Can it be that the whole nation is bent upon suicide? I have read that
a single drop of the pure essense of nicotine dropped upon the back
of a healthy and robust flea will cause the unfortunate beast to
fall into convulsions, frequently terminating in a partial paralysis
or total dissolution. Now, it is well known to all who make the
slightest pretense to any knowledge of entomology that the flea, or
_Pulex irritans_, is one of the most hardy insects known to man and is
extremely hard to kill. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the fleas
of Mexico encountered the army of Bonaparte and Maximilian and gave
such a good account of themselves that the French soldiers were more
in awe of the fleas than of the natives. If nicotine, then, has such a
disastrous effect upon such a hearty and well-protected beast as the
flea, what must be the effect of its poison upon man, who is, perhaps,
the most easily killed of all living creatures? It is too horrible
to contemplate! I have, by most careful calculations, proved to my
entire satisfaction that the American people have already been totally
exterminated through their persistence in this evil habit of using
tobacco; and if, as may be said, the facts do not seem to fit in with
my figures, I can only say that I am convinced that their survival is
in nowise due either to their hardiness or to the innocuous character
of the herb, but solely to the kindly interposition of Providence,
who, unwilling to see so young and so promising a nation perish by
reason of this folly, has deliberately set at naught the wiles of
the Devil and robbed him of his prey by fortifying and strengthening
the constitutions of this people to withstand the dread effects of
this evil practise. But how long can people given over to this wicked
practise look to Providence for patience and protection?
I have but now spoken of the American people as a promising nation,
but I am not sure but that I should amend this to “a once promising
nation.” I believe that this nation can never become truly great until
it has become a nation of non-smokers. Did the Greeks smoke? No. Did
the Romans smoke? No, again. Not in the history of any of the great
nations of antiquity do I find a single reference to tobacco smoking.
The Boers are reputed to be great smokers, and it is to this that I
attribute their defeat at the hands of the English. I have heard that
the Boers even went into battle with their pipes alight, and I have no
doubt that it was due to their distraction and lack of attention caused
by their habit of scratching matches to keep their pipes burning, that
they lost many important engagements. Do you imagine, Sir, that Troy
could have withstood the assault of the Greeks for ten long years, had
Hector and his fellow warriors lolled upon the battlements puffing on
cigarettes? Can you fancy, Sir, the grave and dignified Cicero pausing
in the midst of one of his philippics to expectorate tobacco juice?
Yet I am told upon good authority that this may be witnessed among the
learned justices of our own Supreme Court.
The almost total destruction of the American Indian, I attribute
chiefly to the debilitating effects of this narcotic. Of all of
the American Indians, the Peruvians attained the highest state of
civilization. And why? Because, Sir, they alone used tobacco only as a
medicine and in the form of snuff. Had they forborne the use of snuff,
it might well have been that the Incas had conquered the Spanish and
colonized the coast of Europe. Snuff, I consider the least harmful
of all forms of tobacco; but only because it is the least frequently
used. There is a lady of my acquaintance, in all other respects a most
estimable woman, who so far forgets her duty as a mother as to permit
her offspring to utilize as a plaything a handsome silver snuff-box
which she inherited from her grandfather. I, Sir, should as soon think
of giving my children a whisky-flask for a toy. I am well aware that
many who have been termed “gentlemen” have been addicted to the use of
snuff; nay, that it was even at one time a fashion among men and women
of the mode to partake of it. But I think none the better of it for
that. As much might be said for rum.
Lord Chesterfield said that he was enabled to get through the last five
or six books of Virgil by having frequent recourse to his snuff-box;
but I say, if the taking of snuff is necessary to the enjoyment of
Virgil, why then, it were better never to read that poet. I had rather
fall asleep over Virgil than to inhale culture tainted with snuff.
I had rather, indeed, snore over the classics, than sneeze at them.
_Trahit sua quemque voluptas_--I suspect that his Lordship did not so
much find snuff an aid to Virgil as Virgil an excuse for snuff.
