There can be few matters in which custom, or fashion, has veered round more completely than it has done in the matter of tobacco during my life-time. The Foreign Office was when I entered it the only public department in which smoking was allowed. That was a legacy from Lord Clarendon, who, an inveterate smoker himself, was far too kindly to inflict upon his subordinates what would have been a cruel privation to himself, so we smoked at our work, but the other departments, and the public in general, looked rather askance upon us for the privilege, for smoking was considered to be the outward and visible sign of idleness and incompetence. Smoking in the streets or in the Park was a thing not to be dreamt of. To carry a cigar in Pall Mall or St. James’s Street would have caused a man to be classed as “an unredeemed cad.” Bulwer’s “My Novel” is not much read now, I fancy, and more’s the pity, for it gives a rare picture of what it calls in its sub-title the “varieties in English life” during the early fifties. It was published in 1852. Harley L’Estrange, coming back from abroad, goes for a stroll with his dog in Hyde Park in the evening. He throws himself upon a bench under a tree. “‘Half-past eight,’ said he, looking at his watch, ‘one may smoke one’s cigar without shocking the world. It is the most barefaced lie in the world, my Nero,’ said he, addressing his dog, ‘this boasted liberty of man! Now here am I, a freeborn Englishman, a citizen of the world, caring—I often say to myself—caring not a jot for Kaiser or mob; and yet I no more dare smoke this cigar in the Park at half-past six, when all the world is abroad, than I dare pick my Lord Chancellor’s pocket, or hit the Archbishop of Canterbury a thump on the nose.’” So much for smoking in London. In country houses we were badly off indeed. When the ladies left the drawing-room, the men who wished to smoke were sent down to the kitchen or the servants’ hall, to fight the rival perfumes of beer, tepid beef, cheese and onions. The banishment of cigars from the statelier rooms once led to my turning a chance acquaintance into something like a friendship. Sir William Middleton, a grand gentleman of the old school, gave a party at his beautiful place, Shrubland, in Suffolk, in honour of the Duke and Duchess d’Aumale. The gardens were exquisitely beautiful, the house comfort itself, the cook an artist of high repute, but there was no smoking-room. The Duke was a confirmed smoker, and, strange to say, I alone in all that large party was able to keep him company. We were sent off—not to the kitchen, for in his case that would never have done—but to some remote turret, whence it was hoped that no noxious fumes might penetrate the rest of the house, and there we sat and smoked till the small hours.