The Social History of Smoking Part 10

describes youths at a University wine-party as "drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch--smoking--ghastly headache--frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco." But the satirist is often tempted to be epigrammatic at the expense of accuracy, and this picture is at least too highly coloured. In the recently published memoir of "J"--John Willis Clark--some reminiscences of the late Registrary are included; and "J" does not recognize Thackeray's picture as quite true of the "wines" of his undergraduate day, _i.e._ about 1850. "They may," he says, "have 'told bad stories and sung bad songs,' as Thackeray says in his 'Book of Sn.o.bs.' I can only say that I never heard either the one or the other." But certainly there was noise, and there was smoke--plenty of it. "Conversation there was none," says "J," "only a noise. Then came smoke. In a short time the atmosphere became dense, the dessert and the wine came to an end, and it was chapel time (mercifully)." One story Clark tells of an extraordinary attempt to smoke. Referring to the compulsory "chapels," he says that as a rule everybody behaved with propriety, whether they regarded the attendance as irksome or otherwise. But, he admits, "'Iniquity Corner,' as the s.p.a.ce at the east end on each side of the altar was called, may occasionally have effectually sheltered card-playing; but when a young sn.o.b went so far as to light a cigar there, he had the pleasure of finishing it in the country, for he was rusticated. It was on a cognate occasion in Jesus College, in which cobblers' wax played a prominent part, that Dr. Corrie dismissed the culprit, after a severe lecture, with these admirable words: 'Your conduct, sir, is what a Christian would call profane, and a gentleman vulgar.'"

At Oxford, in November 1859, the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors issued the following notice, which shows that an occasional outbreak of bad manners might happen on the Isis as on the Cam: "Whereas complaints have been made that some Undergraduate members of the University are in the habit of smoking at _public entertainments_, and otherwise creating annoyance, they are hereby cautioned against the repet.i.tion of such ungentlemanlike conduct."

There was plenty of smoking among undergraduates at Oxford in those days, as may be seen in such books as "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green," and Hughes's "Tom Brown at Oxford," both of which date from 1861. When Tom, after a reading-bout, thought of going out--"there was a wine party at one of his acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of a dozen other places." Cigars were the fashionable form of smoke. When Tom offers his box to Captain Hardy, that worthy's son says: "You might as well give him a gla.s.s of absinthe. He is churchwarden at home, and can't smoke anything but a long clay," with which the old sailor was accordingly supplied.

A striking example of the att.i.tude of the mid-nineteenth century days towards tobacco may be found in connexion with railways and railway travelling. In the early days of such travel there were no smoking compartments, and indeed smoking was "strictly forbidden" practically everywhere on railway premises. Relics of this time may still be seen in many stations and on many platforms in the shape of somewhat dingy placards announcing that smoking is strictly forbidden, and that the penalty is so much. Nowadays the incense from pipes and cigars and cigarettes curls freely round these obsolete notices and helps to make them still dingier. If you wanted to smoke when travelling you had either to contrive to get a compartment to yourself, or to arrange terms with your fellow-travellers. In a _Punch_ of 1855, Leech drew a railway-platform scene wherein figures one of those precocious youngsters of a type he loved to draw. A railway porter says to his mate, as the two gaze at the back of this small swell, with his cane and top-hat, "What does he say, Bill?" "Why, he says he must have a compartment to hisself, because he can't get on without his smoke!"

Another drawing in a _Punch_ of 1861 points the same moral. It represents an elderly "party" and a "fast Etonian" seated side by side in a first-cla.s.s compartment. The latter has a cigar in one hand and with the other offers coins to his neighbour; the explanation is as follows: "_Old Party._ Really, sir,--I am the manager of the line, sir--I must inform you that if you persist in smoking, you will be fined forty shillings, sir. _Fast Etonian._ Well, old boy, I must have my smoke; so you may as well take your forty shillings now!"

