an enemy of what he called "this Heathenish Weed," and who thought the
"folly" of smoking might never have spread so much if stringent "means
of prevention" had been exercised, yet had to declare in 1660 that
"Tobacco it self is by few taken now as medicinal, it is grown a
good-fellow, and fallen from a Physician to a Complement. 'He's no
good-fellow that's without ... burnt Pipes, Tobacco, and his
Tinder-Box.'"
At the time of the Restoration tobacco-boxes which were considered
suitable to the occasion were made in large numbers. The outside of
the lid bore a portrait of the Royal Martyr; within the lid was a
picture of the restored king, His Majesty King Charles II; while on
the inside of the bottom of the box was a representation of Oliver
Cromwell leaning against a post, a gallows-tree over his head, and
about his neck a halter tied to the tree, while beside him was
pictured the devil, wide-mouthed. Another form of memorial tobacco-box
is described in an advertisement in the _London Gazette_ of September
15, 1687. This was a silver box which had either been "taken out of
the Bull's Head Tavern, Cheapside, or left in a Hackney Coach." It was
"ingraved on the Lid with a Coat of Arms, etc., and a Medal of Charles
the First fastened to the inside of the Lid, and engraved on the
inside 'to Jacob Smith it doth belong, at the Black Lyon in High
Holborn, date August 1671.'"
Smokers of the period were often curious in tobacco-boxes. Mr. Richard
Stapley, gentleman, of Twineham, Sussex, whose diary is full of
curious information, was presented in 1691 by his friend Mr. John Hill
with a "tobacco-box made of tortoise." Seven years earlier Stapley had
sold to Hill his silver tobacco-box for 10s. in cash--the rest of the
value of the box, he noted, "I freely forgave him for writing at our
first commission for me, and for copying of answers and ye like in our
law concerns; so yt I reckon I have as good as 30s. for my box: 5s. he
gave me, and 5s. more he promised to pay me ... and I had his steel
box with the bargain, and full of smoake." Apparently Mr. Hill's
secretarial labours were valued at 20s. This same Sussex squire bought
a pound of tobacco in December 1685 for 20d., which seems decidedly
cheap, and in the following year a 5 lb. box for 7s. 6d.--which was
cheaper still.
A Sussex rector, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, in 1656 and
again in 1662, paid 1s. for two ounces of tobacco, _i.e._ at the rate
of 8s. per lb. Presumably the rector bought the more expensive
Spanish tobacco and the squire the cheaper Virginian. At the annual
parish feast held at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London, on May 24,
1666, the expenses included 3d. for tobacco for twenty or more adults.
This too was doubtless Virginian or colonial tobacco. The North Elmham
Church Accounts (Norfolk) for 1673 show that 12s. 4d. was paid for
"Butter, cheese, Bread, Cakes, Beere and Tobacco and Tobacco Pipes at
the goeing of the Rounds of the Towne." On the occasion of a similar
perambulation of the parish boundaries in 1714-15 the churchwardens
paid for beer, pipes and tobacco, cakes and wine. The account-books of
the church and parish of St. Stephen, Norwich, for 1696-97 show 2s. as
the price of a pound of tobacco. These entries, and many others of
similar import, show that at feasts and at social and convivial
gatherings of all kinds, tobacco maintained its ascendancy. Pipes and
tobacco were included in the usual provision for city feasts, mayoral
and other; and smoking was made a particular feature of the Lord
Mayor's Show of 1672. A contemporary pamphleteer says that in the Show
of that year were "two extreme great giants, each of them at least 15
foot high, that do sit, and are drawn by horses in two several
chariots, moving, talking, and taking tobacco as they ride along, to
the great admiration and delight of all the spectators." Among the
guests at a wedding in London in 1683 were the Lord Mayor, Sheriff and
Aldermen of the City, the Lord Chief Justice--the afterwards notorious
Jeffreys--and other "bigwigs." Evelyn records with grave disapproval
that "these great men spent the rest of the afternoon till 11 at
night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath
the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr.
Algernon Sidney."
