us long. There have always been pipe-smokers among the women of the
poorer classes. Up to the middle of the last century smoking was very
common among the hard-working women of Northumberland and the Scottish
border. Nor has the practice by any means yet died out. In May 1913, a
woman, who was charged with drunkenness at the West Ham police court,
laid the blame for her condition on her pipe. She said she had smoked
it for twenty years, and "it always makes me giddy!" The writer, in
August 1913, saw a woman seated by the roadside in County Down,
Ireland, calmly smoking a large briar pipe.
It is not so very long ago that an English traveller heard a
working-man courteously ask a Scottish fish-wife, who had entered a
smoking-compartment of the train, whether she objected to smoking. The
good woman slowly produced a well-seasoned "cutty" pipe, and as she
began to cut up a "fill" from a rank-smelling tobacco, replied: "Na,
na, laddie, I've come in here for a smoke ma'sel."
The _Darlington and Stockton Times_ in 1856 recorded the death on
December 10, at Wallbury, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in the
110th year of her age, of Jane Garbutt, widow. Mrs. Garbutt had been
twice married, her husbands having been sailors during the Napoleonic
wars. The old woman, said the journal, "had dwindled into a small
compass, but she was free from pain, retaining all her faculties to
the last, and enjoying her pipe. About a year ago the writer of this
notice paid her a visit, and took her, as a 'brother-piper,' a present
of tobacco, which ingredient of bliss was always acceptable from her
visitors. Asking of her the question how long she had smoked, her
reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton,
at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for
many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the
accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the
fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the
same operation; but her pipe she was bound to have, and so met her
end.
The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London
street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street
corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still
are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country. An old Seven Dials
ballad has the following choice stanza--
_When first I saw Miss Bailey,
'Twas on a Saturday,
At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,
And smoking a yard of clay._
Up to about the middle of Queen Victoria's reign female smoking in the
nineteenth century in England may be said to have been pretty well
confined to women of the classes and type already mentioned.
Respectable folk in the middle and upper classes would have been
horrified at the idea of a pipe or a cigar between feminine lips; and
cigarettes had been used by men for a long time before it began to be
whispered that here and there a lady--who was usually considered
dreadfully "fast" for her pains--was accustomed to venture upon a
cigarette.
In "Puck," 1870, Ouida represented one of her beautiful young men, Vy
Bruce, as "murmuring idlest nonsense to Lilian Lee, as he lighted one
of his cigarettes for her use"--but Lilian Lee was a _cocotte_.
An amusing incident is related in Forster's "Life of Dickens," which
shows how entirely unknown was smoking among women of the middle and
upper classes in England some ten years after Queen Victoria came to
the throne. Dickens was at Lausanne and Geneva in the autumn of 1846.
At his hotel in Geneva he met a remarkable mother and daughter, both
English, who admired him greatly, and whom he had previously known at
Genoa. The younger lady's conversation would have shocked the prim
maids and matrons of that day. She asked Dickens if he had ever "read
such infernal trash" as Mrs. Gore's; and exclaimed "Oh God! what a
sermon we had here, last Sunday." Dickens and his two daughters--"who
were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards"--dined by
invitation with the mother and daughter. The daughter asked him if he
smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner
when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good
'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the
novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course
we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady
residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady
married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for
sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our
entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of
negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The
box was full of cigarettes--good large ones, made of pretty strong
tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa,
and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers,
at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put
out her stomach, folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up
sideways and her cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill,
laughed, and talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I
ever beheld. Mother immediately lighted her cigar; American lady
immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of
smoke, with us four in the centre pulling away bravely, while American
lady related stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different
kinds of pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen
came in, with whom, and the American lady, daughter sat down to whist.
The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen and
seemed dismayed), and daughter played for the next hour or two with a
cigar continually in her mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked
six or eight. Mother gave in soon--I think she only did it out of
vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning. I took no
more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves.
Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but
half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of
surprise, but I never _was_ so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback,
in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman--not a basket woman or a gipsy--smoke
before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that
Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was
enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described." The
words "cigar" and "cigarette" are used indifferently by the novelist,
but it seems clear from the description and from the number smoked by
the lady in an hour or two, that it was a cigarette and not a cigar,
properly so called, which was never out of her mouth.
The ladies who so surprised Dickens were English and American, but at
the period in question--the early 'forties of the last century--one of
the freaks of fashion at Paris was the giving of luncheon parties for
ladies only, at which cigars were handed round.