Tobacco was always popular in the army; and even the strongest of anti-tobacconists would have felt that there was at least something, if not much, to be said for the abused weed, when in times of campaigning suffering it played so beneficent a part in soothing and comforting weary and wounded men. The period covered by this chapter included both the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and every one knows how the soldiers in the Crimea and in India alike craved for tobacco as for one of the greatest of luxuries, and how even an occasional smoke cheered and encouraged and sustained suffering humanity. The late Dr. Norman Kerr, who was no friend to ordinary, everyday smoking, wrote: "There are occasions, such as in the trenches during military operations, when worn out with exposure and fatigue, or when exhausted by slow starvation with no food in prospect, when a pipe or cigar will be a welcome and valuable friend in need, resting the weary limbs, cheering the fainting heart, allaying the gnawing hunger of the empty stomach."

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar, except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work, and smoked dry leaves as the only subst.i.tute they could obtain." Mr.

L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted--"I have given up smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal properties.

Among the general ma.s.s of the population in the early Victorian period, smoking, though certainly not so all-prevailing as now, was yet very common. It is highly probable that one of the things which led to the great increase in pipe-smoking which took place from this time onwards was the introduction of the briar pipe.

The earliest example of the use of a wooden pipe I have met with is dated 1765--but this was not in England. Many years ago the late Mr.

A.J. Munby pointed out that Smollett, in one of his letters dated March 18, 1765, giving an account of his journey from Nice to Turin, describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes.

His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the singularity of his attire.

Mr. Munby, after this reference to Smollett's adventure, proceeded to claim the honour of having helped to bring the use of wooden pipes into England. In the year 1853 he wrote, "meerschaums and clays were the rule at both the English universities and in all shops throughout the land, and the art of making pipes of wood was either obsolete [it had never been introduced] or wholly _in futuro_. But a college friend of mine, a Norfolk squire, possessed a gardener who was of an inventive turn, though he was not a Scotchman. This man conceived and wrought out the idea of making pipes of willow-wood, cutting the bowl out of a thick stem, and the tube out of a thinner one growing from the bowl, so that the whole pipe was in one piece. Willow-wood is too soft, so that the pipes did not last long; but they were a valuable discovery, and the young squire's friends bought them eagerly at eighteenpence apiece."

This experiment in the direction of wooden pipes was interesting, and deserves to be remembered; but it was not long before the briar was introduced and carried everything before it.

It was about 1859 that the use of the root of the White Heath (_Erica arborea_), a native of the South of France, Corsica, and some other localities, for the purpose of making tobacco-pipes was introduced into this country. The word "brier" or "briar" has no connexion whatever with the p.r.i.c.kly, th.o.r.n.y briar which bears the lovely wild rose. It is derived from the French _bruyere_, heath--the root of the White Heath being the material known as "briar" or "brier," and at first as "bruyer." The Oxford Dictionary quotes an advertis.e.m.e.nt from the _Tobacco Trade Review_ of so recent a date as February 8, 1868, of a "Heath Pipe: in Bruyer Wood." The briar pipe not only soon drove the clay largely out of use, but immensely increased the number of pipe-smokers. Bulwer Lytton may not have known the briar, but he wrote enthusiastically of the pipe. Every smoker knows the glowing tribute he paid to it in his "Night and Morning," which appeared in 1841. It is terser and more to the point than most panegyrics: "A pipe! It is a great soother, a pleasant comforter. Blue devils fly before its honest breath. It ripens the brain, it opens the heart; and the man who smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan."

XI

LATER VICTORIAN DAYS

When life was all a summer day, And I was under twenty, Three loves were scattered in my way-- And three at once are plenty.

Three hearts, if offered with a grace, One thinks not of refusing.

The task in this especial case Was only that of choosing.

I knew not which to make my pet-- My pipe, cigar, or cigarette.

HENRY S. LEIGH.

The social history of smoking in later Victorian days is marked by the triumph of the cigarette. The introduction of the cigar, as we have seen, brought about the revival of smoking, from the point of view of fashion, in the early decades of the nineteenth century; and the coming of the cigarette completed what the cigar had begun.

The earliest references for the word "cigarette" in the Oxford Dictionary are dated 1842 and 1843, but both refer to the smoking of cigarettes abroad--in France and Italy. The 1843 quotation is from a book by Mrs. Romer, in which she says--"The beggars in the streets have paper cigars (called cigarettes) in their mouths." The wording here would seem to show that cigarettes were not then familiar to English people.

