The Social History of Smoking

ASHIONABLE

EORGIAN

the Snuff-box,

and gentlemen

n fashion all

much fallen

am Co

the Rev. John Newt

m 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, wou

tobacco published a few years ago wrote-"Dr. Johnson smoked like a furnace"-a grotesquely untrue statement-an

their Raphaels, Co

trumpet, and

ble world, and a great many others outside that charmed circle, did;

shed 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 c

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 to

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, smo

with tobacco-smoke as in earlier days. Grosley, in his "Tour to London," 1765, says that there were regular clubs, which were

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,

e 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, wh

it was that the Birmingham tradesman used, a half pipeful of which had such

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 commemorat

al "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 refil

ny; 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 remov

n 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

e 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 portra

ins 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 b

d 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 Newpo

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 thi

verse be yo

much, or mo

would, so

mote from w

hat 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 a

l box we

obacco, fin

Anticyra's

e the encum

transatla

e haunt, what

eposing o

o's spaci

g with deli

ra's dis

to cherish

nose-refre

her pulveri

assage to

touched with

g eddies t

more quicke

breath of a

e bard, if

oo wantonl

with a sa

of thy pow

* *

smoke-inh

filling, n

previous year, 1781. In this passage tobacco is abused in terms which Cowper clearly felt to need modification after his personal intercou

h solemn inte

sentence at a

ges drop the

puff-and speak,

ike the tube

ers! have more

opular smoking at that date was with ladies, and which have since

! whose scent t

to society'

ect is banish

e presence c

d the drug a g

min that infe

o to wit and

e the glory

oftest minds a

cy as the gru

much sympathy with John Wesley, who, in his detestation of what had been his fa

es"-"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 tr

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 F

gium," 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

h 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 wi

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 invet

ter 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

as 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 th

e 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 a

in the fashionable world, that is to say-but the dawn follows the dark