Chapter 8 Part 1
SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE: EARLY GEORGIAN DAYS
The allusion in these verses to a "satiric wipe" refers to a passage
in the poem entitled "Conversation," which Cowper had written in the
previous year, 1781. In this passage tobacco is abused in terms which
Cowper clearly felt to need modification after his personal
intercourse with such a smoker as his friend Bull. In describing, in
"Conversation," the manner in which a story is sometimes told, the
poet says:
The pipe, with solemn interposing puff,
Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
Then pause and puff—and speak, and pause again.
Such often, like the tube they so admire,
Important triflers! have more smoke than fire.
Cowper then goes on to attack tobacco in lines which show how
unpopular smoking at that date was with ladies, and which have since
often been quoted by anti-tobacconists with grateful appreciation:
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours;
Thou art indeed the drug a gardener wants,
To poison vermin that infest his plants,
But are we so to wit and beauty blind,
As to despise the glory of our kind,
And show the softest minds and fairest forms
As little mercy as the grubs and worms?
Notwithstanding this "satiric wipe," it is not likely that Cowper
would have had much sympathy with John Wesley, who, in his detestation
of what had been his father's solace at Epworth, forbade his preachers
either to smoke or to take snuff.
In the first two or three decades of the nineteenth century smoking
reached its nadir. No dandy smoked. If some witnesses may be believed
smoking had almost died out even at Oxford. Archdeacon Denison wrote
in his "Memories"—"When I went up to Oxford, 1823-24, there were two
things unknown in Christ Church, and I believe very generally in
Oxford—smoking and slang"; but one cannot help fancying that the
archdeacon's memory was not quite trustworthy. It is difficult to
imagine that there was ever a time when the slang of the day was not
current on the lips of young Oxford, or that so long as tobacco was
procurable it did not find its way into college rooms.
If smoking had died out at Oxford its decline must have been rapid.
When a certain young John James was an undergraduate of Queen's, 1778
to 1781, he and his correspondents spoke severely of the "miserable
condition of Fellows who (under the liberal pretence of educating
youth) spend half their lives in smoking tobacco and reading the
newspapers." About 1800 the older or more old-fashioned of the Fellows
at New College, "not liking the then newly introduced luxury of Turkey
carpets," says Mr. G.V. Cox, in his "Recollections of Oxford," 1868,
"often adjourned to smoke their pipe in a little room opposite to the
Senior Common-room, now appropriated to other uses, but then kept as a
smoking-room." A Mr. Rhodes, a one-time Fellow of Worcester College, who was elected Esquire Bedel in Medicine and Arts in 1792, had a very
peculiar way of enjoying his tobacco. Mr. Cox says: "On one occasion,
when I had to call upon him, I found him drinking rum and water, and
enjoying (what he called his luxury) the fumes of tobacco, not through
a pipe or in the shape of a cigar, but burnt in a dish!"
Smoking had certainly not died out at Cambridge, even at the time when
Denison was at Oxford. According to the "Gradus ad Cantabrigium,"
1824, the Cambridge smart man's habit was to dine in the evening "at
his own rooms, or at those of a friend, and afterwards blows a cloud,
puffs at a segar, and drinks copiously." The spelling of "segar" shows
that cigars were then somewhat of a novelty.
When Tennyson was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 1828-30, he and his
companions all smoked. At the meetings of the "Apostles"—the little
group of friends which included the future Laureate—"much coffee was
drunk, much tobacco smoked." Dons smoked as well as undergraduates. At
Queens', the Combination-room in Tennyson's time had still a sanded
floor, and the "table was set handsomely forth with long
'churchwardens'"—as the poet told Palgrave when the two visited
Cambridge in 1859. George Pryme, in his "Autobiographic
Recollections," 1870, states that in 1800 "smoking was allowed in the
Trinity Combination-room after supper in the twelve days of Christmas,
when a few old men availed themselves of it," which looks as if
tobacco were not very popular just then at Trinity. With the wine,
pipes and the large silver tobacco-box were laid on the table. Porson,
when asked for an inscription for the box. Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco
had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ...
to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had
the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner."
No doubt smoking had its ups and downs at the Universities apart from
the set of the main current of fashion. We learn from the invaluable
Gunning that at Cambridge about 1786 smoking was going "out of fashion
among the junior members of our combination-rooms, except on the river
in the evening, when every man put a short pipe in his mouth." "I took
great pains," he adds, "to make myself master of this elegant
accomplishment, but I never succeeded, though I used to renew the
attempt with a perseverance worthy of a better cause." About the same
time Dr. Farmer was Master of Emmanuel and the Master was an
inveterate smoker. Gunning says that Emmanuel parlour under Farmer's
presidency was always open to those who loved pipes and tobacco and
cheerful conversation—a very natural collocation of tastes. Farmer's
silver tobacco-pipe is still preserved in his old college, while
Porson's japanned snuff-box is at Trinity.
Dr. Farmer was elected Master of Emmanuel in 1775. Years before he had
held the curacy of Swavesey, about nine miles out of Cambridge, where
he regularly performed the duty. After morning service it was his
custom to repair to the local public-house where he enjoyed a
mutton-chop and potatoes. Immediately after the removal of the cloth,
"Mr. Dobson (his churchwarden) and one or two of the principal
farmers, made their appearance, to whom he invariably said, 'I am
going to read prayers, but shall be back by the time you have made
the punch.' Occasionally another farmer accompanied him from church,
when pipes and tobacco"—with the punch—"were in requisition until 6
o'clock." The Sabbath afternoon thus satisfactorily concluded, Farmer
returned to college in Cambridge and took a nap, till at nine he went
to the parlour of the college where the Fellows usually assembled, and
pipes and tobacco concluded a well-spent day.
In the fashionable world the snuff-box was all-powerful. The Prince
Regent was devoted to snuff, but disdained tobacco. He had a "cellar
of snuff," which after his death was sold, said John Bull, August
15, 1830, "to a well-known purveyor, for £400." Lord Petersham, famous
among dandies, made a wonderful collection of snuffs and snuff-boxes,
and was curious in his choice of a box to carry. Gronow relates that
once when a light Sèvres snuff-box which Lord Petersham was using, was
admired, the noble owner replied, with a gentle lisp—"Yes, it is a
nice summer box—but would certainly be inappropriate for winter
wear!" The well-known purveyor who bought the Prince Regent's cellar
of snuff, and who bought also Lord Petersham's stock, was the Fribourg
of Fribourg and Treyer, whose well-known old-fashioned shop at the top
of the Haymarket, with a bow-window on each side of the door, still
gives an eighteenth-century flavour to that thoroughfare. All the
dandies of the period were connoisseurs of snuff, and imitated the
royal mirror of fashion in their devotion to the scented powder. Young
Charles Stanhope wrote to his brother on November 5, 1812—"I have
learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in
countenance." But no dandies or young men of fashion smoked. Tobacco,
save in the disguise of snuff, was tabooed.
Smoking was frowned upon, even in places where hitherto it had been
allowed. In 1812 the authorities of Sion College ordered "that Coffee
and Tea be provided in the Parlour for the Visitors and Incumbents,
and in the Court Room for the Curates and Lecturers; and that Pipes
and Tobacco be not allowed; and that no Wine be at any time carried
into the Court Room, nor any into the Hall after Coffee and Tea shall
have been ordered on that day." The use of tobacco for smoking, as I have said, had reached its
nadir—in the fashionable world, that is to say—but the dawn follows
the darkest hour, and the revival of smoking was at hand, thanks to
the cigar. |
