The house wherein Mr. Allison realized by fair dealing and frugality the modest fortune which enabled him to repurchase the homestead of his fathers, is still a Tobacconists, and has continued to be so from “the palmy days” of that trade, when King James vainly endeavoured by the expression of his royal dislike, to discountenance the newly-imported practice of smoking; and Joshua Sylvester thundered from Mount Helicon a Volley of Holy Shot, thinking that thereby “Tobacco” should be “battered, and the Pipes shattered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome vanity.” For he said,
“If there be any Herb in any place
Most opposite to God's good Herb of Grace,
'Tis doubtless this; and this doth plainly prove it,
That for the most, most graceless men do love it.”
Yet it was not long before the dead and unsavoury odour of that weed, to which a Parisian was made to say that “sea-coal smoke seemed a very Portugal perfume,” prevailed as much in the raiment of the more coarsely clad part of the community, as the scent of lavender among those who were clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and it had grown so much in fashion, that it was said children “began to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to make way for their teeth.”
Louis XIV. endeavoured just as ineffectually to discourage the use of snuff-taking. His valets de chambre were obliged to renounce it when they were appointed to their office; and the Duke of Harcourt was supposed to have died of apoplexy in consequence of having, to please his Majesty, left off at once a habit which he had carried to excess.
I know not through what intermediate hands the business at No. 113 has past, since the name of Allison was withdrawn from the firm; nor whether Mr. Evans, by whom it is now carried on there, is in any way related by descent with that family. Matters of no greater importance to most men have been made the subject of much antiquarian investigation; and they who busy themselves in such investigations must not be said to be ill employed, for they find harmless amusement in the pursuit, and sometimes put up a chance truth of which others, soon or late, discover the application. The house has at this time a more antiquated appearance than any other in that part of the street, though it was modernized some forty or fifty years after Mr. Bacon's friend left it. The first floor then projected several feet farther over the street than at present, and the second several feet farther over the first; and the windows, which still extend the whole breadth of the front, were then composed of small casement panes. But in the progress of those improvements which are now carrying on in the city with as much spirit as at the western end of the metropolis, and which have almost reached Mr. Evans's door, it cannot be long before the house will be either wholly removed, or so altered as no longer to be recognized.
The present race of Londoners little know what the appearance of the city was a century ago;—their own city, I was about to have said; but it was the city of their great grandfathers, not theirs, from which the elder Allisons retired in the year 1746. At that time the kennels (as in Paris) were in the middle of the street, and there were no foot paths; spouts projected the rain-water in streams against which umbrellas, if umbrellas had been then in use, could have afforded no defence; and large signs, such as are now only to be seen at country inns, were suspended before every shop, from posts which impeded the way, or from iron supports strongly fixed into the front of the house. The swinging of one of these broad signs in a high wind, and the weight of the iron on which it acted, sometimes brought the wall down; and it is recorded that one front-fall of this kind in Fleet-street maimed several persons, and killed “two young ladies, a cobler, and the King's Jeweller.”
The sign at No. 113 was an Indian Chief, smoking the calumet. Mr. Allison had found it there; and when it became necessary that a new one should be substituted, he retained the same figure,—though if he had been to chuse he would have greatly preferred the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, by whom, according to the common belief, he supposed tobacco had been introduced into this country. The Water-Poet imputed it to the Devil himself, and published
A Proclamation,
Or Approbation,
From the King of Execration
To every Nation,
For Tobacco's propagation.
Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous aspersions. Raleigh was a great favorite with him, and held indeed in especial respect, though not as the Patron of his old trade, as St. Crispin is of the Gentle Craft, yet as the founder of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore, that he should possess Sir Walter's History of the World, though he had never found inclination, or summoned up resolution, to undertake its perusal.