Some of the references to women smokers occur in curious connexions. When one George Glapthorne, of Whittlesey, J.P., was returned to Parliament for the Isle of Ely in 1654, his return was petitioned against, and among other charges it was said that just before the election, in a certain Martin's ale-house, he had promised to give Mrs. Martin a roll of tobacco, and had also undertaken to grant her husband a licence to brew, thus unduly influencing and corrupting the electors.
Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev. Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."
In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated, but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane, who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman Vall, Norfolk. Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn, as his "Afextinat wife," the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous, tells her "Sweet Hart"—"I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret sed." How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did not care to be long without a supply. In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited Stow's "Chronicles," and continued them "onto the end of this present yeare 1631," wrote that tobacco was "at this day commonly used by most men and many women."
Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country. Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St. Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking, which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them." What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk? Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among women in the west of England. Dunton, in that Athenian Oracle which was a kind of early forerunner of Notes and Queries, alluded to pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that "Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the very Women? What Occasion is there for that very? We wonder that in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall wonder that the Women of Middlesex do not take Tabacco: And why should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!
Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company, the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which is a general custom as well among women as men, who think that without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it dissipates the evil humours of the brain."
Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion" because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in their hands."
From the evidence so far adduced it may fairly be concluded, I think, that during the seventeenth century smoking was not fashionable, or indeed anything but rare, among the women of the more well-to-do classes, while among women of humbler rank it was an occasional, and in a few districts a fairly general habit.
The same conclusion holds good for the eighteenth century. Among women of the lowest class smoking was probably common enough. In Fielding's "Amelia," a woman of the lowest character is spoken of as "smoking tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenely and swearing and cursing"—which accomplishments are all carefully noted, because none of them would be applicable to the ordinary respectable female.
The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of Tobacco," in Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been made, wrote:
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
* * * * * * *
Citronia vows it has an odious stink;
She will not smoke (ye gods!)—but she will drink;