The Social History of Smoking

By George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12

Tobacco is once more triumphant. The cycle of three hundred years is complete. Since the early decades of the seventeenth century, smoking has never been so generally practised nor so smiled upon by fashion as it is at the present time. Men in their attitude towards tobacco have always been divisible into three classes—those who respected and followed and obeyed the conventions of society and the dictates of fashion, and smoked or did not smoke in accordance therewith; those who knew those conventions but disregarded them and smoked as and what they pleased; and those who neither knew nor cared whether such conventions existed, or what fashion might say, but smoked as and what, and when and where they pleased. At the present time the three classes tend to combine into one. There are, it is true, a few conventions and restrictions left; but they are not very strong, and will probably disappear one of these days. There is also, of course, and always has been, a fourth class of men, who for one reason or another, quite apart from what fashion may say or do, do not smoke at all.

Perhaps the most absurd and unmeaning of the restrictions that remain, is that which at certain times and in certain places admits the smoking of cigars and cigarettes and forbids the smoking of pipes. The idea appears to be that a pipe is vulgar. There are few restaurants now in which smoking is not allowed after dinner; but the understanding is that cigars and cigarettes only shall be smoked. In some places of resort there are notices exhibited which specifically prohibit the smoking of pipes. Why? At a smoking concert where few pipes are smoked, anyone looking

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds

can at once realize how much greater is the volume of smoke from cigars and cigarettes than would result from the smoking of a like number of pipes. It cannot, therefore, be that pipes are barred because of a supposed greater effect upon the atmosphere of the room. The only conclusion the observer can come to is, that the fashionable attitude towards pipes is one of the last relics of the old social attitude—the attitude of Georgian and Early Victorian days—towards smoking of any kind. The cigar and the cigarette were first introduced among the upper classes of society, and their use has spread downward. They have broken down many barriers, and in many places, and under many and divers conditions, the pipe has followed triumphantly in their wake; but the last ditch of the old prejudice has been found in the convention, which, in certain places and at certain times, admits the cigar and cigarette of fashionable origin, but bars the entry of the plebeian pipe—the pipe which for two centuries was practically the only mode of smoking used or known.

An article which appeared in the Morning Post of February 20, 1913, may be regarded as a sign of the times. It was entitled "A Plea for the Pipe: By one who Smokes it." "I should like," said the writer, "pipe-men of all degrees to ask themselves whether the time has not really arrived to enter a protest against the convention which forces the pipe into a position of inferiority, and exalts to a pinnacle of undeserved pre-eminence the cigar, and still more the cigarette ... why should it be considered a mark of vulgarity, of plebeianism, to inhale tobacco-smoke through the stem of a briar, and the hall-mark of good breeding to finger a cigar or dally with that triviality and travesty of the adoration of My Lady Nicotine—a cigarette?" To these questions there can be but one answer: and the future, there can be little doubt, will emphasize that answer, and abolish the unmeaning convention.

The prejudice against the pipe is not confined to places of indoor resort. There are many men who smoke pipes within doors, who yet would not care to be seen in London smoking a pipe in the street, or in the park. In some circumstances this is quite intelligible. The writer of the Morning Post article remarked with much force and good sense that "Apart from social environment, there is a certain affinity between pipes and clothes. It is considered 'bad form' for a man in a frock-coat and silk hat to be seen smoking a pipe in the streets. If you are wearing a bowler hat and a lounge suit you may walk along with a briar protruding from your lips, and no one will think ill of you. If you are a son of toil garbed in your habit as you work, there is nothing incongruous in a well-seasoned clay or a 'nose-warmer,' which, for convenience, you carry upside down. Not so very long ago it was considered unseemly to smoke a pipe at all in the street unless you belonged to the humbler orders, who inhale their nicotine through the stem of a clay and expectorate with a greater sense of freedom than of responsibility."

At a few clubs there are still some curious and rather unmeaning restrictions. A particularly absurd rule that maintains its ground here and there, is that which forbids smoking in the library of a club. What more appropriate place could there be for the thoughtful consumption of tobacco than among the books? But after due allowance has been made for a few minor restrictions of this kind, the fact remains that smoking has triumphed socially all along the line in Clubland. We have travelled far from the days when a committee man could declare that "No Gentleman smoked," to the time when, for example, the large smoking-room at Brooks's is one of the finest rooms in one of the most famous and exclusive of clubs. This splendid room in the eighteenth-century days of gambling was the "Grand Subscription Room"—the gambling room of Georgian times. It still retains two of the old gaming tables. Now this magnificent apartment, with its splendid barrelled ceiling, which a well-known architectural writer, Mr. Stanley C. Ramsey, A.R.I.B.A., describes as "probably the finest room of its kind in London," is the temple of Saint Nicotine. The strangers' smoking-room in the same club, formerly the dining-room, is another beautiful and delightfully decorated apartment. Similar transformations have been witnessed in other clubs.