Although smoking was general among parsons, yet attacks on tobacco
were occasionally heard from pulpits. A Lancashire preacher named
Thomas Jollie, who was one of the ministers ejected from Church
livings by the Act of Uniformity, 1662, has left a manuscript diary
relating to his religious work. In it, under date 1687, he mentions
that he had spoken "against the inordinate affection to and the
immoderate use of tobacco which did caus much trouble in some of my
hearers and some reformation did follow." He then goes on to record
two remarkable examples of such "reformation"--examples, he says,
"which did stirr me up in that case more than ordinary. The one I had
from my reverend Brother Mr. Robert Whittaker, concerning a professor
[_i.e._ a person who professed to have been "converted"] who could not
follow his calling without his pipe in his mouth, but that text Isaiah
55, 2, coming into his mind hee layd aside his taking of tobacco. The
other instance was of a profane person living nigh Haslingdon (who was
but poor) and took up his time in the trade of smoking and also spent
what should reliev his poor family. This man dreamed that he was
taking tobacco, and that the devill stood by him filling one pipe upon
another for him. In the morning hee fell to his old cours
notwithstanding; thinking it was but a dream: but when hee came to
take his pipe, hee had such an apprehension that the devill did indeed
stand by him and doe the office as hee dreamed that hee was struck
speechless for a time and when hee came to himself hee threw his
tobacco in the fire and his pipes at the walls; resolving never to
meddle more with it: soe much money as was formerly wasted by the week
in to serving his family afterward weekly."
Among the many medicinal virtues attributed to tobacco was its
supposed value as a preservative from contagion at times of plague.
Hearne, the antiquary, writing early in 1721, said that he had been
told that in the Great Plague of London of 1665 none of those who kept
tobacconists' shops suffered from it, and this belief no doubt
enhanced the medical reputation of the weed. I have also seen it
stated that during the cholera epidemics of 1831, 1849, and 1866 not
one London tobacconist died from that disease; but good authority for
the statement seems to be lacking. Hutton, in his "History of Derby,"
says that when that town was visited by the plague in 1665, that at
the "Headless-cross ... the market-people, having their mouths primed
with tobacco as a preservative, brought their provisions.... It was
observed, that this cruel affliction never attempted the premises of a
tobacconist, a tanner or a shoemaker." Whatever ground there may have
been for the belief in the prophylactic effect of smoking, there can
be no doubt that in the seventeenth century it was firmly held. Howell
in one of his "Familiar Letters" dated January 1, 1646, says that the
smoke of tobacco is "one of the wholesomest sents that is against all
contagious airs, for it overmasters all other smells, as King James
they say found true, when being once a hunting, a showr of rain drave
him into a Pigsty for shelter, wher he caus'd a pipe full to Be taken
of purpose." But here Mr. Howell is certainly drawing the long-bow.
One cannot imagine the author of the "Counterblaste" countenancing
the use of tobacco under any circumstances.
At the time of the Great Plague all kinds of nostrums were sold and
recommended as preservatives or as cures. Most of these perished with
the occasion that called them forth; but the names of some have been
preserved in a rare quarto tract which was published in the Plague
year, 1665, entitled "A Brief Treatise of the Nature, Causes, Signes,
Preservation from and Cure of the Pestilence," "collected by W. Kemp,
Mr. of Arts." In the list of devices for purifying infected air it is
stated that "The American Silver-weed, or Tobacco, is very excellent
for this purpose, and an excellent defence against bad air, being
smoked in a pipe, either by itself, or with Nutmegs shred, and Rew
Seeds mixed with it, especially if it be nosed"--which, I suppose,
means if the smoke be exhaled through the nose--"for it cleanseth the
air, and choaketh, suppresseth and disperseth any venomous vapour."