Laurence Oliphant, who was both a man of letters and a man of fashion, is generally credited with the introduction into English society of the cigarette; but it is difficult to suggest even an approximate date. Writing from Boulogne to W.H. Wills in September 1854, d.i.c.kens says, "I have nearly exhausted the cigarettes I brought here," and proceeds to give directions for some to be sent to him from London.

This is the earliest reference I have found to cigarette-smoking in England; but it is possible that by "cigarettes" d.i.c.kens meant not what we now know as such, but simply small cigars. Mr. H.M. Hyndman, in his "Record of an Adventurous Life," says that when he was living as a pupil, about the year 1860, with the Rector of Oxburgh, his fellow-pupils included "Edward Abbott of Salonica, who, poor fellow, was battered to pieces by the Turks with iron staves torn from palings at the beginning of the Turco-Servian War. Cigarette-smoking, now so popular, was then almost unknown, and Abbott, who always smoked the finest Turkish tobacco which he rolled up into cigarettes for himself, was the first devotee of this habit I encountered."

Fairholt, in his book on "Tobacco," which was published in 1859, mentions cigarettes as being smoked in Spain and South and Central America, but makes no reference to their use in this country.

The late Lady Dorothy Nevill said that although cigarettes are a modern invention, she believed that they already existed in a slightly different form at the beginning of the nineteenth century, "when old Peninsular officers used to smoke tobacco rolled up tight in a piece of paper. They called this a _papelito_, and I fancy it was much the same thing as a cigarette." But if this were so, the habit must have died out long before the cigarette, as we now know it, came into vogue.

It may fairly be concluded, I think, that although about 1860 there may have been an occasional cigarette-smoker in England, like the Edward Abbott of Mr. Hyndman's reminiscences, yet it was not until a little later date that the small paper-enclosed rolls of tobacco became at all common among Englishmen; and it is quite likely that the credit (or discredit, as the reader pleases) of bringing them into general, and especially into fashionable, use, has been rightly given to Laurence Oliphant.

Cigarettes were perhaps in fashion in 1870. In "Puck," which was published in that year, Ouida--who is hardly an unimpeachable authority on the ways and customs of fashionable folk, though she loved to paint fancy pictures of their sayings and doings--pictures the Row: "the most fashionable lounge you have, but it is a Republic for all that." There, she says, "could Bill Jacobs lean against a rail, with a clay-pipe in his mouth, and a terrier under his arm, close beside the Earl of Guilliadene, with his cigarette and his eye-gla.s.s, and his Poole-cut habiliments."

Thirty years or more ago the late Andrew Lang wrote an article ent.i.tled "Enchanted Cigarettes," which began--"To dream our literary projects, Balzac says, is like 'smoking enchanted cigarettes,' but when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real, the enchantment disappears--we have to till the soil, to sow the weed, to gather the leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manufactured, while there may be no market for them after all. Probably most people have enjoyed the fragrance of these cigarettes and have brooded over much which they will never put on paper. Here are some of 'the ashes of the weeds of my delight'--memories of romances whereof no single line is written, or is likely to be written." What Balzac said in his "La Cousine Bette" was--"Penser, rever, concevoir de belles uvres est une occupation delicieuse. C'est fumer des cigares enchantes, c'est mener la vie de la courtisane occupee a sa fantaisie." Balzac's cigars became cigarettes in Lang's fantasy. The French novelist seems to have been one of those who praised tobacco without using it much himself.

In his "Illusions Perdues" Carlos Herrera, who was Vautrin, says to Lucien, whom he meets on the point of suicide: "Dieu nous a donne le tabac pour endormir nos pa.s.sions et nos douleurs." M.A. Le Breton, however, in his book on Balzac--"L'Homme et L'uvre"--says: "Il ne se soutient qu'a force de cafe," though he would sit working at his desk for twenty-five hours running.

