Pickwick, "I like it very much, although I am no smoker myself." "I should be very sorry to say I wasn"t," interposes another gentleman on the opposite side of the table. "It"s board and lodging to me, is smoke." Mr. Pickwick glances at the speaker, and thinks that if it were washing too, it would be all the better!
Later again when the "couple o" Sawbones," the medical students, Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer, make their first appearance on the scene, they are discovered in the morning seated by Mr. Wardle"s kitchen fire, smoking cigars; and it is significant of how smoking out of doors was then regarded that d.i.c.kens, going on to describe Sawyer in detail, refers to "that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description." Apparently in 1836 the only person who would allow himself to be seen smoking in the street was of the kind naturally inclined to do the other objectionable things mentioned. The same idea runs through the allusions to tobacco in "Pickwick." Smoking was undeniably vulgar. Mr. John Smauker, who introduces Sam Weller at the "friendly swarry" of the Bath footmen, smokes a cigar "through an amber tube"--cigar-holders were a novelty. When Mr. Pickwick is taken to the house of Namby, the sheriffs" officer, the "princ.i.p.al features"
of the front parlour are "fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke." One of the occupants of the room is a "mere boy of nineteen or twenty, who, though it was yet barely ten o"clock, was drinking gin and water, and smoking a cigar, amus.e.m.e.nts to which, judging from his inflamed countenance, he had devoted himself pretty constantly for the last year or two of his life." Tobacco-smoke pervades the Fleet prison. In fact, to trace tobacco through the pages of "Pickwick" is to realize vividly how vulgar if not vicious an accomplishment smoking was considered by the fashionable world and how popular it was among the n.o.bodies of the unfashionable world.
Similar morals may be drawn from other works of fiction. The action of the first chapters of Thackeray"s "Pendennis" pa.s.ses early in the nineteenth century. In the third chapter Foker has a cigar in his mouth as he strolls with Pen down the High Street of Chatteris. Old Doctor Portman meets them and regards "with wonder Pen"s friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round the doctor"s honest face and shovel hat. "An old school-fellow of mine, Mr. Foker," said Pen. The doctor said "H"m!" and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman." The reverend gentleman in liking his pipe was faithful to the traditional fondness for smoking of parsons; but smoking must be in the study. To smoke in the street was vulgar; and to smoke the newfangled cigar was worse.
Pendennis, when he comes home the first time from Oxbridge, brings with him a large box of cigars of strange brand, which he smokes "not only about the stables and greenhouses, where they were good" for his mother"s plants, and which were obviously places to which a man who wished to smoke should betake himself, but in his own study, which rather shocks his mother. Pen goes from bad to worse during his University days, and, sad to say, one Sunday in the last long vacation, the "wretched boy," instead of going to church, "was seen at the gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the congregation as it issued from St. Mary"s. There was an awful sensation in the village society. Portman prophesied Pen"s ruin after that, and groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal." Later the smoke from Warrington"s short pipe and Pen"s cigars floats through many pages of the novel.
X
EARLY VICTORIAN DAYS
Scent to match thy rich perfume Chemic art did ne"er presume Through her quaint alembic strain, None so sovereign to the brain.
LAMB, _A Farewell to Tobacco._
The social att.i.tude towards smoking in early Victorian days, and for some time later, was curious. The development of cigar-smoking among those cla.s.ses from which tobacco had long been practically banished, and the natural consequent spread downwards of the use of cigars--in accordance with the invariable law of fashion--together with the continued devotion to the pipe among those whose love of tobacco had never slackened, made smoking a much more general practice than it had been for some generations.
It is somewhat significant that d.i.c.kens, in the "Old Curiosity Shop,"
1840, makes that repulsive dwarf, Quilp, smoke cigars. When the little monster comes home unexpectedly in the fourth chapter of the book, and breaks up his wife"s tea-party, he settles himself in an arm-chair--"with his large head and face squeezed up against the back, and his little legs planted on the table"--with a case-bottle of rum, cold water, and a box of cigars before him. "Now, Mrs. Quilp," he says, "I feel in a smoking humour, and shall probably blaze away all night. But sit where you are, if you please, in case I want you."