Tobacco, Sir, won its way into Europe by a ruse--a pretense. It wormed
its way into the confidence of the European peoples masquerading as
a medicine--a panacea. Introduced by Francesco Fernandez, himself a
renowned physician, and endorsed by many other men supposed to be
learned in _materia medica_, it was taken on faith and retained through
weakness. At the very outset some of the wiser heads saw the danger of
it. Burton sounded a note of warning in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_:
“Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes far
beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, is a
sovereign remedy in all disease. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous
herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medically used;
but, as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers
do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands,
health,--hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow
of body and soul.”
King James, of blessed memory, was not deceived by the fictitious
virtues of this plant, and he condemned it in his noble work, _The
Counterblaste_. Would that more had been so blessed with wisdom!
The absurdity of the extravagant claims made for the curative powers
of this herb is well illustrated in the words of Master Nicholas
Culpepper, author of _The English Physitian_, published so late as 1671:
“It is a Martial plant (governed by Mars). It is found by good
experience to be available to expectorate tough Flegm from the Stomach,
Chest and Lungs.... The seed hereof is very effectual to expel the
toothach, & the ashes of the burnt herb, to cleanse the Gums and make
the Teeth white. The herb bruised and applied to the place grieved by
the Kings-Evil, helpeth it in nine or ten days effectually. _Manardus_,
faith, it is a Counter-Poyson against the biting of any Venomous
Creatures; the Herb also being outwardly applyd to the hurt place. The
Distilled Water is often given with some Sugar before the fit of Ague
to lessen it, and take it away in three or four times using.”
Such vaporings were, indeed, as little worthy of credence as the empty
chatter of Ben Jonson’s Bobadil: “Signor, believe me (upon my relation)
for what I tell you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the
Indies (where this herb grows), where neither myself nor a dozen
gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other
nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but
tobacco only. Therefore it can not be but ’tis most divine. Further,
take it in the nature, in the true kind, so, it makes an antidote,
that had you taken the most deadly poisonous simple in all Florence
it should expel it, and clarify you with as much ease as I speak.... I
do hold it, and will affirm it (before any Prince in Europe) to be the
most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered to the
use of man.”
Such were the absurd claims of those who held tobacco to be a medicine.
But I contend, Sir, that tobacco has never been proven of any real
medical value whatever; that it is a poison and not a blessing. I have
been told, indeed, that it sometimes destroys the toothache; but for
my own part I had rather taste the toothache than tobacco; and as for
deadening the pain, so, for that matter, will opium or prussic acid.
I contend, Sir, that tobacco will eventually bring to grief every
nation which makes use of it. Who can contemplate the present
distressing state of Portugal without recalling that it was from Jean
Nicot, a Portuguese, that the poison, nicotine, received its name?
Tobacco destroys all that is noble in man. There is no more noble
sentiment than chivalry; and tobacco has destroyed the chivalry of
man. How else could we applaud that English poet who sang,
“A thousand surplus Maggies are waiting to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke”?
Tobacco is offensive to all high-minded people of delicate
sensibilities; it is offensive to me. Nay, the smoker himself sometimes
involuntarily recoils from his slavery and feels disgust for the vile
weed, as is shown by the cry of the modern poet, whose name for the
moment escapes me, in that line--
“Then, as you love me, take the stubs away!”
Oh, Sir, it is now high time for all men of sound judgment and
unselfish nature to unite in stamping out this nefarious traffic! Let
every state pass laws forbidding the manufacture, sale _and use_ of
tobacco in any form. Let the government suppress with stringent law and
heavy penalty that wicked and seductive book of J. M. Barrie’s called
_My Lady Nicotine_; that work which has, without doubt, led many young
men to contract this evil habit and confirmed many older men in it
against their own better judgment. Let all books in praise of tobacco
be destroyed publicly, as is befitting a public menace.
