If he happen, once in a way, to have nothing special to do and plenty
of time in which to do it, he naturally fills his pipe as he draws the
easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he
have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it
over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves
above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie,
and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least,
something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the
paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems can usually afford to
wait.
"Over a pipe!" Why the words bring up innumerable pleasant
associations. The angler, having caught the coveted prize, refills his
pipe, and with the satisfied sense of duty done, as the rings curl
upward he reviews the struggle and glows again with victory. At the
end of any day's occupation, especially one of pleasurable
toil--whether it be shooting or hunting, or walking or what not--what
can be pleasanter than to let the mind meander through the course of
the day's proceedings over a pipe?
There is much wisdom in Robert Louis Stevenson's remarks in
"Virginibus Puerisque"--"Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden
rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not
smoke. It is not for nothing that this 'ignoble tabagie,' as Michelet
calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it
because it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident
women this will seem no evil influence in married life. Whatever
keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and
all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment,
makes just so surely for domestic happiness."
Nothing is more marked in the change in the social attitude towards
tobacco than the revolution which has taken place in woman's view of
smoking. The history of smoking by women is dealt with separately in
the next chapter; but here it may be noted that most of the old
intolerance of tobacco has disappeared. "To smoke in Hyde Park," said
the late Lady Dorothy Nevill, in 1907, "even up to comparatively
recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while
smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost
disgraceful social crime."
Women do not nowadays shun the smell of smoke as they did in early
Victorian days, as if it were the most dreadful of odours. They are
tolerant of smoking in their presence, in public places, in
restaurants--in fact, wherever men and women congregate--to a degree
that would have horrified extremely their mothers and grandmothers. It
is only within the last few years that visits to music-halls and
theatres of varieties have been socially possible to ladies. Men go
largely because they can smoke during the performance; women go
largely because they have ceased to consider tobacco-smoke as a thing
to be rigidly avoided, and therefore have no hesitation in
accompanying their menfolk.
The observant visitor to the promenade concerts annually given in the
Queen's Hall, Langham Place, will notice that but one small section of
the grand circle is reserved for non-smokers, while smoking is freely
allowed (with no absurd ban on the friendly pipe) in every other part
of the great auditorium--floor, circle and balcony.
There are still some people who share the Duke of Wellington's
delusion that smoking promotes drinking, although experience proves
the contrary, and historic evidence, especially as regards drinking
after dinner, shows that it was the introduction of the cigar,
followed by that of the cigarette, which absolutely killed the old,
bad after-dinner habits. The Salvation Army do not enforce total
abstinence from tobacco as well as from alcoholic drinks as a
condition of membership or soldiership, but a member of the Army must
be a non-smoker before he can hold any office in its rank, or be a
bandsman, or a member of a "songster brigade." And in other religious
organizations there are yet a few of the "unco' guid" who look askance
at pipe or cigarette as if it were a device of the devil. But the
numbers of these misguided folk become fewer every year.
Smoking in the dining-room after dinner is now so general that people
are apt to forget that this particular development is of no great age.
It is not yet, however, universal. A valued correspondent tells me
that he knows a house "where tobacco is still kept out of the
dining-room, and smoke indulged in elsewhere after wine. This
old-fashioned habit must now be pretty rare."
The chief legitimate objection to cigarette smoking was well stated
some years ago by the late Dr. Andrew Wilson. "I think cigarettes are
apt to prove injurious," he said, "because a man will smoke far too
much when he indulges in this form of the weed, and because I think it
is generally admitted that cigarettes are apt to produce evil effects
out of all proportion to the amount of tobacco which is apparently
consumed." Excess can equally be found among cigar and pipe-smokers.
The late Chancellor Parish, in his "Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect,"
tells a delightful story of a Sussex rustic's holiday--"May be you
knows Mass [Master, the distinctive title of a married labourer]
Pilbeam? No! doaent ye? Well, he was a very sing'lar marn was Mass
Pilbeam, a very sing'lar marn! He says to he's mistus one day, he
says, 'tis a long time, says he, sence I've took a holiday--so
cardenly, nex marnin' he laid abed till purty nigh seven o'clock, and
then he brackfustes, and then he goos down to the shop and buys fower
ounces of barca, and he sets hisself down on the maxon [manure heap],
and there he set, and there he smoked and smoked and smoked all the
whole day long, for, says he 'tis a long time sence I've had a
holiday! Ah, he was a very sing'lar marn--a very sing'lar marn
indeed."
Some men seem to act upon Mark Twain's principle of never smoking when
asleep or at meals, and never refraining at any other time. But excess
is self-condemned. There is no good reason why anyone, for social or
any other reasons, should look askance at the reasonable use of
tobacco. "But used in moderation, what evils, let me ask,"--I again
quote Dr. Andrew Wilson's calm good sense--"are to be found in the
train of the tobacco-habit! A man doesn't get delirium tremens even if
he smokes more than is good for him; he doesn't become a debased
mortal; there is nothing about tobacco which makes a man beat his wife
or assault his mother-in-law--rather the reverse, in fact, for tobacco
is a soother and a quietener of the passions, and many a man, I
daresay, has been prevented from doing rash things in the way of
retaliation, when he has lit his pipe and had a good think over his
affairs. Whenever anybody counterblasts to-day against tobacco, I feel
as did my old friend Wilkie Collins, when somebody told him that to
smoke was a wrong thing. 'My dear sir,' said the great novelist, 'all
your objections to tobacco only increase the relish with which I look
forward to my next cigar!'"
