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THE
SOCIAL HISTORY
OF SMOKING
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
BYGONE LONDON LIFE
THE
SOCIAL HISTORY
OF SMOKING
BY G.L. APPERSON, I.S.O.
LONDON
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI
_First published 1914_
PRINTED AT
THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON
TO
J.H.M. AND R.W.B.
GOOD FRIENDS AND
GOOD SMOKERS
BOTH
PREFACE
This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this
country from the social point of view. There have been many books
written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's "History of Tobacco," 1859, and
the "Tobacco" (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable
authorities--but hitherto no one has told the story of the
fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking.
Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's
"History" is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine
myself strictly to the changes in the attitude of society towards
smoking, and to such historical and social sidelights as serve to
illuminate that theme.
The tobacco-pipe was popular among every section of society in this
country in an amazingly short space of time after smoking was first
practised for pleasure, and retained its ascendancy for no
inconsiderable period. Signs of decline are to be observed during the
latter part of the seventeenth century; and in the course of its
successor smoking fell more and more under the ban of fashion. Early
in the nineteenth century tobacco-smoking had reached its nadir from
the social point of view. Then came the introduction of the cigar and
the revival of smoking in the circles from which it had long been
almost entirely absent. 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.
The tracing and recording of this social history of the smoking-habit,
touching as it does so many interesting points and details of domestic
manners and customs, has been a task of peculiar pleasure. To me it
has been a labour of love; but no one can be more conscious of the
many imperfections of these pages than I am.
I should like to add that I am indebted to Mr. Vernon Rendall, editor
of _The Athenaeum_, for a number of valuable references and
suggestions.
G.L.A.
HAYWARDS HEATH.
_September 1914._
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE FIRST PIPES OF TOBACCO SMOKED IN ENGLAND 11
II. TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT: SMOKING FASHIONABLE AND UNIVERSAL 25
III. TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT (_continued_): SELLERS OF
TOBACCO AND PROFESSORS OF THE ART OF SMOKING 39
IV. CAVALIER AND ROUNDHEAD SMOKERS 57
V. SMOKING IN THE RESTORATION ERA 69
VI. SMOKING UNDER KING WILLIAM III AND QUEEN ANNE 83
VII. SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE: EARLY GEORGIAN DAYS 99
VIII. SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE (_continued_):
LATER GEORGIAN DAYS 119
IX. SIGNS OF REVIVAL 137
X. EARLY VICTORIAN DAYS 155
XI. LATER VICTORIAN DAYS 179
XII. SMOKING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 193
XIII. SMOKING BY WOMEN 205
XIV. SMOKING IN CHURCH 225
XV. TOBACCONISTS' SIGNS 235
INDEX 251
I
THE FIRST PIPES OF TOBACCO SMOKED IN ENGLAND
Before the wine of sunny Rhine, or even Madam Clicquot's,
Let all men praise, with loud hurras, this panacea of Nicot's.
The debt confess, though none the less they love the grape and barley,
Which Frenchmen owe to good Nicot, and Englishmen to Raleigh.
DEAN HOLE.
There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various
kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long
before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But
whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social.
Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling
those used for tobacco-smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and
in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity
of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these
finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them,
and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted
for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for
them. In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to
smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in
mediaeval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social
point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of
dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped
funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco
for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside
the scope of this book.
It may further be added that though the use of tobacco was known and
practised on the continent of Europe for some time before smoking
became common in England--it was taken to Spain from Mexico by a
physician about 1560, and Jean Nicot about the same time sent tobacco
seeds to France--yet such use was exclusively for medicinal purposes.
The smoking of tobacco in England seems from the first to have been
much more a matter of pleasure than of hygiene.
Who first smoked a pipe of tobacco in England? The honour is divided
among several claimants. It has often been stated that Captain William
Middleton or Myddelton (son of Richard Middleton, Governor of Denbigh
Castle), a Captain Price and a Captain Koet were the first who smoked
publicly in London, and that folk flocked from all parts to see them;
and it is usually added that pipes were not then invented, so they
smoked the twisted leaf, or cigars. This account first appeared in one
of the volumes of Pennant's "Tour in Wales." But the late Professor
Arber long ago pointed out that the remark as to the mode of smoking
by cigars and not by pipes was simply Pennant's speculation. The
authority for the rest of the story is a paper in the Sebright MSS.,
which, in an account of William Middleton, has the remark: "It is
sayed, that he, with Captain Thomas Price of Plasyollin and one
Captain Koet, were the first who smoked, or (as they called it) drank
tobacco publickly in London; and that the Londoners flocked from all
parts to see them." No date is named, and no further particulars are
available.
