the use of
tobacco was "very universal, and indeed not improper for so moist a
climate." He tells us that though the taverns were very numerous yet
the ale-houses were much more so. These ale-houses were visited by the
inferior tradesmen, mechanics, journeymen, porters, coachmen, carmen,
servants, and others whose pockets were not equal to the price of a
glass of wine, which, apparently, was the more usual thing to call for
at a tavern, properly so called. In the ale-house men of the various
classes and occupations enumerated, says the traveller, would "sit
promiscuously in common dirty rooms, with large fires, and clouds of
tobacco, where one that is not used to them can scarce breathe or
see."

The antiquary Hearne has left on record an account of a curious
smoking match held at Oxford in 1723. It began at two o'clock in the
afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the
purpose "over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore's, an
alehouse." The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could
smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off
the stage, should have 12s. "Many tryed," continues Hearne, "and 'twas
thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter's in the East would
have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before,
the rest: but at last he was so sick, that 'twas thought he would have
dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently,
came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told
one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the
same evening." The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.

Another foreign visitor to England, the Abbé Le Blanc, who was over
here about 1730, found English customs rather trying. "Even at table,"
he says, "where they serve desserts, they do but show them, and
presently take away everything, even to the tablecloth. By this the
English, whom politeness does not permit to tell the ladies their
company is troublesome, give them notice to retire.... The table is
immediately covered with mugs, bottles and glasses; and often with
pipes of tobacco. All things thus disposed, the ceremony of toasts
begins."

The frowns and remonstrances of Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of
Friends had not succeeded in putting the Quakers' pipes out. In a list
of sea stores put on board a vessel called by the un-Quaker-like name
of _The Charming Polly_, which brought a party of Friends across the
Atlantic from Philadelphia in 1756, we find "In Samuel Fothergill's
new chest ... Tobacco ... a Hamper ... a Barrel ... a box of pipes."
The provident Samuel was well found for a long voyage.

The non-smokers were the men of fashion and those who followed them in
preferring the snuff-box to the pipe. Sometimes, apparently, they
chewed. A _World_ of 1754 pokes fun at the "pretty" young men who
"take pains to appear manly. But alas! the methods they pursue, like
most mistaken applications, rather aggravate the calamity. Their
drinking and raking only makes them look like old maids. Their
swearing is almost as shocking as it would be in the other sex. Their
chewing tobacco not only offends, but makes us apprehensive at the
same time that the poor things will be sick," as they certainly well
deserved to be. To chew might be "manly," but it will be observed that
smoking is not mentioned. No reputation for manliness could be
achieved by even the affectation of a pipe. Similarly, in Bramston's
"Man of Taste," various fashionable tastes are described, but there is
no mention of tobacco.

In Townley's well-known two-act farce "High Life Below Stairs," 1759,
the servants take their masters' and mistresses' titles and ape their
ways. The menservants--the Dukes and Sir Harrys--offer one another
snuff. "Taste this snuff, Sir Harry," says the "Duke." "'Tis good
rappee," replies "Sir Harry." "Right Strasburgh, I assure you, and of
my own importing," says the knowing ducal valet. "The city people
adulterate it so confoundedly," he continues, "that I always import my
own snuff;" and in similar vein he goes on in imitation of his master,
the genuine Duke. These servants copy the talk and style (with a
difference) of their employers; but smoking is never mentioned. The
real Dukes and Sir Harrys took snuff with a grace, but they did not do
anything so low as to smoke, and their menservants faithfully aped
their preferences and their aversions.

Negative evidence of this kind is abundant; and positive statements of
the aversion of the beaux from smoking are not lacking. Dodsley's
"Collection" contains a satirical poem called "A Pipe of Tobacco,"
which was written in imitation of six different poets. The author was
Isaac Hawkins Browne, and the poets imitated were the Laureate Cibber,
Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift. The first imitation is
called "A New Year's Ode," and contains three recitatives, three airs
and a chorus. One of the airs will suffice as a sample:

    _Happy mortal! he who knows
    Pleasure which a Pipe bestows;
    Curling eddies climb the room
    Wafting round a mild perfume._

Number two, which was intended as a burlesque of Philips's "Splendid
Shilling," is really pretty and must be given entire. It reveals
unsuspected beauties in the simple "churchwarden," or "yard of clay":

    _Little tube of mighty pow'r,
    Charmer of an idle hour,
    Object of my warm desire,
    Lip of wax, and eye of fire:
    And thy snowy taper waist,
    With my finger gently brac'd;
    And thy pretty swelling crest,
    With my little stopper prest,
    And the sweetest bliss of blisses,
    Breathing from thy balmy kisses.
    Happy thrice, and thrice agen,
    Happiest he of happy men;
    Who when agen the night returns,
    When agen the taper burns;
    When agen the cricket's gay,
    (Little cricket, full of play)
    Can afford his tube to feed
    With the fragrant Indian weed:
    Pleasure for a nose divine,
    Incense of the god of wine.
    Happy thrice, and thrice agen,
    Happiest he of happy men._

Imitations three and five praise the leaf in less happy strains,
though number five has a line worth noting for our purpose, in which
tobacco is spoken of as

      _By ladies hated, hated by the beaux._

The sixth sinks to ribaldry. Number four contains evidence of the
distaste for smoking among the beaux in the lines:

    _Coxcombs prefer the tickling sting of snuff;
    Yet all their claim to wisdom is--a puff;
    Lord Foplin smokes not--for his teeth afraid:
    Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade.
    Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
    They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town;
    But courtiers hate the puffing tube--no matter,
    Strange if they love the breath that cannot flatter!_
    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
    _Yet crowds remain, who still its worth proclaim,
    While some for pleasure smoke, and some for Fame._

The satirist wrote truly that after all the fashionable abstainers had
been deducted, crowds remained, who smoked as heartily as their
predecessors of a century earlier. The populace was still on the side
of tobacco. This was well shown in 1732 when Sir Robert Walpole
proposed special excise duties on tobacco, and brought a Bill into
Parliament which would have given his excisemen powers of inquisition
which were much resented by the people generally. The controversy
produced a host of squibs and caricatures, most of which were directed
against the measure. The Bill was defeated in 1733, and great and
general were the rejoicings. When the news reached Derby on April 19
in that year, the dealers in tobacco caused all the bells in the Derby
churches to be rung, and we may be sure that this rather unusual
performance was highly popular. The withdrawal of the odious duty was
further celebrated by caricatures and "poetical" chants of triumph.
One of the leading opponents of the Bill had been a well-known puffing
tobacconist named Bradley, who was accustomed to describe his wares as
"the best in Christendom"; and when the Bill was defeated Bradley's
portrait was published for popular circulation, above these lines:

    _Behold the man, who, when a gloomy band
    Of vile excisemen threatened all the land,
    Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe
    The cheerful bottle and the social pipe.
    O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl,
    Still_ unexcised, _rejoice thy honest soul!
    May still_ the best in Christendom _for this
    Cleave to thy stopper, and compleat thy bliss!_

This print is now chiefly of interest because the plate was adorned
with a tiny etching by Hogarth, in which appear the figures of the
British Lion and Britannia, both with pipes in their mouths, Britannia
being seated on a cask of tobacco.

Hogarth was fond of introducing the pipe into his plates. In the
tail-piece to his works, which he prepared a few months before his
death, and which he called _The Bathos, or Manner of Sinking in
Sublime Paintings_, the end of everything is represented. Time
himself, supported against a broken column, is expiring, his scythe
falling from his grasp and a long clay pipe breaking in two as it
falls from his lips. This was issued in 1764--Hogarth's last published
work. In the plate which shows the execution of Thomas Idle, in the
"Industry and Idleness" series, Hogarth depicts the little hangman
smoking a short pipe as he sits on the top of the gallows, waiting for
his victim. The familiar plate of _A Modern Midnight Conversation_
shows a parson in surplice and wig smoking like a furnace while he
ladles punch from a bowl--probably meant for a portrait of the
notorious Orator Henley. Most of the other guests are also shown
smoking long clay pipes.

Hogarth's subscription ticket for the print of _Sigismunda_ was _Time
Smoking a Picture_ (1761). It represents an old man sitting on a
fragment of statuary and smoking a long pipe against a picture of a
landscape which stands upon an easel before him. Below, on his left,
is a large jar labelled "Varnish." The figure of Time is nude and has
large wings. Volumes of smoke are pouring against the surface of the
picture from both his mouth and the bowl of his long clay pipe. In
_The Stage-Coach, or Country Inn-yard_, is shown an old woman smoking
a pipe in the "basket" of the coach. The plate of _The Distrest Poet_
(1736) shows four books and three tobacco-pipes on a shelf. In the
second of the "Election" series--the _Canvassing for Votes_ (1755)--a
barber and a cobbler, seated at the table in the right-hand corner,
are both smoking long pipes. Apparently they are discussing the taking
of Portobello by Admiral Vernon in 1739 with only six ships; for the
barber is illustrating his talk by pointing with his twisted pipe-stem
to six fragments which he has broken from the stem and arranged on the
table in the shape of a crescent. In the frontispiece which Hogarth
drew in 1762 for Garrick's farce of "The Farmer's Return from London,"
the worthy farmer, seated in his great chair, holds out a large mug in
one hand to be filled with ale, while the other supports his long
pipe, which he is smoking with evident enjoyment.

Hogarth himself was a confirmed pipe-lover. When he and Thornhill and
their three companions set out from Gravesend for the final stage, up
the river, of their famous "Five Days Peregrination," we are told that
they hired a boat with clean straw, and laid in a bottle of wine,
pipes, tobacco, and light, and so came merrily up the river. The
arm-chair in which Hogarth was wont to sit and smoke is still
preserved in his house at Chiswick, which has been bought and
preserved as a memorial of the moralist-painter; and in the garden of
the house may still be seen the remains of the mulberry tree under
which Mr. Austin Dobson suggests that Hogarth and Fielding may have
sat and smoked their pipes together in the days when George was
King.




VIII

SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE (_continued_): LATER GEORGIAN DAYS

    Says the Pipe to the Snuff-box, I can't understand
      What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face,
    That you are in fashion all over the land,
      And I am so much fallen into disgrace.

          WILLIAM COWPER.
    (From a letter to the Rev. John Newton, May 28, 1782.)


"Smoking has gone out," said Johnson in talk at St. Andrews, one day
in 1773. "To be sure," he continued, "it is a shocking thing, blowing
smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes and noses,
and having the same thing done to us; yet I cannot account why a thing
which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from
total vacuity, should have gone out." Johnson did not trouble himself
to think of how much the vagaries of fashion account for stranger
vicissitudes in manners and customs than the rise and fall of the
smoking-habit; nor did he probably foresee how slowly but surely the
taste for smoking, even in the circles most influenced by fashion,
would revive. Boswell tells us that although the sage himself never
smoked, yet he had a high opinion of the practice as a sedative
influence; and Hawkins heard him say on one occasion that insanity had
grown more frequent since smoking had gone out of fashion, which
shows that even Johnson could fall a victim to the _post hoc propter
hoc_ fallacy.

More than one writer of recent days has absurdly misrepresented
Johnson as a smoker. The author of a book on tobacco published a few
years ago wrote--"Dr. Johnson smoked like a furnace"--a grotesquely
untrue statement--and "all his friends, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick,
were his companions in tobacco-worship." Reynolds, we know--

    _When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff,
    He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff._

Johnson and all his company took snuff, as every one in the
fashionable world, and a great many others outside that charmed
circle, did; but Johnson did not smoke, and I doubt whether any of the
others did.

There is ample evidence, apart from Johnson's dictum, that in the
latter part of the eighteenth century smoking had "gone out." In Mrs.
Climenson's "Passages from the Diaries of Mrs. Lybbe Powys," we hear
of a bundle of papers at Hardwick House, near Whitchurch, Oxon, which
bears the unvarnished title "Dick's Debts." This Dick was a Captain
Richard Powys who had a commission in the Guards, and died at the
early age of twenty-six in the year 1768. This list of debts, it
appears, gives "the most complete catalogue of the expenses of a dandy
of the Court of George II, consisting chiefly of swords, buckles,
lace, Valenciennes and point d'Espagne, gold and amber-headed canes,
tavern bills and chair hire." But in all the ample detail of Captain
Powys's list of extravagances there is nothing directly or indirectly
relating to smoking. The beaux of the time did not smoke.

In the whole sixteen volumes of Walpole's correspondence, as so
admirably edited by Mrs. Toynbee, there is scarcely a mention of
tobacco; and the same may be said of other collections of letters of
the same period--the Selwyn letters, the Delany correspondence, and so
on. Neither Walpole nor any member of the world in which he lived
would appear to have smoked. In Miss Burney's "Evelina," 1778, from
the beginning to the end of the book there is no mention whatever of
tobacco or of smoking. Apparently the vulgar Branghtons were not
vulgar enough to smoke. Such use of tobacco was considered low, and
was confined to the classes of society indicated in the preceding
chapter. One of the characters in Macklin's "Love à la Mode," 1760, is
described as "dull, dull as an alderman, after six pounds of turtle,
four bottles of port, and twelve pipes of tobacco."

A satirical print by Rowlandson contains _A Man of Fashion's Journal_,
dated May 1, 1802. The "man of fashion" rides and drinks, goes to the
play, gambles and bets, but his journal contains no reference to
smoking. Rowlandson himself smoked, and so did his brother
caricaturist, Gillray. Angelo says that they would sometimes meet at
such resorts of the "low" as the Bell, the Coal Hole, or the Coach and
Horses, and would enter into the common chat of the room, smoke and
drink together, and then "sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands
at the door--look up at the stars, say it is a pretty night, and
depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James's Street, each to
his bachelor's bed."

But outside the fashionable world pipes were still in full blast, and
in many places of resort the atmosphere was as beclouded with
tobacco-smoke as in earlier days. Grosley, in his "Tour to London,"
1765, says that there were regular clubs, which were held in
coffee-houses and taverns at fixed days and hours, when wine, beer,
tea, pipes and tobacco helped to amuse the company.

Angelo gives some lively pictures of scenes of this kind in the London
of about 1780. The Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, was the
meeting-place for "a knot of worthies, principally 'Sons of St. Luke,'
or the children of Thespis, and mostly votaries of Bacchus," as the
old fencing-master, who loved a little "fine writing," describes them;
and here they sat, he says, "taking their punch and smoking, the
prevailing custom of the time." About the same time (_circa_ 1790) an
evening resort for purposes mostly vicious was the famous Dog and
Duck, in St. George's Fields. "The long room," says Angelo, "if I may
depend on my memory, was on the ground floor, and all the benches were
filled with motley groups, eating, drinking, and smoking." Angelo also
mentions the "Picnic Society," a celebrated resort of fashion at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, where the odour of tobacco never
penetrated. It afforded, he says in his fine way, "a sort of
antipodeal contrast to these smoking tavern clubs of the old city of
Trinobantes." The same writer speaks of a certain Monsieur Liviez whom
he met in Paris in 1772, who had been one of the first dancers at the
Italian Opera House, and _maître de ballet_ at Drury Lane Theatre.
This gentleman was addicted to self-indulgence, loved good eating, and
good and ample drinking, and moreover kept "late hours, _à
l'Anglaise_, smoked his pipe, and drank oceans of punch."

Coleridge, in the "Biographia Literaria," gives an amusing account of
his own experience of an attempt to smoke in company with a party of
tradesmen. In 1795 he was travelling about the country endeavouring to
secure subscriptions to the periodical publication he had started
called _The Watchman_. At Birmingham one day he dined with a worthy
tradesman, who, after dinner, importuned him "to smoke a pipe with
him, and two or three other _illuminati_ of the same rank." The
remainder of the moving story must be told in Coleridge's own words.
"I objected," he says, "both because I was engaged to spend the
evening with a minister and his friends, and because I had never
smoked except once or twice in my life-time, and then it was herb
tobacco mixed with Oronooko. On the assurance, however, that the
tobacco was equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a yellow
colour,--not forgetting the lamentable difficulty I have always
experienced in saying, 'No,' and in abstaining from what the people
about me were doing,--I took half a pipe, filling the lower half of
the bole with salt. I was soon, however, compelled to resign it, in
consequence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes, which,
as I had drunk but a single glass of ale, must, I knew, have been the
effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered, I sallied
forth to my engagement; but the walk and the fresh air brought on all
the symptoms again, and I had scarcely entered the minister's
drawing-room, and opened a small pacquet of letters, which he had
received from Bristol for me, ere I sank back on the sofa in a sort of
swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had found just time enough to
inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of the occasion.
For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is white-washing,
deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it
from my forehead, while one after another there dropped in the
different gentlemen, who had been invited to meet, and spend the
evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the
poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from
insensibility, and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the
candles which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my
embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the conversation with 'Have
you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?' 'Sir,' I replied, rubbing my
eyes, 'I am far from convinced that a Christian is permitted to read
either newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary
interest.' This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather,
incongruous with, the purpose for which I was known to have visited
Birmingham, and to assist me in which they were all met, produced an
involuntary and general burst of laughter; and seldom indeed have I
passed so many delightful hours as I enjoyed in that room from the
moment of that laugh till an early hour the next morning."

All's well that ends well; but one cannot help wondering what kind of
tobacco it was that the Birmingham tradesman used, a half pipeful of
which had such a deadly effect--but perhaps the effect was due to the
salt, not to the tobacco.

In the year after that which witnessed Coleridge's adventure, _i.e._
in 1796, a tobacco-box with a history was the subject of a legal
decision. This box, made of common horn and small enough to be
carried in the pocket, was bought for fourpence by an overseer of the
poor in the time of Queen Anne, and was presented by him in 1713 to
the Society of Past Overseers of the parish of St. Margaret,
Westminster. In 1720 the Society, in memory of the donor, ornamented
the lid with a silver rim; and at intervals thereafter additions were
made to an extraordinary extent to the box and its casings. Hogarth
engraved within the lid in 1746 a bust of the victor of Culloden.
Gradually the horn box was enshrined within one case after
another--usually silver lined with velvet--each case bearing inscribed
plates commemorating persons or events. A Past Overseer who detained
the box in 1793 had to give it back after three years of litigation. A
case of octagon shape records the triumph of Justice, and Lord
Chancellor Loughborough pronouncing his decree for the restitution of
the box on March 5, 1796. In later days many and various additions
have been made to the many coverings of the box, recording public
events of interest.

Notwithstanding the unfashionableness of tobacco, there were still
some noteworthy smokers to be found among the clergy. Dr. Sumner, head
master of Harrow, who died in 1771, was devoted to his pipe. The
greatest of clerical "tobacconists" of late eighteenth century and
early nineteenth century date was the once famous Dr. Parr. It was
from him that Dr. Sumner learned to smoke. When he and Parr got
together Sumner was in the habit of refilling his pipe again and again
in such a way as to be unobserved, at the same time begging Parr not
to depart till he had finished his pipe, in order that he might detain
him, we are told, in the evening as long as possible.

Parr was not a model smoker. He was brutally overbearing towards other
folk, and would accept no invitation except on the understanding that
he might smoke when and where he liked. It was his invariable
practice, wherever he might be visiting, to smoke a pipe as soon as he
had got out of bed. His biographer says--"The ladies were obliged to
bear his tobacco, or to give up his company; and at Hatton (1786-1825)
now and then he was the tyrant of the fireside." Parr was capable of
smoking twenty pipes in an evening, and described himself as "rolling
volcanic fumes of tobacco to the ceiling" while he worked at his desk.
At a dinner which was given at Trinity College, Cambridge, to the Duke
of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University, when the cloth was
removed, Parr at once started his pipe and began, says one who was
present, "blowing a cloud into the faces of his neighbours, much to
their annoyance, and causing royalty to sneeze by the stimulating
stench of mundungus." It is surprising that people were willing to put
up with such bad manners as Parr was accustomed to exhibit; but his
reputation was then great, and he traded upon it.

Parr is said on one occasion to have called for a pipe after taking a
meal at a coaching-inn called the "Bush" at Bristol, when the waiter
told him that smoking was not allowed at the Bush. Parr persisted, but
the authorities at the inn were firm in their refusal to allow
anything so vulgar as smoking on their premises, whereupon Parr is
said to have exclaimed: "Why, man, I've smoked in the dining-room of
every nobleman in England. The Duchess of Devonshire said I could
smoke in every room in her house but her dressing-room, and here, in
this dirty public-house of Bristol you forbid smoking! Amazing! Bring
me my bill." The learned doctor exaggerated no doubt as regards the
facilities given him for smoking; for it was his overbearing way not
to ask for leave to smoke, but to smoke wherever he went, whether
invited to do so or not; but the story shows the prejudice against
smoking which was found in many places as a result of the attitude of
the fashionable world towards tobacco.

Johnstone, Parr's biographer, referring to his hero's failure to
obtain preferment to the Episcopal Bench about the year 1804,
says--"His pipe might be deemed in these fantastic days a degradation
at the table of the palace or the castle; but his noble hospitality,
combined with his habits of sobriety, whether tobacco fumigated his
table or not, would have filled his hall with the learned and the
good." A portrait of Parr hangs in the Combination Room in St. John's,
Cambridge. Originally it represented him faithfully with a long clay
between hand and mouth; but for some unknown reason the pipe has been
painted out.

A famous crony of Parr's, the learned Porson, was another devotee of
tobacco. In November 1789 Parr wrote to Dr. Burney: "The books may be
consulted, and Porson shall do it, and he will do it. I know his price
when he bargains with me; two bottles instead of one, six pipes
instead of two, burgundy instead of claret, liberty to sit till five
in the morning instead of sneaking into bed at one: these are his
terms:" and these few lines, it may be added, give a graphic picture
of Porson. According to Maltby, Porson once remarked that when smoking
began to go out of fashion, learning began to go out of fashion
also--which shows what nonsense a learned man could talk.

Another famous parson, the Rev. John Newton, was a smoker, and so was
Cowper's other clerical friend, that learned and able Dissenter, the
Rev. William Bull, whose whole mien and bearing were so dignified that
on two occasions he was mistaken for a bishop. Cowper appreciated
snuff, but did not care for smoking, and when he wrote to Unwin,
describing his new-made friend in terms of admiration, he
concluded--"Such a man is Mr. Bull. But--he smokes tobacco. Nothing is
perfection 'Nihil est ab omni parte beatum.'" Bull, however, was not
excessive in his smoking, for his daily allowance was but three pipes.
In his garden at Newport Pagnell, Bull showed Cowper a nook in which
he had placed a bench, where he said he found it very refreshing to
smoke his pipe and meditate. "Here he sits," wrote Cowper, "with his
back against one brick wall, and his nose against another, which must,
you know, be very refreshing, and greatly assist meditation."

