“It does, I believe,” responded Professor Maturin, “incline one to prefer the company of other smokers, and to reduce the number even of those that one desires at a time. However, if that be the case, we must commend it for inciting such conversation as the present, such intimate games as chess, and such profitable solitude as that with books. It was no accidental combination that made Buckle say he never regretted the money spent for books or tobacco. King Alfred and his ancient candle are succeeded by the modern scholar, measuring time by the rings on the ash of his cigar, or by the succession of his pipes. Is not tobacco, therefore, an encourager of domesticity? What makes one more content to stay at home?”
“Or away from home?” smiled the clergyman, consulting his watch. “As for domesticity, you know the saying that ‘tobacco is woman’s only successful rival;’ and you recall those shocking lines of Kipling’s. I think I never knew a woman who was not, secretly, at least, distressed by the odor of tobacco—no matter what the younger ones may say to the contrary. Remember poor Mrs. Carlyle!”
“There were two Mrs. Carlyles,” chuckled Professor Maturin, “and you must restrict your sympathies to Jane, for the dowager and son Thomas used to smoke their pipes together. Of the feminine reaction to tobacco, however, I am no judge, although I do recall George Sand’s pipe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s snuff, and the cigarettes of contemporary empresses and suffragettes. Have I not heard that women physicians prescribe the latter—cigarettes, I mean—for feminine nervousness?”
“I have no doubt whatever about cigarettes,” replied the Vicar. “I would unhesitatingly banish them as the bane of the young and the foolish. Snuff, also, we are done with, and happily, for it was the most slovenly form of an indulgence which is unclean at its best.” Here the Vicar flicked some imaginary ashes from his waistcoat. “We can never be too grateful that our contemporary Sir Joshua Reynoldses are not snuffy. But I must confess that a good Havana now and then”—and the Vicar spoke slower and slower, until his sentence became an eloquent silence as he drew upon his cigar, expelled the smoke, and watched it fade away.
No one spoke for some moments, and as neither the Vicar nor Professor Maturin seemed inclined to do so, I ventured a brief panegyric upon pipes, preferably briars—their intimate, companionable, cumulative qualities; the preference for them on the part of Spenser and Tennyson, Locke and Fielding, Lamb and Lowell; and the varied range of their offering as illustrated by Cowper’s Virginia, Thackeray’s Canaster, and Aldrich’s Latakia.
“Nor may we forget Southey’s ‘Elegy on a Quid,’” added Professor Maturin. “Seriously, however,” he continued, “smoke is beautiful to the eye, pleasing in flavor and odor, smooth to the tactile and comforting to the temperature sense, the occasion of a tranquil muscular rhythm—the last not the least important. Thus it gratifies six senses at once—no wonder its use has become universal, intimately incorporated into national life east and west, south and north.”
“Alas, too intimately,” sighed the Vicar. “It costs half a billion a year. It is another artificial habit that the world finds it difficult if not impossible to do without. So few have Newton’s fear of adding to the number of their necessities. Think how Thackeray missed his cigar and how Prescott, when but one a day was allowed to him, ranged Paris over for the very largest procurable! Did not Stevenson write, ‘Most men eat occasionally, but what they really live on is tobacco’? Did not Charles Lamb say he toiled after tobacco as other men toiled after virtue? Was not his struggle to stop smoking as severe as De Quincey’s with Opium?”
“I suspect,” replied Professor Maturin, “that both Lamb and De Quincey made the literary most of their sufferings, and as for force of habit, who can tell? I am sure that I never smoke merely from habit, but always because of a conscious desire for the kind of satisfaction that smoking gives.”
“Yes, yes,” sighed the Vicar, finishing his cigar, “but I am truly distressed about the matter. I wish that your scientists would make a comprehensive and conclusive investigation into the effects of tobacco, as they have recently done into those of alcohol. Is it a stimulant or a sedative? What is its effect on perception, comprehension, association, combination, on general efficiency, on general health? Is it a poison or a panacea?”
“It is certainly time that we knew surely,” replied Professor Maturin gravely, “and it is our obligation to urge our scientific friends to inform us. Until then, however, I must confess that my own experience chiefly corroborates Carlyle’s judgment that ‘sedative, gently clarifying tobacco smoke, with the obligation to a minimum of speech, surely gives human intellect and insight the best chance they can have.’ The general situation is well summed up by old Burton, when he says: ‘Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, ... but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco.’ Have another cigar, dominie.”