Another Elizabethan who is often said to have smoked the first pipe in
England is Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Virginia, who came home
with Drake in 1586. Lane is said to have given Sir Walter Raleigh an
Indian pipe and to have shown him how to use it. There is no original
authority, however, for the statement that Lane first smoked tobacco
in England, and, moreover, he was not the first English visitor to
Virginia to return to this country. One Captain Philip Amadas
accompanied Captain Barlow, who commanded on the occasion of Raleigh's
first voyage of discovery, when the country was formally taken
possession of and named Virginia in honour of Queen Elizabeth. This
was early in 1584. The two captains reached England in September 1584,
bringing with them the natives of whom King James I, in his
"Counter-blaste to Tobacco," speaks as "some two or three Savage men,"
who "were brought in, together with this Savage custome," _i.e._ of
smoking. It is extremely improbable that Captains Amadas and Barlow,
when reporting to Raleigh on their expedition, did not also make him
acquainted with the Indian practice of smoking. This would be two
years before the return of Ralph Lane.
But certainly pipes were smoked in England before 1584. The plant was
introduced into Europe, as we have seen, about 1560, and it was under
cultivation in England by 1570. In the 1631 edition of Stow's
"Chronicles" it is stated that tobacco was "first brought and made
known by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after." There is only one reference to
tobacco in Hawkins's description of his travels. In the account of his
second voyage (1564-65) he says: "The Floridians when they travel have
a kinde of herbe dryed, which with a cane, and an earthen cup in the
end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together do smoke thoro the
cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and
therewith they live foure or five days without meat or drinke."
Smoking was thus certainly known to Hawkins in 1565, but much reliance
cannot be placed on the statement in the Stow of 1631 that he first
made known the practice in this country, because that statement
appears in no earlier edition of the "Chronicles." Moreover, as
opposed to the allegation that tobacco was "not used by Englishmen in
many years after" 1565, there is the remark by William Harrison, in
his "Chronologie," 1588, that in 1573 "the taking in of the smoke of
the Indian herbe called Tobacco, by an instrument formed like a little
ladell, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach,
is gretlie taken up and used in England." The "little ladell"
describes the early form of the tobacco-pipe, with small and very
shallow bowl.
King James, in his reference to the "first Author" of what he calls
"this abuse," clearly had Sir Walter Raleigh in view, and it is
Raleigh with whom in the popular mind the first pipe of tobacco smoked
in England is usually associated. The tradition is crystallized in the
story of the schoolboy who, being asked "What do you know about Sir
Walter Raleigh?" replied: "Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into
England, and when smoking it in this country said to his servant,
'Master Ridley, we are to-day lighting a candle in England which by
God's blessing will never be put out'"!
The truth probably is that whoever actually smoked the first pipe, it
was Raleigh who brought the practice into common use. It is highly
probable, also, that Raleigh was initiated in the art of smoking by
Thomas Hariot. This was made clear, I think, by the late Dr.
Brushfield in the second of the valuable papers on matters connected
with the life and achievements of Sir Walter, which he contributed
under the title of "Raleghana" to the "Transactions" of the Devonshire
Association. Hariot was sent out by Raleigh for the specific purpose
of inquiring into and reporting upon the natural productions of
Virginia. He returned in 1586, and in 1588 published the results of
his researches in a thin quarto with an extremely long-winded title
beginning "A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia"
and continuing for a further 138 words.
In this "Report" Hariot says of the tobacco plant: "There is an herbe
which is sowed a part by itselfe and is called by the inhabitants
Vppowoc: In the West Indies it hath divers names, according to the
severall places and countries where it groweth and is used: The
Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried
and brought into powder: they use to take the fume or smoke thereof by
sucking it through pipes made of claie into their stomacke and heade:
from whence it purgeth superfluous fleame and other grosse humors,
openeth all the pores and passages of the body: by which meanes the
use thereof, not only preserveth the body from obstructions: but if
also any be, so that they have not beane of too long continuance, in
short time breaketh them: wherby their bodies are notably preserved in
health, and know not many greevous diseases wherewithall wee in
England are oftentimes afflicted."
So far Hariot's "Report" regarded tobacco from the medicinal point of
view only; but it is important to note that he goes on to describe his
personal experience of the practice of smoking in words that suggest
the pleasurable nature of the experience. He says: "We ourselves
during the time we were there used to suck it after their maner, as
also since our returne, and have found maine [? manie] rare and
wonderful experiments of the vertues thereof: of which the relation
woulde require a volume by itselfe: the use of it by so manie of late,
men and women of great calling as else, and some learned Physitians
also, is sufficient witness."
