Our readers, whom, between ourselves, and without flattery, we take to
be as social a set of persons as can be, people of an impartial
humanity, and able to relish whatever concerneth a common good, whether
a child’s story or a man’s pinch of snuff, (for snuff comes after
knowledge,) doubtless recollect the famous tale of the Barmecide and his
imaginary dinner in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. We hereby invite
them to an imaginary cigar and cup of coffee with us in a spot scarcely
less oriental--to wit, our friend Gliddon’s Divan in King-street. Not
that our fictitious enjoyment is to serve them instead of the real one.
Quite the contrary; our object being to advance the good of all
parties,--of our readers, inasmuch as they are good fellows in their
snuffs,--of our friend, who can supply them in a manner different from
any body else,--and of ourselves, because the subject is a pleasant
one, and brings us all together agreeably. Those who have the greatest
relish for things real, have also the best taste of them in imagination.
We confess, that for our private eating (for a cigar, with coffee, may
truly be said to be meat and drink to us) we prefer a bower with a
single friend; but for public smoking, that is to say, for smoking with
a greater number of persons, or in a coffee-room, especially now that
the winter is coming on, and people cannot sit in bowers without boots,
commend us to the warmth, and luxury, and conspiracy of comforts, in the
Cigar Divan.
In general, the room is occupied by individuals, or groups of
individuals, sitting apart at their respective little mahogany tables,
and smoking, reading, or talking with one another in a considerate
undertone, in order that nobody may be disturbed. But on the present
occasion we will have the room to ourselves, and talk as we please. In
the East it is common to see dirty streets and poor looking houses, and
on being admitted into the interior of one of them, to find yourself in
a beautiful room, noble with drapery, and splendid with fountains and
gilded trellices. We do not mean to compare King-street with a street in
Bagdad or Constantinople. We have too much respect for that eminent
thoroughfare, clean in general, and classical always; where you cannot
turn, but you meet recollections of the Drydens and Hogarths. The hotel
next door to the Divan is still the same as in Hogarth’s picture of the
Frosty Morning; and looking the other way, you see Dryden coming out of
Rose Alley to spend his evening at the club in Russell-street. But there
is mud and fog enough this weather to render the contrast between any
thoroughfare and a carpeted interior considerable; and making due
allowance for the palace of an effendi and the premises of a tradesman,
a person’s surprise would hardly be greater, certainly his comfort not
so great, in passing from the squalidness of a Turkish street into the
gorgeous but suspicious wealth of the apartment of a pasha, as in
slipping out of the mud, and dirt, and mist, and cold, and shudder, and
blinking misery of an out-of-door November evening in London, into the
oriental and carpeted warmth of Mr. Gliddon’s Divan. It is pleasant to
think, what a number of elegant and cheerful places lurk behind shops,
and in places where nobody would expect them. Mr. Gliddon’s shop is a
very respectable one; but nobody would look for the saloon beyond it;
and it seems in good oriental keeping, and a proper _sesame_, when on
touching a door in the wall, you find yourself in a room like an eastern
tent, the drapery festooned up around you, and views exhibited on all
sides of mosques, and minarets, and palaces rising out of the water.
But here we are inside ourselves. What do you think of it?
_B._ This is a tent indeed, exactly as you have described it. It seems
pitched in the middle of the Ganges or Tigris; for most of the views are
in the midst of water.
_J._ Yes; we might fancy ourselves a party of British merchants, who had
purchased a little island in an Eastern gulf, and built themselves a
tent on it to smoke in. The scenes, though they have a panoramic effect,
are really not panoramic daubs. This noble edifice on the left, touched
in that delicate manner with silver, (or is it rather not gold?) unites
the reality of architecture built by mortal hands, with the fairy lustre
of a palace raised by enchantment. One has a mind to sail to it, and get
an adventure.
_E._ And this on the left. What a fine sombre effect that mountain with
a building on it has in the background;--how dark yet aerial! You would
have a very solemn adventure there,--nothing under a speaking
stone-gentleman, or the loss of your right eye.
_O._ Well, this snug little corner for me, under the bamboos; two
gigantic walking-sticks in leaf! A cup of coffee served by a pretty
Hindoo would do very well here; and there is a temple to be religious
in, when convenient. ’Tis pleasant to have all one’s luxuries together.
_T._ If there is any fault, it is in the scene at the bottom of the
room, which is perhaps too full of scattered objects. But all is
remarkably well done; and as the newspapers have observed, as oriental
as any thing in the paintings of Daniel or Hodges.
_C._ Are you sure we are not all Mussulmen? I begin to think I am a Turk
under the influence of opium, who take my turban for a hat, and fancy
I’m speaking English. We shall have the sultan upon us presently.
_L._ With old Ibrahim to give us the bastinado. I have no fair Persian
at hand to offer him; and, if I had, wouldn’t do it. But here’s ----; he
shall have _him_.