Cowper's aversion from tobacco could not have been very strong, for he
encouraged his friend to smoke in the famous Summer House at Olney,
which was the poet's outdoor study. Bull smoked Orinoco tobacco, which
he carried in one of the tobacco-boxes, which in those days were much
more commonly used than pouches, and this box on one occasion he
accidentally left behind him at Olney. Cowper returned it to him with
the well-known rhymed epistle dated June 22, 1782, and beginning:

    _If reading verse be your delight,
    'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
    But what we would, so weak is man,
    Lies oft remote from what we can._

He describes the box and its contents in lines which show not only
tolerance but appreciation of tobacco, from which it is not
unreasonable to infer that Cowper's first view of his friend's
smoking-habit as a drawback--as shown in his letter to Unwin, quoted
above--had been modified by neighbourhood and custom. It might have
been well for the poet himself if he had learned to smoke a social
pipe with his friend Bull. The appreciative lines run thus:

        _This oval box well filled
    With best tobacco, finely milled,
    Beats all Anticyra's pretences
    To disengage the encumbered senses.
        O Nymph of transatlantic fame,
    Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
    Whether reposing on the side
    Of Oronoco's spacious tide,
    Or listening with delight not small
    To Niagara's distant fall,
    'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
    The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
    Which, whether pulverized it gain
    A speedy passage to the brain,
    Or whether, touched with fire, it rise
    In circling eddies to the skies,
    Does thought more quicken and refine
    Than all the breath of all the Nine--
    Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
    Who once too wantonly made free,
    To touch with a satiric wipe
    That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
    And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
    Be always filling, never full._

The allusion in these verses to a "satiric wipe" refers to a passage
in the poem entitled "Conversation," which Cowper had written in the
previous year, 1781. In this passage tobacco is abused in terms which
Cowper clearly felt to need modification after his personal
intercourse with such a smoker as his friend Bull. In describing, in
"Conversation," the manner in which a story is sometimes told, the
poet says:

    _The pipe, with solemn interposing puff,
    Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
    The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
    Then pause and puff--and speak, and pause again.
    Such often, like the tube they so admire,
    Important triflers! have more smoke than fire._

Cowper then goes on to attack tobacco in lines which show how
unpopular smoking at that date was with ladies, and which have since
often been quoted by anti-tobacconists with grateful appreciation:

    _Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
    Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
    Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
    The sex whose presence civilizes ours;
    Thou art indeed the drug a gardener wants,
    To poison vermin that infest his plants,
    But are we so to wit and beauty blind,
    As to despise the glory of our kind,
    And show the softest minds and fairest forms
    As little mercy as the grubs and worms?_

Notwithstanding this "satiric wipe," it is not likely that Cowper
would have had much sympathy with John Wesley, who, in his detestation
of what had been his father's solace at Epworth, forbade his preachers
either to smoke or to take snuff.

In the first two or three decades of the nineteenth century smoking
reached its nadir. No dandy smoked. If some witnesses may be believed
smoking had almost died out even at Oxford. Archdeacon Denison wrote
in his "Memories"--"When I went up to Oxford, 1823-24, there were two
things unknown in Christ Church, and I believe very generally in
Oxford--smoking and slang"; but one cannot help fancying that the
archdeacon's memory was not quite trustworthy. It is difficult to
imagine that there was ever a time when the slang of the day was not
current on the lips of young Oxford, or that so long as tobacco was
procurable it did not find its way into college rooms.

If smoking had died out at Oxford its decline must have been rapid.
When a certain young John James was an undergraduate of Queen's, 1778
to 1781, he and his correspondents spoke severely of the "miserable
condition of Fellows who (under the liberal pretence of educating
youth) spend half their lives in smoking tobacco and reading the
newspapers." About 1800 the older or more old-fashioned of the Fellows
at New College, "not liking the then newly introduced luxury of Turkey
carpets," says Mr. G.V. Cox, in his "Recollections of Oxford," 1868,
"often adjourned to smoke their pipe in a little room opposite to the
Senior Common-room, now appropriated to other uses, but then kept as a
smoking-room." A Mr. Rhodes, a one-time Fellow of Worcester College,
who was elected Esquire Bedel in Medicine and Arts in 1792, had a very
peculiar way of enjoying his tobacco. Mr. Cox says: "On one occasion,
when I had to call upon him, I found him drinking rum and water, and
enjoying (what he called his luxury) the fumes of tobacco, not through
a pipe or in the shape of a cigar, but _burnt in a dish!_"

Smoking had certainly not died out at Cambridge, even at the time when
Denison was at Oxford. According to the "Gradus ad Cantabrigium,"
1824, the Cambridge smart man's habit was to dine in the evening "at
his own rooms, or at those of a friend, and afterwards blows a cloud,
puffs at a segar, and drinks copiously." The spelling of "segar" shows
that cigars were then somewhat of a novelty.

When Tennyson was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 1828-30, he and his
companions all smoked. At the meetings of the "Apostles"--the little
group of friends which included the future Laureate--"much coffee was
drunk, much tobacco smoked." Dons smoked as well as undergraduates. At
Queens', the Combination-room in Tennyson's time had still a sanded
floor, and the "table was set handsomely forth with long
'churchwardens'"--as the poet told Palgrave when the two visited
Cambridge in 1859. George Pryme, in his "Autobiographic
Recollections," 1870, states that in 1800 "smoking was allowed in the
Trinity Combination-room after supper in the twelve days of Christmas,
when a few old men availed themselves of it," which looks as if
tobacco were not very popular just then at Trinity. With the wine,
pipes and the large silver tobacco-box were laid on the table. Porson,
when asked for an inscription for the box, suggested "+Tô bakchô+."
Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco
had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ...
to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had
the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner."

No doubt smoking had its ups and downs at the Universities apart from
the set of the main current of fashion. We learn from the invaluable
Gunning that at Cambridge about 1786 smoking was going "out of fashion
among the junior members of our combination-rooms, except on the river
in the evening, when every man put a short pipe in his mouth." "I took
great pains," he adds, "to make myself master of this elegant
accomplishment, but I never succeeded, though I used to renew the
attempt with a perseverance worthy of a better cause." About the same
time Dr. Farmer was Master of Emmanuel and the Master was an
inveterate smoker. Gunning says that Emmanuel parlour under Farmer's
presidency was always open to those who loved pipes and tobacco and
cheerful conversation--a very natural collocation of tastes. Farmer's
silver tobacco-pipe is still preserved in his old college, while
Porson's japanned snuff-box is at Trinity.

Dr. Farmer was elected Master of Emmanuel in 1775. Years before he had
held the curacy of Swavesey, about nine miles out of Cambridge, where
he regularly performed the duty. After morning service it was his
custom to repair to the local public-house where he enjoyed a
mutton-chop and potatoes. Immediately after the removal of the cloth,
"Mr. Dobson (his churchwarden) and one or two of the principal
farmers, made their appearance, to whom he invariably said, 'I am
going to read prayers, but shall be back by the time you have made
the punch.' Occasionally another farmer accompanied him from church,
when pipes and tobacco"--with the punch--"were in requisition until 6
o'clock." The Sabbath afternoon thus satisfactorily concluded, Farmer
returned to college in Cambridge and took a nap, till at nine he went
to the parlour of the college where the Fellows usually assembled, and
pipes and tobacco concluded a well-spent day.

In the fashionable world the snuff-box was all-powerful. The Prince
Regent was devoted to snuff, but disdained tobacco. He had a "cellar
of snuff," which after his death was sold, said _John Bull_, August
15, 1830, "to a well-known purveyor, for £400." Lord Petersham, famous
among dandies, made a wonderful collection of snuffs and snuff-boxes,
and was curious in his choice of a box to carry. Gronow relates that
once when a light Sèvres snuff-box which Lord Petersham was using, was
admired, the noble owner replied, with a gentle lisp--"Yes, it is a
nice summer box--but would certainly be inappropriate for winter
wear!" The well-known purveyor who bought the Prince Regent's cellar
of snuff, and who bought also Lord Petersham's stock, was the Fribourg
of Fribourg and Treyer, whose well-known old-fashioned shop at the top
of the Haymarket, with a bow-window on each side of the door, still
gives an eighteenth-century flavour to that thoroughfare. All the
dandies of the period were connoisseurs of snuff, and imitated the
royal mirror of fashion in their devotion to the scented powder. Young
Charles Stanhope wrote to his brother on November 5, 1812--"I have
learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom
which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in
countenance." But no dandies or young men of fashion smoked. Tobacco,
save in the disguise of snuff, was tabooed.

Smoking was frowned upon, even in places where hitherto it had been
allowed. In 1812 the authorities of Sion College ordered "that Coffee
and Tea be provided in the Parlour for the Visitors and Incumbents,
and in the Court Room for the Curates and Lecturers; and that Pipes
and Tobacco be not allowed; and that no Wine be at any time carried
into the Court Room, nor any into the Hall after Coffee and Tea shall
have been ordered on that day."

The use of tobacco for smoking, as I have said, had reached its
nadir--in the fashionable world, that is to say--but the dawn follows
the darkest hour, and the revival of smoking was at hand, thanks to
the cigar.




IX

SIGNS OF REVIVAL

    Some sigh for this and that
    My wishes don't go far;
    The world may wag at will,
    So I have my cigar.

          THOMAS HOOD.


The revival of smoking among those who were most amenable to the
dictates of fashion, and among whom consequently tobacco had long been
in bad odour, came by way of the cigar.

In the preceding chapters all the references to and illustrations of
smoking have been concerned with pipes. Until the early years of the
nineteenth century the use of cigars was practically unknown in this
country. The earliest notices of cigars in English books occur in
accounts of travel in Spain and Portugal, and in the Spanish Colonies,
and in such notices the phonetic spelling of "segar" often occurs. A
few folk still cling to this spelling--there was a "segar-shop" in the
Strand till quite recently, and I saw the notice "segars" the other
day over a small tobacco-shop in York--which has no authority, and on
etymological grounds is indefensible. The derivation of "cigar" is not
altogether clear; but the probabilities are strongly in favour of its
connexion with "cigarra," the Spanish name for the cicada, the
shrilly-chirping insect familiar in the southern countries of Europe,
and the subject of frequent allusions by the ancient writers of Greece
and Rome, as well as by modern scribes. A Spanish lexicographer of
authority says that the cigar has the form of a "cicada" of paper,
and, on the whole, it is highly probable that the likeness of the roll
of tobacco-leaf to the cylindrical body of the insect (_cigarra_) was
the reason that the "cigarro" was so called. There is no warrant of
any kind for "segar."

The earliest mention of cigars in English occurs in a book dated 1735.
A traveller in Spanish America, named Cockburn, whose narrative was
published in that year, describes how he met three friars at
Nicaragua, who, he says, "gave us some Seegars to smoke ... these are
Leaves of Tobacco rolled up in such Manner that they serve both for a
Pipe and Tobacco itself ... they know no other way here, for there is
no such Thing as a Tobacco-Pipe throughout New Spain."

Cheroots seem to have been known somewhat earlier. The earliest
mention of them is dated about 1670. Sir James Murray, in the great
Oxford Dictionary, gives the following interesting extract from an
unpublished MS. relating to India, written between 1669 and 1679: "The
Poore Sort of Inhabitants vizt. yet Gentues, Mallabars, &c., Smoke
theire Tobacco after a very meane, but I judge Original manner, Onely
ye leafe rowled up, and light one end, holdinge ye other between their
lips ... this is called a bunko, and by ye Portugals a Cheroota." The
condemnation of cheroot-or cigar-smoking as a mean method of taking
tobacco has an odd look in the light of modern habits and customs.

The use of cigars in this country began to come in early in the last
century; and by at least 1830 they were being freely, if privately,
smoked. It is probable that the reduction of the duty on cigars from
18s. to 9s. a lb., in 1829, had its effect in making cigars more
popular. Croker, in 1831, commenting on Johnson's saying that smoking
had gone out, said: "The taste for smoking, however, has revived,
probably from the military habits of Europe during the French wars;
but instead of the sober sedentary pipe, the ambulatory cigar is
chiefly used." Croker's shrewd suggestion was probably not far wide of
the truth. It is quite likely, if not highly probable, that the
revival of smoking in the shape of the cigar was directly connected
with the experiences of British officers in Spain and Portugal during
the Peninsular War.

One of the earliest cigar-smokers must have been that remarkable
clergyman, the Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, whose "Lacon," published in
1820, was once popular. Colton was in succession Rector of Tiverton
and Vicar of Kew, but on leaving Kew became a wine-merchant in Soho.
While at Kew he is said to have kept cigars under the pulpit, where,
he said, the temperature was exactly right.

At first even cigar-smoking was confined to comparatively few persons,
and the social prejudice against tobacco continued unabated. Thackeray
significantly makes Rawdon Crawley a smoker--the action of "Vanity
Fair" takes place in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
The original smoking-room of the Athenæum Club, which was founded in
1824, the present building being erected in 1830, was a miserable
little room, Dr. Hawtree, on behalf of the committee, announcing that
"no gentleman smoked." The Oriental Club, when built in 1826-27,
contained no smoking-room at all.

Sir Walter Scott often smoked cigars, though he seems to have regarded
it in the light of an indulgence to be half-apologized for. In his
"Journal," July 4, 1829, he noted--"When I had finished my bit of
dinner, and was in a quiet way smoking my cigar over a glass of negus,
Adam Ferguson comes with a summons to attend him to the Justice
Clerk's, where, it seems, I was engaged. I was totally out of case to
attend his summons, redolent as I was of tobacco. But I am vexed at
the circumstance. It looks careless, and, what is worse, affected; and
the Justice is an old friend moreover." Tobacco in any form was
suspect. A man might smoke a cigar, but he must not take the odour
into the drawing-room of even an old friend.

A few years earlier, in November 1825, Scott had written in his
"Journal" that after dinner he usually smoked a couple of cigars which
operated as a sedative--

    _Just to drive the cold winter away,
    And drown the fatigues of the day._

"I smoked a good deal," he continued, "about twenty years ago when at
Ashestiel; but, coming down one morning to the parlour, I found, as
the room was small and confined, that the smell was unpleasant, and
laid aside the use of the _Nicotian weed_ for many years; but was
again led to use it by the example of my son, a hussar officer, and my
son-in-law, an Oxford student. I could lay it aside to-morrow; I laugh
at the dominion of custom in this and many things.

      "_We make the giants first, and then_ do not _kill them._"

Scott's remark that Lockhart smoked when an Oxford student rather
discredits Archdeacon's Denison's statement, quoted in the preceding
chapter, that smoking was very generally unknown in Oxford in 1823-24.
The archdeacon was writing from memory--a very untrustworthy recorder;
Scott's remark was that of a contemporary.

Byron is reputed to have been another cigar-smoker. His apostrophe to
tobacco in "The Island" (1823), a poem founded in part on the history
of the Mutiny of the Bounty, is familiar. The lines are, indeed,
almost the only familiar passage in that poem:

    _Sublime tobocco! which, from east to west,
    Cheers the tar's labours or the Turkman's rest;
    Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
    His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
    Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
    Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand:
    Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
    When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
    Like other charmers, wooing the caress,
    More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
    Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
    Thy naked beauties--Give me a cigar!_

How far these lines really represent the poet's own sentiments, and
whether he habitually smoked either cigar or pipe, is another matter.

Other men of letters of the time were zealous adherents of the pipe.
One of these was the poet Campbell. From 1820 to 1830 he was editor of
the _New Monthly Magazine_, and is reputed to have been so very
unbusinesslike in his methods that there was always difficulty in
getting proofs corrected and returned in good time. On one occasion,
as reported by a member of the firm that printed the magazine, a proof
had been lost, and the poet was informed that the article must go to
press next day uncorrected. Campbell sent word that he would look in
in the morning and correct it. Preparations were duly made to receive
him; he was shown into the best room, and left with the proof on his
table. After a while he rang the bell, and said, "I could do this much
better if I had a pipe." Thereupon pipe and tobacco were procured and
taken in to him. Campbell tore open the paper containing the tobacco,
and, with a slightly contemptuous expression, exclaimed, "Ugh!
C'naster! I'd rather it had been shag!"

Charles Lamb was a heavy pipe-smoker. He smoked too much--regretted
it--but continued to smoke, not wisely but too well. "He came home
very smoky and drinky last night," says his sister of him.

When sending some books to Coleridge at Keswick in November 1802, Lamb
wrote--"If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled
with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual
supper), or peradventure, a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the
crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it
contains good matter." To Lamb, a book read best over a pipe.

The following year he wrote to Coleridge--"What do you think of
smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_, of it. I
generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it.
Morning is a girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the
other; and Night is so evidently _bought over_, he can't be a very
upright judge. Maybe the truth is that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_
pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_
pipes quarrelsome, and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding
rather upon rhyme than reason.... After all, our instincts may be
best." It is clear from one or two references, that Lamb and Coleridge
had been accustomed to smoke together at their meetings in early days
at the "Salutation and Cat"--with less disastrous results to
Coleridge, it is to be hoped, than those which followed his Birmingham
smoke, as set forth in the preceding chapter.

In 1805 Lamb wrote to Wordsworth--"now I have bid farewell to my
'sweet enemy' tobacco ... I shall, perhaps, set nobly to work."
Forthwith he set to work on the farce "Mr. H.," which some months
later was produced at Drury Lane and was promptly damned. After its
failure Lamb wrote to Hazlitt--"We are determined not to be cast down.
I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoky man
must write smoky farces." But Lamb and his pipe were not to be parted
by even repeated resolutions to leave off smoking. It was years after
this that he met Macready at Talfourd's, and by way probably of saying
something to shock Macready; whose personality could hardly have been
sympathetic to him, uttered the remarkable wish that the last breath
he drew in might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun.

It was in 1818 that Lamb published the collection of his writings, in
two volumes, which contained the well-known "Farewell to Tobacco,"
written in 1805, and referred to in the letter of that year to
Wordsworth quoted above. Its phrases of mingled abuse and affection
are familiar to lovers of Lamb.

Parr is reported to have once asked Lamb how he could smoke so much
and so fast, and Lamb is said to have replied--"I toiled after it,
sir, as some men toil after virtue." But if all accounts are true,
Parr far outsmoked Lamb. If the essayist discontinued or modified his
smoking habits, he made up for it by devotion to snuff--a devotion
which his sister shared. A large snuff-box usually lay on the table
between them, and they pushed it one to the other.

But it is time to return to the cigar, and the changing attitude of
fashion towards smoking.

There would appear to have been some smokers who disliked the
new-fangled cigars. Angelo seems, from various passages in his
"Reminiscences," to have been a smoker, and to have been very
frequently in the company of smokers, yet he could write: "There are
few things which, after a foreign tour, more forcibly remind us that
we are again in England, than the superiority of our stage-coaches.
There is something very exhilarating in being carried through the air
with rapidity ... considering the rate at which stage-coaches now
travel [_i.e._ in and just before 1830] ... a place on the box or
front of a prime set-out is, indeed, a considerable treat. But alas!
no human enjoyment is free from alloy. A Jew pedlar or mendicant
foreigner with his cigar in his mouth, has it in his power to turn the
draft of sweet air into a cup of bitterness." Perhaps Angelo's
objection was more to the quality of the cigar that would be smoked by
a "Jew pedlar or mendicant foreigner," than to the cigar itself. Yet,
going on to describe a journey to Hastings, sitting "on the roof in
front" beside an acquaintance, he says, notwithstanding the enjoyment
of dashing along, anecdote and jest going merrily on, "we had the
annoyance of a coxcomb perched on the box, infecting the fresh air
which Heaven had sent us, with the smoke of his abominable cigar,"
which looks as if his real objection was to _cigars_, as such.

The fashionable dislike of tobacco-smoke appears in the pages of
another descriptive writer--the once well known N.P. Willis, the
American author of many books of travel and gossip. In his
"Pencillings by the Way," writing in July 1833, Willis describes the
prevalence of smoking in Vienna among all the nationalities that
thronged that cosmopolitan capital. "It is," he says, "like a fancy
ball. Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians,
Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and stinking costumes,
promenade up and down, smoking all, and none exciting the slightest
observation. Every third window is a pipe-shop, and they [presumably
the pipes] show, by their splendour and variety, the expensiveness of
the passion. Some of them are marked '200 dollars.' The streets reek
with tobacco-smoke. You never catch a breath of untainted air within
the Glacis. Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are all
redolent of the same disgusting odour." In the following year,
describing a large dinner-party at the Duke of Gordon's in Scotland,
Willis says that when the ladies left the table, the gentlemen closed
up and "conversation assumed a merrier cast," then "coffee and
liqueurs were brought in, when the wines began to be circulated more
slowly," and at eleven o'clock there was a general move to the
drawing-room. The dinner began at seven, so the guests had been four
hours at table; but smoking is not mentioned, and it is quite certain
from Willis's silence on the subject--the "disgusting odour" would
surely have disturbed him--that no single member of the large
dinner-party dreamed of smoking, or, at all events, attempted to
smoke.

By 1830 smoking had so far "come in" again that a considerable
proportion of the members of the House of Commons were smokers.
Macaulay has drawn for us the not very attractive picture of the
smoking-room of the old House of Commons--before the fire of 1834--in
a letter to his sister dated in the summer of 1831. "I have left Sir
Francis Burdett on his legs," he wrote, "and repaired to the
smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables
covered with green baize and writing materials. On a full night it is
generally thronged towards twelve o'clock with smokers. It is then a
perfect cloud of fume. There have I seen (tell it not to the West
Indians), Buxton blowing fire out of his mouth. My father will not
believe it. At present, however, all the doors and windows are open,
and the room is pure enough from tobacco to suit my father himself."
In July 1832 he again dated a letter to his sisters from the House of
Commons smoking-room. "I am writing here," he says, "at eleven at
night, in this filthiest of all filthy atmospheres ... with the smell
of tobacco in my nostrils.... Reject not my letter, though it is
redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for this is the room--

    _The room,--but I think I'll describe it in rhyme,
    That smells of tobacco and chloride of lime.
    The smell of tobacco was always the same:
    But the chloride was bought since the cholera came."_

The mention of pigtail shows that the House contained pipe- as well as
cigar-smokers. A few days later he wrote again to his sisters, but
this time from the library, where, he says, "we are in a far better
atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week."
One wonders why Macaulay, who apparently did not smoke himself, and
who, though somewhat more tolerant of tobacco than his father, Zachary
Macaulay, evidently did not like the atmosphere of the smoking-room,
chose to write there, when the library--where he must surely have felt
more at home--was available.