Quilp smokes cigars one after the other, his wretched wife sitting patiently by, from sunset till some time after daybreak. The dwarf"s tastes, however, were catholic. A little later in the book the reader finds him, when encamped in the back parlour of the old man"s shop, smoking pipe after pipe, and compelling that knavish attorney, Sampson Bra.s.s, to do the same. Tobacco-smoke always caused Bra.s.s "great internal discomposure and annoyance"; but this made no difference to Quilp, who insisted on his "friend" continuing to smoke, while he inquired: "Is it good, Bra.s.s, is it nice, is it fragrant, do you feel like the Grand Turk?" But Quilp and Bra.s.s were not in "society."
Notwithstanding that the number of smokers had so largely increased, and was continually increasing, smoking was regarded socially as something of a vice--to be practised in inconvenient places and not too publicly.
There were still plenty of active opponents and denouncers of tobacco.
One of the most distinguished was the great Duke of Wellington, who abominated smoking, and was annoyed by the increase of cigar-smoking among officers of the army. In the early "forties he issued a General Order (No. 577) which contained a paragraph that would have delighted the heart of King James I. It ran thus: "The Commander-in-Chief has been informed, that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars, or cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers of the Army, which is not only in itself a species of intoxication occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but, undoubtedly, occasions drinking and tippling by those who acquire the habit; and he intreats the Officers commanding Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms of their several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their Regiments."
The Duke"s prejudices were stronger than his facts. The statement, not very grammatically expressed, that "the practice of smoking" was "itself a species of intoxication" was absurd enough; but the allegation, introduced by a question-begging "undoubtedly," that smoking occasioned drinking was directly contrary to fact. It was the introduction of after-dinner smoking that largely helped to kill the bad old practice of continued after-dinner drinking.
Perhaps the best reflection of and comment upon the att.i.tude of society towards smoking is to be found in the ironical, satirical pages of Thackeray. Let the reader turn to the confessions of George Fitz-Boodle Esq.--the "Fitz-Boodle Papers" first appeared in _Fraser"s Magazine_ for 1842--and he will find how smoking was regarded at that date, and what Thackeray, speaking through the puppet Fitz-Boodle, thought of it. George starts by saying: "I am not, in the first place, what is called a ladies" man, having contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking after dinner, which has obliged me to give up a great deal of the dear creatures" society; nor can I go much to country-houses for the same reason." The ladies had a keen scent for the abominable odour of tobacco, and distrusted the men who smoked. Here is Fitz-Boodle"s, or Thackeray"s, comment on it--"What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who has just been kind enough to read the above lines lays down the book, after this confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, "Oh, the vulgar wretch!" and pa.s.ses on to something else." He goes on to prophesy--and for once the "most gratuitous of follies" has been justified by the event--that tobacco will conquer. "Look over the wide world," he says to the ladies, "and see that your adversary has overcome it. Germany has been puffing for three score years; France smokes to a man. Do you think you can keep the enemy out of England? Psha! look at his progress. Ask the club-houses, Have they smoking-rooms, or not? Are they not obliged to yield to the general want of the age, in spite of the resistance of the old women on the committees? I, for my part, do not despair to see a bishop lolling out of the "Athenaeum" with a cheroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his shovel-hat."
The flight of fancy in the last sentence has hardly yet been fulfilled; but I saw, many years ago, a distinguished man of letters, the late Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, of "Golden Treasury" fame, who was an inveterate smoker, sitting on one of the cane benches by the door of the Athenaeum Club, smoking a short clay pipe.
Thackeray does not appear to have realized that tobacco was not invading England for the first, but for the second time, nor did he foresee that the ladies, to whom he addressed his impa.s.sioned defence of smoking, would not only submit to the conqueror but would themselves be found among his joyous devotees.
George Fitz-Boodle recounts how, as a boy, he was flogged for smoking, and how, at Oxford, smoking among other villainies led to his rustication. Later his tobacco, combined with insolence to his tobacco-hating colonel, conducted him out of the army into the retirement of civil life; and so on and so on. There is, of course, an element of exaggeration in all this; but Mr. Fitz-Boodle"s experiences and reflections throw much light on the social history of smoking in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Mr. Harry Furniss, in the preface to his edition of Thackeray, has an admirably terse and pertinent paragraph on this aspect of the "Fitz-Boodle Papers." He says--"No gentleman in those days was seen smoking even a "weed" in the streets. Cigarettes were practically unheard of in England, and outside one"s private smoking-room pipes were tabooed. Men in Society slunk into their smoking-rooms, or, when there was no smoking-room, into the kitchen or servants" hall, after the domestics had retired. A smoking-jacket was worn in the place of their ordinary evening coat, and their well-oiled, ma.s.sive head of hair was protected by a gorgeously decorated smoking-cap. Thus the odour of tobacco was not brought into the drawing-room."