_O._ (_grinding with laughter._) What, in woman’s clothes, to beguile
him, and play the lute?
_L._ No; as a fair dealer; no less a prodigy, especially for a
bookseller. You should save your head every day by a new joke; and we
would have another new Arabian Nights, or the Adventures of Sultan
Mahmoud and the Fair Dealer. You should be Scheherezade turned into a
man. Every morning, the prince’s jester should say to you, “Brother
Scratch-his-head, if you are awake, favour his Majesty with a handsome
come-off.”
_E._ I cannot help thinking we are the Calenders, got into the house
full of ladies; and that we shall have to repent, and rub our faces with
ashes, crying out, “_This_ is the reward of our debauchery: _This_ is
the reward of taking too many cups of coffee: _This_ is the reward of
excessive girl and tobacco.”
_L._ But, alas! in that case we should have the repentance without the
lady, which is unfair. No ladies, I believe, are admitted here, Mr.
Gliddon?
_Mr. G._ No, sir; it has been often observed to me, by way of hint, that
it was a pity ladies were not admitted into English coffee-houses, as
they are on the continent; but this is a smoking as well as a
coffee-room. Ladies do not smoke in England, as they do in the East; and
then, as extremes meet, and the most respectable creatures in the world
render a place, it seems, not respectable, I was to take care how I
risked my character, and made my Divan too comfortable.
_O._ And we call ourselves a gallant nation! We also go to the theatres
to sit and hear ourselves complimented on our liberal treatment of
women, and suffer them all the while to enjoy the standing-room!
_C._ Women are best away, after all. We should be making love, while
they ought to be making the coffee.
_L._ Women and smoking would not do together, unless we smoked perfumes,
and saw their eyes through a cloud of fragrance, like Venus in her
ambrosial mist. This room, I confess, being full of oriental scenes,
reminds one of other things oriental--of love and a lute. I could very
well fancy myself Noureddin, sitting here with my fair Persian, eating
peaches, and sending forth one of the songs of Hafiz over those
listening waters.
_J._ The next time Mr. Gliddon indulges us with a new specimen of his
magnificence, he must give us animate instead of inanimate scenes, and
treat us with a series of subjects out of the Arabian Nights--lovers,
genii, and elegant festivities.
_Mr. G._ Gentlemen, here is a little festivity at hand, not, I hope,
altogether inelegant. Your coffee and cigars are ready.
_C._ Ah, this is the substantial picturesque. I was beginning to long
for something oriental to eat, elegant or not; an East-dumpling for
instance.
_H._ I wonder whether they have any puns in the East.
_J._ To be sure they have. The elegancies of some of their writers
consist of a sort of serious punning, like the conceits of our old
prosers; such as, a man was “deserted for his deserts;” or “graceless,
though full of gracefulness, was his grace, and in great disgrace.”
_C._ But I mean proper puns; puns worthy of a Pundit.
_L._ You have it. It is part of their daily _expunditure_. How can
there be men and not puns?
To pun is human; to forgive it, fine.
_H._ There’s an instance in Blue Beard; in a pun set to music by Kelly;
_Fat_ima, _Fat_ima, _See-limbs_ here!
_C._ Good. I think I see Kelly, who used to stick his arms out, as if he
were requesting you to see his limbs; and Mrs. Bland, whom he used to
sing it to--a proper little Fatima. Come; I feel all the beauty of the
room, now that one is “having something.” This is really very Grand,
Signior; though to complete us, I think we ought to have some Sublime
Port.
_Mr. G._ Excuse me: _whining_ is not allowed to a true Mussulman.
_C._ Some snuff, however.
_Mr. G._ The best to be had.
_W._ Take some of mine; I have cropped the flower of the shop.
_J._ You sneeze, C. I thought you too old a snuff-taker for that.
_C._ The air of the water always makes me sneeze. It’s the Persian gulf
here.
_W._ This is a right pinch, friend C. I’ll help you at another, as
you’ve helped me.
_C._ Snuff’s a capital thing. I cannot help thinking there is something
providential in snuff. If you observe, different refreshments come up
among nations at different eras of the world. In the Elizabethan age, it
was beef-steaks. Then tea and coffee came up; and people being irritable
sometimes, perhaps with the new light let in upon them by the growth of
the press, snuff was sent us to “support uneasy thoughts.” During the
Assyrian monarchy, cherry-brandy may have been the thing. I have no
doubt Semiramis took it; unless we suppose it too matronly a drink for
_So-Mere-a-Miss_.
(Here the whole Assyrian monarchy is run down in a series of puns.)
_H._ Gentlemen, we shall make the Tour of Babel before we have done.
