The Social History of Smoking

by George Latimer Apperson

Ne'er swerves a hairbreadth from the same old way.
Always within the memory of men
He's risen at eight and gone to bed at ten:
The same old cat his College room partakes,
The same old scout his bed each morning makes:
On mutton roast he daily dines in state
(Whole flocks have perished to supply his plate),
Takes just one turn to catch the westering sun,
Then reads the paper, as he's always done;
Soon cracks in Common-room the same old jokes,
Drinking three glasses ere three pipes he smokes:—
And what he did while Charles our throne did fill
'Neath George's heir you'll find him doing still.

It seems to have been taken for granted that country parsons smoked. Smoking was universal among their male parishioners from the squire to the labourer (when he could afford it), so that it was only natural that the parson, with little to do, and in those days not too much inclination to do it, should be as fond of his pipe as the rest of the world around him. In a World of 1756 there is an account of a country gentleman entertaining one evening the vicar of the parish, and the host as a matter of course proceeds to order a bottle of wine with pipes and tobacco to be placed on the table. The vicar forthwith "filled his pipe, and drank very cordially to my friend," his host. One cannot doubt that Laurence Sterne, that most remarkable of country parsons, smoked. His "My Uncle Toby" is among the immortals, and Toby without his pipe is unimaginable.

The most famous of country clergymen of the early Georgian period is, of course, Fielding's lovable and immortal Parson Adams. Throughout "Joseph Andrews" the parson smokes at every opportunity. At his first appearance on the scene, in the inn kitchen, he calls for a pipe of tobacco before taking his place at the fireside. The next morning, when he fails to obtain a desired loan from the landlord, Adams, extremely dejected at his disappointment, immediately applies to his pipe, "his constant friend and comfort in his affliction," and leans over the rails of the gallery overlooking the inn-yard, devoting himself to meditation, "assisted by the inspiring fumes of tobacco." Later on, in the parlour of the country Justice of the Peace, who condemned his prisoners before he had taken the depositions of the witnesses against them, and who, by the way, also lit his pipe while his clerk performed this necessary duty, Adams, when his character has been cleared, sits down with the company and takes a cheerful glass and applies himself vigorously to smoking. A few hours later, when the parson, Fanny, and their guide are driven by a storm of rain to take shelter in a wayside ale-house, Adams "immediately procured himself a good fire, a toast and ale, and a pipe, and began to smoke with great content, utterly forgetting everything that had happened." In the same inn, after Mrs. Slipslop has appeared and disappeared, Adams smokes three pipes and takes "a comfortable nap in a great chair," so leaving the lovers, Joseph and Fanny, to enjoy a delightful time together.

At another inn a country squire is discovered smoking his pipe by the door and the parson promptly joins him. Again, he smokes before he goes to bed, and before he breakfasts the next morning; and when he goes into the inn garden with the host who is willing to trust him, both host and parson light their pipes before beginning to gossip. Farther on, when the hospitable Mr. Wilson takes the weary wayfarers in, Parson Adams loses no time in filling himself with ale, as Fielding puts it, and lighting his pipe. The menfolk—Wilson, Adams and Joseph—have to spend the night seated round the fire, but apparently Adams is the only one who seeks the solace of tobacco. It is significant that Wilson, in telling the story of his dissipated early life, classes smoking with "singing, holloaing, wrangling, drinking, toasting," and other diversions of "jolly companions."

There is no mention of Parson Trulliber's pipe, but that pig-breeder and lover can hardly have been a non-smoker. Both the other clerical characters who appear in the book, the Roman Catholic priest who makes an equivocal appearance in the eighth chapter of the third book, and Parson Barnabas, who thinks that his own sermons are at least equal to Tillotson's, smoke their pipes. The other smokers in "Joseph Andrews" are the surgeon and the exciseman who, early in the story, are found sitting in the inn kitchen with Parson Barnabas, "smoking their pipes over some syderand"—the mysterious "cup" being a mixture of cider and something spirituous—and Joseph's father, old Gaffer Andrews, who appears at the end of the story, and complains bitterly that he wants his pipe, not having had a whiff that morning.

Fielding himself smoked his pipe. When his play "The Wedding Day" was produced by Garrick in 1743, various suggestions were made to the author as to the excision of certain passages, and the modification of one of the scenes. Garrick pressed for certain omissions, but—"No, damn them," said Fielding, "if the scene is not a good one, let them find that out"; and then, according to Murphy, he retired to the green-room, where, during the progress of the play, he smoked his pipe and drank champagne. Presently he heard the sound of hissing, and when Garrick came in and explained that the audience had hissed the scene he had wished to have modified, all Fielding said was: "Oh, damn them, they have found it out, have they!"

Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the crafty old Jacobite who took part in the rising of 1745 and who was executed on Tower Hill in 1747, was a smoker. The pipe which he was reported to have smoked on the evening before his execution, together with his snuff-box and a canvas tobacco-bag, were for many years in the possession of the Society of Cogers, the famous debating society of Fleet Street.

It has sometimes been said that Swift smoked; but this is a mistake. He had a fancy for taking tobacco in a slightly different way from the fashionable mode of taking snuff. He told Stella that he had left off snuff altogether, and then in the very next sentence remarked that he had "a noble roll of tobacco for grating, very good." And in a later letter to Stella, May 24, 1711, he asked if she still snuffed, and went on to say, in sentences that seem to contradict one another: "I have left it off, and when anybody offers me their box, I take about a tenth part of what I used to do, then just smell to it, and privately fling the rest away. I keep to my tobacco still, as you say; but even much less of that than formerly, only mornings and evenings, and very seldom in the day." One might infer from this that he smoked, but this Swift never did. His practice was to snuff up cut and dried tobacco, which was sometimes just coloured with Spanish snuff. This he did all his life, but as the mixture he took was not technically snuff, he never owned that he took snuff.

Another cleric of the period, well known to fame, who took snuff but also loved his pipe, was Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire, from 1697 to 1735. He not only smoked his pipe, but sang its praises:

In these raw mornings, when I'm freezing ripe,
What can compare with a tobacco-pipe?
Primed, cocked and toucht, 'twould better heat a man
Than ten Bath Faggots or Scotch warming-pan.