The fear of the odour of tobacco-smoke was extraordinary. Mr. J.C.
Buckmaster in his reminiscences describes the famous debating society at Cogers" Hall, and says that "after one night at the Cogers" it took three days on a common to purify your clothes" from the smoke. The journalists and Bohemians who met at the Cogers were above (or below) the dictates of fashion, and smoking was always a feature of their gatherings. The "yard of clay" is provided gratis for members, and it is to its almost universal use, says Mr. Peter Rayleigh, in his book on "The Cogers and Fleet Street," "that Cogers owe their existence in the present quarters. Once upon a time the Cogers "swarmed" to a well-appointed room, where carpets covered the floors, the chairs were upholstered, and the tables had finely polished marble tops. The hot pipes and smouldering matches stained the table tops and burnt the carpets, so that they had the option of abandoning either the pipe or the quarters. Old customs die hard with Cogers, and they stuck to their pipe.... The pipe is a feature in all ill.u.s.trations of Cogerian meetings."
The influence of the Court was wholly against smoking. Both Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort detested it, so tobacco was taboo wherever the Court was. The late Lady Dorothy Nevill, who lived to see the new triumph of tobacco, said that she thought the greatest minor change in social habits which she had witnessed was that in the att.i.tude a.s.sumed towards smoking, which, in her youth, "and even later, was, except in certain well-defined circ.u.mstances, regarded as little less than a heinous crime." Lady Dorothy remarked that "smoking-rooms in country houses were absolutely unknown"--but that was not quite correct as we shall see in the experiences of Professor von Holtzendorff, to be mentioned directly--and that "such gentlemen as wished to smoke after the ladies had gone to bed used, as a matter of course, to go either to the servants" hall or to the harness-room in the stables, where at night some sort of rough preparation was generally made for their accommodation.... Well do I remember the immense care which devotees of tobacco used to take, when sallying forth in the country to enjoy it, not to allow the faintest whiff of smoke to penetrate into the hall as they lit their cigars at the door."
In 1845 d.i.c.kens wrote: "I generally take a cigar after dinner when I"m alone." The reservation in the last three words may be noted. In the "Book of Sn.o.bs," Major Wellesley Ponto goes to smoke a cigar in the stables--Ponto had no smoking-room--with Lord Gules, who is described as a "very young, short, sandy-haired and tobacco-smoking n.o.bleman, who cannot have left the nursery very long." Later, Ponto and Gules "resume smoking operations ... in the now vacant kitchen."
Even so late as 1861 the att.i.tude towards smoking was still much the same in some quarters. In that year a German scholar, Professor Franz von Holtzendorff, paid a visit to a country gentleman"s house in Gloucestershire--Hardwicke Court. Later he printed an account of his experiences, a translation of which was published in this country in 1878. When the professor arrived, his host, the first greeting over, at once pointed out to him a secluded apartment--the one which he thought it most important for a German to know, namely, the smoking-room. "According to his idea," continued the professor, "every German has three national characteristics, smoking, singing, and Sabbath-breaking; the first and only idea in which I found him led astray by an abstract theory." Later, his hostess, explaining to him the method and routine of life in an English country-house, said that the ladies retired about eleven, while the gentlemen finished their day"s work in the smoking-room--the secluded apartment--or enjoyed a cigar at the billiard-table; but a smoke in the billiard-room was only allowed if that room was not near the drawing-room or in the hall close by. "You must have often been surprised," she continued, "that we English ladies have such an invincible repugnance to tobacco smoke, but there is no dispensation from our rule of abstinence, except in those rooms which my husband has already pointed out to you."