Who can doubt that Hariot, in reporting direct to Sir Walter Raleigh,
showed his employer how "to suck it after their maner"?
All the evidence agrees that whoever taught Raleigh, it was Raleigh's
example that brought smoking into notice and common use. Long before
his death in 1618 it had become fashionable, as we shall see, in all
ranks of society. He is said to have smoked a pipe on the morning of
his execution, before he went to the scaffold, a tradition which is
quite credible.
Every one knows the legend of the water (or beer) thrown over Sir
Walter by his servant when he first saw his master smoking, and
imagined he was on fire. The story was first associated with Raleigh
by a writer in 1708 in a magazine called the _British Apollo_.
According to this yarn Sir Walter usually "indulged himself in
Smoaking secretly, two pipes a Day; at which time, he order'd a Simple
Fellow, who waited, to bring him up a Tankard of old Ale and Nutmeg,
always laying aside the Pipe, when he heard his servant coming." On
this particular occasion, however, the pipe was not laid aside in
time, and the "Simple Fellow," imagining his master was on fire, as he
saw the smoke issuing from his mouth, promptly put the fire out by
sousing him with the contents of the tankard. One difficulty about
this story is the alleged secrecy of Raleigh's indulgence in tobacco.
There seems to be no imaginable reason why he should not have smoked
openly. Later versions turn the ale into water and otherwise vary the
story.
But the story was a stock jest long before it was associated with
Raleigh. The earliest example of it occurs in the "Jests" attributed
to Richard Tarleton, the famous comic performer of the Elizabethan
stage, who died in 1588--the year of the Armada. "Tarlton's Jests"
appeared in 1611, and the story in question, which is headed "How
Tarlton tooke tobacco at the first comming up of it," runs as follows:
"Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco,
did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a
roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing
the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's
nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's
face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if
the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And
drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I
am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a
little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco
whiffes made them leave him to pay all."
In the early days of smoking, the smoker was very generally said to
"drink" tobacco.
Another early example of the story occurs in Barnaby Rich's "Irish
Hubbub," 1619, where a "certain Welchman coming newly to London," and
for the first time seeing a man smoking, extinguished the fire with a
"bowle of beere" which he had in his hand.
Various places are traditionally associated with Raleigh's first pipe.
The most surprising claim, perhaps, is that of Penzance, for which
there is really no evidence at all. Miss Courtney, writing in the
_Folk-Lore Journal_, 1887, says: "There is a myth that Sir Walter
Raleigh landed at Penzance Quay when he returned from Virginia, and on
it smoked the first tobacco ever seen in England, but for this I do
not believe that there is the slightest foundation. Several western
ports, both in Devon and Cornwall, make the same boast." Miss Courtney
might have added that Sir Walter never himself visited Virginia at
all.
Another place making a similar claim is Hemstridge, on the Somerset
and Dorset border. Just before reaching Hemstridge from Milborne Port,
at the cross-roads, there is a public-house called the Virginia Inn.
There, it is said, according to Mr. Edward Hutton, in his "Highways
and Byways in Somerset," "Sir Walter Raleigh smoked his first pipe of
tobacco, and, being discovered by his servant, was drenched with a
bucket of water."
At the fifteenth-century Manor-House at South Wraxall, Wiltshire, the
"Raleigh Room" is shown, and visitors are told that according to local
tradition it was in this room that Sir Walter smoked his first pipe,
when visiting his friend, the owner of the mansion, Sir Henry Long.
Another tradition gives the old Pied Bull at Islington, long since
demolished, as the scene of the momentous event. It is said in its
earlier days to have been a country house of Sir Walter's, and
according to legend it was in his dining-room in this house that he
had his first pipe. Hone, in the first volume of the "Every Day Book"
tells how he and some friends visited this Pied Bull, then in a very
decayed condition, and smoked their pipes in the dining-room in memory
of Sir Walter. From the recently published biography of William Hone
by Mr. F.W. Hackwood, we learn that the jovial party consisted of
William Hone, George Cruikshank, Joseph Goodyear, and David Sage, who
jointly signed a humorous memorandum of their proceedings on the
occasion, from which it appears that "each of us smoked a pipe, that
is to say, each of us one or more pipes, or less than one pipe, and
the undersigned George Cruikshank having smoked pipes innumerable or
more or less," and that "several pots of porter, in aid of the said
smoking," were consumed, followed by bowls of negus made from "port
wine @ 3s. 6d. per bottle (duty knocked off lately)" and other
ingredients. Speeches were made and toasts proposed, and altogether
the four, who desired to "have the gratification of saying hereafter
that we had smoked a pipe in the same room that the man who first
introduced tobacco smoked in himself," seem to have thoroughly enjoyed
themselves.