For my own part, having suffered all my life from a quinsy which I
contracted early in youth, and which my family physician assured me
would be greatly aggravated by the use of tobacco, I have been saved
from the vile effects of even the slightest contact with that noxious
plant. But, Sir, being a man of tender sensibilities and imbued with
an almost paternal love of humanity, it has grieved me to the heart to
see my fellow men falling ever deeper and deeper into the clutches of
this sinful practise. Owing to the distress I suffer from the fumes
of tobacco, I have often been compelled practically to abstain from
the company of men, otherwise estimable citizens, who have contracted
this habit. Everywhere I go I see young and old blowing out their
brains with every puff of smoke, until I am sometimes tempted to blow
out my own in sheer despair of ever making them see the evil of their
ways. And they smoke, Sir, with such an air of innocent enjoyment as
is enough to fair madden one whose counsel they scorn and at whose
warnings they scoff.
I have been told, Sir, that you are, yourself, a victim of this evil
habit of tobacco using, and I have been warned that you will refuse,
with the infatuation of a confirmed smoker, to grant me space in your
publication for these honest and unprejudiced expressions of opinion
upon this subject. I have refused, however, to credit these scandalous
reflections upon your character, and I hope that you will refute
them and cause the utter confusion of your calumniators, as well as
help enlighten an ignorant and misguided people, by printing this
communication in full.
I am, Sir, very truly yours,
B. Z. BODY.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FASHION WRITERS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Some writers have an unhappy faculty of adopting a superior
tone which is very offensive to most readers. Even in a writer of
acknowledged excellence this dictatorial style is a blemish, and,
moreover, it is an impertinence. Not only does the writer assume to
be superior to the majority of his readers, but, by implication, to
all the world, since his book is addressed to mankind at large. And
if this air of condescension is hard to bear from men of parts, how
much more galling it is when we suffer it at the hands of insolent
nobodies--writers who seek to hide their obscurity behind the shield of
an imposing pseudonym. I have in mind, Sir, that pestiferous crew who
mar the pages of our theater programs with their uninvited discourses
upon men’s fashions.
It may be that I am confessing to an unmanly weakness when I confess
that I invariably peruse that column in my program which is signed
_Beau Nash_, _Beau Brummel_, or something equally ridiculous; but if
it is a weakness, I am convinced that it is one which is shared by
nine out of ten men in the audience. I say I am convinced, because,
suspecting that I might be alone in it, I took the trouble to observe
the men about me upon several occasions, and I always caught them at
it at some time during the intermissions. They read it furtively, to
be sure, but they read it none the less. Of course, I can not be sure
what effect these essays upon sartorial matters have upon others, but I
fancy they are affected much as I am, and for my part they distress me
exceedingly.
In the first place, I am not overly pleased that some unknown hack
writer has assumed to instruct me in such a personal matter as
the clothes which I put upon my back, and in the second place, I
strongly resent the implication that I am interested in such foppish
literature. But, what is worse than all else, these anonymous arbiters
of dress are continually putting me out of countenance by criticizing
explicitly and in detail the very clothes that I have on! It seems to
me that these fellows have a devilish faculty of knowing beforehand
just what I shall be wearing every season.
Now, Mr. _Idler_, you must not suppose that I am one of those silly
fellows who aspire to lead the fashion or to play the dandy, for,
indeed, I am nothing of the sort. I do not believe there is a man
living who more heartily despises those empty-headed creatures who
are variously known as fops, dudes and dandies. It has never been my
ambition to be the introducer of a new style of neckwear or footgear;
indeed, I fear my very indifference to such matters lays me open to the
vexation caused by these miserable scribblers who prey upon my peace
of mind. Were I in the habit of consulting long and earnestly with my
tailor and haberdasher, no doubt I should be fortified with a sound and
sure confidence in the appropriateness of my apparel. But the fact is,
I leave these things largely to the men who make a business of them,
and content myself with choosing what seems to me to be sufficiently
modish and yet in good taste.
And yet, Sir, though I am no macaroni, I am not utterly indifferent to
my personal appearance. If I am not a fop, neither am I a sloven. I am
one of those who have faith in the old saying, _In medio tutissimus
ibis_. I would not be
“The first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
Like most practical men, I have a positive horror of appearing queer.