The first hints of feminine smoking in England may be traced, like so
many other changes in fashion, in the pages of _Punch_. In 1851,
steady-going folk were alarmed and shocked at a sudden and short-lived
outburst of "bloomerism," imported from the United States. Of course
it was at once suggested that women who would go so far as to imitate
masculine attire and to emancipate themselves from the usual
conventions of feminine dress, would naturally seek to imitate men in
other ways also. Leech had a picture of "A Quiet Smoke" in _Punch_,
which depicted five ladies in short wide skirts and "bloomers" in a
tobacconist's shop, two smoking cigars and one a pipe, while "one of
the inferior animals" behind the counter was selling tobacco. But this
was satire and hardly had much relation to fact.
It was not until the 'sixties of the last century that
cigarette-smoking by women began to creep in. Mortimer Collins,
writing in 1869, in a curious outburst against the use of tobacco by
young men, said, "When one hears of sly cigarettes between feminine
lips at croquet parties, there is no more to be said." Since that date
cigarette-smoking has become increasingly popular among women, and the
term "sly" has long ceased to be applicable. "Punch's Pocket-Book" for
1878 had an amusing skit on a ladies' reading-party, to which Mr.
Punch acted as "coach." After breakfast the reading ladies lounged on
the lawn with cigarettes.
What Queen Victoria, who hated tobacco and banished it from her
presence and from her abodes as far as she could, would have thought
and said of the extent to which cigarette-smoking is indulged in now
by women, is a question quite unanswerable. Yet Queen Victoria once
received a present of pipes and tobacco. By the hands of Sir Richard
Burton the Queen had sent a damask tent, a silver pipe, and two silver
trays to the King of Dahomey. That potentate told Sir Richard that the
tent was very handsome, but too small; that the silver pipe did not
smoke so well as his old red clay with a wooden stem; and that though
he liked the trays very much, he thought them hardly large enough to
serve as shields. He hoped that the next gifts would include a
carriage and pair, and a white woman, both of which he would
appreciate very much. However, he sent gifts in return to her
Britannic Majesty, and among them were a West African state umbrella,
a selection of highly coloured clothing materials, and some native
pipes and tobacco for the Queen to smoke.
Many royal ladies of Europe, contemporaries of Queen Victoria and her
son, have had the reputation of being confirmed smokers. Among them may
be named Carmen Sylva, the poetess--Queen of Roumania, the Dowager
Tsaritsa of Russia, the late Empress of Austria, King Alfonso's mother,
formerly Queen-Regent of Spain, the Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy
and ex-Queen Amelie of Portugal. It is, of course, well known that
Austrian and Russian ladies generally are fond of cigarette-smoking. On
Russian railways it is not unusual to find a compartment labelled "For
ladies who do not smoke."
The newspapers reported not long ago from the other side of the
Atlantic that the "smart" women of Chicago had substituted cigars for
cigarettes. According to an interview with a Chicago hotel proprietor,
the fair smokers "select their cigars as men do, either black and
strong, or light, according to taste." How in the world else could
they select them? It is not likely, however, that cigar-smoking will
become popular among women. For one thing, it leaves too strong and
too clinging an odour on the clothes.
One of the latest announcements, however, in the fashion pages of the
newspapers is the advent of "Smoking Jackets" for ladies! We are
informed in the usual style of such pages, that "the well-dressed
woman has begun to consider the little smoking-jacket indispensable."
This jacket, we are told "is a very different matter to the braided
velvet coats which were donned by our masculine forbears in the days
of long drooping cavalry moustaches, tightly buttoned frock-coats, and
flexible canes. The feminine smoking-jacket of to-day is worn with
entrancing little evening or semi-evening frocks, and represents a
compromise between a cloak and a coat, being exquisitely draped and
fashioned of the softest and most attractive of the season's beautiful
fabrics."
There are still many good people nowadays who are shocked at the idea
of women smoking; and to them may be commended the common-sense words
of Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, formerly of Ripon, who arrived in New York
early in 1913 to deliver a series of lectures at Harvard University.
The American newspapers reported him as saying, with reference to this
subject: "Many women in England who are well thought of, smoke. I do
not attempt to enter into the ethical part of this matter, but this
much I say: if men find it such a pleasure to smoke, why shouldn't
women? There are many colours in the rainbow; so there are many tastes
in people. What may be a pleasure to men may be given to women. When
we find women smoking, as they do in some branches of society to-day,
the mere pleasure of that habit must be accepted as belonging to both
sexes."
XIV
SMOKING IN CHURCH
For thy sake, TOBACCO, I
Would do anything but die.
CHARLES LAMB, _A Farewell to Tobacco._
The use of tobacco in churches forms a curious if short chapter in the
social history of smoking. The earliest reference to such a practice
occurs in 1590, when Pope Innocent XII excommunicated all such persons
as were found taking snuff or using tobacco in any form in the church
of St. Peter, at Rome; and again in 1624, Pope Urban VIII issued a
bull against the use of tobacco in churches.