Mr. Kemp warms to his subject and proceeds with a whole-hearted
panegyric that must be quoted in full: "It hath singular and contrary
effects, it is good to warm one being cold, and will cool one being
hot. All ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old, Men and
Women, the Sanguine, the Cholerick, the Melancholy, the phlegmatick,
take it without any manifest inconvenience, it quencheth thirst, and
yet will make one more able, and fit to drink; it abates hunger, and
yet will get one a good stomach; it is agreeable with mirth or
sadness, with feasting and with fasting; it will make one rest that
wants sleep, and will keep one waking that is drowsie; it hath an
offensive smell to some, and is more desirable than any perfume to
others; that it is a most excellent preservative, both experience and
reason do teach; it corrects the air by Fumigation, and it avoids
corrupt humours by Salivation; for when one takes it either by Chewing
it in the leaf, or Smoaking it in the pipe, the humors are drawn and
brought from all parts of the body, to the stomach, and from thence
rising up to the mouth of the Tobacconist, as to the helme of a
Sublimatory, are voided and spitten out."
When plague was abroad even children were compelled to smoke. At the
time of the dreadful visitation of 1665 all the boys at Eton were
obliged to smoke in school every morning. One of these juvenile
smokers, a certain Tom Rogers, years afterwards declared to Hearne,
the Oxford antiquary, that he never was whipped so much in his life as
he was one morning for not smoking. Times have changed at Eton since
this anti-tobacconist martyr received his whipping. It is sometimes
stated that at this time smoking was generally practised in schools,
and that at a stated hour each morning lessons were laid aside, and
masters and scholars alike produced their pipes and proceeded to smoke
tobacco. But I know of no authority for this wider statement; it seems
to have grown out of Hearne's record of the practice at Eton.
The belief in the prophylactic power of tobacco was, however, very
generally held. When Mr. Samuel Pepys on June 7, 1665, for the first
time saw several houses marked with the ominous red cross, and the
words "Lord, have mercy upon us" chalked upon the doors, he felt so
ill at ease that he was obliged to buy some roll tobacco to smell and
chew. There is nothing to show that Pepys even smoked, which
considering his proficiency in the arts of good-fellowship, is perhaps
a little surprising. Defoe, in his fictitious but graphic "Journal of
the Plague Year in London," says that the sexton of one of the London
parishes, who personally handled a large number of the victims, never
had the distemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and
was sexton of the parish to the time of his death. This man, according
to Defoe, "never used any preservative against the infection other
than holding garlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco."
When excavations were in progress early in 1901, preparatory to the
construction of Kingsway and Aldwych, they included the removal of
bodies from the burying-grounds of St. Clement Danes and St.
Mary-le-Strand; and among the bones were found a couple of the curious
tobacco-pipes called "plague-pipes," because they are supposed to have
been used as a protection against infection by those whose office it
was to bury the dead. These pipes have been dug up from time to time
in numbers so large that one antiquary, Mr. H. Syer Cuming, has
ventured to infer that "almost every person who ventured from home
invoked the protection of tobacco."
These seventeenth-century pipes were largely made in Holland of
pipe-clay imported from England--to the disgust and loss of English
pipe-makers. In 1663 the Company of Tobacco-Pipe Makers petitioned
Parliament "to forbid the export of tobacco pipe clay, since by the
manufacture of pipes in Holland their trade is much damaged." Further,
they asked for "the confirmation of their charter of government so as
to empower them to regulate abuses, as many persons engage in the
trade without licence." The Company's request was granted; but in the
next year they again found it necessary to come to Parliament, showing
"the great improvement in their trade since their incorporation, 17
James I, and their threatened ruin because cooks, bakers, and
ale-house keepers and others make pipes, but so unskilfully that they
are brought into disesteem; they request to be comprehended in the
Statute of Labourers of 5 Elizabeth, so that none may follow the trade
who have not been apprentices seven years."
Tobacco-pipe making was a flourishing industry at this period and
throughout the seventeenth and following century in most of the chief
provincial towns and cities as well as in London.
"Old English 'clays,'" says Mr. T.P. Cooper, "are exceedingly
interesting, as most of them are branded with the maker's initials.
Monograms and designs were stamped or moulded upon the bowls and on
the stems, but more generally upon the spur or flat heel of the pipe.