I shun eccentricity in dress as assiduously as I shun eccentricity
in manners. I sometimes envy poets and artists, not for their poetry
or their art, but for that sublime egotism which enables them to
take pleasure in making themselves ridiculous. This seems to me
a vanity which is almost beautiful, a self-confidence which is a
greater blessing than personal bravery. Many a man, otherwise not
extraordinary, may prove himself a hero of physical courage when the
occasion offers, but few there are who can deliberately challenge
attention by their freakish appearance and go out among their fellow
men with an air which seems to say, “I know I look like the devil and I
am proud of it.”
Now I, Sir--I should not be proud of it. I should be miserably ashamed.
And so I am ashamed when I read in my program that which brands me as
a man of no taste or discrimination. I am horribly humiliated when I
discover in the column of Beau Nash that I have brazenly shattered
every commandment in the sartorial decalogue. I give you my word,
Sir, I break into a cold perspiration whenever I recall the harrowing
experience I had last Saturday-week. It so happened that when I
prepared to go to the play, I found no fresh white waistcoats. This did
not greatly trouble me at the time, for I am a resourceful man, and I
at once recalled that I possessed a black waistcoat which my tailor had
made for me at the same time he had made my dress suit. This I donned
in blissful ignorance of my impending ordeal. I arrived at the theater
rather late and had no opportunity of reading the program before the
curtain rose. That first act is the one bright memory I have of that
awful evening. I enjoyed the first act. But, Sir, I did not long remain
in ignorance of my disgrace. In the first intermission my eyes were
drawn by an irresistible fascination to the column headed, “What Men
Wear,” and in letters which seemed fairly to jump out of the page I
read, “_The black waistcoat worn with evening dress is the height of
vulgarity and is not tolerated._”
Sir, you can imagine with what a sudden shock my care-free contentment
dropped from me. There I sat in the full glare of the electric light,
conscious that I was surrounded by hundreds of men who had read that
damning paragraph which stamped me as an ignorant underbred boor, who
had attempted evening dress without knowing the very rudiments of the
art. I cast a hasty glance about the theater, and the fleeting hope
which had sprung up died within my breast. _There was not another
black waistcoat in sight._
How I lived through the rest of that intermission I can not say. I only
know that I could feel the contemptuous eyes of the audience upon that
dreadful black waistcoat, like so many hot augurs boring holes in the
pit of my stomach. Hastily hiding my face behind my program, I slumped
down in my seat in the vain hope of hiding my disgrace, while drops of
anguish trickled down my brow and fell splashing upon the cruel words
which had rendered me an object for pity and contempt. When the curtain
rose upon the second act, I crept out of the auditorium under cover of
the kindly darkness and slunk away home to hide my shame.
I do not think I shall ever attend the theater in this city again.
In vain I argue and seek to persuade myself that what I read in the
program was only the opinion of one man, and a man at that who, in all
probability, never owned a dress suit in his life. Whoever he may be,
whatever his knowledge or ignorance of dress may be, he writes with
such a saucy assumption of omniscient authority that my reason stands
abashed before his insolence. As aloof and austere as the Olympian
gods, he crushes my spirit and fills my soul with humility. No, Mr.
_Idler_, I do not believe I shall ever attend the theater here again.
The mental suffering these fashion writers inflict upon me is too great
a price to pay for the pleasure I extract from the drama.
I am, Sir,
MAURICE MUFTI.
OF LOOKING BACKWARD
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: It is a constant source of surprise to me that men continue,
at all ages but the earliest, to look back upon the past with a wistful
eye, recalling, with many expressions of regret, the days that are no
more. Thus, while still in the twenties, the youth begins to feel the
burden of worldly cares already pressing heavily upon his shoulders and
sighs when he thinks of the irresponsible school-days of his teens. At
thirty, he is convinced that he has missed the best part of his youth
and would fain be a youngster of twenty once more, his greatest care
the sprouting down upon his upper lip. Come to forty, he is sure that
he should have been most happy when thirty, over the first rawness of
youth, but not yet sensible of any physical deterioration and quite
unmarked by the passage of time. At fifty, he envies the lustihood of
forty, and at sixty he longs for the activity and the muscular ease
which he enjoyed at fifty. And so it goes on, so that we can readily
imagine a patriarch of ancient days exclaiming, “Oh, if I were but
two-hundred-and-twenty once more! How I should enjoy life!”