The professor, after luncheon, was pressed by the squire--"who, on any other occasion would never waste time in smoking, and only filled his short clay pipe at the end of his day"s work"--to come to his smoking-room. As regards this room the professor drily remarked--"I thought I had noticed that even the key-hole was stopped up, in order to preserve the ladies" delicate nerves from every disagreeable sensation." After dinner, again, when the ladies had left the table, "the gentlemen pa.s.sed the bottles of port, sherry, and claret, with the regularity of planets from hand to hand," but no one dreamed of smoking. That was reserved for the secluded apartment after the ladies had gone to bed. Neither host nor guest imagined what a revolution another generation or so would make in these social habits.
In the "fifties the pipes smoked were mostly clays. There were the long clays or "churchwardens," to be smoked in hours of ease and leisure; and the short clays--"cutties"--which could be smoked while a man was at work. Milo, a tobacconist in the Strand, and Inderwick, whose shop was near Leicester Square, were famous for their pipes, which could be bought for 6d. apiece. A burlesque poem of 1853, in praise of an old black pipe, says:
_Think not of meerschaum is that bowl: away, Ye fond enthusiasts! it is common clay, By Milo stamped, perchance by Milo"s hand, And for a tizzy purchased in the Strand._
_Famed are the clays of Inderwick, and fair The pipes of Fiolet from Saint Omer._
I am indebted for this quotation to a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, September 27, 1913.
Another correspondent of the same journal, Colonel W.F. Prideaux, also replying to a query of mine, wrote: "Before briar-root pipes came into common use clay pipes were of necessity smoked by all cla.s.ses. When I matriculated at Oxford at the Easter of 1858 ... University men used to be rather particular about the pipes they smoked. The finest were made in France, and the favourite brand was "Fiolet, Saint Omer." I do not know if this kind is still smoked, but it was made of a soft clay that easily coloured. In taverns, of course, the churchwarden--beloved of Carlyle and Tennyson--was usually smoked to the accompaniment of shandygaff. At Simpson"s fish ordinary at Billingsgate these pipes were always placed on the table after dinner, together with screws of s.h.a.g tobacco, and a smoking parliament moistened with hot or cold punch according to the season, was generally held during the following hour. Of course, in those days no one ever thought of smoking a pipe in the presence of ladies."
Colonel Harold Malet at the same time wrote--"When I was a cadet at Sandhurst in 1855-58, Milo"s cutty pipes were quite the thing, and the selection by cadets of a good one out of a fresh consignment packed in sawdust was eagerly watched by the "Johns." Of course we were imitating our parents." It was no doubt these cutty pipes which are referred to in one of the sporting books of Robert Surtees as the "clay pipes of gentility."
In a private letter to me, which I am privileged to quote, Colonel Prideaux adds some further particulars as to the social att.i.tude of early Victorian days towards tobacco--particulars which are the more valuable and interesting as being supplied from personal recollection of those now somewhat distant days. The Colonel writes: "When I was a young man people never thought of smoking in what house-agents call the "reception-rooms," the princ.i.p.al reason being that the occupation of these rooms was shared by ladies, and it was "bad form" (not, by the way, a contemporary expression) to smoke while in the company of the fairer half of creation. Consequently, men had either to indulge in the practice out of doors, or else, as you say, sneak away to the kitchen when the servants had gone to bed, and puff up the chimney. It was only in large houses that a billiard room could be found, and even in a billiard room a pipe or cigar was _taboo_ if ladies were present, while smoking-rooms could no more be found in middle-cla.s.s houses than bath-rooms. Both cutties and churchwardens were smoked, but the latter of course were not adapted for persons engaged in active pursuits and were essentially of what I may call a sedentary nature. You could not even walk while holding a long churchwarden in your mouth, and consequently the short clay was most favoured by young men at Sandhurst and the Universities.... Labourers smoked short clays when out of doors, and churchwardens when they rested from their labours and took their ease in their inn in the evenings."
Mr. Furniss, in the paragraph quoted on a previous page, says: "No gentleman in those days was seen smoking even a "weed" in the streets." The nearest approach to this seems to have been smoking on club steps. Thackeray, in the seventeenth chapter of the "Book of Sn.o.bs," speaks of dandies smoking their cigars upon the steps of "White"s," most fashionable of clubs, and, in an earlier chapter, of young Ensign Famish lounging and smoking on the steps of the "Union Jack Club," with half a dozen other "young rakes of the fourth or fifth order." Two of Thackeray"s own drawings in the "Book of Sn.o.bs"--in chapters three and nine--show men, one civil the other military, smoking cigars out of doors; but as these were no doubt arrant sn.o.bs, the drawings may be accepted as proof of Mr. Furniss"s statement.