Many pipes display on the heels various forms of lines, hatched and
milled, which were perhaps the earliest marks of identification
adopted by the pipe-makers. In a careful examination of the monograms
we are able to identify the makers of certain pipes found in
quantities at various places, by reference to the freeman and burgess
rolls and parish registers. During the latter half of the seventeenth
century English pipes were presented by colonists in America to the
Indians; they subsequently became valuable as objects of barter or
part purchase value in exchange for land. In 1677 one hundred and
twenty pipes and one hundred Jew's harps were given for a strip of
country near Timber Creek, in New Jersey. William Penn, the founder
of Pennsylvania, purchased a tract of land, and 300 pipes were
included in the articles given in the exchange."
The French traveller, Sorbiere, who visited London in 1663, declared
that the English were naturally lazy and spent half their time in
taking tobacco. They smoked after meals, he observed, and conversed
for a long time. "There is scarce a day passes," he wrote, "but a
Tradesman goes to the Ale-house or Tavern to smoke with some of his
Friends, and therefore Public Houses are numerous here, and Business
goes on but slowly in the Shops"; but, curiously enough, he makes no
mention of coffee-houses. A little later they were too common and too
much frequented to be overlooked. An English writer on thrift in 1676
said that it was customary for a "mechanic tradesman" to go to the
coffee-house or ale-house in the morning to drink his morning's
draught, and there he would spend twopence and consume an hour in
smoking and talking, spending several hours of the evening in similar
fashion.
Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen.
In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas
Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring "to be remembered by the witty
smoakers of Hawsted." A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a
"History and Antiquities of Hawsted," and in describing Hawsted Place,
which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment
called the smoking-room--"a name," he says, "it acquired probably soon
after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as
it stood." I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum
could have made the assertion that the room was called the
smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century.
No mention in print of a smoking-room has been found for the purposes
of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689. In Shadwell's "Bury Fair"
of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves
to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary
heroes of a bygone day, "While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter
says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred,
witless drunkards with you in your smoking-room." As Mr. Oldwit
himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends,
"We'll into my smoking-room and sport about a brimmer," there was
probably some excuse for his wife's remark. These country
smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor
being flagged for safety's sake; and the "stone-parlour" in many a
squire's house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no
doubt, abundant smoking.
The arrival of coffee and the establishment of coffee-houses opened a
new field for the victories of tobacco. The first house was opened in
St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652. Others soon followed, and in a
short time the new beverage had captured the town, and coffee-houses
had been opened in every direction. They sold many things besides
coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were
temples of talk and good-fellowship. The buzz of conversation and the
smoke of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of
the club-houses of a much later day.
VI
SMOKING UNDER KING WILLIAM III AND QUEEN ANNE
Hail! social pipe--thou foe of care,
Companion of my elbow-chair;
As forth thy curling fumes arise,
They seem an evening sacrifice--
An offering to my Maker's praise,
For all His benefits and grace.
SIR SAMUEL GARTH (1660-1718).
After King William III was settled on the throne the sum of L600,000
was paid to the Dutch from the English exchequer for money advanced in
connexion with his Majesty's expedition, and this amount was paid off
by tobacco duties. Granger long ago remarked that most of the eminent
divines and bishops of the day contributed very practically to the
payment of this revolutionary debt by their large consumption of
tobacco. He mentions Isaac Barrow, Dr. Barlow of Lincoln, who was as
regular in smoking tobacco as at his meals, and had a high opinion of
its virtues, Dr. Aldrich, "and other celebrated persons who flourished
about this time, and gave much into that practice." One of the best
known of these celebrated persons was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of
Salisbury from 1689, and historian of his own times. He had the
reputation of being an inveterate smoker, and was caricatured with a
long clay stuck through the brim of the shovel hat, on the breadth of
which King William once made remark. The bishop replied that the hat
was of a shape suited to his dignity, whereupon the King caustically
said, "I hope that the hat won't turn your head."
Thackeray pictures Dryden as sitting in his great chair at Will's
Coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, tobacco-pipe in hand; but
there is no evidence that Dryden smoked. The snuff-box was his symbol
of authority. Budding wits thought themselves highly distinguished if
they could obtain the honour of being allowed to take a pinch from it.