Among other well-known men of standing and fashion who were smokers
about this period may be named Lord Eldon, Lord Stowell, Brougham,
Lord Calthorp and H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex. In Thackeray's "Book of
Snobs," Miss Wirt, the governess at Major Ponto's, refers in shocked
tones to "H.R.H. the poor dear Duke of Sussex (such a man my dears,
but alas! addicted to smoking!)."

Sad to say, the Royal Duke was not content with the cigar that was
becoming fashionable, but actually smoked a pipe. Mrs. Stirling, in
"The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope," 1913, notes that
Lord Althorp was a frequent visitor about 1822 at Holkham, the
well-known seat of Mr. Coke of Norfolk, later Lord Leicester, and that
on such occasions he enjoyed "the distinction of being the only guest
besides the Duke of Sussex who ever indulged in the rare habit of
smoking. But while the Royal Duke was wont to puff away at a long
meerschaum in his bedroom till he actually blinded himself, and all
who came near him, Fidèle Jack [Lord Althorp's nickname] behaved in
more considerate fashion, only smoking out of doors as he passed
restlessly up and down the grass terrace."

With the revival of smoking, things changed at Holkham. On Christmas
Day, 1847, Lady Elizabeth, writing to her husband from Holkham, the
home of her childhood, remarked: "The Billiard table is always lighted
up for the gentlemen when they come from shooting, and there they sit
smoking."

The growing popularity of the cigar made smoking less unfashionable
than it had been among the upper classes of society; but among humbler
folk pipe-smoking had never "gone out." Every public-house did its
regular trade in clays, known as churchwardens and Broseleys, and by
other names either of familiarity or descriptive of the place of
manufacture; and on the mantelpiece or table of inn or ale-house stood
the tobacco-box. Miss Jekyll, in her delightful book on "Old West
Surrey," figures an example of these old public-house tobacco-boxes
which is made of lead. It has bosses of lions' heads at the ends, and
a portrait in relief on the front of the Duke of Wellington in his
plumed cocked hat. Inside, there is a flat piece of sheet-lead with a
knob to keep the tobacco pressed close, so that it may not dry up.

A curious and popular variety of tobacco-box often to be found in
rural inns and ale-houses was made somewhat on the principle of the
now everywhere familiar automatic machines. The late Mr. Frederick
Gale, in a column of "Tobacco Reminiscences," which he contributed to
the _Globe_ newspaper in 1899, said, that at village outdoor festivals
of the 'thirties and early 'forties, respectable elderly farmers and
tradesmen would sit "round a table, on which was an automatic, square,
brass tobacco-box of large dimensions, into which the smokers dropped
a halfpenny and the lid flew back, and the publican trusted to the
smoker's honour to fill his pipe and close the box." When the pipes
were filled they were lighted by means of tinder-box and flint, and a
stable lanthorn supplied by the ostler. A penny would appear to have
been a more usual charge, for a frequent inscription on the lid was:

    _The custom is, before you fill,
    To put a penny in the till;
    When you have filled, without delay
    Close the lid, or sixpence pay._

One of these old brass penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes was included in
the exhibition of Welsh Antiquities held at Cardiff in the summer of
1913.

In the Colchester Museum is an automatic tobacco-box and till of
japanned iron. On the lid of the box is painted a keg of tobacco and
two clay pipes; and on that of the till the following doggerel lines:

    _A halfpeny dropt into the till,
    Upsprings the lid and you may fill;
    When you have filled, without delay,
    Shut down the lid, or sixpence pay._

A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, in 1908, mentioned that he
possessed two of these old penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes, and had
come across another in a dealer's shop of a somewhat peculiar make,
about which he wished to get information. "It is of the ordinary
shape," he wrote, "but differs from any I have previously seen in this
respect, that it works with a sixpence, and not with a penny or
halfpenny. It is engraved with the usual lines, except that the user
is asked to put sixpence in the till, and then to shut down the lid
under penalty of a fine of a shilling. What could it have been used
for that was worth sixpence a time? Other uncommon features are that
the money portion is shallow, and that the part for the tobacco
extends the whole length of the box. I should say that the box is much
smaller than any others I have ever seen." No information as to the
use of this curious box was forthcoming from any of the learned and
ingenious correspondents of _Notes and Queries_; and a problem which
they cannot solve may not unreasonably be regarded as insoluble.

Readers of Dickens are familiar with the drawing by Cruikshank which
illustrates the chapter on "Scotland Yard" in Dickens's "Sketches by
Boz," which was written before 1836. It shows the coal-heavers sitting
round the fire shouting out "some sturdy chorus," and smoking long
clays. "Here," wrote Dickens, "in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient
appearance, cheered by the glow of a mighty fire ... sat the lusty
coal-heavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing
forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and
involved the room in a thick dark cloud." These good folk and others
of their kin had never been affected by any change of fashion in
respect of smoking. In another of the "Sketches," the amusing "Tuggs's
at Ramsgate," when poor Cymon Tuggs is hid behind the curtain, half
dead with fear, he hears Captain Waters call for brandy and
cigars--"The cigars were introduced; the captain was a professed
smoker; so was the lieutenant; so was Joseph Tuggs." Poor Cymon, on
the other hand, was one of those who could never smoke "without
feeling it indispensably necessary to retire, immediately, and never
could smell smoke without a strong disposition to cough."
Consequently, as the apartment was small, the door closed and the
smoke powerful, poor Cymon was soon compelled to cough, which
precipitated the catastrophe. It is noticeable that Dickens speaks of
the three worthies as _professed_ smokers, a remark which suggests
that such dare-devils, men who would take cigars as a matter of course
and for enjoyment, and not merely out of a complimentary acquiescence
in some one else's wish, were comparatively rare.

Other illustrations of folk who smoked, not cigars, but pipes, may be
drawn from "Pickwick," which was published in 1836. At the very
beginning, when Mr. Pickwick calls a cab at Saint Martin's-le-Grand,
the first cab is "fetched from the public-house, where he had been
smoking his first pipe." At Rochester, Mr. Pickwick makes notes on the
four towns of Strood, Rochester, Chatham and Brompton, where the
military were present in strength, and hence the observant gentleman
noted--"The consumption of tobacco in these towns must be very great:
and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious
to those who are extremely fond of smoking." On the evening of the
election at Eatanswill, Tupman and Snodgrass resort to the commercial
room of the Peacock Inn, where "the atmosphere was redolent of
tobacco-smoke, the fumes of which had communicated a rather dingy hue
to the whole room, and more especially to the dusty red curtains which
shaded the windows." Here, among others, were the dirty-faced man with
a clay pipe, the very red-faced man behind a cigar, and the man with a
black eye, who slowly filled a large Dutch pipe with most capacious
bowl. Tupman and Snodgrass were of the company and smoked cigars. Sam
Weller's father smoked his pipe philosophically. If Sam's
"mother-in-law" "flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe, he steps out
and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics;
and he smokes wery comfortably 'till she comes to agin." What better
example could there be of pipe-engendered philosophy? When Mr.
Pickwick and Sam look in at old Weller's house of call off Cheapside,
they find the boxes full of stage coachmen, drinking and smoking, and
among them is the old gentleman himself, "smoking with great
vehemence." After having given his son valuable parental advice, "Mr.
Weller, senior, refilled his pipe from a tin box he carried in his
pocket, and, lighting his fresh pipe from the ashes of the old one,
commenced smoking at a great rate."

A little later when Mr. Pickwick hunts up Perker's clerk Lowten, and
joins the jovial circle at the Magpie and Stump, he finds on his right
hand "a gentleman in a checked shirt and Mosaic studs, with a cigar in
his mouth," who expresses the hope that the newcomer does not "find
this sort of thing disagreeable." "Not in the least," replied Mr.
Pickwick, "I like it very much, although I am no smoker myself." "I
should be very sorry to say I wasn't," interposes another gentleman on
the opposite side of the table. "It's board and lodging to me, is
smoke." Mr. Pickwick glances at the speaker, and thinks that if it
were washing too, it would be all the better!

Later again when the "couple o' Sawbones," the medical students, Ben
Allen and Bob Sawyer, make their first appearance on the scene, they
are discovered in the morning seated by Mr. Wardle's kitchen fire,
smoking cigars; and it is significant of how smoking out of doors was
then regarded that Dickens, going on to describe Sawyer in detail,
refers to "that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which
is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout
and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian
names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious
description." Apparently in 1836 the only person who would allow
himself to be seen smoking in the street was of the kind naturally
inclined to do the other objectionable things mentioned. The same idea
runs through the allusions to tobacco in "Pickwick." Smoking was
undeniably vulgar. Mr. John Smauker, who introduces Sam Weller at the
"friendly swarry" of the Bath footmen, smokes a cigar "through an
amber tube"--cigar-holders were a novelty. When Mr. Pickwick is taken
to the house of Namby, the sheriffs' officer, the "principal features"
of the front parlour are "fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke." One of
the occupants of the room is a "mere boy of nineteen or twenty, who,
though it was yet barely ten o'clock, was drinking gin and water, and
smoking a cigar, amusements to which, judging from his inflamed
countenance, he had devoted himself pretty constantly for the last
year or two of his life." Tobacco-smoke pervades the Fleet prison. In
fact, to trace tobacco through the pages of "Pickwick" is to realize
vividly how vulgar if not vicious an accomplishment smoking was
considered by the fashionable world and how popular it was among the
nobodies of the unfashionable world.

Similar morals may be drawn from other works of fiction. The action
of the first chapters of Thackeray's "Pendennis" passes early in the
nineteenth century. In the third chapter Foker has a cigar in his
mouth as he strolls with Pen down the High Street of Chatteris. Old
Doctor Portman meets them and regards "with wonder Pen's friend, from
whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round
the doctor's honest face and shovel hat. 'An old school-fellow of
mine, Mr. Foker,' said Pen. The doctor said 'H'm!' and scowled at the
cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an
abomination to the worthy gentleman." The reverend gentleman in liking
his pipe was faithful to the traditional fondness for smoking of
parsons; but smoking must be in the study. To smoke in the street was
vulgar; and to smoke the newfangled cigar was worse.

Pendennis, when he comes home the first time from Oxbridge, brings
with him a large box of cigars of strange brand, which he smokes "not
only about the stables and greenhouses, where they were good" for his
mother's plants, and which were obviously places to which a man who
wished to smoke should betake himself, but in his own study, which
rather shocks his mother. Pen goes from bad to worse during his
University days, and, sad to say, one Sunday in the last long
vacation, the "wretched boy," instead of going to church, "was seen at
the gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the
congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful
sensation in the village society. Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after
that, and groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal." Later
the smoke from Warrington's short pipe and Pen's cigars floats through
many pages of the novel.




X

EARLY VICTORIAN DAYS

    Scent to match thy rich perfume
    Chemic art did ne'er presume
    Through her quaint alembic strain,
    None so sovereign to the brain.

          LAMB, _A Farewell to Tobacco._


The social attitude towards smoking in early Victorian days, and for
some time later, was curious. The development of cigar-smoking among
those classes from which tobacco had long been practically banished,
and the natural consequent spread downwards of the use of cigars--in
accordance with the invariable law of fashion--together with the
continued devotion to the pipe among those whose love of tobacco had
never slackened, made smoking a much more general practice than it had
been for some generations.

It is somewhat significant that Dickens, in the "Old Curiosity Shop,"
1840, makes that repulsive dwarf, Quilp, smoke cigars. When the little
monster comes home unexpectedly in the fourth chapter of the book, and
breaks up his wife's tea-party, he settles himself in an
arm-chair--"with his large head and face squeezed up against the back,
and his little legs planted on the table"--with a case-bottle of rum,
cold water, and a box of cigars before him. "Now, Mrs. Quilp," he
says, "I feel in a smoking humour, and shall probably blaze away all
night. But sit where you are, if you please, in case I want you."
Quilp smokes cigars one after the other, his wretched wife sitting
patiently by, from sunset till some time after daybreak. The dwarf's
tastes, however, were catholic. A little later in the book the reader
finds him, when encamped in the back parlour of the old man's shop,
smoking pipe after pipe, and compelling that knavish attorney, Sampson
Brass, to do the same. Tobacco-smoke always caused Brass "great
internal discomposure and annoyance"; but this made no difference to
Quilp, who insisted on his "friend" continuing to smoke, while he
inquired: "Is it good, Brass, is it nice, is it fragrant, do you feel
like the Grand Turk?" But Quilp and Brass were not in "society."

Notwithstanding that the number of smokers had so largely increased,
and was continually increasing, smoking was regarded socially as
something of a vice--to be practised in inconvenient places and not
too publicly.

There were still plenty of active opponents and denouncers of tobacco.
One of the most distinguished was the great Duke of Wellington, who
abominated smoking, and was annoyed by the increase of cigar-smoking
among officers of the army. In the early 'forties he issued a General
Order (No. 577) which contained a paragraph that would have delighted
the heart of King James I. It ran thus: "The Commander-in-Chief has
been informed, that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes,
cigars, or cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers of the
Army, which is not only in itself a species of intoxication
occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but, undoubtedly, occasions
drinking and tippling by those who acquire the habit; and he intreats
the Officers commanding Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms
of their several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to
discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their
Regiments."

The Duke's prejudices were stronger than his facts. The statement, not
very grammatically expressed, that "the practice of smoking" was
"itself a species of intoxication" was absurd enough; but the
allegation, introduced by a question-begging "undoubtedly," that
smoking occasioned drinking was directly contrary to fact. It was the
introduction of after-dinner smoking that largely helped to kill the
bad old practice of continued after-dinner drinking.

Perhaps the best reflection of and comment upon the attitude of
society towards smoking is to be found in the ironical, satirical
pages of Thackeray. Let the reader turn to the confessions of George
Fitz-Boodle Esq.--the "Fitz-Boodle Papers" first appeared in _Fraser's
Magazine_ for 1842--and he will find how smoking was regarded at that
date, and what Thackeray, speaking through the puppet Fitz-Boodle,
thought of it. George starts by saying: "I am not, in the first place,
what is called a ladies' man, having contracted an irrepressible habit
of smoking after dinner, which has obliged me to give up a great deal
of the dear creatures' society; nor can I go much to country-houses
for the same reason." The ladies had a keen scent for the abominable
odour of tobacco, and distrusted the men who smoked. Here is
Fitz-Boodle's, or Thackeray's, comment on it--"What is this smoking
that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women
are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret
awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel
society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who has just been kind
enough to read the above lines lays down the book, after this
confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, 'Oh, the vulgar
wretch!' and passes on to something else." He goes on to prophesy--and
for once the "most gratuitous of follies" has been justified by the
event--that tobacco will conquer. "Look over the wide world," he says
to the ladies, "and see that your adversary has overcome it. Germany
has been puffing for three score years; France smokes to a man. Do you
think you can keep the enemy out of England? Psha! look at his
progress. Ask the club-houses, Have they smoking-rooms, or not? Are
they not obliged to yield to the general want of the age, in spite of
the resistance of the old women on the committees? I, for my part, do
not despair to see a bishop lolling out of the 'Athenæum' with a
cheroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his
shovel-hat."

The flight of fancy in the last sentence has hardly yet been
fulfilled; but I saw, many years ago, a distinguished man of letters,
the late Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, of "Golden Treasury" fame, who
was an inveterate smoker, sitting on one of the cane benches by the
door of the Athenæum Club, smoking a short clay pipe.

Thackeray does not appear to have realized that tobacco was not
invading England for the first, but for the second time, nor did he
foresee that the ladies, to whom he addressed his impassioned defence
of smoking, would not only submit to the conqueror but would
themselves be found among his joyous devotees.

George Fitz-Boodle recounts how, as a boy, he was flogged for smoking,
and how, at Oxford, smoking among other villainies led to his
rustication. Later his tobacco, combined with insolence to his
tobacco-hating colonel, conducted him out of the army into the
retirement of civil life; and so on and so on. There is, of course, an
element of exaggeration in all this; but Mr. Fitz-Boodle's experiences
and reflections throw much light on the social history of smoking in
the early decades of the nineteenth century. Mr. Harry Furniss, in the
preface to his edition of Thackeray, has an admirably terse and
pertinent paragraph on this aspect of the "Fitz-Boodle Papers." He
says--"No gentleman in those days was seen smoking even a 'weed' in
the streets. Cigarettes were practically unheard of in England, and
outside one's private smoking-room pipes were tabooed. Men in Society
slunk into their smoking-rooms, or, when there was no smoking-room,
into the kitchen or servants' hall, after the domestics had retired. A
smoking-jacket was worn in the place of their ordinary evening coat,
and their well-oiled, massive head of hair was protected by a
gorgeously decorated smoking-cap. Thus the odour of tobacco was not
brought into the drawing-room."

The fear of the odour of tobacco-smoke was extraordinary. Mr. J.C.
Buckmaster in his reminiscences describes the famous debating society
at Cogers' Hall, and says that "after one night at the Cogers' it took
three days on a common to purify your clothes" from the smoke. The
journalists and Bohemians who met at the Cogers were above (or below)
the dictates of fashion, and smoking was always a feature of their
gatherings. The "yard of clay" is provided gratis for members, and it
is to its almost universal use, says Mr. Peter Rayleigh, in his book
on "The Cogers and Fleet Street," "that Cogers owe their existence in
the present quarters. Once upon a time the Cogers 'swarmed' to a
well-appointed room, where carpets covered the floors, the chairs were
upholstered, and the tables had finely polished marble tops. The hot
pipes and smouldering matches stained the table tops and burnt the
carpets, so that they had the option of abandoning either the pipe or
the quarters. Old customs die hard with Cogers, and they stuck to
their pipe.... The pipe is a feature in all illustrations of Cogerian
meetings."

The influence of the Court was wholly against smoking. Both Queen
Victoria and the Prince Consort detested it, so tobacco was taboo
wherever the Court was. The late Lady Dorothy Nevill, who lived to see
the new triumph of tobacco, said that she thought the greatest minor
change in social habits which she had witnessed was that in the
attitude assumed towards smoking, which, in her youth, "and even
later, was, except in certain well-defined circumstances, regarded as
little less than a heinous crime." Lady Dorothy remarked that
"smoking-rooms in country houses were absolutely unknown"--but that
was not quite correct as we shall see in the experiences of Professor
von Holtzendorff, to be mentioned directly--and that "such gentlemen
as wished to smoke after the ladies had gone to bed used, as a matter
of course, to go either to the servants' hall or to the harness-room
in the stables, where at night some sort of rough preparation was
generally made for their accommodation.... Well do I remember the
immense care which devotees of tobacco used to take, when sallying
forth in the country to enjoy it, not to allow the faintest whiff of
smoke to penetrate into the hall as they lit their cigars at the
door."

In 1845 Dickens wrote: "I generally take a cigar after dinner when I'm
alone." The reservation in the last three words may be noted. In the
"Book of Snobs," Major Wellesley Ponto goes to smoke a cigar in the
stables--Ponto had no smoking-room--with Lord Gules, who is described
as a "very young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking nobleman,
who cannot have left the nursery very long." Later, Ponto and Gules
"resume smoking operations ... in the now vacant kitchen."

Even so late as 1861 the attitude towards smoking was still much the
same in some quarters. In that year a German scholar, Professor Franz
von Holtzendorff, paid a visit to a country gentleman's house in
Gloucestershire--Hardwicke Court. Later he printed an account of his
experiences, a translation of which was published in this country in
1878. When the professor arrived, his host, the first greeting over,
at once pointed out to him a secluded apartment--the one which he
thought it most important for a German to know, namely, the
smoking-room. "According to his idea," continued the professor, "every
German has three national characteristics, smoking, singing, and
Sabbath-breaking; the first and only idea in which I found him led
astray by an abstract theory." Later, his hostess, explaining to him
the method and routine of life in an English country-house, said that
the ladies retired about eleven, while the gentlemen finished their
day's work in the smoking-room--the secluded apartment--or enjoyed a
cigar at the billiard-table; but a smoke in the billiard-room was only
allowed if that room was not near the drawing-room or in the hall
close by. "You must have often been surprised," she continued, "that
we English ladies have such an invincible repugnance to tobacco smoke,
but there is no dispensation from our rule of abstinence, except in
those rooms which my husband has already pointed out to you."

The professor, after luncheon, was pressed by the squire--"who, on any
other occasion would never waste time in smoking, and only filled his
short clay pipe at the end of his day's work"--to come to his
smoking-room. As regards this room the professor drily remarked--"I
thought I had noticed that even the key-hole was stopped up, in order
to preserve the ladies' delicate nerves from every disagreeable
sensation." After dinner, again, when the ladies had left the table,
"the gentlemen passed the bottles of port, sherry, and claret, with
the regularity of planets from hand to hand," but no one dreamed of
smoking. That was reserved for the secluded apartment after the ladies
had gone to bed. Neither host nor guest imagined what a revolution
another generation or so would make in these social habits.

In the 'fifties the pipes smoked were mostly clays. There were the
long clays or "churchwardens," to be smoked in hours of ease and
leisure; and the short clays--"cutties"--which could be smoked while a
man was at work. Milo, a tobacconist in the Strand, and Inderwick,
whose shop was near Leicester Square, were famous for their pipes,
which could be bought for 6d. apiece. A burlesque poem of 1853, in
praise of an old black pipe, says:

    _Think not of meerschaum is that bowl: away,
    Ye fond enthusiasts! it is common clay,
    By Milo stamped, perchance by Milo's hand,
    And for a tizzy purchased in the Strand._

    _Famed are the clays of Inderwick, and fair
    The pipes of Fiolet from Saint Omer._

I am indebted for this quotation to a correspondent of _Notes and
Queries_, September 27, 1913.

Another correspondent of the same journal, Colonel W.F. Prideaux, also
replying to a query of mine, wrote: "Before briar-root pipes came into
common use clay pipes were of necessity smoked by all classes. When I
matriculated at Oxford at the Easter of 1858 ... University men used
to be rather particular about the pipes they smoked. The finest were
made in France, and the favourite brand was 'Fiolet, Saint Omer.' I do
not know if this kind is still smoked, but it was made of a soft clay
that easily coloured. In taverns, of course, the churchwarden--beloved
of Carlyle and Tennyson--was usually smoked to the accompaniment of
shandygaff. At Simpson's fish ordinary at Billingsgate these pipes
were always placed on the table after dinner, together with screws of
shag tobacco, and a smoking parliament moistened with hot or cold
punch according to the season, was generally held during the following
hour. Of course, in those days no one ever thought of smoking a pipe
in the presence of ladies."

Colonel Harold Malet at the same time wrote--"When I was a cadet at
Sandhurst in 1855-58, Milo's cutty pipes were quite the thing, and the
selection by cadets of a good one out of a fresh consignment packed
in sawdust was eagerly watched by the 'Johns.' Of course we were
imitating our parents." It was no doubt these cutty pipes which are
referred to in one of the sporting books of Robert Surtees as the
"clay pipes of gentility."