Wherever Raleigh is known to have lived or lodged we are sure to find
the tradition flourishing that there he smoked his first pipe. The
assertion has been made of his birthplace, Hayes Barton, although it
is very doubtful if he ever visited the place after his parents left
it, some years before their son had become acquainted with tobacco;
and also with more plausibility of his home at Youghal, in the south
of Ireland. Froude, in one of his "Short Studies," quotes a legend to
the effect that Raleigh smoked on a rock below the Manor House of
Greenaway, on the River Dart, which was the home of the first husband
of Katherine Champernowne, afterwards Raleigh's wife; and Devonshire
guide-books have adopted the story.
Perhaps the most likely scene of Raleigh's first experiments in the
art of smoking was Durham House, which stood where the Adelphi Terrace
and the streets between it and the Strand now stand. This was in the
occupation of Sir Walter for twenty years (1583-1603), and he was
probably resident there when Hariot returned from Virginia to make his
report and instruct his employer in the management of a pipe. Walter
Thornbury, in his "Haunted London," referring to the story of the
servant throwing the ale over his smoking master, says: "There is a
doubtful old legend about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may
be not unfairly laid at Durham House, where Raleigh lived." The ale
story is mythical, but it is highly probable that Sir Walter's first
pipes were smoked in Durham House. Dr. Brushfield quotes Hepworth
Dixon, in "Her Majesty's Tower," as drawing "an imaginary and yet
probable picture of him and his companions at a window of this very
house, overlooking the 'silent highway':
"'It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men
[Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham
House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the
highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds
and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the
distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.'" This is a pure
"effort of the fancy" so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned.
Shakespeare's absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that
he smoked; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house
had, as Aubrey tells us, "a little turret that looked into and over
the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any
in the world"; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the
noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of
that pleasant turret.
The only mention made of tobacco by Raleigh himself occurs in a
testamentary note made a little while before his execution in 1618.
Referring to the tobacco remaining on his ship after his last voyage,
he wrote: "Sir Lewis Stukely sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of
which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also
a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself ... I desire that
hee may give his account for the tobacco." As showing how closely Sir
Walter's name was associated with it long after his death, Dr.
Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl
of Cork: "Sept. 1, 1641. Sent by Travers to my infirme cozen Roger
Vaghan, a pott of Sir Walter Raleighes tobackoe."
In the Wallace Collection at Hertford House is a pouch or case
labelled as having belonged to and been used by Sir Walter Raleigh.
This pouch contains several clay pipes. It was perhaps this same pouch
or case which once upon a time figured in Ralph Thoresby's museum at
Leeds, and is described by Thoresby himself in his "Ducatus
Leodiensis," 1715. Curiously enough, a few years ago when excavations
were being made around the foundations of Raleigh's house at Youghal a
clay pipe-bowl was dug up which in size, shape, &c., was exactly like
the pipes in the Wallace exhibit. Raleigh lived and no doubt smoked in
the Youghal house, so it is quite possible that the bowl found
belonged to one of the pipes actually smoked by him. In the garden of
the Youghal house, by the way, they used to show the tree--perhaps
still do so--under which Raleigh was sitting, smoking his pipe, when
his servant drenched him. Thus the tradition, which, as we have seen,
dates from 1708 only, has obtained two local habitations--Youghal and
Durham House on the Adelphi site.
In November 1911 a curiously shaped pipe was put up for sale in Mr.
J.C. Stevens's Auction Room, Covent Garden, which was described as
that which Raleigh smoked "on the scaffold." The pipe in question was
said to have been given by the doomed man to Bishop Andrewes, in whose
family it remained for many years, and it was stated to have been in
the family of the owner, who sent it for sale, for some 200 years. The
pipe was of wood constructed in four pieces of strange shape, rudely
carved with dogs' heads and faces of Red Indians. According to legend
it had been presented to Raleigh by the Indians. The auctioneer, Mr.
Stevens, remarked that unfortunately a parchment document about the
pipe was lost some years ago, and declared, "If we could only produce
the parchment the pipe would fetch L500." In the end, however, it was
knocked down at seventy-five guineas.