Of Dr. Aldrich, who was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and who wrote a
curious "Catch not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear, to
be sung by four men smoaking their pipes," an anecdote has often been
related, which illustrates his devotion to the weed. A bet was made by
one undergraduate and taken by another, that at whatever time, however
early, the Dean might be visited in his own den, he would be found
smoking. As soon as the bet had been made the Dean was visited. The
pair explained the reason for their call, when Aldrich, who must have
been a good-tempered man, said, "Your friend has lost: I am not
smoking, only filling my pipe."
John Philips, the author of "Cyder" and the "Splendid Shilling," was
an undergraduate at Christ Church, during Aldrich's term of office,
and no doubt learned to smoke in an atmosphere so favourable to
tobacco. In his "Splendid Shilling," which dates from about 1700,
Philips says of the happy man with a shilling in his pocket:
_Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or Pun ambiguous or Conundrum quaint._
But the poor shillingless wretch can only
_doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chill'd fingers; or from tube as black
As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet,
Exhale Mundungus, ill-perfuming scent._
The miserable creature, though without a shilling, yet possessed a
well-coloured "clay."
It is significant that the writer of a life of Philips, which was
prefixed to an edition of his poems which was published in 1762, after
mentioning that smoking was common at Oxford in the days of Aldrich,
says apologetically, "It is no wonder therefore that he [Philips] fell
in with the general taste ... he has descended to sing its praises in
more than one place." By 1762, as we shall see, smoking was quite
unfashionable, and consequently it was necessary to explain how it was
that a poet could "descend" so low as to sing the praises of tobacco.
Other well-known men of the late seventeenth century were
"tobacconists" in the old sense of the word. Sir Isaac Newton is said
to have smoked immoderately; and a familiar anecdote represents him as
using for the purposes of a tobacco-stopper, in a fit of
absent-mindedness, the little finger of a lady sitting beside him,
whom he admired, but the truth of this legend is open to doubt. Thomas
Hobbes, who lived to be ninety (1588-1679), was accustomed to dine at
11 o'clock, after which he smoked a pipe and then lay down and took a
nap of about half an hour. No doubt he would have attributed the
length of his days to the regularity of his habits. Izaak Walton, who
also lived to be ninety, as the lover of the placid and contemplative
life deserved to do, loved his pipe, though he seldom mentions smoking
in the "Compleat Angler." Sir Samuel Garth, poet and physician, once
known to fame as the author of "The Dispensary," was another
pipe-lover, as is shown by his verses quoted at the head of this
chapter. Dudley, the fourth Lord North, began to smoke in 1657, and,
says Dr. Jessopp, "the habit grew upon him, the frequent entries for
pipes and tobacco showing that he became more and more addicted to
this indulgence. Probably it afforded him some solace in the dreadful
malady from which he suffered so long."
Even the staid Quakers smoked. George Fox's position in regard to
tobacco was curious. He did not smoke himself; but on one occasion he
was offered a pipe by a jesting youth who thought thereby to shock so
saintly a person. Fox says in his "Journal," "I lookt upon him to bee
a forwarde bolde lad: and tobacco I did not take: butt ... I saw hee
had a flashy empty notion of religion: soe I took his pipe and putt it
to my mouth and gave it to him again to stoppe him lest his rude
tongue should say I had not unity with ye creation." The incident is
curious, but testifies to Fox's tolerance and breadth of outlook.
Many of his followers smoked, sometimes apparently to such an extent
as to cause scandal among their brethren. The following is an entry in
the minutes of the Friends' Monthly Meeting at Hardshaw, Lancashire:
"14th of 4th mo. 1691. It being considered that the too frequent use
of smoking Tobacco is inconsistent with friends holy profession, it is
desired that such as have occasion to make use thereof take it
privately, neither too publicly in their own houses, nor by the
highways, streets, or in alehouses or elsewhere, tending to the
abetting the common excess." Another Lancashire Monthly Meeting,
Penketh, under date "18th 8th mo. 1691" suggested that Friends were
"not to smoke during their labour or occupation, but to leave their
work and take it privately"--a suggestion which clearly proceeded from
non-smokers. The smug propriety of these recommendations to enjoy a
smoke in private is delightful.