Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 5:

Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen. In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring "to be remembered by the witty smoakers of Hawsted." A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a "History and Antiquities of Hawsted," and in describing Hawsted Place, which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment called the smoking-room—"a name," he says, "it acquired probably soon after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as it stood." I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum could have made the assertion that the room was called the smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century. No mention in print of a smoking-room has been found for the purposes of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689. In Shadwell's "Bury Fair" of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary heroes of a bygone day, "While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred, witless drunkards with you in your smoking-room." As Mr. Oldwit himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends, "We'll into my smoking-room and sport about a brimmer," there was probably some excuse for his wife's remark. These country smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor being flagged for safety's sake; and the "stone-parlour" in many a squire's house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no doubt, abundant smoking.

Read More

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

An amusing incident is related in Forster's "Life of Dickens," which shows how entirely unknown was smoking among women of the middle and upper classes in England some ten years after Queen Victoria came to the throne. Dickens was at Lausanne and Geneva in the autumn of 1846. At his hotel in Geneva he met a remarkable mother and daughter, both English, who admired him greatly, and whom he had previously known at Genoa. The younger lady's conversation would have shocked the prim maids and matrons of that day. She asked Dickens if he had ever "read such infernal trash" as Mrs. Gore's; and exclaimed "Oh God! what a sermon we had here, last Sunday." Dickens and his two daughters-"who were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards"-dined by invitation with the mother and daughter. The daughter asked him if he smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good 'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The box was full of cigarettes-good large ones, made of pretty strong tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa, and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers, at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put out her stomach, folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up sideways and her cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill, laughed, and talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I ever beheld. Mother immediately lighted her cigar; American lady immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of smoke, with us four in the centre pulling away bravely, while American lady related stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different kinds of pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen came in, with whom, and the American lady, daughter sat down to whist. The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen and seemed dismayed), and daughter played for the next hour or two with a cigar continually in her mouth-never out of it. She certainly smoked six or eight. Mother gave in soon-I think she only did it out of vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning. I took no more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves. Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of surprise, but I never was so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback, in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and another, I never saw a woman-not a basket woman or a gipsy-smoke before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described." The words "cigar" and "cigarette" are used indifferently by the novelist, but it seems clear from the description and from the number smoked by the lady in an hour or two, that it was a cigarette and not a cigar, properly so called, which was never out of her mouth.

Read More