As a soother of sorrow in wedded life, the story told by Camden of good Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, shews how over-indulgence in the weed may carry its votary farther than he wots of. For his sins, people would say, the Bishop had to endure the plague of a scolding wife. The burden became greater than he could bear; he sighed for the peace that failed him, and in his distress he fell to smoking so immoderately that at last his weary spirit took flight on the wings of the weed to the realms of rest he longed for. There is a pathos in the story that awakens a kindred feeling; one can see the peace-loving prelate quietly slipping away from the domestic storm, and, finding sanctuary in his attic, yielding himself a willing martyr to the solace of St Nicotine. Indeed, if the truth must be told, the clergy, ever since her advent in these islands, have been noted votaries at her shrine. Instances crowd upon us.
A curious example is found in the pages of the astrologer Lilly’s Memoires published in 1715, thirty-four years after his death. We are told of one, William Bredon, vicar of Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, who was so far given over to the taking of tobacco in a pipe that when his supply was run out he would cut off the ends of the bell-ropes and smoke the bits. But this unworthy lover of his pipe was profoundly learned in Eastern lore, particularly that which related to judicial astrology. It may well be, that, along with his learning, he derived from the same source his knowledge of hashish. The practice of inhaling the fumes of burning hemp, was, as we have already seen, common in the near East, before tobacco had reached the Moslem.
It is next to impossible to dip into the pages of the early playwrights and pamphleteers without coming upon mirthful allusions to the new indulgence. Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Samuel Rowlands, and a host of other writers in those jubilant days, found in the weed and the habits of smokers a never-failing source for good-natured raillery.
In Every Man out of his Humour we learn that the rage for tobacco had spread to the provinces. One, Sogliardo, is described as essentially a clown, yet so enamoured of the name of gentleman that he will have it though he buys it. He comes to town every term to learn the manners of polite society, and readily falls a victim to men of the Bobadil type, who sees in the novelty a new field of enterprise. Jonson describes their methods, and speaks of a bill posted in St. Paul’s churchyard notifying fledglings from the country that instruction in the art of taking tobacco can be arranged for. It affords us a glimpse of the smart men-about-town three centuries ago who lay in wait for inexperienced youth. It runs as follows:—
‘If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford any young gentleman of the first, second, or third head, more or less, whose friends are but lately deceased, and whose lands are but new come into his hands, that, to be as exactly qualified as the best of our ordinary gallants are, is affected to entertain the most gentleman-like use of tobacco; as first to give it the most exquisite perfume, then to know all the delicate sweet forms for the assumption of it, as also the rare corollary and the practice of the Cuban ebolition, Euripus, and Whiffe, which he shall receive or take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it pleases him. If there be any such generous spirit that is truly enamoured of these good faculties, may it please him but by a note of his hand, to specify the place or ordinary where he uses to eat and lie, and most sweet attendance with tobacco and pipes of the best sort shall be ministered. Stet, quæso, candide lector.
EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SMOKERS
After King James had sent forth his famous Counterblaste in 1604, declaring to the world that tobacco was the ‘lively image and pattern of hell,’ it was not unusual to hear the weed associated with the arch enemy. And rare Ben would seem to have been nothing loth to trim his sails to the new breeze. In his masque entitled The Gipsies Metamorphosed he is so considerate as to wish that his Majesty’s nose may be protected from the smell of
Tobacco with the type