The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account