Chapter 10 Part 1
EARLY VICTORIAN DAYS
In 1845 Dickens 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 Snobs," 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 nobleman,
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 attitude 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 passed 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 classes. 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
shag 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 attitude 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 principal 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-class 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
Snobs," 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
Snobs"—in chapters three and nine—show men, one civil the other
military, smoking cigars out of doors; but as these were no doubt
arrant snobs, 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 passage 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 Athenæum," 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 class 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 glasses, 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 attaché at our embassy 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 attitude 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 attitude 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 noble, 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 Cock (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 cigars that tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet." The late
Laureate, Alfred Austin, once asked Tennyson, after reading a passage
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 illustrating
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." |