The form and make of the first pipe is a matter I do not propose to go
into here; but in connexion with the first pipe smoked in this country
Aubrey's interesting statements must be given. Writing in the time of
Charles II, he said that he had heard his grandfather say that at
first one pipe was handed from man to man round about the table. "They
had first silver pipes; the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell
and a straw"--surely a very unsatisfactory pipe. Tobacco in those
earliest days, he says, was sold for its weight in silver. "I have
heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to
Malmesbury or Chippenham Market, they culled out their biggest
shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco."
II
TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT: SMOKING FASHIONABLE AND UNIVERSAL
Tobacco engages
Both sexes, all ages,
The poor as well as the wealthy;
From the court to the cottage,
From childhood to dotage,
Both those that are sick and the healthy.
_Wits' Recreations_, 1640.
This chapter and the next deal with the history of smoking during the
first fifty years after its introduction as a social habit--roughly to
1630.
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. Earle says that a gallant was one
that was born and shaped for his clothes--but clothes were only a part
of his equipment. Bishop Hall, satirizing the young man of fashion in
1597, describes the delicacies with which he was accustomed to
indulge his appetite, and adds that, having eaten, he "Quaffs a whole
tunnel of tobacco smoke"; and old Robert Burton, in satirically
enumerating the accomplishments of "a complete, a well-qualified
gentleman," names to "take tobacco with a grace," with hawking,
riding, hunting, card-playing, dicing and the like. The qualifications
for a gallant were described by another writer in 1603 as "to make
good faces, to take Tobacco well, to spit well, to laugh like a
waiting gentlewoman, to lie well, to blush for nothing, to looke big
upon little fellowes, to scoffe with a grace ... and, for a neede, to
ride prettie and well."
A curious feature of tobacco-manners among fashionable smokers of the
period was the practice of passing a pipe from one to another, after
the fashion of the "loving cup." There is a scene in "Greene's Tu
Quoque," 1614, laid in a fashionable ordinary, where the London
gallants meet as usual, and one says to a companion who is smoking:
"Please you to impart your smoke?" "Very willingly, sir," says the
smoker. Number two takes a whiff or two and courteously says: "In good
faith, a pipe of excellent vapour!" The owner of the pipe then
explains that it is "the best the house yields," whereupon the other
immediately depreciates it, saying affectedly: "Had you it in the
house? I thought it had been your own: 'tis not so good now as I took
it for!" Another writer of this time speaks of one pipe of tobacco
sufficing "three or four men at once."
The rich young gallant carried about with him his tobacco apparatus
(often of gold or silver) in the form of tobacco-box,
tobacco-tongs--wherewith to lift a live coal to light his pipe, ladle
"for the cold snuffe into the nosthrill," and priming-iron. Sometimes
the tobacco-box was of ivory; and occasionally a gallant would have
looking-glass set in his box, so that when he took it out to obtain
tobacco, he could at the same time have a view of his own delectable
person. When our gallant went to dine at the ordinary, according to
the custom of the time, he brought out these possessions, and smoked
while the dinner was being served. Before dinner, after taking a few
turns up and down Paul's Walk in the old cathedral, he might look into
the booksellers' shops, and, pipe in mouth, inquire for the most
recent attack upon the "divine weed"--the contemporary tobacco
literature was abundant--or drop into an apothecary's, which was
usually a tobacco-shop also, and there meet his fellow-smokers.
In the afternoon the gallant might attend what Dekker calls a
"Tobacco-ordinary," by which may possibly have been meant a
smoking-club, or, more probably, the gathering after dinner at one of
the many ordinaries in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's Cathedral of
"tobacconists," as smokers were then called, to discuss the merits of
their respective pipes, and of the various kinds of tobacco--"whether
your Cane or your Pudding be sweetest."
Of course he often bragged, like Julio in Day's "Law Trickes":
"Tobacco? the best in Europe, 't cost me ten Crownes an ounce, by this
vapour."
An amusing example of the bragging "tobacconist" is pictured for us in
Ben Jonson's "Bobadil." Bobadil may perhaps be somewhat of an
exaggerated caricature, but it is probable that the dramatist in
drawing him simply exaggerated the characteristic traits of many
smokers of the day. This hero, drawing tobacco from his pocket,
declares that it is all that is left of seven pounds which he had
bought only "yesterday was seven-night." A consumption of seven pounds
of tobacco in eight days is a pretty "tall order"! Then he goes on to
brag of its quality--your right Trinidado--and to assert that he had
been in the Indies, where the herb grows, and where he himself and a
dozen other gentlemen had for the space of one-and-twenty weeks known
no other nutriment than the fume of tobacco. This again was tolerably
"steep" even for this Falstaff-like braggart. He continues with more
bombast in praise of the medicinal virtues of the herb--virtues which
were then very firmly and widely believed in--and is replied to by
Cob, the anti-tobacconist, who, with equal exaggeration on the other
side, denounces tobacco, and declares that four people had died in one
house from the use of it in the preceding week, and that one had
"voided a bushel of soot"!