In a private letter to me, which I am privileged to quote, Colonel
Prideaux adds some further particulars as to the social attitude of
early Victorian days towards tobacco--particulars which are the more
valuable and interesting as being supplied from personal recollection
of those now somewhat distant days. The Colonel writes: "When I was a
young man people never thought of smoking in what house-agents call
the 'reception-rooms,' the principal reason being that the occupation
of these rooms was shared by ladies, and it was 'bad form' (not, by
the way, a contemporary expression) to smoke while in the company of
the fairer half of creation. Consequently, men had either to indulge
in the practice out of doors, or else, as you say, sneak away to the
kitchen when the servants had gone to bed, and puff up the chimney. It
was only in large houses that a billiard room could be found, and even
in a billiard room a pipe or cigar was _taboo_ if ladies were present,
while smoking-rooms could no more be found in middle-class houses than
bath-rooms. Both cutties and churchwardens were smoked, but the latter
of course were not adapted for persons engaged in active pursuits and
were essentially of what I may call a sedentary nature. You could not
even walk while holding a long churchwarden in your mouth, and
consequently the short clay was most favoured by young men at
Sandhurst and the Universities.... Labourers smoked short clays when
out of doors, and churchwardens when they rested from their labours
and took their ease in their inn in the evenings."

Mr. Furniss, in the paragraph quoted on a previous page, says: "No
gentleman in those days was seen smoking even a 'weed' in the
streets." The nearest approach to this seems to have been smoking on
club steps. Thackeray, in the seventeenth chapter of the "Book of
Snobs," speaks of dandies smoking their cigars upon the steps of
"White's," most fashionable of clubs, and, in an earlier chapter, of
young Ensign Famish lounging and smoking on the steps of the "Union
Jack Club," with half a dozen other "young rakes of the fourth or
fifth order." Two of Thackeray's own drawings in the "Book of
Snobs"--in chapters three and nine--show men, one civil the other
military, smoking cigars out of doors; but as these were no doubt
arrant snobs, the drawings may be accepted as proof of Mr. Furniss's
statement.

In this same book Thackeray says ironically--"Think of that den of
abomination, which, I am told, has been established in _some_ clubs,
called the _Smoking-Room_." The satirist was very familiar with the
smoking-room at the club he loved well--the "Little G."--the Garrick.
The original Garrick club-house was at 35 King Street, Covent Garden,
where the club was founded in 1831. It had formerly been a quiet,
old-fashioned family hotel, but apparently was not furnished with a
smoking-room, for one of the first acts of the club, when they
obtained possession of the house, was to build out over the "leads" a
large and comfortable smoking-room. Shirley Brooks said that this
room, which was reached by a long passage from the Strangers'
Dining-room, "was not a cheerful apartment by daylight, and when
empty, but which, at night and full, was thought the most cheerful
apartment in Town." At other clubs of more fashion, perhaps, but
certainly of less good-fellowship, smoking-rooms made their way more
slowly. At White's, smoking was not allowed at all till 1845. The
Alfred Club, founded in 1808, which Lord Byron described as
pleasant--"a little too sober and literary, perhaps, but, on the
whole, a decent resource on a rainy day," and which Sir William Fraser
called "a sort of minor Athenæum," owed its death in 1855, if report
be true, to a dispute about smoking. One section of the members wished
for an improved smoking-room--they called the existing room, which was
at the top of the house--an "infamous hole"--while the more
old-fashioned and more influential members objected to any
improvement. The latter carried the day, but the consequent loss of
members ruined the club, which soon after ceased to exist. This
secession must have been subsequent to that of the bishops, of whom at
one time many were members, but who left, it is said, because of the
introduction of a billiard-table!

The growth of cigar-smoking was rapid. Mr. Steinmetz, in his book on
"Tobacco," published in 1857, remarked that no way of using tobacco
had made a more striking advance in England within the preceding
twenty years than cigars. For a long time it had been confined in this
country to the richer class of smokers, but when he wrote it was "in
universal use." The wonder is that with so many men smoking cigars the
old domestic and club restrictions, as pilloried in Thackeray's pages,
were maintained so long. In 1853 Leech had an admirably drawn sketch
in _Punch_ of paterfamilias, in the absence of his wife, giving a
little dinner. Beside him sits his small son, and on either side of
the table sit two of his cronies. One has a cigar in his hand and is
blowing a cloud of smoke, while the other is selecting a "weed." The
host is just lighting his cigar as the maid enters with a tray of
decanters and glasses, and with disgust written plainly on her face.
The objectionable child beside him says--"Lor! Pa, are you going to
smoke? My eye! won't you catch it when Ma comes home, for making the
curtains smell!"

Another witness to the rapid development of cigar-smoking is Captain
Gronow, the author of the well-known "Reminiscences." Gronow says that
the famous surgeon, Sir Astley Cooper, on one occasion perceiving that
he was fond of smoking, cautioned him against that habit, telling him
that it would, sooner or later, be the cause of his death. This must
have been before 1841, when Sir Astley died. Writing in the 'sixties
Gronow said: "If Sir Astley were now alive he would find everybody
with a cigar in his mouth: men smoke nowadays whilst they are occupied
in working or hunting, riding in carriages, or otherwise
employed"--which shows how the prejudice against outdoor smoking was
then breaking down. "During the experience of a long life, however,"
continued Gronow, "I never knew but one person of whom it was said
that smoking was the cause of his death: he was the son of an Irish
earl, and an attaché at our embassy in Paris. But, alas! I have known
thousands who have been carried off owing to their love of the
bottle."

Thackeray, as the satirist of the foolish social prejudices against
smoking, was naturally an inveterate smoker himself. He died in 1863,
and so hardly saw the beginning of a change in the attitude of
society towards the pestilent weed; but he was one of the many men of
letters and artists, who, despising the conventions of society, were
largely instrumental in breaking down stupid restrictions, and in
overcoming senseless prejudices, and were thus heralds of freedom.
Charles Keene's attitude was that of many artists. He smoked a little
Jacobean clay pipe in his "sky-parlour" overlooking the Strand, and
did not care in the least what the world might think or not think
about that or any other subject.

Those who smoked pipes at Cambridge continued to smoke pipes
afterwards, whatever "society" might do. Spedding, who spent his life
on the elucidation of Bacon, was one of the "Apostles," and he
continued a pipe-lover to the end. In 1832 we hear of Tennyson being
in London with him, and "smoking all the day."

Lady Ritchie, in "Tennyson and his Friends," says: "I can remember
vaguely, on one occasion through a cloud of smoke, looking across a
darkening room at the noble, grave head of the Poet Laureate. He was
sitting with my Father in the twilight after some family meal in the
old house in Kensington." Thackeray was a cigar-smoker, but Tennyson
was a devotee of the pipe. It was on this occasion, as the poet
himself reminded Thackeray's daughter, that while the novelist was
speaking, Lady Ritchie's little sister "looked up suddenly from the
book over which she had been absorbed, saying in her sweet childish
voice, 'Papa, why do you not write books like 'Nicholas Nickleby'?'"

Tennyson wrote "In Memoriam" at Shawell Rectory, near Lutterworth,
Leicestershire. The rector was a Mr. Elmhirst, a native of the poet's
Lincolnshire village. The latest historian of Lutterworth says that
"The great puffs of tobacco smoke with which he [Tennyson] mellowed
his thoughts, proved insufferable to his host, and he was accordingly
turned out into Mr. Elmhirst's workshop in the garden, which in
consequence became the birthplace of one of the gems of English
literature."

About 1842, when Tennyson often dined at the Old Cock (by Temple Bar)
and at other taverns, the perfect dinner for his taste, says his son,
was "a beef-steak, a potato, a cut of cheese, a pint of port, and
afterwards a pipe (never a cigar)." When the Kingsleys paid the
Tennysons a visit about 1859, Charles Kingsley, so the Laureate told
his son, "talked as usual on all sorts of topics, and walked hard up
and down the study for hours smoking furiously, and affirming that
tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet." The late
Laureate, Alfred Austin, once asked Tennyson, after reading a passage
in Dorothy Wordsworth's "Journal" that William had gone to bed "very
tired" with writing the "Prelude," if he had ever felt tired by
writing poetry. "I think not," said the poet, "but tired with the
accompaniment of too much smoking."

Kingsley's devotion to smoke seems to have surprised Tennyson, who was
no light smoker himself. The most curious story illustrating
Kingsley's love of tobacco is that told in the life of Archbishop
Benson by his son, Mr. A.C. Benson. One day about the year 1860, the
future archbishop was walking with the Rector of Eversley in a remote
part of the parish, on a common, when Kingsley suddenly said--"I must
smoke a pipe," and forthwith went to a furze-bush and felt about in it
for a time. Presently he produced a clay churchwarden pipe, "which he
lighted, and solemnly smoked as he walked, putting it when he had done
into a hole among some tree roots, and telling my father that he had a
_cache_ of pipes in several places in the parish to meet the
exigencies of a sudden desire for tobacco." If this story did not
appear in the life of an archbishop, some scepticism on the part of
the reader might be excused.

Carlyle, as every one knows, was a great smoker. The story is
familiar--it may be true--that one evening he and Tennyson sat in
solemn silence smoking for hours, one on each side of the fireplace,
and that when the visitor rose to go, Carlyle, as he bade him
good-night, said--"Man, Alfred, we hae had a graund nicht; come again
soon."

Tennyson's own devotion to tobacco led, on at least one occasion, to a
peculiar and somewhat questionable proceeding. Mr. W.M. Rossetti had a
temporary acquaintance with the poet, and in the "Reminiscences" which
he published in 1906, he told a curious anecdote concerning him which
was new to print. Rossetti told, on the authority of Woolner, how, in
the course of a trip with friends to Italy, tobacco such as Tennyson
could smoke gave out at some particular city, whereupon the poet
packed up his portmanteau and returned home, breaking up the party!
The late Joseph Knight, who reviewed Rossetti's volumes in the
_Athenæum_, vouched for the truth of this relation, which he had
heard, not only from Woolner, but also from Tennyson's brother
Septimus.

In more fashionable circles the mere possession of a pipe might be
looked at askance. Robertson's comedy "Society" was produced in 1865,
and in it, Tom Stylus, a somewhat Bohemian journalist, has the
misfortune, in a fashionable ball-room, when pulling out his
handkerchief to bring out his pipe with it from his pocket. The vulgar
thing falls upon the floor, and Tom is ashamed to claim his property
and so acknowledge his ownership of a pipe. He presently calls a
footman, who comes with a tray and sugar-tongs, picks up the offending
briar with the tongs, and carries it off "with an air of ineffable
disgust."

Undergraduates, like men of letters, did not pay much attention to the
conventional attitude of society towards tobacco, and pipes maintained
their popularity in college rooms. Thackeray, in the "Book of Snobs,"
describes youths at a University wine-party as "drinking bad wines,
telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk
punch--smoking--ghastly headache--frightful spectacle of dessert-table
next morning, and smell of tobacco." But the satirist is often tempted
to be epigrammatic at the expense of accuracy, and this picture is at
least too highly coloured. In the recently published memoir of
"J"--John Willis Clark--some reminiscences of the late Registrary are
included; and "J" does not recognize Thackeray's picture as quite true
of the "wines" of his undergraduate day, _i.e._ about 1850. "They
may," he says, "have 'told bad stories and sung bad songs,' as
Thackeray says in his 'Book of Snobs.' I can only say that I never
heard either the one or the other." But certainly there was noise, and
there was smoke--plenty of it. "Conversation there was none," says
"J," "only a noise. Then came smoke. In a short time the atmosphere
became dense, the dessert and the wine came to an end, and it was
chapel time (mercifully)." One story Clark tells of an extraordinary
attempt to smoke. Referring to the compulsory "chapels," he says that
as a rule everybody behaved with propriety, whether they regarded the
attendance as irksome or otherwise. But, he admits, "'Iniquity
Corner,' as the space at the east end on each side of the altar was
called, may occasionally have effectually sheltered card-playing; but
when a young snob went so far as to light a cigar there, he had the
pleasure of finishing it in the country, for he was rusticated. It was
on a cognate occasion in Jesus College, in which cobblers' wax played
a prominent part, that Dr. Corrie dismissed the culprit, after a
severe lecture, with these admirable words: 'Your conduct, sir, is
what a Christian would call profane, and a gentleman vulgar.'"

At Oxford, in November 1859, the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors issued
the following notice, which shows that an occasional outbreak of bad
manners might happen on the Isis as on the Cam: "Whereas complaints
have been made that some Undergraduate members of the University are
in the habit of smoking at _public entertainments_, and otherwise
creating annoyance, they are hereby cautioned against the repetition
of such ungentlemanlike conduct."

There was plenty of smoking among undergraduates at Oxford in those
days, as may be seen in such books as "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant
Green," and Hughes's "Tom Brown at Oxford," both of which date from
1861. When Tom, after a reading-bout, thought of going out--"there was
a wine party at one of his acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and
smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of a dozen other
places." Cigars were the fashionable form of smoke. When Tom offers
his box to Captain Hardy, that worthy's son says: "You might as well
give him a glass of absinthe. He is churchwarden at home, and can't
smoke anything but a long clay," with which the old sailor was
accordingly supplied.

A striking example of the attitude of the mid-nineteenth century days
towards tobacco may be found in connexion with railways and railway
travelling. In the early days of such travel there were no smoking
compartments, and indeed smoking was "strictly forbidden" practically
everywhere on railway premises. Relics of this time may still be seen
in many stations and on many platforms in the shape of somewhat dingy
placards announcing that smoking is strictly forbidden, and that the
penalty is so much. Nowadays the incense from pipes and cigars and
cigarettes curls freely round these obsolete notices and helps to make
them still dingier. If you wanted to smoke when travelling you had
either to contrive to get a compartment to yourself, or to arrange
terms with your fellow-travellers. In a _Punch_ of 1855, Leech drew a
railway-platform scene wherein figures one of those precocious
youngsters of a type he loved to draw. A railway porter says to his
mate, as the two gaze at the back of this small swell, with his cane
and top-hat, "What does he say, Bill?" "Why, he says he must have a
compartment to hisself, because he can't get on without his smoke!"
Another drawing in a _Punch_ of 1861 points the same moral. It
represents an elderly "party" and a "fast Etonian" seated side by side
in a first-class compartment. The latter has a cigar in one hand and
with the other offers coins to his neighbour; the explanation is as
follows: "_Old Party._ Really, sir,--I am the manager of the line,
sir--I must inform you that if you persist in smoking, you will be
fined forty shillings, sir. _Fast Etonian._ Well, old boy, I must have
my smoke; so you may as well take your forty shillings now!"

Tobacco was always popular in the army; and even the strongest of
anti-tobacconists would have felt that there was at least something,
if not much, to be said for the abused weed, when in times of
campaigning suffering it played so beneficent a part in soothing and
comforting weary and wounded men. The period covered by this chapter
included both the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and every one
knows how the soldiers in the Crimea and in India alike craved for
tobacco as for one of the greatest of luxuries, and how even an
occasional smoke cheered and encouraged and sustained suffering
humanity. The late Dr. Norman Kerr, who was no friend to ordinary,
everyday smoking, wrote: "There are occasions, such as in the trenches
during military operations, when worn out with exposure and fatigue,
or when exhausted by slow starvation with no food in prospect, when a
pipe or cigar will be a welcome and valuable friend in need, resting
the weary limbs, cheering the fainting heart, allaying the gnawing
hunger of the empty stomach."

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the
siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar,
except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco
also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the
want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work,
and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain." Mr.
L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted--"I have given up
smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and
guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also
constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the
margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal
properties.

Among the general mass of the population in the early Victorian
period, smoking, though certainly not so all-prevailing as now, was
yet very common. It is highly probable that one of the things which
led to the great increase in pipe-smoking which took place from this
time onwards was the introduction of the briar pipe.

The earliest example of the use of a wooden pipe I have met with is
dated 1765--but this was not in England. Many years ago the late Mr.
A.J. Munby pointed out that Smollett, in one of his letters dated
March 18, 1765, giving an account of his journey from Nice to Turin,
describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top
thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very
tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes.
His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped
hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was
furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing
clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian
marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of
a piece with the singularity of his attire.

Mr. Munby, after this reference to Smollett's adventure, proceeded to
claim the honour of having helped to bring the use of wooden pipes
into England. In the year 1853 he wrote, "meerschaums and clays were
the rule at both the English universities and in all shops throughout
the land, and the art of making pipes of wood was either obsolete [it
had never been introduced] or wholly _in futuro_. But a college friend
of mine, a Norfolk squire, possessed a gardener who was of an
inventive turn, though he was not a Scotchman. This man conceived and
wrought out the idea of making pipes of willow-wood, cutting the bowl
out of a thick stem, and the tube out of a thinner one growing from
the bowl, so that the whole pipe was in one piece. Willow-wood is too
soft, so that the pipes did not last long; but they were a valuable
discovery, and the young squire's friends bought them eagerly at
eighteenpence apiece."

This experiment in the direction of wooden pipes was interesting, and
deserves to be remembered; but it was not long before the briar was
introduced and carried everything before it.

It was about 1859 that the use of the root of the White Heath (_Erica
arborea_), a native of the South of France, Corsica, and some other
localities, for the purpose of making tobacco-pipes was introduced
into this country. The word "brier" or "briar" has no connexion
whatever with the prickly, thorny briar which bears the lovely wild
rose. It is derived from the French _bruyère_, heath--the root of the
White Heath being the material known as "briar" or "brier," and at
first as "bruyer." The Oxford Dictionary quotes an advertisement from
the _Tobacco Trade Review_ of so recent a date as February 8, 1868, of
a "Heath Pipe: in Bruyer Wood." The briar pipe not only soon drove the
clay largely out of use, but immensely increased the number of
pipe-smokers. Bulwer Lytton may not have known the briar, but he wrote
enthusiastically of the pipe. Every smoker knows the glowing tribute
he paid to it in his "Night and Morning," which appeared in 1841. It
is terser and more to the point than most panegyrics: "A pipe! It is a
great soother, a pleasant comforter. Blue devils fly before its honest
breath. It ripens the brain, it opens the heart; and the man who
smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan."




XI

LATER VICTORIAN DAYS

    When life was all a summer day,
      And I was under twenty,
    Three loves were scattered in my way--
      And three at once are plenty.
    Three hearts, if offered with a grace,
      One thinks not of refusing.
    The task in this especial case
      Was only that of choosing.
        I knew not which to make my pet--
        My pipe, cigar, or cigarette.

          HENRY S. LEIGH.


The social history of smoking in later Victorian days is marked by the
triumph of the cigarette. The introduction of the cigar, as we have
seen, brought about the revival of smoking, from the point of view of
fashion, in the early decades of the nineteenth century; and the
coming of the cigarette completed what the cigar had begun.

The earliest references for the word "cigarette" in the Oxford
Dictionary are dated 1842 and 1843, but both refer to the smoking of
cigarettes abroad--in France and Italy. The 1843 quotation is from a
book by Mrs. Romer, in which she says--"The beggars in the streets
have paper cigars (called cigarettes) in their mouths." The wording
here would seem to show that cigarettes were not then familiar to
English people.

Laurence Oliphant, who was both a man of letters and a man of fashion,
is generally credited with the introduction into English society of
the cigarette; but it is difficult to suggest even an approximate
date. Writing from Boulogne to W.H. Wills in September 1854, Dickens
says, "I have nearly exhausted the cigarettes I brought here," and
proceeds to give directions for some to be sent to him from London.
This is the earliest reference I have found to cigarette-smoking in
England; but it is possible that by "cigarettes" Dickens meant not
what we now know as such, but simply small cigars. Mr. H.M. Hyndman,
in his "Record of an Adventurous Life," says that when he was living
as a pupil, about the year 1860, with the Rector of Oxburgh, his
fellow-pupils included "Edward Abbott of Salonica, who, poor fellow,
was battered to pieces by the Turks with iron staves torn from palings
at the beginning of the Turco-Servian War. Cigarette-smoking, now so
popular, was then almost unknown, and Abbott, who always smoked the
finest Turkish tobacco which he rolled up into cigarettes for himself,
was the first devotee of this habit I encountered."

Fairholt, in his book on "Tobacco," which was published in 1859,
mentions cigarettes as being smoked in Spain and South and Central
America, but makes no reference to their use in this country.

The late Lady Dorothy Nevill said that although cigarettes are a
modern invention, she believed that they already existed in a slightly
different form at the beginning of the nineteenth century, "when old
Peninsular officers used to smoke tobacco rolled up tight in a piece
of paper. They called this a _papelito_, and I fancy it was much the
same thing as a cigarette." But if this were so, the habit must have
died out long before the cigarette, as we now know it, came into
vogue.

It may fairly be concluded, I think, that although about 1860 there
may have been an occasional cigarette-smoker in England, like the
Edward Abbott of Mr. Hyndman's reminiscences, yet it was not until a
little later date that the small paper-enclosed rolls of tobacco
became at all common among Englishmen; and it is quite likely that the
credit (or discredit, as the reader pleases) of bringing them into
general, and especially into fashionable, use, has been rightly given
to Laurence Oliphant.

Cigarettes were perhaps in fashion in 1870. In "Puck," which was
published in that year, Ouida--who is hardly an unimpeachable
authority on the ways and customs of fashionable folk, though she
loved to paint fancy pictures of their sayings and doings--pictures
the Row: "the most fashionable lounge you have, but it is a Republic
for all that." There, she says, "could Bill Jacobs lean against a
rail, with a clay-pipe in his mouth, and a terrier under his arm,
close beside the Earl of Guilliadene, with his cigarette and his
eye-glass, and his Poole-cut habiliments."

Thirty years or more ago the late Andrew Lang wrote an article
entitled "Enchanted Cigarettes," which began--"To dream our literary
projects, Balzac says, is like 'smoking enchanted cigarettes,' but
when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real, the enchantment
disappears--we have to till the soil, to sow the weed, to gather the
leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manufactured, while there may
be no market for them after all. Probably most people have enjoyed
the fragrance of these cigarettes and have brooded over much which
they will never put on paper. Here are some of 'the ashes of the weeds
of my delight'--memories of romances whereof no single line is
written, or is likely to be written." What Balzac said in his "La
Cousine Bette" was--"Penser, rêver, concevoir de belles oeuvres est
une occupation délicieuse. C'est fumer des cigares enchantés, c'est
mener la vie de la courtisane occupée à sa fantaisie." Balzac's cigars
became cigarettes in Lang's fantasy. The French novelist seems to have
been one of those who praised tobacco without using it much himself.
In his "Illusions Perdues" Carlos Herrera, who was Vautrin, says to
Lucien, whom he meets on the point of suicide: "Dieu nous a donné le
tabac pour endormir nos passions et nos douleurs." M.A. Le Breton,
however, in his book on Balzac--"L'Homme et L'OEuvre"--says: "Il ne
se soutient qu'à force de café," though he would sit working at his
desk for twenty-five hours running.