_L._ Talking of the refreshments of different ages, it is curious to see
how we identify smoking with the Eastern nations; whereas it is a very
modern thing among them, and was taught them from the west. One wonders
what the Turks and Persians did before they took to smoking; just as the
ladies and gentlemen of these nervous times wonder how their ancestors
existed without tea for breakfast.
_J._ Coffee is a modern thing too in the East, though the usual
accompaniment of their tobacco. “Coffee without Tobacco,” quoth the
Persian, as our friend’s learned placard informs us, “is like meat
without salt.”[479] But coffee is of Eastern growth. It is a species of
jasmin. I remember, in a novel I read once, the heroine was described in
grand terms, as “presiding at the hysonian altar;” that is to say,
making tea. This lady might have asked her lover, whether before his
hysonian recreation, he would not “orientalize in a cup of jessamine.”
_W._ I met with a little story in a book yesterday, which I must tell
you, not because it is quite new or very applicable, but because it is
Eastern, and made me laugh. I don’t know whether it is in the
jest-books; but I never saw it before. A fellow was going home through
one of the streets of Bagdad with a forbidden bottle of wine under his
cloak, when the cadi stopped him. “What have you got there, fellow?” The
fellow, who had contrived to plant himself against a wall, said,
“Nothing, sir.” “Put out your hand, sir.” The right hand was put out;
there was nothing in it. “Your left, sir.” The left was put out, equally
innocent. “You see, sir,” said the fellow, “I have nothing.” “Come away
from the wall,” said the cadi. “No, sir,” returned he, “_it will
break_.”
_H._ Good. That is really dramatic. It reminds me that I must be off to
the play.
_J._ And I.
_C._ And I.
_O._ And I. We’ll make a party of it, and finish our evening worthily
with Shakspeare; one of the greatest of men, and most good-natured of
punsters.
_L._ By the by, Mr. Gliddon, your room is not so large as in the
lithographic print they have made of it; but it is more Eastern and
picturesque.
_W._ We’ll have a more faithful print to accompany this conversation,
for I am resolved to be treacherous for this night only, and publish it.
It is not a proper specimen of what my friends _could_ say; but it is
not unlike something of what they do; and sociality, on all sides, will
make the best of it.
☞
[479] A quotation from a prospectus published by Mr. Gliddon. As this
prospectus is written in the “style social,” and contains some
particulars of his establishment, which our article has not noticed,
we lay a few passages from it before our readers:--
“The recreation of smoking, which was introduced into this country in
an age of great men, by one of the greatest and most accomplished men
of that or any other age, was for a long time considered an elegance,
and a mark of good-breeding. Its very success gradually got it an ill
name by rendering it too common and popular; and something became
necessary to give it a new turn in its favour,--to alter the
association of ideas connected with it, and awaken its natural friends
to a due sense of its merits. Two circumstances combined to effect
this desirable change. One was the discovery of a new mode of smoking
by means of rolling up the fragrant leaf itself, and making it perform
the office of its own pipe; the other was the long military experience
in our late wars, which have rendered us so renowned; and which, by
throwing the most gallant of our gentry upon the hasty and humble
recreations eagerly snatched at by all campaigners, opened their eyes
to the difference between real and imaginary good-breeding, and made
them see that what comforted the heart of man under such grave
circumstances, must have qualities in it that deserved to be rescued
from an ill name. Thus arose the cigar, and with it a reputation that
has been continually increasing. There is no rank in society into
which it has not made its way, not excepting the very highest. If
James the First, an uncouth prince, unworthy of his clever, though
mistaken race, and who hated the gallant introducer of tobacco, did
not think it beneath his princely indignation to write in abuse of it,
George the Fourth, who has unquestionably a better taste for some of
the best things in the world, has not thought it beneath his princely
refinement to give the cigar his countenance.
“The art of smoking is a contemplative art; and being naturally allied
to other arts meditative, hath an attachment to a book and a
newspaper. Books and newspapers are accordingly found at the Cigar
Divan; the latter consisting of the principal daily papers, and the
former of a PROFUSE COLLECTION OF THE MOST ENTERTAINING PERIODICALS.
The situation of the house is unexceptionable, being _at an equal
distance from the city and the west end, and in the immediate
neighbourhood of the great theatres_. Writers of the most opposite
parties have conspired to speak in the highest terms of the
establishment, on their own personal knowledge; and should any
authority be wanting to induce a reader of this paper to taste all the
piquant advantages of fragrance, and fine drinks, and warmth, and
quiet, and literature, which they have done the proprietor the honour
to expatiate on, he may find it, if a man of wit and the town, in the
person of Fielding; if a philosopher, in that of Hobbes; if a divine,
in that of Aldrich; and if a soldier, seaman, patriot, statesman, or
cavalier, in the all-accomplished person of sir Walter Raleigh.”--See
also an article in the New Monthly Magazine, for January, 1826.
* * * * *