In this same book Thackeray says ironically--"Think of that den of abomination, which, I am told, has been established in _some_ clubs, called the _Smoking-Room_." The satirist was very familiar with the smoking-room at the club he loved well--the "Little G."--the Garrick.
The original Garrick club-house was at 35 King Street, Covent Garden, where the club was founded in 1831. It had formerly been a quiet, old-fashioned family hotel, but apparently was not furnished with a smoking-room, for one of the first acts of the club, when they obtained possession of the house, was to build out over the "leads" a large and comfortable smoking-room. Shirley Brooks said that this room, which was reached by a long pa.s.sage from the Strangers"
Dining-room, "was not a cheerful apartment by daylight, and when empty, but which, at night and full, was thought the most cheerful apartment in Town." At other clubs of more fashion, perhaps, but certainly of less good-fellowship, smoking-rooms made their way more slowly. At White"s, smoking was not allowed at all till 1845. The Alfred Club, founded in 1808, which Lord Byron described as pleasant--"a little too sober and literary, perhaps, but, on the whole, a decent resource on a rainy day," and which Sir William Fraser called "a sort of minor Athenaeum," owed its death in 1855, if report be true, to a dispute about smoking. One section of the members wished for an improved smoking-room--they called the existing room, which was at the top of the house--an "infamous hole"--while the more old-fashioned and more influential members objected to any improvement. The latter carried the day, but the consequent loss of members ruined the club, which soon after ceased to exist. This secession must have been subsequent to that of the bishops, of whom at one time many were members, but who left, it is said, because of the introduction of a billiard-table!
The growth of cigar-smoking was rapid. Mr. Steinmetz, in his book on "Tobacco," published in 1857, remarked that no way of using tobacco had made a more striking advance in England within the preceding twenty years than cigars. For a long time it had been confined in this country to the richer cla.s.s of smokers, but when he wrote it was "in universal use." The wonder is that with so many men smoking cigars the old domestic and club restrictions, as pilloried in Thackeray"s pages, were maintained so long. In 1853 Leech had an admirably drawn sketch in _Punch_ of paterfamilias, in the absence of his wife, giving a little dinner. Beside him sits his small son, and on either side of the table sit two of his cronies. One has a cigar in his hand and is blowing a cloud of smoke, while the other is selecting a "weed." The host is just lighting his cigar as the maid enters with a tray of decanters and gla.s.ses, and with disgust written plainly on her face.
The objectionable child beside him says--"Lor! Pa, are you going to smoke? My eye! won"t you catch it when Ma comes home, for making the curtains smell!"
Another witness to the rapid development of cigar-smoking is Captain Gronow, the author of the well-known "Reminiscences." Gronow says that the famous surgeon, Sir Astley Cooper, on one occasion perceiving that he was fond of smoking, cautioned him against that habit, telling him that it would, sooner or later, be the cause of his death. This must have been before 1841, when Sir Astley died. Writing in the "sixties Gronow said: "If Sir Astley were now alive he would find everybody with a cigar in his mouth: men smoke nowadays whilst they are occupied in working or hunting, riding in carriages, or otherwise employed"--which shows how the prejudice against outdoor smoking was then breaking down. "During the experience of a long life, however,"
continued Gronow, "I never knew but one person of whom it was said that smoking was the cause of his death: he was the son of an Irish earl, and an attache at our emba.s.sy in Paris. But, alas! I have known thousands who have been carried off owing to their love of the bottle."
Thackeray, as the satirist of the foolish social prejudices against smoking, was naturally an inveterate smoker himself. He died in 1863, and so hardly saw the beginning of a change in the att.i.tude of society towards the pestilent weed; but he was one of the many men of letters and artists, who, despising the conventions of society, were largely instrumental in breaking down stupid restrictions, and in overcoming senseless prejudices, and were thus heralds of freedom.