XIII
SMOKING BY WOMEN
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740.
A story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh by John Aubrey which seems to
imply that at first women not only did not smoke, but that they
disliked smoking by men. Aubrey says that Raleigh "standing in a stand
at Sir R. Poyntz's parke at Acton, tooke a pipe of tobacco, which made
the ladies quitt it till he had done." But this objection, whether
general or not, soon vanished, for, as we have seen in a previous
chapter, the gallant of Elizabethan and Jacobean days made a practice
of smoking in his lady's presence. It seems certain, moreover, that
some women, at least, smoked very soon after the introduction of
tobacco; but it is not easy to find direct evidence, though there are
sundry traditions and allusions which suggest that the practice was
not unknown.
There is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth herself once smoked--with
unpleasant results. Campbell, in his "History of Virginia," says that
Raleigh having offered her Majesty "some tobacco to smoke, after two
or three whiffs she was seized with a nausea, upon observing which
some of the Earl of Leicester's faction whispered that Sir Walter had
certainly poisoned her. But her Majesty in a short while recovering
made the countess of Nottingham and all her maids smoke a whole pipe
out among them." The Queen had no selfish desire to monopolize the
novel sensations caused by smoking. An eighteenth-century writer,
Oldys, in his "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," declares that tobacco
"soon became of such vogue in Queen Elizabeth's court, that some of
the great ladies, as well as noblemen therein, would not scruple to
take a pipe sometimes very sociably." But these stories rest on vague
tradition, and probably have no foundation in fact.
King James I in his famous "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," hinted that
the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his
delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie,
that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or
else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's
style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two
references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before
King James blew his royal "Counter-blaste," Cob, the water-bearer,
says that he would have any "man or woman that should but deal with a
tobacco-pipe," immediately whipped. Prynne, in his attack on the
stage, declared that women smoked pipes in theatres; but the truth of
this statement may well be doubted. The habit was probably far from
general among women, although Joshua Sylvester, a doughty opponent of
the weed, was pleased to declare that "Fooles of all Sexes haunt it,"
_i.e._ tobacco.
The ballads of the period abound in rough woodcuts in which tavern
scenes are often figured, wherein pewter pots and tobacco-pipes are
shown lying on the table or in the hands or at the mouths of the male
carousers. Men and women are figured together, but it would be very
hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her
hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies
before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad
characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good
Fellows," and beginning:
_Come hither, mine host, come hither!
Come hither, mine host, come hither!
I pray thee, mine host,
Give us a pot and a tost,
And let us drinke all together._
The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a
woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One
man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other
pipes--one for each man--and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is
plainly a convivial soul; but there is no pipe for her, and such
provision was no doubt unusual.
There is direct evidence, too, besides the story in the first
paragraph of this chapter, that women disliked the prevalence of
smoking. In Marston's "Antonio and Mellinda," 1602, Rosaline, when
asked by her uncle when she will marry, makes the spirited
reply--"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking
of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have
a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the
ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis
more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to
smoking could be quoted from other plays.
On the other hand, it is certain that from comparatively early in the
seventeenth century there were to be found here and there women who
smoked.
On the title-page of Middleton's comedy, "The Roaring Girle," 1611, is
a picture of the heroine, Moll Cutpurse, in man's apparel, smoking a
pipe, from which a great cloud of smoke is issuing.
In the record of an early libel action brought in the court of the
Archdeacon of Essex, some domestic scenes of 1621 are vividly
represented. We need not trouble about the libel action, but two of
the _dramatis personae_ were a certain George Thresher, who sold beer
and tobacco at his "shopp in Romford," and a good friend and customer
of his named Elizabeth Savage, who, sad to say, was described as much
given to "stronge drincke and tobacco." In the course of the trial, on
June 8, 1621, Mistress Savage had to tell her tale, part of which is
reported as follows:
"George Thresher kept a shoppe in Romford and sold tobacco there. She
came divers tymes to his shoppe to buy tobacco there; and sometimes,
with company of her acquaintance, did take tobacco and drincke beere
in the hall of George Thresher's house, sometimes with the said
George, and sometimes with his father and his brothers. And sometimes
shee hath had a joint of meat and a cople of chickens dressed there;
and shee, and they, and some other of her freinds, have dined there
together, and paid their share for their dinner, shee being many times
more willing to dine there than at an inne or taverne."
Elizabeth was evidently of a sociable turn, and though she turned her
nose up at a tavern, there seems to have been little difference
between these festive dinners at Mr. Thresher's "shopp," where
Mistress Savage indulged her taste for ale and tobacco, and similar
pleasures at an inn or tavern.
Some of the references to women smokers occur in curious connexions.
