Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Thackeray, as the satirist of the foolish social prejudices against smoking, was naturally an inveterate smoker himself. He died in 1863, and so hardly saw the beginning of a change in the attitude of society towards the pestilent weed; but he was one of the many men of letters and artists, who, despising the conventions of society, were largely instrumental in breaking down stupid restrictions, and in overcoming senseless prejudices, and were thus heralds of freedom. Charles Keene's attitude was that of many artists. He smoked a little Jacobean clay pipe in his "sky-parlour" overlooking the Strand, and did not care in the least what the world might think or not think about that or any other subject.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent Carlyle—an inveterate smoker—a box of cigars in February 1865. In his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote—"Dear Ruskin, you have sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in answer? It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi

'We are such stuff,
Gone with a puff—
Then think, and smoke Tobacco!'"

In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin's guests found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.

Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker. He is said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out of courtesy to his illustrious guest.

It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in the day—an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished smokers would subscribe—when Sir William laughingly replied, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened bards."

The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened birdseye" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, in "Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.

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