Charles Keene"s att.i.tude was that of many artists. He smoked a little Jacobean clay pipe in his "sky-parlour" overlooking the Strand, and did not care in the least what the world might think or not think about that or any other subject.
Those who smoked pipes at Cambridge continued to smoke pipes afterwards, whatever "society" might do. Spedding, who spent his life on the elucidation of Bacon, was one of the "Apostles," and he continued a pipe-lover to the end. In 1832 we hear of Tennyson being in London with him, and "smoking all the day."
Lady Ritchie, in "Tennyson and his Friends," says: "I can remember vaguely, on one occasion through a cloud of smoke, looking across a darkening room at the n.o.ble, grave head of the Poet Laureate. He was sitting with my Father in the twilight after some family meal in the old house in Kensington." Thackeray was a cigar-smoker, but Tennyson was a devotee of the pipe. It was on this occasion, as the poet himself reminded Thackeray"s daughter, that while the novelist was speaking, Lady Ritchie"s little sister "looked up suddenly from the book over which she had been absorbed, saying in her sweet childish voice, "Papa, why do you not write books like "Nicholas Nickleby"?""
Tennyson wrote "In Memoriam" at Shawell Rectory, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire. The rector was a Mr. Elmhirst, a native of the poet"s Lincolnshire village. The latest historian of Lutterworth says that "The great puffs of tobacco smoke with which he [Tennyson] mellowed his thoughts, proved insufferable to his host, and he was accordingly turned out into Mr. Elmhirst"s workshop in the garden, which in consequence became the birthplace of one of the gems of English literature."
About 1842, when Tennyson often dined at the Old c.o.c.k (by Temple Bar) and at other taverns, the perfect dinner for his taste, says his son, was "a beef-steak, a potato, a cut of cheese, a pint of port, and afterwards a pipe (never a cigar)." When the Kingsleys paid the Tennysons a visit about 1859, Charles Kingsley, so the Laureate told his son, "talked as usual on all sorts of topics, and walked hard up and down the study for hours smoking furiously, and affirming that tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet." The late Laureate, Alfred Austin, once asked Tennyson, after reading a pa.s.sage in Dorothy Wordsworth"s "Journal" that William had gone to bed "very tired" with writing the "Prelude," if he had ever felt tired by writing poetry. "I think not," said the poet, "but tired with the accompaniment of too much smoking."
Kingsley"s devotion to smoke seems to have surprised Tennyson, who was no light smoker himself. The most curious story ill.u.s.trating Kingsley"s love of tobacco is that told in the life of Archbishop Benson by his son, Mr. A.C. Benson. One day about the year 1860, the future archbishop was walking with the Rector of Eversley in a remote part of the parish, on a common, when Kingsley suddenly said--"I must smoke a pipe," and forthwith went to a furze-bush and felt about in it for a time. Presently he produced a clay churchwarden pipe, "which he lighted, and solemnly smoked as he walked, putting it when he had done into a hole among some tree roots, and telling my father that he had a _cache_ of pipes in several places in the parish to meet the exigencies of a sudden desire for tobacco." If this story did not appear in the life of an archbishop, some scepticism on the part of the reader might be excused.
Carlyle, as every one knows, was a great smoker. The story is familiar--it may be true--that one evening he and Tennyson sat in solemn silence smoking for hours, one on each side of the fireplace, and that when the visitor rose to go, Carlyle, as he bade him good-night, said--"Man, Alfred, we hae had a graund nicht; come again soon."
Tennyson"s own devotion to tobacco led, on at least one occasion, to a peculiar and somewhat questionable proceeding. Mr. W.M. Rossetti had a temporary acquaintance with the poet, and in the "Reminiscences" which he published in 1906, he told a curious anecdote concerning him which was new to print. Rossetti told, on the authority of Woolner, how, in the course of a trip with friends to Italy, tobacco such as Tennyson could smoke gave out at some particular city, whereupon the poet packed up his portmanteau and returned home, breaking up the party!
The late Joseph Knight, who reviewed Rossetti"s volumes in the _Athenaeum_, vouched for the truth of this relation, which he had heard, not only from Woolner, but also from Tennyson"s brother Septimus.
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 att.i.tude of society towards tobacco, and pipes maintained their popularity in college rooms. Thackeray, in the "Book of Sn.o.bs,"