About the time that Lang's article was written, Sir F.C. Burnand's
burlesque, "Bluebeard" was produced at the Gaiety Theatre. In those
days a certain type of young man, since known by many names, including
the present day "nut," was called a "masher"; and Burnand's burlesque
included a duet with the refrain:

    _We are mashers, we are,
    As we smoke our cigar
      And crawl along, never too quick;
    We are mashers, you bet,
    With the light cigarette
      And the quite irreproachable stick._

Nowadays the cigarette is in such universal use, that it would be
impossible thus to associate it with any particular type of man, sane
or inane.

The late Bishop Mandell Creighton, of London, was an incessant smoker
of cigarettes. Mr. Herbert Paul, in his paper on the Bishop, says that
those who went to see him at Fulham on a Sunday afternoon always found
him, if they found him at all, "leisurely, chatty, hospitable, and
apparently without a care in the world. There was the family
tea-table, and there were the eternal cigarettes. The Bishop must have
paid a fortune in tobacco-duty." There is a side view of another
tobacco-lover in the "Note-Books" of Samuel Butler, the author of
"Erewhon." Creighton, after reading Butler's "Alps and Sanctuaries"
had asked the author to come and see him. Butler was in doubt whether
or not to go, and consulted his clerk, Alfred, on the matter. That
wise counsellor asked to look at the Bishop's letter, and then said:
"I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it; I think you can go."

Apart from cigarette-smoking, however, the use of tobacco grew
steadily during the later Victorian period. In "Mr. Punch's
Pocket-Book" for 1878 there was a burlesque dialogue between uncle and
nephew entitled "Cupid and 'Baccy." The uncle thinks the younger men
smoke too much, and declares that tobacco "has destroyed the
susceptibility, which in my time made youngsters fall in love, as they
often did, with a girl without a penny. No fellow can fall in love
when he has continually a pipe in his mouth; and if he ever feels
inclined to when it would be imprudent, why he lights his pipe, and
very soon smokes the idea of such folly out of his head. Not so when I
was of your age. Besides a few old farmers, churchwardens, and
overseers, and such, nobody then ever smoked but labourers and the
lower orders--cads as you now say. Smoking was thought vulgar. Young
men never smoked at all. To smoke in the presence of a lady was an
inconceivable outrage; yet now I see you and your friends walking
alongside of one another's sisters, smoking a short pipe down the
street." "The girls like it," says Nepos. "In my time," replies
Avunculus, "young ladies would have fainted at the bare suggestion of
such an enormity." The dialogue ends as follows:

  "NEPOS (_producing short clay_). See here, Uncle. This pipe is
  almost coloured. How long do you think I have had it?

  "AVUNCULUS. Can't imagine.

  "NEPOS. Only three weeks.

  "AVUNCULUS. Good boy!"

In the same "Pocket-Book" one of the ideals of a wife by a bachelor
is--"To approve of smoking all over the house"; while one of the
ideals of a husband by a spinster is--"Not to smoke, or use a
latch-key." Mr. Punch's prelections, of course, are not to be taken
too seriously. They all necessarily have the exaggeration of
caricature; but at the same time they are all significant, and for the
social historian are invaluable.

Tobacco-smoking was advancing victoriously all along the line. Absurd
old conventions and ridiculous restrictions had to give way or were
broken through in every direction. The compartments for smokers on
railway trains, at first provided sparsely and grudgingly, became more
and more numerous. The practice of smoking out of doors, which the
early Victorians held in particular abhorrence, became common--at
least so far as cigars and cigarettes were concerned. Lady Dorothy
Nevill, whose memory covered so large a part of the nineteenth
century, said, in the "Leaves" from her note-book which was published
in 1907, that to smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent
years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable; while smoking
anywhere with a lady would, in the earlier days, have been classed as
an almost disgraceful social crime. The first gentleman of whom Lady
Dorothy heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the
Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told her spoke of it as if she
had been present at an earthquake! Pipes were (and are) still looked
at askance in many places where the smoking of cigars and cigarettes
is freely allowed, and fashion frowned on the pipe in street or Park.

Of course, what one might do in the country and what one might do in
town were two quite different things. The following story was told
nearly twenty years ago of the late Duke of Devonshire. An American
tourist began talking one day to a quiet-looking man who was smoking
outside an inn on the Chatsworth estate, and, taking the man for the
inn-keeper, expressed his admiration of the Duke of Devonshire's
domain. "Quite a place, isn't it?" said the American. "Yes, a pleasant
place enough," returned the Englishman. "The fellow who owns it must
be worth a mint of money," said the American, through his cigar-smoke.
"Yes, he's comfortably off," agreed the other. "I wonder if I could
get a look at the old chap," said the stranger, after a short silence;
"I should like to see what sort of a bird he is." Puff, puff, went
the English cigar, and then said the English voice, trying hard to
control itself: "If you"--puff--"look hard"--puff, puff--"in this
direction, you"--puff, puff--"can tell in a minute." "You, you!"
faltered the American, getting up, "why, I thought you were the
landlord!" "Well, so I am," said the Duke, "though I don't perform the
duties." "I stay here," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "to be
looked at."

Among the chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some
of the clubs. At the Athenæum the only smoking-room used to be a
combined billiard-and smoking-room in the basement. It was but a few
years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers
can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when
the alterations were made in 1900. This new smoking-room is a very
handsome, largely book-lined apartment. At the end of the room is a
beautiful marble mantelpiece of late eighteenth century Italian work.
At White's even cigars had not been allowed at all until 1845; and
when, in 1866, some of the younger members wished to be allowed to
smoke in the drawing-room, there was much perturbation, the older
members bitterly opposing the proposal. "A general meeting was held to
decide the question," says Mr. Ralph Nevill, in his "London Clubs,"
"when a number of old gentlemen who had not been seen in the club for
years made their appearance, stoutly determined to resist the proposed
desecration. 'Where do all these old fossils come from?' inquired a
member. 'From Kensal Green,' was Mr. Alfred Montgomery's reply. 'Their
hearses, I understand, are waiting to take them back there.'" The
motion for the extension of the facilities for smoking was defeated
by a majority of twenty-three votes, and as an indirect result the
Marlborough Club was founded. The late King Edward, at that time
Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the
defeated minority at White's, and to have interested himself in the
foundation of the Marlborough; where, "for the first time in the
history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was
everywhere allowed." By "smoking" is no doubt here meant everything
but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick
Club at the beginning of the present century. The late Duc d'Aumale
was a social pioneer in pipe-smoking. His caricature in "Vanity Fair"
represents him with a pipe in his mouth, although he is wearing an
opera-hat, black frock-coat buttoned up, and a cloak.

By the end of the nineteenth century the snuff-box which once upon a
time stood upon the mantelpiece of every club, had disappeared. The
habit of snuffing had long been falling into desuetude. The cigar
dealt the snuff-box its death-blow and the cigarette was chief mourner
at its funeral.

As in other periods, men of letters and artists ignored the social
prejudices and conventions about tobacco, and laughed at the
artificial distinctions drawn between cigars and pipes. It is said
that the late Sir John Millais smoked a clay pipe in his carriage when
he was part of the first Jubilee procession of Queen Victoria--a
performance, if it took place, which would certainly have horrified
her tobacco-hating Majesty. Tennyson and his friends smoked their
pipes as they had always done--and old-fashioned clay pipes too. Sir
Norman Lockyer, referring to a period about 1867, mentions Monday
evenings in his house which were given up to friends "who came in,
_sans cérémonie_, to talk and smoke. Clays from Broseley, including
'churchwardens' and some of larger size (Frank Buckland's held an
ounce of tobacco) were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson,
an occasional visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which
the name was written, in a rack for future symposia."

Of the other great Victorian poets Morris was a pipe-smoker, and so
was Rossetti. Browning also smoked, but not, I think, a pipe.
Swinburne, on the other hand, detested tobacco, and expressed himself
on the subject with characteristic extravagance and vehemence--"James
I was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward. But I love him, I
worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh who
invented this filthy smoking!" Professor Blackie, in a letter to his
wife, remarked: "The first thing I said on entering the public room
was--'What a delightful thing the smell of tobacco is, in a warm room
on a wet night!' ... I gave my opinion with great decision that
tobacco, whisky and all such stimulants or sedatives, had their
foundation in nature, could not be abolished, or rather should not,
and must be content with the check of a wise regulation. Even pious
ladies were fond of tea, which, taken in excess, was worse for the
nerves than a glass of sherry."

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John
Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent
Carlyle--an inveterate smoker--a box of cigars in February 1865. In
his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote--"Dear Ruskin, you have
sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in
answer? It makes me both sad and glad. _Ay de mi_

    _'We are such stuff,
    Gone with a puff--
    Then think, and smoke Tobacco!'"_

In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin's guests
found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.

Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker. He is
said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales
dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out
of courtesy to his illustrious guest.

It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William
Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in
the day--an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished
smokers would subscribe--when Sir William laughingly replied, "The
earliest pipe of half-awakened _bards_."

The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened
_birdseye_" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the
head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, "+TÔ BAKCHÔ+," in
"Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.

Sidgwick's praise of tobacco, classically draped in Greek verse,
occasionally of the macaronic order, is delightful. He hails the pipe
as the work of Pan, and the divine smoke as the best and most fragrant
of gifts--healer of sorrow, companion in joy, rest for the toilers,
drink for the thirsty, warmth for the cold, coolness in the heat, and
a cheap feast for those who waste away through hunger. How is it, he
says, that through so many ages men, who have need of thee, have not
seen thy nature? Often, he continues--the verses may be roughly
translated--often, when I am in Alpine solitudes, tied in a chain to a
few companions, clinging to the rope, while barbarians lead the way,
carrying in my hands an ice-axe (+krustalloplêga chersin axinên
pherôn+), and breathless crawling up the snow-covered plain--then,
when groaning I reach the summit (either pulled up or on foot), how
have I rested, on my back on the rocks, charming my soul with thy
divine clouds! He goes on in burlesque strain to speak of the joys of
tobacco when he lies in idleness by the streams in breathless summer,
comforted by a bath just taken, or when in the middle of the night he
is worn out by revising endless exercises, underlining the mistakes in
red and allotting marks, or weighed down by the wise men of
old--Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, the ideas of Plato, wiles of
Pindar, fearfully corrupt strophe of chorus, wondrous guesses of
Teutons and fancies of philologists, when men swoon in the
inexplicable wanderings of the endless examination of Homer, when the
brain reels among such toil--then he hails the pipe, help of mortals,
and hastens to kindle sacrifices at its altars and rejoices as he
tastes its smoke. Let some one, he exclaims, bring Bryant and May's
fire, which strikes a light only if rubbed on the box--

    +enenkatô tis pur bruantomaïkon+
    (+kausai d' adunaton mê ouchi pros kistê tribeu+)

and taking the best and blackest bowl, and putting on Persian
slippers, sitting on the softest couch, I will light my pipe, with my
feet on the hearth, and I will cast aside all mortal care!

Nor must the delightful verses by "J.K.S." be forgotten, in which the
author of "Lapsus Calami" sings of the "Grand Old Pipe"--

    _And I'm smoking a pipe which is fashioned
    Like the face of the Grand Old Man;_

and the quaint similarity or comparison between the pipe and
Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man" when "Lapsus Calami" appeared in 1888,
is maintained throughout--

    _Grows he black in his face with his labours?
      Well, so does my Grand Old Pipe._

    _For the sake of its excellent savour,
      For the many sweet smokes of the past
    My pipe keeps its hold on my favour,
      Tho' now it is blackening fast._

But although many pipes were smoked at the Universities, there were
occasionally to be found odd survivals of old prejudices. Dr. Shipley,
in his recent memoir of John Willis Clark, the Cambridge Registrary,
says that even in the 'seventies of the last century there was an
elderly Don at Cambridge who once rebuked a Junior Fellow, who was
smoking a pipe in the Wilderness, with the remark, "No Christian
gentleman smokes a pipe, or if he does he smokes a cigar." The
perpetrator of this bull was the same parson who married late in life,
and returning to his church after a honeymoon of six weeks, publicly
thanked God "for _three_ weeks of unalloyed connubial bliss."




XII

SMOKING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

    Sweet when the morn is grey;
    Sweet, when they've clear'd away
    Lunch; and at close of day
            Possibly sweetest.

          C.S. CALVERLEY.


Tobacco is once more triumphant. The cycle of three hundred years is
complete. Since the early decades of the seventeenth century, smoking
has never been so generally practised nor so smiled upon by fashion as
it is at the present time. Men in their attitude towards tobacco have
always been divisible into three classes--those who respected and
followed and obeyed the conventions of society and the dictates of
fashion, and smoked or did not smoke in accordance therewith; those
who knew those conventions but disregarded them and smoked as and what
they pleased; and those who neither knew nor cared whether such
conventions existed, or what fashion might say, but smoked as and
what, and when and where they pleased. At the present time the three
classes tend to combine into one. There are, it is true, a few
conventions and restrictions left; but they are not very strong, and
will probably disappear one of these days. There is also, of course,
and always has been, a fourth class of men, who for one reason or
another, quite apart from what fashion may say or do, do not smoke at
all.

Perhaps the most absurd and unmeaning of the restrictions that remain,
is that which at certain times and in certain places admits the
smoking of cigars and cigarettes and forbids the smoking of pipes. The
idea appears to be that a pipe is vulgar. There are few restaurants
now in which smoking is not allowed after dinner; but the
understanding is that cigars and cigarettes only shall be smoked. In
some places of resort there are notices exhibited which specifically
prohibit the smoking of pipes. Why? At a smoking concert where few
pipes are smoked, anyone looking

      _Athwart the smoke of burning weeds_

can at once realize how much greater is the volume of smoke from
cigars and cigarettes than would result from the smoking of a like
number of pipes. It cannot, therefore, be that pipes are barred
because of a supposed greater effect upon the atmosphere of the room.
The only conclusion the observer can come to is, that the fashionable
attitude towards pipes is one of the last relics of the old social
attitude--the attitude of Georgian and Early Victorian days--towards
smoking of any kind. The cigar and the cigarette were first introduced
among the upper classes of society, and their use has spread downward.
They have broken down many barriers, and in many places, and under
many and divers conditions, the pipe has followed triumphantly in
their wake; but the last ditch of the old prejudice has been found in
the convention, which, in certain places and at certain times, admits
the cigar and cigarette of fashionable origin, but bars the entry of
the plebeian pipe--the pipe which for two centuries was practically
the only mode of smoking used or known.

An article which appeared in the _Morning Post_ of February 20, 1913,
may be regarded as a sign of the times. It was entitled "A Plea for
the Pipe: By one who Smokes it." "I should like," said the writer,
"pipe-men of all degrees to ask themselves whether the time has not
really arrived to enter a protest against the convention which forces
the pipe into a position of inferiority, and exalts to a pinnacle of
undeserved pre-eminence the cigar, and still more the cigarette ...
why should it be considered a mark of vulgarity, of plebeianism, to
inhale tobacco-smoke through the stem of a briar, and the hall-mark of
good breeding to finger a cigar or dally with that triviality and
travesty of the adoration of My Lady Nicotine--a cigarette?" To these
questions there can be but one answer: and the future, there can be
little doubt, will emphasize that answer, and abolish the unmeaning
convention.

The prejudice against the pipe is not confined to places of indoor
resort. There are many men who smoke pipes within doors, who yet would
not care to be seen in London smoking a pipe in the street, or in the
park. In some circumstances this is quite intelligible. The writer of
the _Morning Post_ article remarked with much force and good sense
that "Apart from social environment, there is a certain affinity
between pipes and clothes. It is considered 'bad form' for a man in a
frock-coat and silk hat to be seen smoking a pipe in the streets. If
you are wearing a bowler hat and a lounge suit you may walk along
with a briar protruding from your lips, and no one will think ill of
you. If you are a son of toil garbed in your habit as you work, there
is nothing incongruous in a well-seasoned clay or a 'nose-warmer,'
which, for convenience, you carry upside down. Not so very long ago it
was considered unseemly to smoke a pipe at all in the street unless
you belonged to the humbler orders, who inhale their nicotine through
the stem of a clay and expectorate with a greater sense of freedom
than of responsibility."

At a few clubs there are still some curious and rather unmeaning
restrictions. A particularly absurd rule that maintains its ground
here and there, is that which forbids smoking in the library of a
club. What more appropriate place could there be for the thoughtful
consumption of tobacco than among the books? But after due allowance
has been made for a few minor restrictions of this kind, the fact
remains that smoking has triumphed socially all along the line in
Clubland. We have travelled far from the days when a committee man
could declare that "No Gentleman smoked," to the time when, for
example, the large smoking-room at Brooks's is one of the finest rooms
in one of the most famous and exclusive of clubs. This splendid room
in the eighteenth-century days of gambling was the "Grand Subscription
Room"--the gambling room of Georgian times. It still retains two of
the old gaming tables. Now this magnificent apartment, with its
splendid barrelled ceiling, which a well-known architectural writer,
Mr. Stanley C. Ramsey, A.R.I.B.A., describes as "probably the finest
room of its kind in London," is the temple of Saint Nicotine. The
strangers' smoking-room in the same club, formerly the dining-room,
is another beautiful and delightfully decorated apartment. Similar
transformations have been witnessed in other clubs.

Barry's original plan for the Travellers' Club, erected in 1832, shows
no smoking-room on the ground floor. It was probably some inconvenient
apartment of no account. The early "Travellers" did smoke, for
Theodore Hook, satirizing them and the club rule that no person was
eligible as a member who had not travelled out of the British Islands
to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a direct line,
wrote:

    _The travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so
         cosily,
    And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the
         plains of Moselai,
    The world for them has nothing new, they have explored
         all parts of it;
    And now they are club-footed! and they sit and look at
         charts of it._

The present-day smoking-room at the Travellers' is a noble apartment,
which was originally the coffee-room. It occupies the whole of the
ground-floor front to the gardens of Carlton House Terrace, and is
divided into three bays by the projection of square piers.

Another sign of the complete change which has come over the attitude
of most folk towards tobacco is to be seen in the permission of
smoking at meetings of committees and councils, where not so long ago
such an indulgence would have been regarded as an outrage. Many of the
committees of municipal councils and other public bodies now permit
smoking while business is proceeding. It has even become usual for
members of the House of Commons to smoke in committee rooms when the
sitting is private; and cigars and cigarettes and pipes are now
lighted in the lobby the moment that the House has risen. A very thin
line thus separates the legislative chamber itself from the conquering
weed. A further step forward (or backward, according to each reader's
judgment) was taken on July 21, 1913, when smoking was allowed at the
sitting of the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills--one of the
committees which does not conduct its business in private. On this
occasion, after the luncheon interval, two members entered the
committee room smoking, one a cigarette the other a cigar. The former
was soon finished; but the latter continued to shed its fragrance on
the room. Naturally the chairman, Mr. Arthur Henderson, was appealed
to. He gave a diplomatic reply. It had been held, he said, by two
chairmen that smoking was not in order at the public sessions of a
Standing Committee; and, of course, if his ruling were formally asked
he would be bound to follow precedent. He said this with a suavity and
a smile which disarmed any possible objector. Nobody raised the formal
point of order; so other members "lighted up," and the proceedings
went on peacefully to the appointed hour of closing.

Yet another sign of the times was the permission given not so very
long ago to the drivers of taxi-cabs to smoke while driving fares--a
development regarding which there may well be two opinions.

The number of cigarette-smokers nowadays is legion; but to a very
large number of "tobacconists" (in the old sense of the word) a pipe
remains the most satisfactory of "smokes." A cigar or a cigarette
is--and it is not; the pipe renders its service again and again and
yet remains--a steadfast companion. "Over a pipe" is a phrase of more
meaning than "over a cigarette." Discussions are best conducted over a
pipe. No one can get too excited or over-heated in argument, no one
can neglect the observance of the amenities of conversation, who talks
thoughtfully between the pulls at his pipe, who has to pause now and
again to refill, to strike a light, to knock out the ashes, or to
perform one of those numberless little acts of devotion at the shrine
of St. Nicotine, which fill up the pauses and conduce to reflection.
The Indians were wise in their generation when they made the
circulation of the pipe an essential part of their pow-wows. A
conference founded on the mutual consumption of tobacco was likely,
not, as the frivolous would say, to end in smoke, but to lead to solid
and lasting results. "The fact is, squire," said Sam Slick, "the
moment a man takes a pipe he becomes a philosopher." The pipe, says
Thackeray, "draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts
up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation,
contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent and unaffected.... May I die if
I abuse that kindly weed which has given me so much pleasure."

And what more fitting emblem of peace could be chosen than the
calumet, the proffered pipe? Tobacco, whatever its enemies may have
said, or may yet say, is the friend of peace, the foe of strife, and
the promoter of geniality and good fellowship. Mrs. Battle, whose
serious energies were all given to the great game of whist, unbent her
mind, we are told, over a book. Most men unbend over a pipe, even if
the book is an accompaniment.

To the solitary man the well-seasoned tube is an invaluable companion.
If he happen, once in a way, to have nothing special to do and plenty
of time in which to do it, he naturally fills his pipe as he draws the
easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he
have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it
over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves
above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie,
and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least,
something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the
paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems can usually afford to
wait.

"Over a pipe!" Why the words bring up innumerable pleasant
associations. The angler, having caught the coveted prize, refills his
pipe, and with the satisfied sense of duty done, as the rings curl
upward he reviews the struggle and glows again with victory. At the
end of any day's occupation, especially one of pleasurable
toil--whether it be shooting or hunting, or walking or what not--what
can be pleasanter than to let the mind meander through the course of
the day's proceedings over a pipe?

There is much wisdom in Robert Louis Stevenson's remarks in
"Virginibus Puerisque"--"Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden
rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not
smoke. It is not for nothing that this 'ignoble tabagie,' as Michelet
calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it
because it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident
women this will seem no evil influence in married life. Whatever
keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and
all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment,
makes just so surely for domestic happiness."