About the time that Lang's article was written, Sir F.C. Burnand's burlesque, "Bluebeard" was produced at the Gaiety Theatre. In those days a certain type of young man, since known by many names, including the present day "nut," was called a "masher"; and Burnand's burlesque included a duet with the refrain:

_We are mashers, we are, As we smoke our cigar And crawl along, never too quick; We are mashers, you bet, With the light cigarette And the quite irreproachable stick._

Nowadays the cigarette is in such universal use, that it would be impossible thus to a.s.sociate it with any particular type of man, sane or inane.

The late Bishop Mandell Creighton, of London, was an incessant smoker of cigarettes. Mr. Herbert Paul, in his paper on the Bishop, says that those who went to see him at Fulham on a Sunday afternoon always found him, if they found him at all, "leisurely, chatty, hospitable, and apparently without a care in the world. There was the family tea-table, and there were the eternal cigarettes. The Bishop must have paid a fortune in tobacco-duty." There is a side view of another tobacco-lover in the "Note-Books" of Samuel Butler, the author of "Erewhon." Creighton, after reading Butler's "Alps and Sanctuaries"

had asked the author to come and see him. Butler was in doubt whether or not to go, and consulted his clerk, Alfred, on the matter. That wise counsellor asked to look at the Bishop's letter, and then said: "I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it; I think you can go."

Apart from cigarette-smoking, however, the use of tobacco grew steadily during the later Victorian period. In "Mr. Punch's Pocket-Book" for 1878 there was a burlesque dialogue between uncle and nephew ent.i.tled "Cupid and 'Baccy." The uncle thinks the younger men smoke too much, and declares that tobacco "has destroyed the susceptibility, which in my time made youngsters fall in love, as they often did, with a girl without a penny. No fellow can fall in love when he has continually a pipe in his mouth; and if he ever feels inclined to when it would be imprudent, why he lights his pipe, and very soon smokes the idea of such folly out of his head. Not so when I was of your age. Besides a few old farmers, churchwardens, and overseers, and such, n.o.body then ever smoked but labourers and the lower orders--cads as you now say. Smoking was thought vulgar. Young men never smoked at all. To smoke in the presence of a lady was an inconceivable outrage; yet now I see you and your friends walking alongside of one another's sisters, smoking a short pipe down the street." "The girls like it," says Nepos. "In my time," replies Avunculus, "young ladies would have fainted at the bare suggestion of such an enormity." The dialogue ends as follows:

"NEPOS (_producing short clay_). See here, Uncle. This pipe is almost coloured. How long do you think I have had it?

"AVUNCULUS. Can't imagine.

"NEPOS. Only three weeks.

"AVUNCULUS. Good boy!"

In the same "Pocket-Book" one of the ideals of a wife by a bachelor is--"To approve of smoking all over the house"; while one of the ideals of a husband by a spinster is--"Not to smoke, or use a latch-key." Mr. Punch's prelections, of course, are not to be taken too seriously. They all necessarily have the exaggeration of caricature; but at the same time they are all significant, and for the social historian are invaluable.

Tobacco-smoking was advancing victoriously all along the line. Absurd old conventions and ridiculous restrictions had to give way or were broken through in every direction. The compartments for smokers on railway trains, at first provided spa.r.s.ely and grudgingly, became more and more numerous. The practice of smoking out of doors, which the early Victorians held in particular abhorrence, became common--at least so far as cigars and cigarettes were concerned. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose memory covered so large a part of the nineteenth century, said, in the "Leaves" from her note-book which was published in 1907, that to smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable; while smoking anywhere with a lady would, in the earlier days, have been cla.s.sed as an almost disgraceful social crime. The first gentleman of whom Lady Dorothy heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told her spoke of it as if she had been present at an earthquake! Pipes were (and are) still looked at askance in many places where the smoking of cigars and cigarettes is freely allowed, and fashion frowned on the pipe in street or Park.

Of course, what one might do in the country and what one might do in town were two quite different things. The following story was told nearly twenty years ago of the late Duke of Devonshire. An American tourist began talking one day to a quiet-looking man who was smoking outside an inn on the Chatsworth estate, and, taking the man for the inn-keeper, expressed his admiration of the Duke of Devonshire's domain. "Quite a place, isn't it?" said the American. "Yes, a pleasant place enough," returned the Englishman. "The fellow who owns it must be worth a mint of money," said the American, through his cigar-smoke.