In England it would seem as if some of the early smokers, in the
fulness of their enthusiasm for the new indulgence, went so far as to
smoke in church. When King James I was about to visit Cambridge, the
Vice-Chancellor of the University put forth sundry regulations in
connexion with the royal visit, in which may be found the following
passage: "That noe Graduate, Scholler, or Student of this Universitie
presume to resort to any Inn, Taverne, Alehowse, or Tobacco-Shop at
any tyme dureing the aboade of his Majestie here; nor doe presume to
take tobacco in St. Marie's Church, or in Trinity Colledge Hall, uppon
payne of finall expellinge the Universitie."
Evidently the intention was to make things pleasant for the royal foe
of tobacco during his visit. It would appear to be a fair inference
from the wording of this prohibition that when the King was not at
Cambridge, graduates and scholars and students could resume their
liberty to resort to inns, taverns, ale-houses and tobacco-shops, and
presumably to take tobacco in St. Mary's Church, without question.
The prohibition, in the regulation quoted, of smoking in St. Mary's
Church, referred, it may be noted, to the Act which was held therein.
Candidates for degrees, or graduates to display their proficiency,
publicly maintained theses; and this performance was termed keeping or
holding an Act.
It is, of course, conceivable that the prohibition, so far as the
church and Trinity College Hall were concerned, was against the taking
of snuff rather than against smoking; but the phrase "to take tobacco"
was at that time quite commonly applied to smoking, and, considering
the extraordinary and immoderate use of tobacco soon after its
introduction, it is not in the least incredible that pipes were
lighted, at least occasionally, even in sacred buildings.
Sometimes tobacco was used in church for disinfecting or deodorizing
purposes. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Peter's, Barnstaple, for
1741 contain the entry: "Pd. for Tobacco and Frankincense burnt in the
Church 2s. 6d." Sprigs of juniper, pitch, and "sweete wood," in
combination with incense, were often used for the same purpose.
Smoking, it may safely be asserted, was never practised commonly in
English churches. Even in our own day people have been observed
smoking--not during service time, but in passing through the
building--in church in some of the South American States, and nearer
home in Holland; but in England such desecration has been occasional
only, and quite exceptional.
One need not be much surprised at any instance of lack of reverence in
English churches during the eighteenth century, and a few instances
can be given of church smoking in that era.
Blackburn, Archbishop of York, was a great smoker. On one occasion he
was at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham, for a confirmation. The story of
what happened was told long afterwards in a letter written in December
1773 by John Disney, rector of Swinderby, Lincolnshire, the grandson
of the Mr. Disney who at the time of the Archbishop's visit to St.
Mary's was incumbent of that church. This letter was addressed to
James Granger, and was published in Granger's correspondence. "The
anecdote which you mention," wrote the Mr. Disney of Swinderby, "is, I
believe, unquestionably true. The affair happened in St. Mary's Church
at Nottingham, when Archbishop Blackbourn (of York) was there on a
visitation. The Archbishop had ordered some of the apparitors, or
other attendants, to bring him pipes and tobacco, and some liquor into
the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And
this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought
thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop
upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his
Grace that his vestry should not be converted into a smoking-room."
Another eighteenth-century clerical worthy, the famous Dr. Parr, an
inveterate smoker, was accustomed to do what Mr. Disney prevented
Archbishop Blackburn from doing--he smoked in his vestry at Hatton.
This he did before the sermon, while the congregation were singing a
hymn, and apparently both parties were pleased, for Parr would say:
"My people like long hymns; but I prefer a long clay."
Robert Hall, the famous Baptist preacher, having once upon a time
strongly denounced smoking as an "odious custom," learned to smoke
himself as a result of his acquaintance with Dr. Parr. Parr was such a
continual smoker that anyone who came into his company, if he had
never smoked before, had to learn the use of a pipe as a means of
self-defence. Hall, who became a heavy smoker, is said to have smoked
in his vestry at intervals in the service. He probably found some
relief in tobacco from the severe internal pains with which for many
years he was afflicted.
Mr. Ditchfield, in his entertaining book on "The Parish Clerk," tells
a story of a Lincolnshire curate who was a great smoker, and who, like
Parr, was accustomed to retire to the vestry before the sermon and
there smoke a pipe while the congregation sang a psalm. "One Sunday,"
says Mr. Ditchfield, "he had an extra pipe, and Joshua (the clerk)
told him that the people were getting impatient.
"'Let them sing another psalm,' said the curate.
"'They have, sir,' replied the clerk.
"'Then let them sing the hundred and nineteenth,' replied the curate.
"At last he finished his pipe, and began to put on the black gown, but
its folds were troublesome and he could not get it on.
"'I think the devil's in the gown,' muttered the curate.
"'I think he be,' dryly replied old Joshua."