Nothing is more marked in the change in the social attitude towards
tobacco than the revolution which has taken place in woman's view of
smoking. The history of smoking by women is dealt with separately in
the next chapter; but here it may be noted that most of the old
intolerance of tobacco has disappeared. "To smoke in Hyde Park," said
the late Lady Dorothy Nevill, in 1907, "even up to comparatively
recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while
smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost
disgraceful social crime."

Women do not nowadays shun the smell of smoke as they did in early
Victorian days, as if it were the most dreadful of odours. They are
tolerant of smoking in their presence, in public places, in
restaurants--in fact, wherever men and women congregate--to a degree
that would have horrified extremely their mothers and grandmothers. It
is only within the last few years that visits to music-halls and
theatres of varieties have been socially possible to ladies. Men go
largely because they can smoke during the performance; women go
largely because they have ceased to consider tobacco-smoke as a thing
to be rigidly avoided, and therefore have no hesitation in
accompanying their menfolk.

The observant visitor to the promenade concerts annually given in the
Queen's Hall, Langham Place, will notice that but one small section of
the grand circle is reserved for non-smokers, while smoking is freely
allowed (with no absurd ban on the friendly pipe) in every other part
of the great auditorium--floor, circle and balcony.

There are still some people who share the Duke of Wellington's
delusion that smoking promotes drinking, although experience proves
the contrary, and historic evidence, especially as regards drinking
after dinner, shows that it was the introduction of the cigar,
followed by that of the cigarette, which absolutely killed the old,
bad after-dinner habits. The Salvation Army do not enforce total
abstinence from tobacco as well as from alcoholic drinks as a
condition of membership or soldiership, but a member of the Army must
be a non-smoker before he can hold any office in its rank, or be a
bandsman, or a member of a "songster brigade." And in other religious
organizations there are yet a few of the "unco' guid" who look askance
at pipe or cigarette as if it were a device of the devil. But the
numbers of these misguided folk become fewer every year.

Smoking in the dining-room after dinner is now so general that people
are apt to forget that this particular development is of no great age.
It is not yet, however, universal. A valued correspondent tells me
that he knows a house "where tobacco is still kept out of the
dining-room, and smoke indulged in elsewhere after wine. This
old-fashioned habit must now be pretty rare."

The chief legitimate objection to cigarette smoking was well stated
some years ago by the late Dr. Andrew Wilson. "I think cigarettes are
apt to prove injurious," he said, "because a man will smoke far too
much when he indulges in this form of the weed, and because I think it
is generally admitted that cigarettes are apt to produce evil effects
out of all proportion to the amount of tobacco which is apparently
consumed." Excess can equally be found among cigar and pipe-smokers.
The late Chancellor Parish, in his "Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect,"
tells a delightful story of a Sussex rustic's holiday--"May be you
knows Mass [Master, the distinctive title of a married labourer]
Pilbeam? No! doänt ye? Well, he was a very sing'lar marn was Mass
Pilbeam, a very sing'lar marn! He says to he's mistus one day, he
says, 'tis a long time, says he, sence I've took a holiday--so
cardenly, nex marnin' he laid abed till purty nigh seven o'clock, and
then he brackfustes, and then he goos down to the shop and buys fower
ounces of barca, and he sets hisself down on the maxon [manure heap],
and there he set, and there he smoked and smoked and smoked all the
whole day long, for, says he 'tis a long time sence I've had a
holiday! Ah, he was a very sing'lar marn--a very sing'lar marn
indeed."

Some men seem to act upon Mark Twain's principle of never smoking when
asleep or at meals, and never refraining at any other time. But excess
is self-condemned. There is no good reason why anyone, for social or
any other reasons, should look askance at the reasonable use of
tobacco. "But used in moderation, what evils, let me ask,"--I again
quote Dr. Andrew Wilson's calm good sense--"are to be found in the
train of the tobacco-habit! A man doesn't get delirium tremens even if
he smokes more than is good for him; he doesn't become a debased
mortal; there is nothing about tobacco which makes a man beat his wife
or assault his mother-in-law--rather the reverse, in fact, for tobacco
is a soother and a quietener of the passions, and many a man, I
daresay, has been prevented from doing rash things in the way of
retaliation, when he has lit his pipe and had a good think over his
affairs. Whenever anybody counterblasts to-day against tobacco, I feel
as did my old friend Wilkie Collins, when somebody told him that to
smoke was a wrong thing. 'My dear sir,' said the great novelist, 'all
your objections to tobacco only increase the relish with which I look
forward to my next cigar!'"




XIII

SMOKING BY WOMEN

    Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
    They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.

          ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740.


A story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh by John Aubrey which seems to
imply that at first women not only did not smoke, but that they
disliked smoking by men. Aubrey says that Raleigh "standing in a stand
at Sir R. Poyntz's parke at Acton, tooke a pipe of tobacco, which made
the ladies quitt it till he had done." But this objection, whether
general or not, soon vanished, for, as we have seen in a previous
chapter, the gallant of Elizabethan and Jacobean days made a practice
of smoking in his lady's presence. It seems certain, moreover, that
some women, at least, smoked very soon after the introduction of
tobacco; but it is not easy to find direct evidence, though there are
sundry traditions and allusions which suggest that the practice was
not unknown.

There is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth herself once smoked--with
unpleasant results. Campbell, in his "History of Virginia," says that
Raleigh having offered her Majesty "some tobacco to smoke, after two
or three whiffs she was seized with a nausea, upon observing which
some of the Earl of Leicester's faction whispered that Sir Walter had
certainly poisoned her. But her Majesty in a short while recovering
made the countess of Nottingham and all her maids smoke a whole pipe
out among them." The Queen had no selfish desire to monopolize the
novel sensations caused by smoking. An eighteenth-century writer,
Oldys, in his "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," declares that tobacco
"soon became of such vogue in Queen Elizabeth's court, that some of
the great ladies, as well as noblemen therein, would not scruple to
take a pipe sometimes very sociably." But these stories rest on vague
tradition, and probably have no foundation in fact.

King James I in his famous "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," hinted that
the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his
delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie,
that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or
else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's
style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two
references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before
King James blew his royal "Counter-blaste," Cob, the water-bearer,
says that he would have any "man or woman that should but deal with a
tobacco-pipe," immediately whipped. Prynne, in his attack on the
stage, declared that women smoked pipes in theatres; but the truth of
this statement may well be doubted. The habit was probably far from
general among women, although Joshua Sylvester, a doughty opponent of
the weed, was pleased to declare that "Fooles of all Sexes haunt it,"
_i.e._ tobacco.

The ballads of the period abound in rough woodcuts in which tavern
scenes are often figured, wherein pewter pots and tobacco-pipes are
shown lying on the table or in the hands or at the mouths of the male
carousers. Men and women are figured together, but it would be very
hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her
hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies
before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad
characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good
Fellows," and beginning:

    _Come hither, mine host, come hither!
    Come hither, mine host, come hither!
      I pray thee, mine host,
      Give us a pot and a tost,
    And let us drinke all together._

The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a
woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One
man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other
pipes--one for each man--and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is
plainly a convivial soul; but there is no pipe for her, and such
provision was no doubt unusual.

There is direct evidence, too, besides the story in the first
paragraph of this chapter, that women disliked the prevalence of
smoking. In Marston's "Antonio and Mellinda," 1602, Rosaline, when
asked by her uncle when she will marry, makes the spirited
reply--"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking
of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have
a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the
ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis
more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to
smoking could be quoted from other plays.

On the other hand, it is certain that from comparatively early in the
seventeenth century there were to be found here and there women who
smoked.

On the title-page of Middleton's comedy, "The Roaring Girle," 1611, is
a picture of the heroine, Moll Cutpurse, in man's apparel, smoking a
pipe, from which a great cloud of smoke is issuing.

In the record of an early libel action brought in the court of the
Archdeacon of Essex, some domestic scenes of 1621 are vividly
represented. We need not trouble about the libel action, but two of
the _dramatis personæ_ were a certain George Thresher, who sold beer
and tobacco at his "shopp in Romford," and a good friend and customer
of his named Elizabeth Savage, who, sad to say, was described as much
given to "stronge drincke and tobacco." In the course of the trial, on
June 8, 1621, Mistress Savage had to tell her tale, part of which is
reported as follows:

"George Thresher kept a shoppe in Romford and sold tobacco there. She
came divers tymes to his shoppe to buy tobacco there; and sometimes,
with company of her acquaintance, did take tobacco and drincke beere
in the hall of George Thresher's house, sometimes with the said
George, and sometimes with his father and his brothers. And sometimes
shee hath had a joint of meat and a cople of chickens dressed there;
and shee, and they, and some other of her freinds, have dined there
together, and paid their share for their dinner, shee being many times
more willing to dine there than at an inne or taverne."

Elizabeth was evidently of a sociable turn, and though she turned her
nose up at a tavern, there seems to have been little difference
between these festive dinners at Mr. Thresher's "shopp," where
Mistress Savage indulged her taste for ale and tobacco, and similar
pleasures at an inn or tavern.

Some of the references to women smokers occur in curious connexions.
When one George Glapthorne, of Whittlesey, J.P., was returned to
Parliament for the Isle of Ely in 1654, his return was petitioned
against, and among other charges it was said that just before the
election, in a certain Martin's ale-house, he had promised to give
Mrs. Martin a roll of tobacco, and had also undertaken to grant her
husband a licence to brew, thus unduly influencing and corrupting the
electors.

Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev.
Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his
journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from
other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost
him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with
her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the
journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but
needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence
to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal
virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."

In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the
originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated,
but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane,
who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman Vall, Norfolk.
Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn,
as his "Afextinat wife," the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous,
tells her "Sweet Hart"--"I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I
pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret
sed." How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with
cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did
not care to be long without a supply. In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited
Stow's "Chronicles," and continued them "onto the end of this present
yeare 1631," wrote that tobacco was "at this day commonly used by most
men and many women."

Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century
would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country.
Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign
of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St.
Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which
is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their
pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking,
which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my
Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them."
What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk?
Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among
women in the west of England. Dunton, in that _Athenian Oracle_ which
was a kind of early forerunner of _Notes and Queries_, alluded to
pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the
French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that
"Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take
it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the
_very_ Women? What Occasion is there for that _very_? We wonder that
in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and
why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall
wonder that the Women of Middlesex do _not_ take Tabacco: And why
should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant
Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his
catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize
about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!

Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of
travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of
England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed
at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself
quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that
according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with
strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are
of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits
where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our
visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company,
the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half
the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health
you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the
table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which
is a general custom as well among women as men, who think that
without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it
dissipates the evil humours of the brain."

Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall
might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is
certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few
female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a
sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the
seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her
pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at
Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an
elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same
writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that
smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for
the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for
smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion"
because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant
persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to
meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that
recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more
write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in
their hands."

From the evidence so far adduced it may fairly be concluded, I think,
that during the seventeenth century smoking was not fashionable, or
indeed anything but rare, among the women of the more well-to-do
classes, while among women of humbler rank it was an occasional, and
in a few districts a fairly general habit.

The same conclusion holds good for the eighteenth century. Among women
of the lowest class smoking was probably common enough. In Fielding's
"Amelia," a woman of the lowest character is spoken of as "smoking
tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenely and swearing and
cursing"--which accomplishments are all carefully noted, because none
of them would be applicable to the ordinary respectable female.

The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of Tobacco," in
Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been
made, wrote:

    _Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
    They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
    Citronia vows it has an odious stink;
    She will not smoke (ye gods!)--but she will drink;_

and the same writer describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by
the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the
sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have
disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be
found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a
smoke. In an early _Spectator_, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny
Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and
good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was
frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall
fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member
brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or
smokes."

In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of
Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth
century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a
Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the
alarming question--Did Irish ladies chew?

It has sometimes been supposed that the companion of Swift's Stella,
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, was addicted to smoking. In the letters which
make up the famous "Journal to Stella," there are several references
by Swift to the presents of tobacco which he was in the habit of
sending to Mrs. Dingley. On September 21, 1710, he wrote: "I have the
finest piece of Brazil tobacco for Dingley that ever was born." In the
following month he again had a great piece of Brazil tobacco for the
same lady, and again in November: "I have made Delaval promise to send
me some Brazil tobacco from Portugal for you, Madam Dingley." In
December, Swift was expressing his hope that Dingley's tobacco had not
spoiled the chocolate which he had sent for Stella in the same parcel;
and three months later he wrote: "No news of your box? I hope you have
it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of
the Brazil tobacco has not affected it." The explanation of all this
tobacco for Mistress Dingley is to be found in Swift's letter to
Stella of October 23, 1711. "Then there's the miscellany," he writes,
"an apron for Stella, a pound of chocolate, without sugar, for Stella,
a fine snuff-rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and
a large roll of tobacco which she must hide or cut shorter out of
modesty, and four pair of spectacles for the Lord knows who." The
tobacco was clearly not for smoking, but for Dingley to operate upon
with the snuff-rasp, and so supply herself with snuff--a luxury, which
in those days, was as much enjoyed and as universally used by women as
by men.

Even Quakeresses sometimes smoked. A list of the sea-stores put on
board the ship in which certain friends--Samuel Fothergill, Mary
Peisly, Katherine Payton and others--sailed from Philadelphia for
England in June 1756, is still extant. In those days Atlantic passages
were long, and might last for an indefinite period, and passengers
provisioned themselves accordingly. On this occasion the passage
though stormy was very quick, for it lasted only thirty-four days. The
list of provisions taken is truly formidable. It includes all sorts of
eatables and drinkables in astonishing quantities. The "Women's
Chest," we are told, contained, among a host of other good and useful
things, "Balm, sage, summer Savoury, horehound, Tobacco, and Oranges;
two bottles of Brandy, two bottles of Jamaica Spirrit, A Canister of
green tea, a Jar of Almond paste, Ginger bread." Samuel Fothergill's
"new chest" contained tobacco among many other things; and a box of
pipes was among the miscellaneous stores.

The history of smoking by women through Victorian days need not detain
us long. There have always been pipe-smokers among the women of the
poorer classes. Up to the middle of the last century smoking was very
common among the hard-working women of Northumberland and the Scottish
border. Nor has the practice by any means yet died out. In May 1913, a
woman, who was charged with drunkenness at the West Ham police court,
laid the blame for her condition on her pipe. She said she had smoked
it for twenty years, and "it always makes me giddy!" The writer, in
August 1913, saw a woman seated by the roadside in County Down,
Ireland, calmly smoking a large briar pipe.

It is not so very long ago that an English traveller heard a
working-man courteously ask a Scottish fish-wife, who had entered a
smoking-compartment of the train, whether she objected to smoking. The
good woman slowly produced a well-seasoned "cutty" pipe, and as she
began to cut up a "fill" from a rank-smelling tobacco, replied: "Na,
na, laddie, I've come in here for a smoke ma'sel."

The _Darlington and Stockton Times_ in 1856 recorded the death on
December 10, at Wallbury, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in the
110th year of her age, of Jane Garbutt, widow. Mrs. Garbutt had been
twice married, her husbands having been sailors during the Napoleonic
wars. The old woman, said the journal, "had dwindled into a small
compass, but she was free from pain, retaining all her faculties to
the last, and enjoying her pipe. About a year ago the writer of this
notice paid her a visit, and took her, as a 'brother-piper,' a present
of tobacco, which ingredient of bliss was always acceptable from her
visitors. Asking of her the question how long she had smoked, her
reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton,
at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for
many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the
accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the
fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the
same operation; but her pipe she was bound to have, and so met her
end.

The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London
street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street
corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still
are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country. An old Seven Dials
ballad has the following choice stanza--

    _When first I saw Miss Bailey,
        'Twas on a Saturday,
    At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,
        And smoking a yard of clay._

Up to about the middle of Queen Victoria's reign female smoking in the
nineteenth century in England may be said to have been pretty well
confined to women of the classes and type already mentioned.
Respectable folk in the middle and upper classes would have been
horrified at the idea of a pipe or a cigar between feminine lips; and
cigarettes had been used by men for a long time before it began to be
whispered that here and there a lady--who was usually considered
dreadfully "fast" for her pains--was accustomed to venture upon a
cigarette.

In "Puck," 1870, Ouida represented one of her beautiful young men, Vy
Bruce, as "murmuring idlest nonsense to Lilian Lee, as he lighted one
of his cigarettes for her use"--but Lilian Lee was a _cocotte_.

An amusing incident is related in Forster's "Life of Dickens," which
shows how entirely unknown was smoking among women of the middle and
upper classes in England some ten years after Queen Victoria came to
the throne. Dickens was at Lausanne and Geneva in the autumn of 1846.
At his hotel in Geneva he met a remarkable mother and daughter, both
English, who admired him greatly, and whom he had previously known at
Genoa. The younger lady's conversation would have shocked the prim
maids and matrons of that day. She asked Dickens if he had ever "read
such infernal trash" as Mrs. Gore's; and exclaimed "Oh God! what a
sermon we had here, last Sunday." Dickens and his two daughters--"who
were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards"--dined by
invitation with the mother and daughter. The daughter asked him if he
smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner
when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good
'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the
novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course
we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady
residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady
married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for
sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our
entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of
negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The
box was full of cigarettes--good large ones, made of pretty strong
tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa,
and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers,
at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put
out her stomach, folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up
sideways and her cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill,
laughed, and talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I
ever beheld. Mother immediately lighted her cigar; American lady
immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of
smoke, with us four in the centre pulling away bravely, while American
lady related stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different
kinds of pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen
came in, with whom, and the American lady, daughter sat down to whist.
The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen and
seemed dismayed), and daughter played for the next hour or two with a
cigar continually in her mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked
six or eight. Mother gave in soon--I think she only did it out of
vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning. I took no
more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves.
Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but
half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of
surprise, but I never _was_ so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback,
in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman--not a basket woman or a gipsy--smoke
before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that
Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was
enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described." The
words "cigar" and "cigarette" are used indifferently by the novelist,
but it seems clear from the description and from the number smoked by
the lady in an hour or two, that it was a cigarette and not a cigar,
properly so called, which was never out of her mouth.

The ladies who so surprised Dickens were English and American, but at
the period in question--the early 'forties of the last century--one of
the freaks of fashion at Paris was the giving of luncheon parties for
ladies only, at which cigars were handed round.

The first hints of feminine smoking in England may be traced, like so
many other changes in fashion, in the pages of _Punch_. In 1851,
steady-going folk were alarmed and shocked at a sudden and short-lived
outburst of "bloomerism," imported from the United States. Of course
it was at once suggested that women who would go so far as to imitate
masculine attire and to emancipate themselves from the usual
conventions of feminine dress, would naturally seek to imitate men in
other ways also. Leech had a picture of "A Quiet Smoke" in _Punch_,
which depicted five ladies in short wide skirts and "bloomers" in a
tobacconist's shop, two smoking cigars and one a pipe, while "one of
the inferior animals" behind the counter was selling tobacco. But this
was satire and hardly had much relation to fact.

It was not until the 'sixties of the last century that
cigarette-smoking by women began to creep in. Mortimer Collins,
writing in 1869, in a curious outburst against the use of tobacco by
young men, said, "When one hears of sly cigarettes between feminine
lips at croquet parties, there is no more to be said." Since that date
cigarette-smoking has become increasingly popular among women, and the
term "sly" has long ceased to be applicable. "Punch's Pocket-Book" for
1878 had an amusing skit on a ladies' reading-party, to which Mr.
Punch acted as "coach." After breakfast the reading ladies lounged on
the lawn with cigarettes.

What Queen Victoria, who hated tobacco and banished it from her
presence and from her abodes as far as she could, would have thought
and said of the extent to which cigarette-smoking is indulged in now
by women, is a question quite unanswerable. Yet Queen Victoria once
received a present of pipes and tobacco. By the hands of Sir Richard
Burton the Queen had sent a damask tent, a silver pipe, and two silver
trays to the King of Dahomey. That potentate told Sir Richard that the
tent was very handsome, but too small; that the silver pipe did not
smoke so well as his old red clay with a wooden stem; and that though
he liked the trays very much, he thought them hardly large enough to
serve as shields. He hoped that the next gifts would include a
carriage and pair, and a white woman, both of which he would
appreciate very much. However, he sent gifts in return to her
Britannic Majesty, and among them were a West African state umbrella,
a selection of highly coloured clothing materials, and some native
pipes and tobacco for the Queen to smoke.

Many royal ladies of Europe, contemporaries of Queen Victoria and her
son, have had the reputation of being confirmed smokers. Among them may
be named Carmen Sylva, the poetess--Queen of Roumania, the Dowager
Tsaritsa of Russia, the late Empress of Austria, King Alfonso's mother,
formerly Queen-Regent of Spain, the Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy
and ex-Queen Amélie of Portugal. It is, of course, well known that
Austrian and Russian ladies generally are fond of cigarette-smoking. On
Russian railways it is not unusual to find a compartment labelled "For
ladies who do not smoke."

The newspapers reported not long ago from the other side of the
Atlantic that the "smart" women of Chicago had substituted cigars for
cigarettes. According to an interview with a Chicago hotel proprietor,
the fair smokers "select their cigars as men do, either black and
strong, or light, according to taste." How in the world else could
they select them? It is not likely, however, that cigar-smoking will
become popular among women. For one thing, it leaves too strong and
too clinging an odour on the clothes.

One of the latest announcements, however, in the fashion pages of the
newspapers is the advent of "Smoking Jackets" for ladies! We are
informed in the usual style of such pages, that "the well-dressed
woman has begun to consider the little smoking-jacket indispensable."
This jacket, we are told "is a very different matter to the braided
velvet coats which were donned by our masculine forbears in the days
of long drooping cavalry moustaches, tightly buttoned frock-coats, and
flexible canes. The feminine smoking-jacket of to-day is worn with
entrancing little evening or semi-evening frocks, and represents a
compromise between a cloak and a coat, being exquisitely draped and
fashioned of the softest and most attractive of the season's beautiful
fabrics."

There are still many good people nowadays who are shocked at the idea
of women smoking; and to them may be commended the common-sense words
of Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, formerly of Ripon, who arrived in New York
early in 1913 to deliver a series of lectures at Harvard University.
The American newspapers reported him as saying, with reference to this
subject: "Many women in England who are well thought of, smoke. I do
not attempt to enter into the ethical part of this matter, but this
much I say: if men find it such a pleasure to smoke, why shouldn't
women? There are many colours in the rainbow; so there are many tastes
in people. What may be a pleasure to men may be given to women. When
we find women smoking, as they do in some branches of society to-day,
the mere pleasure of that habit must be accepted as belonging to both
sexes."




XIV

SMOKING IN CHURCH

    For thy sake, TOBACCO, I
    Would do anything but die.

