The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
In 1805 Lamb wrote to Wordsworth--"now I have bid farewell to my
'sweet enemy' tobacco ... I shall, perhaps, set nobly to work."
Forthwith he set to work on the farce "Mr. H.," which some months
later was produced at Drury Lane and was promptly damned. After its
failure Lamb wrote to Hazlitt--"We are determined not to be cast down.
I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoky man
must write smoky farces." But Lamb and his pipe were not to be parted
by even repeated resolutions to leave off smoking. It was years after
this that he met Macready at Talfourd's, and by way probably of saying
something to shock Macready; whose personality could hardly have been
sympathetic to him, uttered the remarkable wish that the last breath
he drew in might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun.
It was in 1818 that Lamb published the collection of his writings, in
two volumes, which contained the well-known "Farewell to Tobacco,"
written in 1805, and referred to in the letter of that year to
Wordsworth quoted above. Its phrases of mingled abuse and affection
are familiar to lovers of Lamb.
Parr is reported to have once asked Lamb how he could smoke so much
and so fast, and Lamb is said to have replied--"I toiled after it,
sir, as some men toil after virtue." But if all accounts are true,
Parr far outsmoked Lamb. If the essayist discontinued or modified his
smoking habits, he made up for it by devotion to snuff--a devotion
which his sister shared. A large snuff-box usually lay on the table
between them, and they pushed it one to the other.
But it is time to return to the cigar, and the changing attitude of
fashion towards smoking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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