The properly accomplished gallant not only professed to be curiously
learned in pipes and tobacco, but his knowledge of prices and their
fluctuations, of the apothecaries' and other shops where the herb was
sold, and of the latest and most fashionable ways of inhaling and
exhaling the smoke, was, like Mr. Weller's knowledge of London,
"extensive and peculiar." It was knowledge of this kind that gained
for a gallant reputation and respect by no means to be acquired by
mere scholarship and learning.
The satirical Dekker might class "tobacconists" with "feather-makers,
cobweb-lawne-weavers, perfumers, young country gentlemen and fools,"
but he bears invaluable witness to the devotion of the fashionable
men of the day to the "costlye and gentleman-like Smoak."
It was customary for a man to carry a case of pipes about with him. In
a play of 1609 ("Everie Woman in her Humour") there is an inventory of
the contents of a gentleman's pocket, with a value given for each
item, which displays certainly a curious assortment of articles. First
comes a brush and comb worth fivepence, and next a looking-glass worth
three halfpence. With these aids to vanity are a case of tobacco-pipes
valued at fourpence, half an ounce of tobacco valued at sixpence, and
three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, "in money and
golde." Satirists of course made fun of the smoker's pocketful of
apparatus. A pamphleteer of 1609 says: "I behelde pipes in his pocket;
now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to
his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast
from his mouth."
It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about
smoking in the presence of ladies. Gostanzo, in Chapman's "All Fools,"
1605, says:
_And for discourse in my fair mistress's presence
I did not, as you barren gallants do,
Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco._
And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious
Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to
his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of
ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date,
gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of
tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.
When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the
stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and
embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.
_It chaunc'd me gazing at the Theater,
To spie a Lock-Tabacco Chevalier
Clowding the loathing ayr with foggie fume
Of Dock Tobacco friendly foe to rhume_--
says a versifier of 1599, who did not like smoking in the theatre and
so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked--though admitting its
medicinal virtue. Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one
reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the
stage, notwithstanding "the mewes and hisses of the opposed
rascality"--the "mewes" must have been the squeals or whistles
produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call--was
the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of
"the best and most essential parts of a gallant--good cloathes, a
proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable
beard." Apparently, too, serving-boys were within call, and thus
lights could easily be obtained, which were handed to one another by
the smokers on the points of their swords.
Ben Jonson has given us an amusing picture of the behaviour of
gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this
scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am
one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at
the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I
have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus
I begin. 'By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to
see these rascally tits play here--they do act like so many wrens--not
the fifth part of a good face amongst them all--and then their musick
is abominable--able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten--pillories,
and their ditties--most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows
that make them--poets. By this vapour--an't were not for tobacco--I
think--the very smell of them would poison me, I should not dare to
come in at their gates. A man were better visit fifteen jails--or a
dozen or two hospitals--than once adventure to come near them.'" And
the young rascal, who at each pause marked by a dash had puffed his
pipe, no doubt blowing an extra large "cloud" when he swore "by this
vapour," turns to his companions and says: "How is't? Well?" and they
pronounce his mimicry "Excellent!"
Smoking was not confined to the auditors on the stage, who paid
sixpence each for a stool. There was the "lords' room" over the stage,
which seems to have corresponded with the modern stage boxes, the
price of admission to which appears to have been a shilling, where the
pipe was also in full blast. Dekker tells how a gallant at a new play
would take a place in the "twelve penny room, next the stage, because
the lords and you may seem to be hail fellow, well met"; and Jonson,
in "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, speaks of one who pretended
familiarity with courtiers, that he talked of them as if he had "taken
tobacco with them over the stage, in the lords' room."
Among the general audience of the theatre smoking seems to have been
usual also. The anti-tobacconists among those present, few of whom
were men, must have suffered by the practice. In that admirable
burlesque comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Knight of the Burning
Pestle," 1613, the citizen's wife, addressing herself either to the
gallants on the stage, or to her fellow-spectators sitting around her,
exclaims: "Fy! 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."
Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited London in 1598, speaks of
smoking being customary among the audience at plays, who were also
supplied with "fruits, such as apples, pears and nuts, according to
the season, carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine." He was
struck with the universal prevalence of the tobacco-habit. Not only at
plays, but "everywhere else," he says, the "English are constantly
smoking tobacco," and then he proceeds to describe how they did it:
"They have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the further end of
which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder; and
putting fire to it, they draw the smoak into their mouths, which they
puff out again through their nostrils, like funnels, along with it
plenty of phlegm and defluxions from the head." This suggests that
the unpleasant and quite unnecessary habit of spitting was common with
these early smokers, a suggestion which is amply supported by other
contemporary evidence.