Barry's original plan for the Travellers' Club, erected in 1832, shows no smoking-room on the ground floor. It was probably some inconvenient apartment of no account. The early "Travellers" did smoke, for Theodore Hook, satirizing them and the club rule that no person was eligible as a member who had not travelled out of the British Islands to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a direct line, wrote:

The travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily,
And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai,
The world for them has nothing new, they have explored all parts of it;
And now they are club-footed! and they sit and look at charts of it.

The present-day smoking-room at the Travellers' is a noble apartment, which was originally the coffee-room. It occupies the whole of the ground-floor front to the gardens of Carlton House Terrace, and is divided into three bays by the projection of square piers.

Another sign of the complete change which has come over the attitude of most folk towards tobacco is to be seen in the permission of smoking at meetings of committees and councils, where not so long ago such an indulgence would have been regarded as an outrage. Many of the committees of municipal councils and other public bodies now permit smoking while business is proceeding. It has even become usual for members of the House of Commons to smoke in committee rooms when the sitting is private; and cigars and cigarettes and pipes are now lighted in the lobby the moment that the House has risen. A very thin line thus separates the legislative chamber itself from the conquering weed. A further step forward (or backward, according to each reader's judgment) was taken on July 21, 1913, when smoking was allowed at the sitting of the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills—one of the committees which does not conduct its business in private. On this occasion, after the luncheon interval, two members entered the committee room smoking, one a cigarette the other a cigar. The former was soon finished; but the latter continued to shed its fragrance on the room. Naturally the chairman, Mr. Arthur Henderson, was appealed to. He gave a diplomatic reply. It had been held, he said, by two chairmen that smoking was not in order at the public sessions of a Standing Committee; and, of course, if his ruling were formally asked he would be bound to follow precedent. He said this with a suavity and a smile which disarmed any possible objector. Nobody raised the formal point of order; so other members "lighted up," and the proceedings went on peacefully to the appointed hour of closing.

Yet another sign of the times was the permission given not so very long ago to the drivers of taxi-cabs to smoke while driving fares—a development regarding which there may well be two opinions.

The number of cigarette-smokers nowadays is legion; but to a very large number of "tobacconists" (in the old sense of the word) a pipe remains the most satisfactory of "smokes." A cigar or a cigarette is—and it is not; the pipe renders its service again and again and yet remains—a steadfast companion. "Over a pipe" is a phrase of more meaning than "over a cigarette." Discussions are best conducted over a pipe. No one can get too excited or over-heated in argument, no one can neglect the observance of the amenities of conversation, who talks thoughtfully between the pulls at his pipe, who has to pause now and again to refill, to strike a light, to knock out the ashes, or to perform one of those numberless little acts of devotion at the shrine of St. Nicotine, which fill up the pauses and conduce to reflection. The Indians were wise in their generation when they made the circulation of the pipe an essential part of their pow-wows. A conference founded on the mutual consumption of tobacco was likely, not, as the frivolous would say, to end in smoke, but to lead to solid and lasting results. "The fact is, squire," said Sam Slick, "the moment a man takes a pipe he becomes a philosopher." The pipe, says Thackeray, "draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent and unaffected.... May I die if I abuse that kindly weed which has given me so much pleasure."

And what more fitting emblem of peace could be chosen than the calumet, the proffered pipe? Tobacco, whatever its enemies may have said, or may yet say, is the friend of peace, the foe of strife, and the promoter of geniality and good fellowship. Mrs. Battle, whose serious energies were all given to the great game of whist, unbent her mind, we are told, over a book. Most men unbend over a pipe, even if the book is an accompaniment.

To the solitary man the well-seasoned tube is an invaluable companion. If he happen, once in a way, to have nothing special to do and plenty of time in which to do it, he naturally fills his pipe as he draws the easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie, and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least, something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems can usually afford to wait.
"Over a pipe!" Why the words bring up innumerable pleasant associations. The angler, having caught the coveted prize, refills his pipe, and with the satisfied sense of duty done, as the rings curl upward he reviews the struggle and glows again with victory. At the end of any day's occupation, especially one of pleasurable toil—whether it be shooting or hunting, or walking or what not—what can be pleasanter than to let the mind meander through the course of the day's proceedings over a pipe?