When one George Glapthorne, of Whittlesey, J.P., was returned to
Parliament for the Isle of Ely in 1654, his return was petitioned
against, and among other charges it was said that just before the
election, in a certain Martin's ale-house, he had promised to give
Mrs. Martin a roll of tobacco, and had also undertaken to grant her
husband a licence to brew, thus unduly influencing and corrupting the
electors.
Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev.
Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his
journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from
other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost
him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with
her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the
journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but
needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence
to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal
virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."
In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the
originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated,
but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane,
who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman Vall, Norfolk.
Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn,
as his "Afextinat wife," the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous,
tells her "Sweet Hart"--"I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I
pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret
sed." How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with
cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did
not care to be long without a supply. In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited
Stow's "Chronicles," and continued them "onto the end of this present
yeare 1631," wrote that tobacco was "at this day commonly used by most
men and many women."
Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century
would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country.
Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign
of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St.
Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which
is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their
pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking,
which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my
Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them."
What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk?
Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among
women in the west of England. Dunton, in that _Athenian Oracle_ which
was a kind of early forerunner of _Notes and Queries_, alluded to
pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the
French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that
"Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take
it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the
_very_ Women? What Occasion is there for that _very_? We wonder that
in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and
why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall
wonder that the Women of Middlesex do _not_ take Tabacco: And why
should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant
Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his
catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize
about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!
Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of
travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of
England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed
at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself
quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that
according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with
strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are
of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits
where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our
visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company,
the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half
the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health
you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the
table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which
is a general custom as well among women as men, who think that
without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it
dissipates the evil humours of the brain."
Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall
might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is
certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few
female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a
sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the
seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her
pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at
Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an
elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same
writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that
smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for
the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for
smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion"
because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant
persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to
meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that
recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more
write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in
their hands."
From the evidence so far adduced it may fairly be concluded, I think,
that during the seventeenth century smoking was not fashionable, or
indeed anything but rare, among the women of the more well-to-do
classes, while among women of humbler rank it was an occasional, and
in a few districts a fairly general habit.
The same conclusion holds good for the eighteenth century. Among women
of the lowest class smoking was probably common enough. In Fielding's
"Amelia," a woman of the lowest character is spoken of as "smoking
tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenely and swearing and
cursing"--which accomplishments are all carefully noted, because none
of them would be applicable to the ordinary respectable female.
The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of Tobacco," in
Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been
made, wrote:
_Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
* * * * * * * * *
Citronia vows it has an odious stink;
She will not smoke (ye gods!)--but she will drink;_
and the same writer describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by
the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the
sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have
disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be
found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a
smoke. In an early _Spectator_, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny
Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and
good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was
frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall
fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member
brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or
smokes."
In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of
Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth
century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a
Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the
alarming question--Did Irish ladies chew?
It has sometimes been supposed that the companion of Swift's Stella,
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, was addicted to smoking. In the letters which
make up the famous "Journal to Stella," there are several references
by Swift to the presents of tobacco which he was in the habit of
sending to Mrs. Dingley. On September 21, 1710, he wrote: "I have the
finest piece of Brazil tobacco for Dingley that ever was born." In the
following month he again had a great piece of Brazil tobacco for the
same lady, and again in November: "I have made Delaval promise to send
me some Brazil tobacco from Portugal for you, Madam Dingley." In
December, Swift was expressing his hope that Dingley's tobacco had not
spoiled the chocolate which he had sent for Stella in the same parcel;
and three months later he wrote: "No news of your box? I hope you have
it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of
the Brazil tobacco has not affected it." The explanation of all this
tobacco for Mistress Dingley is to be found in Swift's letter to
Stella of October 23, 1711. "Then there's the miscellany," he writes,
"an apron for Stella, a pound of chocolate, without sugar, for Stella,
a fine snuff-rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and
a large roll of tobacco which she must hide or cut shorter out of
modesty, and four pair of spectacles for the Lord knows who." The
tobacco was clearly not for smoking, but for Dingley to operate upon
with the snuff-rasp, and so supply herself with snuff--a luxury, which
in those days, was as much enjoyed and as universally used by women as
by men.
Even Quakeresses sometimes smoked. A list of the sea-stores put on
board the ship in which certain friends--Samuel Fothergill, Mary
Peisly, Katherine Payton and others--sailed from Philadelphia for
England in June 1756, is still extant. In those days Atlantic passages
were long, and might last for an indefinite period, and passengers
provisioned themselves accordingly. On this occasion the passage
though stormy was very quick, for it lasted only thirty-four days. The
list of provisions taken is truly formidable. It includes all sorts of
eatables and drinkables in astonishing quantities. The "Women's
Chest," we are told, contained, among a host of other good and useful
things, "Balm, sage, summer Savoury, horehound, Tobacco, and Oranges;
two bottles of Brandy, two bottles of Jamaica Spirrit, A Canister of
green tea, a Jar of Almond paste, Ginger bread." Samuel Fothergill's
"new chest" contained tobacco among many other things; and a box of
pipes was among the miscellaneous stores.