Tobacco was smoked by all classes and in almost all places. It was
smoked freely in the streets. In some verses prefixed to an edition of
Skelton's "Elinour Rumming" which appeared in 1624, the ghost of
Skelton, who was poet-laureate to King Henry VIII, was made to say
that he constantly saw smoking:
_As I walked between
Westminster Hall
And the Church of Saint Paul,
And so thorow the citie,
Where I saw and did pitty
My country men's cases,
With fiery-smoke faces,
Sucking and drinking
A filthie weede stinking._
Tobacco-selling was sometimes curiously combined with other trades. A
Fleet Street tobacconist of this time was also a dealer in worsted
stockings. A mercer of Mansfield who died at the beginning of 1624,
and who apparently carried on business also at Southwell, had a
considerable stock of tobacco. In the Inventory of all his "cattalles
and goods" which is dated 24 January 1624, there is included "It. in
Tobacco 19.li 0. 0." Nineteen pounds' worth of tobacco, considering
the then value of money, was no small stock for a mercer-tobacconist
to carry.
But the apothecaries were the most usual salesmen, and their shops
and the ordinaries were the customary day meeting-places for the more
fashionable smokers. The taverns and inns, however, were also filled
with smoke, and taverns were frequented by men of all social grades.
Dekker speaks of the gallant leaving the tavern at night when "the
spirit of wine and tobacco walkes" in his train. On the occasion of
the accession of James I, 1603, when London was given up to rejoicing
and revelry, we are told that "tobacconists [_i.e._ smokers] filled up
whole Tavernes."
King James himself is an unwilling witness to the popularity of
tobacco. He tells us that a man could not heartily welcome his friend
without at once proposing a smoke. It had become, he says, a point of
good-fellowship, and he that would refuse to take a pipe among his
fellows was accounted "peevish and no good company." "Yea," he
continues, with rising indignation, "the mistress cannot in a more
mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair
hand a pipe of tobacco."
Smoking was soon as common in the country as in London. On Wednesday,
April 16, 1621, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons, Sir
William Stroud, who seems to have been a worthy disciple of that
tobacco-hater, King James I, moved that he "would have tobacco
banished wholly out of the kingdom, and that it may not be brought in
from any part, nor used amongst us"; and Sir Grey Palmes said "that if
tobacco be not banished, it will overthrow 100,000 men in England, for
now it is so common that he hath seen ploughmen take it as they are at
plough." Perhaps this terrible picture of a ploughman smoking as he
followed his lonely furrow did not impress the House so much as Sir
Grey evidently thought it would; at all events, tobacco was not
banished.
Peers and squires and parsons and peasants alike smoked. The parson of
Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, was so devoted to tobacco that when his
supply of the weed ran short, he is said to have cut up the bell-ropes
and smoked them! This is dated about 1630. In the well-known
description of the famous country squire, Mr. Hastings, who was
remarkable for keeping up old customs in the early years of the
seventeenth century, we read of how his hall tables were littered with
hawks' hoods, bells, old hats with their crowns thrust in, full of
pheasants' eggs; tables, dice, cards, and store of tobacco-pipes.
Sir Francis Vere, in the account of his services by sea and land which
he wrote about 1606, mentions that on an expedition to the Azores in
1597, the Earl of Essex, waiting for news of the enemy at St. Michael,
"called for tobacco ... and so on horseback, with those Noblemen and
Gentlemen on foot beside him, took tobacco, whilst I was telling his
Lordship of the men I had sent forth, and orders I had given."
Presently came the sound of guns, which "made his Lordship cast his
pipe from him, and listen to the shooting."
Another famous nobleman, Lord Herbert of Cherbury--
_All-virtuous Herbert! on whose every part
Truth might spend all her voice, fame all her art!--_
was a smoker, as we know from a very curious passage in his well-known
autobiography. He appears to have smoked not so much for pleasure as
for supposed reasons of health. "It is well known," he wrote, "to
those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other
garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily
be believed, or hath been observed in any else, which sweetness also
was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take
tobacco, which towards my latter time I was forced to take against
certain rheums and catarrhs that trouble me, which yet did not taint
my breath for any long time." The autobiography was written about
1645, so as Lord Herbert did not smoke till towards the latter part of
his life--he died in 1648--he clearly was not one of those who took to
tobacco in the first enthusiasm for the new indulgence.
