The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
Angelo gives some lively pictures of scenes of this kind in the London
of about 1780. The Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, was the
meeting-place for "a knot of worthies, principally 'Sons of St. Luke,'
or the children of Thespis, and mostly votaries of Bacchus," as the
old fencing-master, who loved a little "fine writing," describes them;
and here they sat, he says, "taking their punch and smoking, the
prevailing custom of the time." About the same time (_circa_ 1790) an
evening resort for purposes mostly vicious was the famous Dog and
Duck, in St. George's Fields. "The long room," says Angelo, "if I may
depend on my memory, was on the ground floor, and all the benches were
filled with motley groups, eating, drinking, and smoking." Angelo also
mentions the "Picnic Society," a celebrated resort of fashion at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, where the odour of tobacco never
penetrated. It afforded, he says in his fine way, "a sort of
antipodeal contrast to these smoking tavern clubs of the old city of
Trinobantes." The same writer speaks of a certain Monsieur Liviez whom
he met in Paris in 1772, who had been one of the first dancers at the
Italian Opera House, and _maître de ballet_ at Drury Lane Theatre.
This gentleman was addicted to self-indulgence, loved good eating, and
good and ample drinking, and moreover kept "late hours, _Ã
l'Anglaise_, smoked his pipe, and drank oceans of punch."
Coleridge, in the "Biographia Literaria," gives an amusing account of
his own experience of an attempt to smoke in company with a party of
tradesmen. In 1795 he was travelling about the country endeavouring to
secure subscriptions to the periodical publication he had started
called _The Watchman_. At Birmingham one day he dined with a worthy
tradesman, who, after dinner, importuned him "to smoke a pipe with
him, and two or three other _illuminati_ of the same rank." The
remainder of the moving story must be told in Coleridge's own words.
"I objected," he says, "both because I was engaged to spend the
evening with a minister and his friends, and because I had never
smoked except once or twice in my life-time, and then it was herb
tobacco mixed with Oronooko. On the assurance, however, that the
tobacco was equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a yellow
colour,--not forgetting the lamentable difficulty I have always
experienced in saying, 'No,' and in abstaining from what the people
about me were doing,--I took half a pipe, filling the lower half of
the bole with salt. I was soon, however, compelled to resign it, in
consequence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes, which,
as I had drunk but a single glass of ale, must, I knew, have been the
effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered, I sallied
forth to my engagement; but the walk and the fresh air brought on all
the symptoms again, and I had scarcely entered the minister's
drawing-room, and opened a small pacquet of letters, which he had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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