The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
Hogarth's subscription ticket for the print of _Sigismunda_ was _Time
Smoking a Picture_ (1761). It represents an old man sitting on a
fragment of statuary and smoking a long pipe against a picture of a
landscape which stands upon an easel before him. Below, on his left,
is a large jar labelled "Varnish." The figure of Time is nude and has
large wings. Volumes of smoke are pouring against the surface of the
picture from both his mouth and the bowl of his long clay pipe. In
_The Stage-Coach, or Country Inn-yard_, is shown an old woman smoking
a pipe in the "basket" of the coach. The plate of _The Distrest Poet_
(1736) shows four books and three tobacco-pipes on a shelf. In the
second of the "Election" series--the _Canvassing for Votes_ (1755)--a
barber and a cobbler, seated at the table in the right-hand corner,
are both smoking long pipes. Apparently they are discussing the taking
of Portobello by Admiral Vernon in 1739 with only six ships; for the
barber is illustrating his talk by pointing with his twisted pipe-stem
to six fragments which he has broken from the stem and arranged on the
table in the shape of a crescent. In the frontispiece which Hogarth
drew in 1762 for Garrick's farce of "The Farmer's Return from London,"
the worthy farmer, seated in his great chair, holds out a large mug in
one hand to be filled with ale, while the other supports his long
pipe, which he is smoking with evident enjoyment.
Hogarth himself was a confirmed pipe-lover. When he and Thornhill and
their three companions set out from Gravesend for the final stage, up
the river, of their famous "Five Days Peregrination," we are told that
they hired a boat with clean straw, and laid in a bottle of wine,
pipes, tobacco, and light, and so came merrily up the river. The
arm-chair in which Hogarth was wont to sit and smoke is still
preserved in his house at Chiswick, which has been bought and
preserved as a memorial of the moralist-painter; and in the garden of
the house may still be seen the remains of the mulberry tree under
which Mr. Austin Dobson suggests that Hogarth and Fielding may have
sat and smoked their pipes together in the days when George was
King.
VIII
SMOKING UNFASHIONABLE (_continued_): LATER GEORGIAN DAYS
Says the Pipe to the Snuff-box, I can't understand
What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face,
That you are in fashion all over the land,
And I am so much fallen into disgrace.
WILLIAM COWPER.
(From a letter to the Rev. John Newton, May 28, 1782.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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