Now, to me, Mr. _Idler_, things do not appear in this light at all.
I can not conceive that had I been Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of
France, I should have longed to be an obscure youth in Corsica. It is
easier, of course, to understand why he might, at St. Helena, regret
the departed glories of St. Cloud; but for myself, I do not believe
I should ever, whatever my former station might have been, wish to
lay down the present for the past. I have, it is true, some hope for
the future (I am now but fifty), but even if this were denied me, and
I were assured that my condition ten years hence would be no more
enviable than it is at present, yet I think I should not care to
reassume my youthful aspect, or to take up my life where I left it long
ago.
There is, in truth, no period of my past life upon which I can look
back with complete complacency. I was, at all times, very well
satisfied with myself, barring occasional and inevitable spasms of
self-reproach. I am, to say the truth, well enough satisfied with
myself as I am to-day. But experience has taught me that the time will
come when I shall look back upon to-day and will not be pleased with
my present self at all. At thirty I remembered the Me of twenty as a
callow and conceited boy. At forty I beheld in the Me of ten years gone
a lazy careless idler. At fifty I recollected the man of forty as a
pompous and affected ass. Now, while the most careful scrutiny of my
person and character fails to reveal to me, at this time, any serious
flaw or defect, yet I doubt not that the future Me, the Me of Sixty,
will have grave fault to find with the individual who is inhabiting my
skin at the present moment.
“We live and learn,” says the proverb, and since we do, it is unnatural
if we do not feel a sort of shame in the ignorance of our former
selves. I feel no shame for my present ignorance because I do not know
wherein that ignorance consists, but be assured I shall, as soon as I
have found myself out.
It is, I like to think, one of the wisest provisions of a merciful God
that no man is ever permitted to see what a consummate simpleton he
is, but only what a simpleton _he has been_. A complete and certain
revelation of a man’s folly to himself would, without a doubt, result
in an immediate and lasting loss of self-respect. And to lose one’s
self-respect is to lose one’s identity and become a stranger to one’s
self. The inmost mind, however the outward actions of the body may seem
to contradict it, still clings to the noblest principles, so that no
man can be truly said to be _unprincipled_. He may be debauched and
depraved, but he is not without principle so long as his subconscious
personality has the power to arise and accuse his conscious person.
Where there is no such accusation there can be no loss of self-respect,
for surely a man must possess a thing before he can lose it. As some
say of another, “He is his own worst enemy,” so it may be said that
every man should be his own best friend. None other is empowered so
to befriend him. His life and his character must be, to a very great
extent, of his own making, for every man truly lives to himself. He
is the central character of the drama in which he is both actor and
spectator. Others may come and go, but he alone remains throughout the
play.
For all our intimacy with ourselves, we never come to know ourselves
completely. We discover, day by day, ideas and opinions which we never
suspected ourselves of possessing. We are wrung by emotions which take
us completely by surprise. We are angered by slights which our reason
tells us are beneath our notice. We are moved to compassion when we are
most determined to remain firm and unmoved. We take a liking for this
person whom we have decided to dislike, and we develop an inexplicable
aversion for another whom we have deliberately chosen for a friend.
Whence come these impulses, these orders which we can not disobey?
These commands which override our conscious desires and break down our
natural wills? Where, indeed, but from that Inner Man, that Unknown
Self whose power we feel but can not comprehend? Where else but from
that second and stronger, if submerged, personality--the human soul?
Is it not, indeed, this unanswerable argument, this inexplicable
conviction of another and better Self within, joined with and yet
distinct from, the ordinary self, which persuades men that mankind is
immortal, no matter how ably the Brain may play the Infidel, nor how
aptly the Tongue may second him?