The same writer, in his companion volume on "The Old Time Parson,"
mentions that the Vicar of Codrington in 1692 found that it was
actually customary for people to play cards on the Communion Table,
and that "when they chose the churchwardens they used to sit in the
Sanctuary smoking and drinking, the clerk gravely saying, with a pipe
in his mouth, that such had been their custom for the last sixty
years."
Although probably the conduct of the Codrington parishioners was
unusual, it is certain that in the seventeenth century smoking at
meetings held, not in the church itself, but in the vestry, was
common. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Leicester, 1665-6,
record the expenditure--"In beer and tobacco from first to last 7s.
10d." In those of St. Alphege, London Wall, for 1671, there are the
entries--"For Pipes and Tobaccoe in the Vestry 2s.," and "For a grosse
of pipes at severall times 2s." In the next century, however, the
practice was modified. The St. Alphege accounts for 1739 have the
entry--"Ordered that there be no Smoaking nor Drinking for the future
in the Vestry Room during the time business is doing on pain of
forfeiting one shilling, Assention Day excepted." From this it would
seem fair to infer (1) that there was no objection to the lighting of
pipes in the vestry after the business of the meeting had been
transacted; and (2) that on Ascension Day for some inscrutable reason
there was no prohibition at all of "Smoaking and Drinking."
Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember in "The Heart of Midlothian"
one curious instance of eighteenth-century smoking in church--in a
Scottish Presbyterian church, too. Jeanie Deans's beloved Reuben
Butler was about to be ordained to the charge of the parish of
Knocktarlitie, Dumbartonshire; the congregation were duly seated,
after prayers, douce David Deans occupying a seat among the elders,
and the officiating minister had read his text preparatory to the
delivery of his hour and a quarter sermon. The redoubtable Duncan of
Knockdunder was making his preparations also for the sermon. "After
rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, he
produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed almost aloud,
'I hae forgotten my spleuchan--Lachlan, gang doon to the Clachan, and
bring me up a pennyworth of twist.' Six arms, the nearest within
reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to
the man of office. He made choice of one with a nod of acknowledgment,
filled his pipe, lighted it with the assistance of his pistol-flint,
and smoked with infinite composure during the whole time of the
sermon. When the discourse was finished, he knocked the ashes out of
his pipe, replaced it in his sporran, returned the tobacco-pouch or
spleuchan to its owner, and joined in the prayers with decency and
attention." David Deans, however, did not at all approve this
irreverence. "It didna become a wild Indian," he said, "much less a
Christian and a gentleman, to sit in the kirk puffing tobacco-reek, as
if he were in a change-house." The date of the incident was 1737; but
whether Sir Walter had any authority in fact for this characteristic
performance of Knockdunder, or not, it is certain that any such
occurrence in a Scottish kirk must have been extremely rare.
Knockdunder's pipe, according to Scott, was made of iron. This was an
infrequent material for tobacco-pipes, but there are a few examples
in museums. In the Belfast Museum there is a cast iron tobacco-pipe
about eighteen inches long. With it are shown another, very short,
also of cast iron, the bowl of a brass pipe, and a pipe, about six
inches in length, made of sheet iron.
Another eighteenth-century instance of smoking in church, taken from
historical fact and not from fiction, is associated with the church of
Hayes, in Middlesex. The parish registers of that village bear witness
to repeated disputes between the parson and bell-ringers and the
parishioners generally in 1748-1754. In 1752 it was noted that a
sermon had been preached after a funeral "to a noisy congregation." On
another occasion, says the register, "the ringers and other
inhabitants disturbed the service from the beginning of prayers to the
end of the sermon, by ringing the bells, and going into the gallery to
spit below"; while at yet another time "a fellow came into church with
a pot of beer and a pipe," and remained "smoking in his own pew until
the end of the sermon." Going to church at Hayes in those days must
have been quite an exciting experience. No one knew what might happen
next.
In remote English and Welsh parishes men seem occasionally to have
smoked in churches without any intention of being irreverent, and
without any consciousness that they were doing anything unusual. Canon
Atkinson, in his delightful book "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish,"
tells how, when he first went to Danby in Cleveland--then very remote
from the great world--and had to take his first funeral, he found
inside the church the parish clerk, who was also parish schoolmaster
by the way, sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window with
his hat on and comfortably smoking his pipe. A correspondent of the
_Times_ in 1895 mentioned that his mother had told him how she
remembered seeing smoking in a Welsh church about 1850--"The Communion
table stood in the aisle, and the farmers were in the habit of putting
their hats upon it, and when the sermon began they lit their pipes and
smoked, but without any idea of irreverence." In an Essex church about
1861, a visitor had pointed out to him various nooks in the gallery
where short pipes were stowed away, which he was informed the old men
smoked during service; and several of the pews in the body of the
church contained triangular wooden spittoons filled with sawdust.