The Social History of Smoking

by George Latimer Apperson

In more fashionable circles the mere possession of a pipe might be looked at askance. Robertson's comedy "Society" was produced in 1865, and in it, Tom Stylus, a somewhat Bohemian journalist, has the misfortune, in a fashionable ball-room, when pulling out his handkerchief to bring out his pipe with it from his pocket. The vulgar thing falls upon the floor, and Tom is ashamed to claim his property and so acknowledge his ownership of a pipe. He presently calls a footman, who comes with a tray and sugar-tongs, picks up the offending briar with the tongs, and carries it off "with an air of ineffable disgust."

Undergraduates, like men of letters, did not pay much attention to the conventional attitude of society towards tobacco, and pipes maintained their popularity in college rooms. Thackeray, in the "Book of Snobs," 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 Snobs.' 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 space at the east end on each side of the altar was called, may occasionally have effectually sheltered card-playing; but when a young snob 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 repetition 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 glass 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 attitude 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-class 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 substitute 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 mass 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."