          CHARLES LAMB, _A Farewell to Tobacco._


The use of tobacco in churches forms a curious if short chapter in the
social history of smoking. The earliest reference to such a practice
occurs in 1590, when Pope Innocent XII excommunicated all such persons
as were found taking snuff or using tobacco in any form in the church
of St. Peter, at Rome; and again in 1624, Pope Urban VIII issued a
bull against the use of tobacco in churches.

In England it would seem as if some of the early smokers, in the
fulness of their enthusiasm for the new indulgence, went so far as to
smoke in church. When King James I was about to visit Cambridge, the
Vice-Chancellor of the University put forth sundry regulations in
connexion with the royal visit, in which may be found the following
passage: "That noe Graduate, Scholler, or Student of this Universitie
presume to resort to any Inn, Taverne, Alehowse, or Tobacco-Shop at
any tyme dureing the aboade of his Majestie here; nor doe presume to
take tobacco in St. Marie's Church, or in Trinity Colledge Hall, uppon
payne of finall expellinge the Universitie."

Evidently the intention was to make things pleasant for the royal foe
of tobacco during his visit. It would appear to be a fair inference
from the wording of this prohibition that when the King was not at
Cambridge, graduates and scholars and students could resume their
liberty to resort to inns, taverns, ale-houses and tobacco-shops, and
presumably to take tobacco in St. Mary's Church, without question.

The prohibition, in the regulation quoted, of smoking in St. Mary's
Church, referred, it may be noted, to the Act which was held therein.
Candidates for degrees, or graduates to display their proficiency,
publicly maintained theses; and this performance was termed keeping or
holding an Act.

It is, of course, conceivable that the prohibition, so far as the
church and Trinity College Hall were concerned, was against the taking
of snuff rather than against smoking; but the phrase "to take tobacco"
was at that time quite commonly applied to smoking, and, considering
the extraordinary and immoderate use of tobacco soon after its
introduction, it is not in the least incredible that pipes were
lighted, at least occasionally, even in sacred buildings.

Sometimes tobacco was used in church for disinfecting or deodorizing
purposes. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Peter's, Barnstaple, for
1741 contain the entry: "Pd. for Tobacco and Frankincense burnt in the
Church 2s. 6d." Sprigs of juniper, pitch, and "sweete wood," in
combination with incense, were often used for the same purpose.

Smoking, it may safely be asserted, was never practised commonly in
English churches. Even in our own day people have been observed
smoking--not during service time, but in passing through the
building--in church in some of the South American States, and nearer
home in Holland; but in England such desecration has been occasional
only, and quite exceptional.

One need not be much surprised at any instance of lack of reverence in
English churches during the eighteenth century, and a few instances
can be given of church smoking in that era.

Blackburn, Archbishop of York, was a great smoker. On one occasion he
was at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham, for a confirmation. The story of
what happened was told long afterwards in a letter written in December
1773 by John Disney, rector of Swinderby, Lincolnshire, the grandson
of the Mr. Disney who at the time of the Archbishop's visit to St.
Mary's was incumbent of that church. This letter was addressed to
James Granger, and was published in Granger's correspondence. "The
anecdote which you mention," wrote the Mr. Disney of Swinderby, "is, I
believe, unquestionably true. The affair happened in St. Mary's Church
at Nottingham, when Archbishop Blackbourn (of York) was there on a
visitation. The Archbishop had ordered some of the apparitors, or
other attendants, to bring him pipes and tobacco, and some liquor into
the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And
this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought
thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop
upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his
Grace that his vestry should not be converted into a smoking-room."

Another eighteenth-century clerical worthy, the famous Dr. Parr, an
inveterate smoker, was accustomed to do what Mr. Disney prevented
Archbishop Blackburn from doing--he smoked in his vestry at Hatton.
This he did before the sermon, while the congregation were singing a
hymn, and apparently both parties were pleased, for Parr would say:
"My people like long hymns; but I prefer a long clay."

Robert Hall, the famous Baptist preacher, having once upon a time
strongly denounced smoking as an "odious custom," learned to smoke
himself as a result of his acquaintance with Dr. Parr. Parr was such a
continual smoker that anyone who came into his company, if he had
never smoked before, had to learn the use of a pipe as a means of
self-defence. Hall, who became a heavy smoker, is said to have smoked
in his vestry at intervals in the service. He probably found some
relief in tobacco from the severe internal pains with which for many
years he was afflicted.

Mr. Ditchfield, in his entertaining book on "The Parish Clerk," tells
a story of a Lincolnshire curate who was a great smoker, and who, like
Parr, was accustomed to retire to the vestry before the sermon and
there smoke a pipe while the congregation sang a psalm. "One Sunday,"
says Mr. Ditchfield, "he had an extra pipe, and Joshua (the clerk)
told him that the people were getting impatient.

"'Let them sing another psalm,' said the curate.

"'They have, sir,' replied the clerk.

"'Then let them sing the hundred and nineteenth,' replied the curate.

"At last he finished his pipe, and began to put on the black gown, but
its folds were troublesome and he could not get it on.

"'I think the devil's in the gown,' muttered the curate.

"'I think he be,' dryly replied old Joshua."

The same writer, in his companion volume on "The Old Time Parson,"
mentions that the Vicar of Codrington in 1692 found that it was
actually customary for people to play cards on the Communion Table,
and that "when they chose the churchwardens they used to sit in the
Sanctuary smoking and drinking, the clerk gravely saying, with a pipe
in his mouth, that such had been their custom for the last sixty
years."

Although probably the conduct of the Codrington parishioners was
unusual, it is certain that in the seventeenth century smoking at
meetings held, not in the church itself, but in the vestry, was
common. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Leicester, 1665-6,
record the expenditure--"In beer and tobacco from first to last 7s.
10d." In those of St. Alphege, London Wall, for 1671, there are the
entries--"For Pipes and Tobaccoe in the Vestry 2s.," and "For a grosse
of pipes at severall times 2s." In the next century, however, the
practice was modified. The St. Alphege accounts for 1739 have the
entry--"Ordered that there be no Smoaking nor Drinking for the future
in the Vestry Room during the time business is doing on pain of
forfeiting one shilling, Assention Day excepted." From this it would
seem fair to infer (1) that there was no objection to the lighting of
pipes in the vestry after the business of the meeting had been
transacted; and (2) that on Ascension Day for some inscrutable reason
there was no prohibition at all of "Smoaking and Drinking."

Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember in "The Heart of Midlothian"
one curious instance of eighteenth-century smoking in church--in a
Scottish Presbyterian church, too. Jeanie Deans's beloved Reuben
Butler was about to be ordained to the charge of the parish of
Knocktarlitie, Dumbartonshire; the congregation were duly seated,
after prayers, douce David Deans occupying a seat among the elders,
and the officiating minister had read his text preparatory to the
delivery of his hour and a quarter sermon. The redoubtable Duncan of
Knockdunder was making his preparations also for the sermon. "After
rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, he
produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed almost aloud,
'I hae forgotten my spleuchan--Lachlan, gang doon to the Clachan, and
bring me up a pennyworth of twist.' Six arms, the nearest within
reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to
the man of office. He made choice of one with a nod of acknowledgment,
filled his pipe, lighted it with the assistance of his pistol-flint,
and smoked with infinite composure during the whole time of the
sermon. When the discourse was finished, he knocked the ashes out of
his pipe, replaced it in his sporran, returned the tobacco-pouch or
spleuchan to its owner, and joined in the prayers with decency and
attention." David Deans, however, did not at all approve this
irreverence. "It didna become a wild Indian," he said, "much less a
Christian and a gentleman, to sit in the kirk puffing tobacco-reek, as
if he were in a change-house." The date of the incident was 1737; but
whether Sir Walter had any authority in fact for this characteristic
performance of Knockdunder, or not, it is certain that any such
occurrence in a Scottish kirk must have been extremely rare.

Knockdunder's pipe, according to Scott, was made of iron. This was an
infrequent material for tobacco-pipes, but there are a few examples
in museums. In the Belfast Museum there is a cast iron tobacco-pipe
about eighteen inches long. With it are shown another, very short,
also of cast iron, the bowl of a brass pipe, and a pipe, about six
inches in length, made of sheet iron.

Another eighteenth-century instance of smoking in church, taken from
historical fact and not from fiction, is associated with the church of
Hayes, in Middlesex. The parish registers of that village bear witness
to repeated disputes between the parson and bell-ringers and the
parishioners generally in 1748-1754. In 1752 it was noted that a
sermon had been preached after a funeral "to a noisy congregation." On
another occasion, says the register, "the ringers and other
inhabitants disturbed the service from the beginning of prayers to the
end of the sermon, by ringing the bells, and going into the gallery to
spit below"; while at yet another time "a fellow came into church with
a pot of beer and a pipe," and remained "smoking in his own pew until
the end of the sermon." Going to church at Hayes in those days must
have been quite an exciting experience. No one knew what might happen
next.

In remote English and Welsh parishes men seem occasionally to have
smoked in churches without any intention of being irreverent, and
without any consciousness that they were doing anything unusual. Canon
Atkinson, in his delightful book "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish,"
tells how, when he first went to Danby in Cleveland--then very remote
from the great world--and had to take his first funeral, he found
inside the church the parish clerk, who was also parish schoolmaster
by the way, sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window with
his hat on and comfortably smoking his pipe. A correspondent of the
_Times_ in 1895 mentioned that his mother had told him how she
remembered seeing smoking in a Welsh church about 1850--"The Communion
table stood in the aisle, and the farmers were in the habit of putting
their hats upon it, and when the sermon began they lit their pipes and
smoked, but without any idea of irreverence." In an Essex church about
1861, a visitor had pointed out to him various nooks in the gallery
where short pipes were stowed away, which he was informed the old men
smoked during service; and several of the pews in the body of the
church contained triangular wooden spittoons filled with sawdust.

A clergyman has put it on record that when he went in 1873 as
curate-in-charge to an out-of-the-way Norfolk village, at his first
early celebration he arrived in church about 7.45 A.M., and, he says,
"to my amazement saw five old men sitting round the stove in the nave
with their hats on, smoking their pipes. I expostulated with them
quite quietly, but they left the church before service and never came
again. I discovered afterwards that they had been regular
communicants, and that my predecessor always distributed the offertory
to the poor present immediately after the service. When these men, in
the course of my remonstrance found that I was not going to continue
the custom, they no longer cared to be communicants."

Nowadays, if smoking takes place in church at all, it can only be done
with intentional irreverence; and it is painful to think that even at
the present day there are people in whom a feeling of reverence and
decency is so far lacking as to lead them to desecrate places of
worship. The Vicar of Lancaster, at his Easter vestry meeting in 1913,
complained of bank-holiday visitors to the parish church who ate their
lunch, smoked, and wore their hats while looking round the building.
It is absurd to suppose that these people were unconscious of the
impropriety of their conduct.




XV

TOBACCONISTS' SIGNS

    "I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which
    bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals."

          ADDISON, _Spectator_, April 2, 1711.


Shop-signs were one of the most conspicuous features of the streets of
old London. In days when the numbering of houses was unknown, the use
of signs was indispensable for identification; and greatly must they
have contributed to the quaint and picturesque appearance of the
streets. Some projected far over the narrow roadway--competition to
attract attention and custom is no modern novelty--some were fastened
to posts or pillars in front of the houses. By the time of Charles II
the overhanging signs had become a nuisance and a danger, and in the
seventh year of that King's reign an Act was passed providing that no
sign should hang across the street, but that all should be fixed to
the balconies or fronts or sides of houses. This Act was not strictly
obeyed; and large numbers of signs were hung over the doors, while
many others were affixed to the fronts of the houses. Eventually, in
the second half of the eighteenth century, signs gradually disappeared
and the streets were numbered. There were occasional survivals which
are to be found to this day, such as the barber's pole, accompanied
sometimes by the brass basin of the barber-surgeon, the glorified
canister of a grocer or the golden leg of a hosier; and inn signs have
never failed us; but by the close of the eighteenth century most of
the old trade signs which flaunted themselves in the streets had
disappeared.

The sellers of tobacco naturally hung out their signs like other
tradesfolk. Signs in their early days were, no doubt, chosen to
intimate the trades of those who used them, and in the easy-going
old-fashioned days when it was considered the right and natural thing
for a son to be brought up to his father's trade and to succeed him
therein, they long remained appropriate and intelligible. Later, as we
shall see, they became meaningless in many cases. But in the days when
tobacco-smoking first came into vogue, the signs chosen naturally had
some reference to the trade they indicated, and one of the earliest
used was the sign of the "Black Boy," in allusion to the association
of the negro with tobacco cultivation. The "Black Boy" existed as a
shop-sign before tobacco's triumph, for Henry Machyn in his "Diary,"
so early as December 30, 1562, mentions a goldsmith "dwellying at the
sene of the Blake Boy, in the Cheep"; but the early sellers of tobacco
soon fastened on this appropriate sign. The earliest reference to such
use may be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, where, in
the first scene, Humphrey Waspe says: "I thought he would have run mad
o' the Black Boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco
there." Later, the "Black Boy," like other once significant signs,
became meaningless and was used in connexion with various trades.
Early in the eighteenth century a bookseller at the sign of the
"Black Boy" on London Bridge was advertising Defoe's "Robinson
Crusoe"; another bookseller traded at the "Black Boy" in Paternoster
Row in 1712. Linendrapers, hatters, pawnbrokers and other tradesmen
all used the same sign at various dates in the eighteenth century. But
side by side with this indiscriminate and unnecessary use of the sign
there existed a continuous association of the "Black Boy" with the
tobacco trade. A tobacconist named Milward lived at the "Black Boy" in
Redcross Street, Barbican, in 1742; and many old tobacco papers show a
black boy, or sometimes two, smoking. Mr. Holden MacMichael, in his
papers on "The London Signs" says: "Mrs. Skinner, of the
old-established tobacconist's opposite the Law Courts in the Strand,
possessed, about the year 1890, two signs of the 'Black Boy,'
appertaining, no doubt, to the old house of Messrs. Skinner's on
Holborn Hill, of the front of which there is an illustration in the
Archer Collection in the Print Department of the British Museum, where
the black boy and tobacco-rolls are depicted outside the premises."
The "Black Boy," indeed, continued in use by tobacconists until the
nineteenth century was well advanced. A tobacconist had a shop "uppon
Wapping Wall" in 1667 at the sign of the "Black Boy and Pelican."

Other significant early tobacconists' signs were "Sir Walter Raleigh,"
"The Virginian" and "The Tobacco Roll." "Sir Walter," as the reputed
introducer of tobacco, was naturally chosen as a sign, and his
portrait adorns several shop-bills in the Banks Collection. The
American Indians, represented under the figure of "The Virginian," and
the negroes were hopelessly confused by the early tobacconists, with
results which were sometimes surprising from an ethnological point of
view. As the first tobacco imported into this country came from
Virginia, a supposed "Virginian" was naturally adopted as a
tobacco-seller's sign at an early date. An "Indian" or a "Negro" or a
figure which was a combination of both, was commonly represented
wearing a kilt or a girdle of tobacco leaves, a feathered head-dress,
and smoking a pipe. A tobacco-paper, dating from about the time of
Queen Anne, bears rudely engraved the figure of a negro smoking, and
holding a roll of tobacco in his hand. Above his head is a crown;
behind are two ships in full sail, with the sun just appearing from
the right-hand corner above. The foreground shows four little black
boys planting and packing tobacco, and below them is the name of the
ingenious tradesman--"John Winkley, Tobacconist, near ye Bridge, in
the Burrough, Southwark." Sixty years or so ago a wooden figure,
representing a negro with a gilt loin-cloth and band with feathered
head, and sometimes with a tobacco roll, was still a frequent ornament
of tobacconists' shops.

The "Tobacco Roll," either alone or in various combinations, was one
of the commonest of early tobacconists' signs, and was in constant use
for a couple of centuries. It may still be occasionally seen at the
present time in the form of the "twist" with alternate brown or black
and yellow coils, which up to quite a recent date was a tolerably
frequent adornment of tobacconists' shops, but is now rare. This roll
represented what was called spun or twist tobacco. Dekker, in James
I's time, speaks of roll tobacco. The youngster who mimics the
stage-gallants in Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels" as described in Chapter
II (_ante_; page 31), says that he has "three sorts of tobacco in his
pocket," which probably means that it was customary to mix for smoking
purposes tobacco of the three usual kinds--roll (or pudding), leaf and
cane. One would have thought that a representation of the tobacco
plant itself would have been a more natural and comprehensive sign
than one particular preparation of the herb, yet representations of
the plant were rare, while those of the compressed tobacco known as
pudding or roll in the form of a "Tobacco Roll," as described above,
were very frequently used as signs.

From the examples given in Burn's "Descriptive Catalogue of London
Tokens" of the seventeenth century, it is clear that the "Tobacco
Roll" was a warm favourite. "Three Tobacco Rolls" was also used as a
sign. In 1732 there was a "Tobacco Roll" in Finch Lane, on the north
side of Cornhill, "over against the Swan and Rummer Tavern." In 1766,
Mrs. Flight, tobacconist, carried on her business at the "Tobacco
Roll. Next door but one to St. Christopher's Church, Threadneedle
Street."

The shop-bill of Richard Lee, who sold tobacco about 1730 "at Ye
Golden Tobacco Roll in Panton Street near Leicester Fields," is an
elaborate production. Hogarth in the earlier period of his career as
an engraver engraved many shop-bills, and this particular bill is
usually attributed to him, though the attribution has been disputed.
There is a copy of the bill in the British Museum, and in the
catalogue of the prints and drawings in the National Collection Mr.
Stephens thus describes it: "It is an oblong enclosing an oval, the
spandrels being occupied by leaves of the tobacco plant tied in
bundles; the above title (Richard Lee at Ye Golden Tobacco Roll in
Panton Street near Leicester Fields) is on a frame which encloses the
oval. Within the latter the design represents the interior of a room,
with ten gentlemen gathered near a round table on which is a bowl of
punch; several of the gentlemen are smoking tobacco in long pipes; one
of them stands up on our right and vomits; another, who is
intoxicated, lies on the floor by the side of a chair; a fire of wood
burns in the grate; on the wall hangs two pictures ... three men's
hats hang on pegs on the wall." Altogether this is an interesting and
suggestive design, but hardly in the taste likely to commend itself to
present day tradesmen.

A roll of tobacco, it may be noted, was a common form of payment to
the Fleet parsons for their scoundrelly services. Pennant, writing in
1791, describes how these men hung out their frequent signs of a male
and female hand conjoined, with the legend written below: "Marriages
performed within." Before his shop walked the parson--"a squalid,
profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery
face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin, or roll of tobacco."

Combinations of the roll in tobacconists' signs occur occasionally. In
1660 there was a "Tobacco Roll and Sugar Loaf" at Gray's Inn Gate,
Holborn. In 1659 James Barnes issued a farthing token from the "Sugar
Loaf and Three Tobacco Rolls" in the Poultry, London. The "Sugar Loaf"
was the principal grocer's sign, and so when it is found in
combination with the tobacco roll at this time it may reasonably be
assumed that the proprietor of the business was a grocer who was also
a tobacconist.

Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the signs were
ceasing to have any necessary association with the trade carried on
under them, and tobacconists are found with shop-signs which had no
reference in any way to tobacco. For instance, to take a few examples
from the late Mr. Hilton Price's lists of "Signs of Old London" from
Cheapside and adjacent streets, in 1695 John Arundell, tobacconist,
was at the "White Horse," Wood Street; in the same year J. Mumford,
tobacconist, was at the "Faulcon," Laurence Lane; in 1699 Mr. Brutton,
tobacconist, was to be found at the "Three Crowns," under the Royal
Exchange; in 1702 Richard Bronas, tobacconist, was at the "Horse
Shoe," Bread Street; and in 1766 Mr. Hoppie, of the "Oil Jar: Old
Change, Watling Street End," advertised that he "sold a newly invented
phosphorus powder for lighting pipes quickly in about half a minute.
Ask for a Bottle of Thunder Powder."

Again, in Fleet Street, Mr. Townsend, tobacconist, traded in 1672 at
the "Three Golden Balls," near St. Dunstan's Church; while at the end
of Fetter Lane, a few years later, John Newland, tobacconist, was to
be found at the "King's Head."

Addison, in the twenty-eighth _Spectator_, April 2, 1711, took note of
the severance which had taken place between sign and trade, and of the
absurdity that the sign no longer had any significance. After
satirizing first, the monstrous conjunctions in signs of "Dog and
Gridiron," "Cat and Fiddle" and so forth; and next the absurd custom
by which young tradesmen, at their first starting in business, added
their own signs to those of the masters under whom they had served
their apprenticeship; the essayist goes on to say: "In the third
place I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some
affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent
than to see ... a tailor at the Lion? A cook should not live at the
Boot, nor a Shoe-maker at the Roasted Pig; and yet for want of this
regulation, I have seen a Goat set up before the door of a perfumer,
and the French King's Head at a sword-cutler's."

Notwithstanding the few examples given above, tobacconists, more than
most tradesmen, seem to have continued to use signs that had at least
some relevance to their trade. Abel Drugger was a "tobacco-man,"
_i.e._ a tobacco-seller in Ben Jonson's play of "The Alchemist," 1610,
so that it is not very surprising to find the name used occasionally
as a tobacconist's sign. Towards the end of the eighteenth century one
Peter Cockburn traded as a tobacconist at the sign of the "Abel
Drugger" in Fenchurch Street, and informed the public on the
advertising papers in which he wrapped up his tobacco for customers
that he had formerly been shopman at the Sir Roger de Coverley--a
notice which has preserved the name of another tobacconist's sign
borrowed from literature. Seventeenth--century London signs were the
"Three Tobacco Pipes," "Two Tobacco Pipes" crossed, and "Five Tobacco
Pipes." At Edinburgh in the eighteenth century there were tobacconists
who used two pipes crossed, a roll of tobacco and two leaves over two
crossed pipes, and a roll of tobacco and three leaves.

The older tobacconists were wont to assert, says Larwood, that the man
in the moon could enjoy his pipe, hence "the 'Man in the Moon' is
represented on some of the tobacconists' papers in the Banks
Collection puffing like a steam engine, and underneath the words,
'Who'll smoake with ye Man in ye Moone?'" The Dutch, as every one
knows, are great smokers, so a Dutchman has been a common figure on
tobacconists' signs. In the eighteenth century a common device was
three figures representing a Dutchman, a Scotchman and a sailor,
explained by the accompanying rhyme:

    _We three are engaged in one cause,
    I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws!_

Larwood says that a tobacconist in the Kingsland Road had the three
men on his sign, but with a different legend:

    _This Indian weed is good indeed,
    Puff on, keep up the joke
    'Tis the best, 'twill stand the test,
      Either to chew or smoke._

The bill bearing this sign is in Banks's Collection, 1750. Another in
the same collection, with a similar meaning but of more elaborate
design, shows the three men, the central figure having his hands in
his pockets and in his mouth a pipe from which smoke is rolling. The
man on the left advances towards this central figure holding out a
pipe, above which is the legend "Voule vous de Rape." Above the middle
man is "No dis been better." The third man, on the right, holds out,
also towards the central figure, a tobacco-box, above which is the
legend "Will you have a quid."