There is much wisdom in Robert Louis Stevenson's remarks in "Virginibus Puerisque"—"Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this 'ignoble tabagie,' as Michelet calls it, spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it because it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident women this will seem no evil influence in married life. Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging and contentment, makes just so surely for domestic happiness."

Nothing is more marked in the change in the social attitude towards tobacco than the revolution which has taken place in woman's view of smoking. The history of smoking by women is dealt with separately in the next chapter; but here it may be noted that most of the old intolerance of tobacco has disappeared. "To smoke in Hyde Park," said the late Lady Dorothy Nevill, in 1907, "even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime."

Women do not nowadays shun the smell of smoke as they did in early Victorian days, as if it were the most dreadful of odours. They are tolerant of smoking in their presence, in public places, in restaurants—in fact, wherever men and women congregate—to a degree that would have horrified extremely their mothers and grandmothers. It is only within the last few years that visits to music-halls and theatres of varieties have been socially possible to ladies. Men go largely because they can smoke during the performance; women go largely because they have ceased to consider tobacco-smoke as a thing to be rigidly avoided, and therefore have no hesitation in accompanying their menfolk.

The observant visitor to the promenade concerts annually given in the Queen's Hall, Langham Place, will notice that but one small section of the grand circle is reserved for non-smokers, while smoking is freely allowed (with no absurd ban on the friendly pipe) in every other part of the great auditorium—floor, circle and balcony.

There are still some people who share the Duke of Wellington's delusion that smoking promotes drinking, although experience proves the contrary, and historic evidence, especially as regards drinking after dinner, shows that it was the introduction of the cigar, followed by that of the cigarette, which absolutely killed the old, bad after-dinner habits. The Salvation Army do not enforce total abstinence from tobacco as well as from alcoholic drinks as a condition of membership or soldiership, but a member of the Army must be a non-smoker before he can hold any office in its rank, or be a bandsman, or a member of a "songster brigade." And in other religious organizations there are yet a few of the "unco' guid" who look askance at pipe or cigarette as if it were a device of the devil. But the numbers of these misguided folk become fewer every year.

smoking in the dining-room after dinner is now so general that people are apt to forget that this particular development is of no great age. It is not yet, however, universal. A valued correspondent tells me that he knows a house "where tobacco is still kept out of the dining-room, and smoke indulged in elsewhere after wine. This old-fashioned habit must now be pretty rare."

The chief legitimate objection to cigarette smoking was well stated some years ago by the late Dr. Andrew Wilson. "I think cigarettes are apt to prove injurious," he said, "because a man will smoke far too much when he indulges in this form of the weed, and because I think it is generally admitted that cigarettes are apt to produce evil effects out of all proportion to the amount of tobacco which is apparently consumed." Excess can equally be found among cigar and pipe-smokers. The late Chancellor Parish, in his "Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect," tells a delightful story of a Sussex rustic's holiday—"May be you knows Mass [Master, the distinctive title of a married labourer] Pilbeam? No! doänt ye? Well, he was a very sing'lar marn was Mass Pilbeam, a very sing'lar marn! He says to he's mistus one day, he says, 'tis a long time, says he, sence I've took a holiday—so cardenly, nex marnin' he laid abed till purty nigh seven o'clock, and then he brackfustes, and then he goos down to the shop and buys fower ounces of barca, and he sets hisself down on the maxon [manure heap], and there he set, and there he smoked and smoked and smoked all the whole day long, for, says he 'tis a long time sence I've had a holiday! Ah, he was a very sing'lar marn—a very sing'lar marn indeed."

Some men seem to act upon Mark Twain's principle of never smoking when asleep or at meals, and never refraining at any other time. But excess is self-condemned. There is no good reason why anyone, for social or any other reasons, should look askance at the reasonable use of tobacco. "But used in moderation, what evils, let me ask,"—I again quote Dr. Andrew Wilson's calm good sense—"are to be found in the train of the tobacco-habit! A man doesn't get delirium tremens even if he smokes more than is good for him; he doesn't become a debased mortal; there is nothing about tobacco which makes a man beat his wife or assault his mother-in-law—rather the reverse, in fact, for tobacco is a soother and a quietener of the passions, and many a man, I daresay, has been prevented from doing rash things in the way of retaliation, when he has lit his pipe and had a good think over his affairs. Whenever anybody counterblasts to-day against tobacco, I feel as did my old friend Wilkie Collins, when somebody told him that to smoke was a wrong thing. 'My dear sir,' said the great novelist, 'all your objections to tobacco only increase the relish with which I look forward to my next cigar!'"

US State Trivia and Facts:

Clinton Riggs designed the YIELD sign. It was first used on a trial basis in Tulsa, Oklahoma.