"Yes, he's comfortably off," agreed the other. "I wonder if I could get a look at the old chap," said the stranger, after a short silence; "I should like to see what sort of a bird he is." Puff, puff, went the English cigar, and then said the English voice, trying hard to control itself: "If you"--puff--"look hard"--puff, puff--"in this direction, you"--puff, puff--"can tell in a minute." "You, you!"

faltered the American, getting up, "why, I thought you were the landlord!" "Well, so I am," said the Duke, "though I don't perform the duties." "I stay here," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "to be looked at."

Among the chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some of the clubs. At the Athenaeum the only smoking-room used to be a combined billiard-and smoking-room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. It was but a few years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when the alterations were made in 1900. This new smoking-room is a very handsome, largely book-lined apartment. At the end of the room is a beautiful marble mantelpiece of late eighteenth century Italian work.

At White's even cigars had not been allowed at all until 1845; and when, in 1866, some of the younger members wished to be allowed to smoke in the drawing-room, there was much perturbation, the older members bitterly opposing the proposal. "A general meeting was held to decide the question," says Mr. Ralph Nevill, in his "London Clubs,"

"when a number of old gentlemen who had not been seen in the club for years made their appearance, stoutly determined to resist the proposed desecration. 'Where do all these old fossils come from?' inquired a member. 'From Kensal Green,' was Mr. Alfred Montgomery's reply. 'Their hea.r.s.es, I understand, are waiting to take them back there.'" The motion for the extension of the facilities for smoking was defeated by a majority of twenty-three votes, and as an indirect result the Marlborough Club was founded. The late King Edward, at that time Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the defeated minority at White's, and to have interested himself in the foundation of the Marlborough; where, "for the first time in the history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was everywhere allowed." By "smoking" is no doubt here meant everything but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick Club at the beginning of the present century. The late Duc d'Aumale was a social pioneer in pipe-smoking. His caricature in "Vanity Fair"

represents him with a pipe in his mouth, although he is wearing an opera-hat, black frock-coat b.u.t.toned up, and a cloak.

By the end of the nineteenth century the snuff-box which once upon a time stood upon the mantelpiece of every club, had disappeared. The habit of snuffing had long been falling into desuetude. The cigar dealt the snuff-box its death-blow and the cigarette was chief mourner at its funeral.

As in other periods, men of letters and artists ignored the social prejudices and conventions about tobacco, and laughed at the artificial distinctions drawn between cigars and pipes. It is said that the late Sir John Millais smoked a clay pipe in his carriage when he was part of the first Jubilee procession of Queen Victoria--a performance, if it took place, which would certainly have horrified her tobacco-hating Majesty. Tennyson and his friends smoked their pipes as they had always done--and old-fashioned clay pipes too. Sir Norman Lockyer, referring to a period about 1867, mentions Monday evenings in his house which were given up to friends "who came in, _sans ceremonie_, to talk and smoke. Clays from Broseley, including 'churchwardens' and some of larger size (Frank Buckland's held an ounce of tobacco) were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson, an occasional visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which the name was written, in a rack for future symposia."

Of the other great Victorian poets Morris was a pipe-smoker, and so was Rossetti. Browning also smoked, but not, I think, a pipe.

Swinburne, on the other hand, detested tobacco, and expressed himself on the subject with characteristic extravagance and vehemence--"James I was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward. But I love him, I worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh who invented this filthy smoking!" Professor Blackie, in a letter to his wife, remarked: "The first thing I said on entering the public room was--'What a delightful thing the smell of tobacco is, in a warm room on a wet night!' ... I gave my opinion with great decision that tobacco, whisky and all such stimulants or sedatives, had their foundation in nature, could not be abolished, or rather should not, and must be content with the check of a wise regulation. Even pious ladies were fond of tea, which, taken in excess, was worse for the nerves than a gla.s.s of sherry."

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent Carlyle--an inveterate smoker--a box of cigars in February 1865. In his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote--"Dear Ruskin, you have sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in answer? It makes me both sad and glad. _Ay de mi_