A frequent sign-device among dealers in snuff was the Crown and Rasp.
The oldest method of taking snuff, says Larwood, in the "History of
Signboards," was "to scrape it with a rasp from the dry root of the
tobacco plant; the powder was then placed on the back of the hand and
so snuffed up; hence the name of _râpé_ (rasped) for a kind of snuff,
and the common tobacconist's sign of La Carotte d'or (the golden root)
in France." _Râpé_ became in English "rappee," familiar in
snuff-taking days as the name for a coarse kind of snuff made from the
darker and ranker tobacco leaves. The list of prices and names given
by Wimble, a snuff-seller, about 1740, and printed in Fairholt's
"History of Tobacco," contains eighteen different kinds of
rappee--English, best English, fine English, high-flavoured coarse,
low, scented, composite, &c. The rasps for obtaining this _râpé_,
continues Larwood, "were carried in the waistcoat pocket, and soon
became articles of luxury, being carved in ivory and variously
enriched. Some of them, in ivory and inlaid wood, may be seen at the
Hotel Cluny in Paris, and an engraving of such an object occurs in
'Archæologia,' vol. xiii. One of the first snuff-boxes was the
so-called _râpé_ or _grivoise_ box, at the back of which was a little
space for a piece of the root, whilst a small iron rasp was contained
in the middle. When a pinch was wanted, the root was drawn a few times
over the iron rasp, and so the snuff was produced and could be offered
to a friend with much more grace than under the above-mentioned
process with the pocket-grater."

The tobacconists' sign that for very many years was in most general
use was the figure of a highlander, which may still perhaps be found
in one or two places, but which was not at all an unusual sight in the
streets of London and other towns some forty or fifty years ago. Most
men of middle age can remember when the snuff-taking highlander was
the usual ornament to the entrance of a tobacconist's shop; but all
have disappeared from London streets save two--I say two on the
authority of Mr. E.V. Lucas, who gives it (in his "Wanderer in
London") as the number of the survivors; but only one is known to me.
This is the famous old wooden highlander which stood for more than a
hundred years on guard at a tobacconist's shop in Tottenham Court
Road. About the end of 1906 it was announced that the shop was to be
demolished, and that the time-worn figure was for sale. The
announcement created no small stir, and it was said that the offers
for the highlander ran up to a surprising figure. He was bought
ultimately by a neighbouring furnishing firm, and now stands on duty
not far from his ancient post, though no passer-by can help feeling
the incongruity between the time-honoured emblem of the snuff-taker
and his present surroundings of linoleum "and sich."

Where Mr. Lucas's second survivor may be is unknown to me. Not so many
years ago a wooden highlander, as a tobacconist's sign, was a
conspicuous figure in Knightsbridge, and there was another in the
Westminster Bridge Road; but _tempus edax rerum_ has consumed them
with all their brethren. In a few provincial towns a wooden highlander
may still be found at the door of tobacco shops, but they are probably
destined to early disappearance. In 1907 one still stood guard--a tall
figure in full costume--outside a tobacconist's shop in Cheltenham,
and may still be there. There is a highlander of oak in the costume of
the Black Watch still standing, I believe, in the doorway of a tobacco
shop at St. Heliers, Jersey. It is traditionally said to have been
originally the figure-head of a war vessel which was wrecked on the
Alderney coast. Another survivor may be seen at the door of a shop
belonging to Messrs. Churchman, tobacco manufacturers, in Westgate
Street, Ipswich. A correspondent of "Notes and Queries" describes it
as a very fine specimen in excellent condition, and adds: "Mr. W.
Churchman informs me that it belonged to his grandfather, who
established the business in Ipswich in 1790, and he believed it was
quite 'a hundred' year old at that time."

One of the earliest known examples of these highlanders as
tobacconists' signs is that which was placed at the door of a shop in
Coventry Street which was opened in 1720 under the sign of "The
Highlander, Thistle and Crown." This is said to have been a favourite
place of resort of the Jacobites. In his "Nicotine and its Rariora,"
Mr. A.M. Broadley gives the card, dated 1765, of "William Kebb, at ye
Highlander ye corner of Pall Mall, facing St. James's, Haymarket," and
says that the highlander was a favourite tobacconist's sign for 200
years. I have been unable, however, to find evidence of such a
prolonged period of favour. I know of no certain seventeenth-century
reference to the highlander as a tobacconist's sign.

The figure was usually made with a snuff mull in his hand--the
highlander being always credited with a great love and a great
capacity for snuff-taking. But one curious example was furnished, not
only with a mull but with a bat-like implement of unknown use. Mr.
Arthur Denman, F.S.A., writing in _Notes and Queries_, April 17, 1909,
said: "I have a very neat little, genuine specimen of the old
tobacconist's sign of a 42nd Highlander with his 'mull.' It is 3 ft.
6 in. high, and it differs from those usually met with in that under
the left arm is an implement almost exactly like a cricket-bat. This
bat has a gilt knob to the handle, and on the shoulder of it are three
chevrons in gold, without doubt a sergeant's stripes. On the exposed
side of the bat is what would appear to represent a loose strip of
wood. This strip is nearly one-third of the width of the instrument,
and extends up the middle about two-fifths of the length of the body
of it. I can only guess that the bat was, at some time, primarily, an
emblem of a sergeant's office, and, secondarily, used for the
infliction of chastisement on clumsy or disorderly recruits; and
perhaps it was equivalent to the _Prügel_ of German armies, with which
sergeants drove lagging warriors into the fray. But is there any
record of such an accoutrement as being that of a sergeant in the
British army? and what was the purpose of the loose strip, unless it
was to cause the blow administered to resound as much as to hurt, as
does the wand of Harlequin in a booth."

These questions received no answers from the learned correspondents of
the most useful and omniscient of weekly papers. Personally, I much
doubt Mr. Denman's suggested explanations of his highlander's curious
implement. There is no evidence that a sergeant in the British army
ever carried a cricket-bat-like implement either as a sign of office
or to be used for disciplinary or punitive purposes like the canes of
the German sergeants of long ago. It would seem to be more likely that
this particular figure was of unusual, perhaps unique, make, and had
some special local or individual significance, wherever or for whom
it was first made and used, which has now been forgotten.

After the suppression of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the English
Government made war on Scottish nationality, and among other measures
the wearing of the highland dress was forbidden by Parliament. On this
occasion the following paragraph appeared in the newspapers of the
time: "We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so
heroically the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the
Legislature, in order that they may be excused from complying with the
Act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress: alledging that
they have ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having
constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls when
they marched by them, and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that
they have never entertained a rebellious thought; whence they humbly
hope that they shall not be put to the expense of buying new cloaths."
This is not a very humorous production, but at least it bears witness
to the common occurrence in 1746 of the highlander's figure at the
shops of snuff and tobacco-sellers.

The highlander, as he existed within living memory at many shop doors,
and as he still exists at a few, was and is the survivor of many
similar wooden figures as trade signs. The wooden figure of a negro or
"Indian" with gilt loin-cloth and feathered head, has already been
mentioned as an old tobacconist's sign. In early Georgian days a
tobacconist named John Bowden, who dealt in all kinds of snuff, and
also in "Aloe, Pigtail, and Wild Tobacco; with all sorts of
perfumer's goods, wholesale and retail," traded at the sign of "The
Highlander and Black Boy" in Threadneedle Street, London. At York, in
this present year, 1914, I came upon a brightly painted wooden figure
of Napoleon in full uniform and snuff-box in hand, standing at the
door of a small tobacco-shop. Another class of sign or emblem was
represented by the "wooden midshipman," which many of us have seen in
Leadenhall Street, and which Dickens made famous in "Dombey and Son."
Sometimes the wooden figure of a sailor stood outside public-houses
with such signs as "The Jolly Sailor"; and a black doll was long a
familiar token of the loathly shop kept by the tradesmen mysteriously
known as Marine Store Dealers. Images of this kind sometimes stood at
the door, or in many cases were placed on brackets or swung from the
lintels.

Sir Walter Scott said that in London a Scotchman would walk half a
mile farther to purchase his ounce of snuff where the sign of the
Highlander announced a North Briton.

Dickens's little figure, which adorned old Sol Gills's shop, "thrust
itself out above the pavement, right leg foremost," with shoe buckles
and flapped waistcoat very much unlike the real thing, and "bore at
its right eye the most offensively disproportionate piece of
machinery." But this was only one of many "little timber midshipmen in
obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the shop-doors of
nautical instrument-makers in taking observations of the
hackney-coaches." All have disappeared, together with the black dolls
of the rag shops and many other old-time figures. A stray highlander
or two, or other figure, may survive here and there; but with very few
exceptions indeed, the once abundant tobacconists' signs have
disappeared from our streets as completely as the emblems and tokens
of other trades.




INDEX


Adams, Parson, 104-106

Addison, Joseph, 92, 94

"Aldermen," 89

Aldrich, Dr. of Oxford, 83, 84, 85

Alfred Club, 166

Althorp, Lord, 147

Amadas, Captain P., 13

Andrewes, Bishop, 22

Angelo, Henry, 121, 122, 144

Apothecaries, Society of, 90

Appleton family, 209

Arber, Edward, 12

Archer Collection, 237

Athenæum Club, 139, 186

_Athenian Oracle, The_, 210

Atkinson, Canon, 231

Aubrey, John, 21, 23, 205

Austin, Alfred, 169


'Bacconist, 68

Balzac, H. de, 181, 182

Banks's Collection, 237, 242

Barclay, Dr. William, 52

Barlow, Bishop, 83

Barlow, Captain, 13

Barrow, Isaac, 83

Bates, Dr. George, 58

Bath, 90

Beaumont and Fletcher, 32

Bell, W.G., 45

Benson, Archbishop, 169

Blackburn, Archbishop, 227

Blackie, Prof. J.S., 188

Boyd-Carpenter, Bishop, 222

Bradley, Ben, 114

Brass pipe, 231

Briar-pipes, 163, 175, 176

Broadley, A.M., 246

Brooks's Club, 196

Brougham, Lord, 147

Brown, Tom, 91, 212

Browne, Isaac H., 112

Browning, Robert, 188

Brushfield, Dr., 15, 21, 61

Buckland, Frank, 188

Bull, Rev. W., 128-130

Burn, J.H., 66, 239

Burnet, Bishop, 83, 84

Burney, Frances, 121

Burney, Dr., 109

Burton, Robert, 26, 50

Burton, Thomas, 67

Butler, Samuel, 183

Byron, Lord, 141, 166


Calthorp, Lord, 147

Cambridge, 70, 95, 102, 132-134, 168, 171, 191, 225, 226

Camden, William, 45

Campbell, Thomas, 141

Carlyle, Thomas, 170, 188

Cecil, Sir Robert, 36

Chapman, George, 29, 42, 55

Charles I, 58, 63

Charles II, 70, 71

Cheroots, 138, 156

Chester, 89, 109

Chicago, 222

Chichester, 57

Chigwell, 54

Church, smoking in, 225-233

"Churchwardens," 89, 162-164, 170

Churchwardens' accounts, 47, 73, 226, 229

Cigarettes, 159, 179-183, 187, 189, 194, 195, 217-223

Cigars, 137-141, 144-148, 155-157, 159, 166, 169, 172, 179, 187, 194,
  195, 218-222

Clarendon, Earl of, 59

Clark, John Willis, 171, 191

Club snuff-box, 187

Clubs, 139, 165, 166, 186, 187, 196, 197

Coffee-houses, 81, 91-95

Cogers' Hall, 107, 159, 160

Coke, Mr., of Norfolk, 147

Coleridge, S.T., 123, 142, 143

Collins, Mortimer, 220

Collins, Wilkie, 204

Colton, Rev. C.C., 139

Coltsfoot, 43

Commons, House of, 34, 66, 146, 198

_Connoisseur_, The, 100, 101

Cooper, Sir Astley, 167

Cooper, T.P., 79

Cork, Earl of, 22

Cornwall, 210

Coverley, Sir Roger de, 93

Cowper, William, 128-131

Cox, G.V., 131, 132

Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 183

Croker, J.W., 139

Cromwell, Oliver, 58, 63, 72

Cromwell, Richard, 67

Crowe, Rev. W., 103

Cruikshank, George, 19, 150

Cullum, Sir John, 80

Cuming, H. Syer, 78

"Cutties," 162, 164


Dahomey, King of, 221

Dalmahoy, Thomas, 60

D'Anvers, A., 95

D'Aumale, Duc, 187

Deacon, 53

Defoe, Daniel, 78

Dekker, T., 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 39, 51, 238

Denison, Archdeacon, 131, 132, 141

Denman, Arthur, 246

Derby, 75, 114

Devonshire, 211

Devonshire, Duke of, 185

Dickens, Charles, 150-153, 155, 161, 180, 218, 219, 249

Disney, John, 227

Ditchfield, P.H., 228

Dixon, Hepworth, 21

Dodsley's "Collection," 112, 213

"Dog and Duck, The," 122

Dryden, John, 84

Dublin, 214

Durham House, Strand, 20, 21


Eachard, John, 70

Earle, Bishop, 25, 39

Earle, Mrs. A.M., 65

Edward VII, 187, 189

Eldon, Lord, 147

Eliot, John, 66

Elizabeth, Queen, 50, 205

Ely, 89

Ember-tongs, 41

Essex, Earl of, 35

Eton, 77

Evelyn, John, 58, 73, 96

Exeter, 46


Fairholt, F.W., 52, 180

Farmer, Dr., 133

Fielding, Henry, 101, 106, 117

Fiennes, Celia, 210

Fitz-Boodle, George, 157

Fleet parsons, 240

Fox, George, 86

Furniss, Harry, 159, 165


Gale, Walter, 101

Garbutt, Jane, 216

Garrick, David, 106, 120

Garrick Club, 165, 187

Garth, Sir Samuel, 86

Gillray, James, 121

Gladstone, W.E., 189

Glapthorne, George, 209

Godley, A.D., 103

Goldsmith, Oliver, 120

Gonzales' "Voyage," 109

Goodyear, Joseph, 19

Granger, J., 83

Gray, Thomas, 102

Greenaway Manor House, 20

Gronow, Captain, 134, 167

Grosley's "Travels," 122

Grunning, Henry, 133


Hall, Bishop, 25

Hall, Robert, 228

Handel, G.F., 109

Harcourt, Sir William, 189

Hariot, Thomas, 15, 16, 20

Harrison, William, 14

Hastings, Squire, 35

Hawkins, Sir John, 14

Hawstead Place, 80

Hayes Barton, 20

Hayes, Middlesex, 231

Hayne, John, 61

Hearne, Thomas, 75, 77, 110

Hemstridge, 18

Hentzner, 32

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 35

Highlander, wooden, 244-248

Hobbes, Thomas, 85

Hogarth, William, 115-117, 125, 239

Holiday, Barten, 56

Holtzendorff, Franz von, 160-162

Hone, William, 19

Hook, Theodore, 197

Howell, James, 75

Hyndman, H.M., 180


Inderwick, tobacconist, 162

Innocent XII, Pope, 225

Iron pipes, 230, 231

Islington, Old Pied Bull at, 19


James I, 13, 14, 34, 37, 50, 62, 75, 206, 225

James, John, 131

Jeffreys, Lord Chief Justice, 73

Jekyll, Miss G., 41, 148

Jessopp, Dr. A., 86

Johnson, Dr., 119, 120

Jollie, Thomas, 74

Jonson, Ben, 27, 29, 30, 31, 42, 43, 48, 207

Jorevin, Monsieur, 211


Keene, Charles, 168

Kingsley, Charles, 169

Knight, Joseph, 170

Koet, Captain, 12


Lamb, Charles, 142-144

Lambeth Palace, 70

Lancaster, 233

Lane, Ralph, 13

Lang, Andrew, 181

Larwood, J., 242, 243

Le Blanc, Abbé, 110

Leslie, Sir James, 60

Licences, 45, 46, 60

Lilly, the Astrologer, 71

Liviez, Monsieur, 122

Livingstone, Matthew, 60

Lockhart, J.G., 141

Lockyer, Sir Norman, 187

Long, Sir Henry, 19

Lord Mayor's Show, 73

Lords, House of, 36

Lovat, Lord, 107

Lucas, E.V., 245

Lucknow, Siege of, 174

Lutterworth, 169

Lyte's "Dodoens," 43

Lytton, Lord, 176


Macaulay, Lord, 146

MacMichael, J.H., 237

Malet, Colonel H., 163

Marlborough Club, 187

Marston, John, 55, 207

"Mashers," 182

Medicinal smoking, 12, 16, 36, 37, 50, 53-56, 75-78

Methwold, Suffolk, 88

Middleton, Captain W., 12

Millais, Sir John, 187

Milo, tobacconist, 162, 163

Milton, John, 63

Milverton, 47

Misson's "Travels," 211

Molly, Pheasy, 236

Monk, General, 71

Moore, Rev. Giles, 72, 209

Morris, William, 188

Munby, A.J., 175

Muratt, B.L. de, 91


Neem-leaves, 175

Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 160, 180, 185, 201

Nevill, Ralph, 186

Newcastle, Marquis of, 58

New England, 47, 64-66

Newton, Sir Isaac, 85

Newton, Rev. John, 128

Nicot, Jean, 12

North, Lord, 86

North Elmham, Norfolk, 73

Norwich, 47, 73

_Notes and Queries_, 149, 246, 247


Oliphant, L., 180, 181

Ouida, 181, 217

Oxford, 37, 95, 102-104, 110, 131, 172


Palgrave, F.T., 132, 158

Parr, Dr., 125-127, 144, 227

Paul, Herbert, 183

Penn, William, 80, 87

Pennant, T., 12

Penzance, 18

Pepys, Samuel, 77, 96

Petersham, Lord, 134

Philips, John, 84, 85, 112

Picnic Society, 122

Plague, The, and tobacco, 75-78

Plague-pipes, 78

Pope, Alexander, 94

Porson, Richard, 127, 132

Powys, Captain Richard, 120

Price, F.G. Hilton, 241

Price, Captain Thomas, 12

Prideaux, Colonel W.F., 163, 164

Prince Regent, the, 134

Prior, Matthew, 94

Pryme, A. de la, 64, 95

Pryme, George, 132

Prynne, William, 206

_Punch_, 166, 173, 183, 220

Puritans and tobacco, 47, 64


Quakers and tobacco, 86-88, 111, 215

Quilp, 155


Railway travelling, 173, 184, 221

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 13-23, 205

Ram Alley, 45, 46

Rasps, 214, 244

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 120

Rich, Barnaby, 18, 43

Ritchie, Lady, 168

Robertson, T.W., 170

Rossetti, D.G., 188

Rossetti, W.M., 170

Rowlands, Samuel, 69

Rowlandson, Thomas, 121

Ruskin, John, 188, 189


Sage, David, 19

St. Bride's, Fleet Street, 73

St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, 45

St. Paul's Cathedral, 27, 48

Salvation Army, 202

Scotland, 60, 61

Scott, Sir Walter, 140, 141, 229

Sebright MSS., 12

Serjeant's Inn, 45

Shadwell, Thomas, 81

Shakespeare, William, 21, 56

Sidgwick, Arthur, 189

Sion College, 108, 135

Skinners' Company, 89

Smoking-rooms, 80, 81, 146, 159, 160-162, 165, 166

Smollett, Tobias, 175

Snuff-taking, 96, 97, 107, 108, 112, 113, 128, 134, 215, 244

Soldiers and smoking, 174

Sorbière, S. de, 80, 90

South Wraxall, 19

_Spectator_, The, 91-93, 213, 241

Spedding, James, 168

Spenser, Edmund, 56

Stanhope, Charles, 134

Stapley, Richard, 72

Steele, Sir R., 94

Steinmetz, A., 166

Stephen, J.K., 191

Stephens, F.G., 239

Sterne, Laurence, 104

Stevenson, R.L., 200

Stone parlours, 81

Stowell, Lord, 147

Sumner, Dr., of Harrow, 125

Sussex, H.R.H. the Duke of, 147

Sussex story, a, 203

Swift, Dean, 107, 214

Swinburne, A.C., 188

Sylvester, Joshua, 54, 206


Tarlton, Richard, 17

Taxi-cabs, 198

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 132, 168-170, 187, 189

Thackeray, W.M., 84, 139, 147, 154, 157-159, 165, 167, 168, 171

Theatres, smoking in, 30-32

Thoresby, Ralph, 22, 92

Thornbury, Walter, 20

Tiltyard, The, Whitehall, 49

Tobacco as disinfectant, 226

Tobacco-boxes, 26, 71, 72, 88, 124, 128, 132, 148

Tobacco-boxes, automatic, 148-150

Tobacco-duty, 62

Tobacco, kinds of, 27, 62, 73, 239

Tobacco-pipe-makers, Society of, 44, 78

Tobacco-pipes, 11, 14, 22, 23, 29, 32, 40, 57, 63, 79, 148, 163, 175

Tobacco prices, 29, 41, 61-63, 72, 73, 109

Tobacco sellers, 33, 39-48, 63

Tobacco-tongs, 26, 41, 63

Tobacconists' signs, 235-249

Townley's "High Life below Stairs," 111

Travellers' Club, 197

Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, 122

Twain, Mark, 203


Urban VIII, Pope, 225


Venner, Tobias, 51

Victoria, Queen, 160, 187, 221

Vienna, 145


Wallace Collection, 22

Walpole, Horace, 102

Walpole, Sir Robert, 114

Walton, Izaak, 55, 86

Ward, Ned, 91

Warton, Thomas, 102, 103

Week-ends, 100

Wellington, Duke of, 156, 202

Wesley, John, 108, 131

Wesley, Samuel, 108

Western, Squire, 101

White's Club, 165, 186

William III, 83, 84

Willis, N.P., 145

Wilson, Dr. Andrew, 202, 203

Winstanley, William, 71

Wither, George, 64

Wiveliscombe, 47

Women and tobacco smoke, 29, 32, 113, 157-168, 184, 205-223

Worcester, 211

_World_, The, 101, 104, 111

Wotton, Sir Henry, 55


Youghal, 20, 22


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  THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
  LONDON

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