|I see that Mr Joynson Hicks and Mrs Bramwell Booth have been talking to
women very seriously on the subject of smoking. “Would you like to see
your mother smoke?” asked Mr Hicks of the Queen's Hall audience he was
addressing, and Mrs Bramwell Booth pictured the mother blowing tobacco
smoke in the face of the baby she was nursing. I confess I have mixed
feelings on this subject, and in order to find out what I really think I
will write about it. And in the first place let us dispose of the baby.
I do not want to see mother blowing tobacco smoke in the face of the
baby. But neither do I want to see father doing so. If father is smoking
when he nurses the baby he will, I am sure, turn his head when he puffs
out his smoke. Do not let us drag in the baby.
The real point is in Mr Hicks' question. Would your respect or your
affection for your mother be lessened if she took to smoking. He would
not, of course, ask the question in relation to your father. It would be
absurd to say that your affection for your father was lessened because
he smoked a pipe or a cigar after dinner. You would as soon think of
disliking him for taking mustard with his mutton. It is a matter of
taste which has no moral implications either way. You may say it is
wasteful and unhygienic, but that is a criticism that applies to the
habit regardless of sex. Mr Hicks would not say that _women_ must not
smoke because the habit is wasteful and unhygienic and that _men_ may.
He would no more say this than he would say that it is right for men to
live in stuffy rooms, but wicked for women to do so, or that it is right
for men to get drunk but wrong for women to do so. In the matter of
drunkenness there is no discrimination between the sexes. We may feel
that it is more tragic in the case of the woman, but it is equally
disgusting in both sexes.
What Mr Hicks really maintains is that a habit which is innocent in men
is vicious in women. But this is a confusion of thought. It is mixing up
morals with customs. Custom has habituated us to men smoking and women
not smoking, and we have converted it into a moral code. Had the custom
been otherwise we should have been equally happy with it. If Carlyle,
for example, had been in Mr Hicks' audience he would have answered the
question with a snort of rage. He and his mother used to smoke their
pipes together in solemn comradeship as they talked of time and
eternity, and no one who has read his letters will doubt his love for
her. There are no such letters from son to mother in all literature. And
of course Mr Hicks knows many admirable women who smoke. I should not be
surprised to know that at dinner to-night he will be in the company of
some women who smoke, and that he will be as cordial with them as with
those who do not smoke.
And yet.... Last night I was coming along Victoria Street on the top of
a bus, and saw two young women in front light cigarettes and begin to
smoke. And I am bound to confess I felt sorry, as I always do at these
now not infrequent incidents. Sorry, and puzzled that I was sorry, for I
had been smoking a cigarette myself, and had not felt at all guilty. If
smoking is an innocent pleasure, said I, which is as reasonable in the
case of women as in the case of men, why should I dislike to see women
smoking outdoors while I am doing the same thing myself? You are an
irrational fellow, said I. Of course I am an irrational fellow, I
replied. We are all irrational fellows. If we were brought to the
judgment seat of pure reason how few of us would escape the cells.
Nevertheless, beneath the feeling there was a reason. Those two young
women smoking on the top of the bus were a symbol. Their trail of smoke
was a flag--the flag of the rebellion of women. But then I got perplexed
again. For I rejoice in this great uprising of women--this universal
claim to equality of status with men. It is the most momentous fact of
the time. And, as I have said, I do not disapprove of the flag. Yet when
I saw the flag, of which I did not disapprove (for I wore it myself),
flaunted publicly as the symbol of the rebellion in which I rejoice, I
felt a cold chill. And probing to the bottom of this paradox, I came to
the conclusion that it was the wrong symbol for the idea. These young
women were proclaiming their freedom in false terms. Because men smoked
on the top of the bus they must smoke too--not perhaps because they
liked it, but because they felt it was a little daring, and put them on
an equality with men. But imitation is not equality: it is the badge
of servility and vulgarity. The freedom of women must not borrow the
symbols of men, but must take its own forms, enlarging the empire of
women, but preserving their independence and cherishing their loyalty to
their finer perceptions and traditions.
But here my perplexity returned. It is not the fact of those young women
smoking that offends you, I said addressing myself. It is the fact of
their smoking on a public conveyance. Yet if you agree that the habit of
smoking is as reputable and reasonable in the case of women as of men,
why should it be secretly, or at least privately, practised in their
case, while it may be publicly enjoyed in the other? You yourself are
smoking at this moment on the top of a bus while you are engaged in
defending the propriety of women smoking, and at the same time mentally
reprobating the conduct of the young women who are smoking in front
of you, not because they are smoking, but because (like you) they are
smoking in public. How do you reconcile such confusions of mind?
At this reasonable challenge I found myself driven on to the the horns
of a dilemma. I could not admit a sex discrimination in regard to the
habit. And that being so it was, I saw, clearly impossible to defend
differential smoking conditions for men and women. If the main position
was surrendered no secondary line was defensible. If men smoked in
public then women could smoke in public; if men smoked pipes and cigars
then women could smoke pipes and cigars. And at the thought of women
smoking pipes on the top of buses, I realised that I had not yet found a
path out of the absurd bog in which I had become mentally involved.
Then something happened which suggested another solution. The young
women rose to leave the bus, and as they passed me a wave of scent was
wafted with them. It was not the scent of tobacco, for they had thrown
their cigarettes down before rising to leave. It was one of those heavy,
languorous odours with which some women drench themselves. The trivial
fact slipped into the current of my thought. If women adopt the man's
tobacco habit, I thought, would it be equally fitting for men to adopt
the woman's scent habit? Why should they not use powder and paint and
wear rings in their ears? The idea threw a new light on my perplexity.
The mind revolted at the thought of a man perfumed and powdered and
be-ringed. Disraeli, it is true, approved of men rouging their cheeks.
But Disraeli was not a man so much as an Oriental fable, a sort of
belated tale from the Arabian Nights. The healthy instinct of men
universally revolts against paint, powder, and perfume. And asking
myself why a habit, which custom had made tolerable in the case of
women, became grotesque and offensive if imagined in connection with
men, I saw a way out of my puzzle. I dismissed the view that the
difference of sex accounted for the different emotions awakened. It was
the habit itself which was objectionable. Familiarity with it in the
case of women had dulled our perceptions to the reality. It was only
when we conceived the habit in an unusual connection--imagined men going
about with painted and powdered faces, with rings in their ears
and heavy scents on their clothes--that its essential vulgarity and
uncleanness were freshly and intensely presented to the mind.
And that, said I, is the case with women and tobacco. It is the habit
in the abstract which is vulgar and unclean. Long familiarity with it in
the case of man has deadened our sense of the fact, but the adoption
of the habit by women, coupled with the fact that there is no logical
halting-place between the cigarette indoors and a pipe on the top of the
bus, gives us what the Americans call a new view-point. From that new
view-point we are bound to admit that there is much to be said against
tobacco and not much to be said for it--except, of course, that we like
it. But Mr Hicks must eliminate sex in the matter. He must talk to the
men as well as to the women.
Then perhaps we will see what can be done. For myself, I make no
promise. After forty, says Meredith, we are wedded to our habits. And I,
alas, am long past forty....
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