George Latimer Apperson

“ 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 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 [177] 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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 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 [102] 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”