When Robert, Earl of Essex, and Henry, Earl of Southampton, were tried
for high treason in Westminster Hall on February 19, 1600-1, the
members of the House of Lords, who with the Judges formed the Court,
if we may believe the French Ambassador of the time, behaved in a
remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the
Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were
pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave
their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and
"yvres de tabac"--drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue
as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly
have been written had smoking not been a common practice among noble
lords.
Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, would appear
to have been a smoker. In a letter addressed to him, John Watts, an
alderman of London, wrote: "According to your request, I have sent
the greatest part of my store of tobaca by the bearer, wishing that
the same may be to your good liking. But this tobaca I have had this
six months, which was such as my son brought home, but since that time
I have had none. At this period there is none that is good to be had
for money. Wishing you to make store thereof, for I do not know where
to have the like, I have sent you of two sorts. Mincing Lane, 12 Dec.
1600."
A curious scene took place at Oxford in 1605 when King James visited
the University. Two subjects were debated by learned dons before his
Majesty, and one of them, at his own suggestion, was, "Whether the
frequent use of tobacco is good for healthy men?" Among those who
spoke were Doctors Ailworth, Gwyn, Gifford and Cheynell. The
discussion, needless to say, being conducted in the presence of the
author of the "Counterblaste to Tobacco," was not favourable to the
herb. The King summed up in a speech which hopelessly begged the
question while it contained plenty of strong denunciation. After his
Majesty had spoken, one learned doctor, Cheynell, who is described by
the recorder, Isaac Wake, the Public Orator of the University, as
second to none of the doctors, had the courage to rise and, with a
pipe held forth in his hand, to speak both wittily and eloquently in
favour of tobacco from the medicinal point of view, praising it to the
skies, says Wake, as of virtue beyond all other remedial agents. His
wit pleased both the King and the whole assembly, whom it moved to
laughter; but when he had finished, his Majesty made a lengthy
rejoinder in which he said some curious things. He objected to the
medicinal use of tobacco, and quite agreed with previous speakers
that such a use must have arisen among Barbarians and Indians, who he
went on to say had as much knowledge of medicine as they had of
civilized customs. If, he argued, there were men whose bodies were
benefited by tobacco-smoke, this did not so much redound to the credit
of tobacco, as it did reflect upon the depraved condition of such men,
that their bodies should have sunk to the level of those of Barbarians
so as to be affected by remedies such as were effective on the bodies
of Barbarians and Indians! His Majesty kindly suggested that doctors
who believed in tobacco as a remedial agent should take themselves and
their medicine of pollution off to join the Indians.
III
TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT (_continued_)--SELLERS OF TOBACCO AND PROFESSORS OF
SMOKING--ABUSE AND PRAISE OF TOBACCO
This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow;
He lets me have good tobacco.
BEN JONSON, _The Alchemist._
The druggists and other tradesmen who sold tobacco in Elizabethan and
Jacobean days had every provision for the convenience of their
numerous customers. Some so-called druggists, it may be shrewdly
suspected, did much more business in tobacco than they did in drugs.
Dekker tells us of an apothecary and his wife who had no customers
resorting to their shop "for any phisicall stuffe," but whose shop had
many frequenters in the shape of gentlemen who "came to take their
pipes of the divine smoake." That tobacco was often the most
profitable part of a druggist's stock is also clear from the last
sentence in Bishop Earle's character of "A Tobacco-Seller," one of the
shortest in that remarkable collection of "Characters" which the
Bishop issued in 1628 under the title of "Micro-Cosmographie."
"A Tobacco-Seller," says Earle, "is the onely man that findes good in
it which others brag of, but do not; for it is meate, drinke, and
clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousnesse, or
challenges your judgement more in the approbation. His shop is the
Randevous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their
communication is smoake. It is the place onely where Spaine is
commended, and prefer'd before England itselfe. He should be well
experienc'd in the world: for he ha's daily tryall of mens nostrils,
and none is better acquainted with humors. Hee is the piecing commonly
of some other trade which is bawde to his Tobacco, and that to his
wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke."
This brief "Character" is hardly so pointed or so effective as some of
the others in the "Micro-Cosmographie," but it would seem that the
Bishop was not very friendly to tobacco. In the character of "A
Drunkard" he says: "Tobacco serves to aire him after a washing [_i.e._
a drinking-bout], and is his onely breath, and breathing while." In
another, a tavern "is the common consumption of the Afternoone, and
the murderer, or maker away of a rainy day. It is the Torrid Zone that
scorches the face, and Tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up."