Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

When Tennyson was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 1828-30, he and his companions all smoked. At the meetings of the "Apostles"—the little group of friends which included the future Laureate—"much coffee was drunk, much tobacco smoked." Dons smoked as well as undergraduates. At Queens', the Combination-room in Tennyson's time had still a sanded floor, and the "table was set handsomely forth with long 'churchwardens'"—as the poet told Palgrave when the two visited Cambridge in 1859. George Pryme, in his "Autobiographic Recollections," 1870, states that in 1800 "smoking was allowed in the Trinity Combination-room after supper in the twelve days of Christmas, when a few old men availed themselves of it," which looks as if tobacco were not very popular just then at Trinity. With the wine, pipes and the large silver tobacco-box were laid on the table. Porson, when asked for an inscription for the box, suggested Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ... to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

Readers of Dickens are familiar with the drawing by Cruikshank which illustrates the chapter on "Scotland Yard" in Dickens's "Sketches by Boz," which was written before 1836. It shows the coal-heavers sitting round the fire shouting out "some sturdy chorus," and smoking long clays. "Here," wrote Dickens, "in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient appearance, cheered by the glow of a mighty fire ... sat the lusty coal-heavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and involved the room in a thick dark cloud." These good folk and others of their kin had never been affected by any change of fashion in respect of smoking. In another of the "Sketches," the amusing "Tuggs's at Ramsgate," when poor Cymon Tuggs is hid behind the curtain, half dead with fear, he hears Captain Waters call for brandy and cigars—"The cigars were introduced; the captain was a professed smoker; so was the lieutenant; so was Joseph Tuggs." Poor Cymon, on the other hand, was one of those who could never smoke "without feeling it indispensably necessary to retire, immediately, and never could smell smoke without a strong disposition to cough." Consequently, as the apartment was small, the door closed and the smoke powerful, poor Cymon was soon compelled to cough, which precipitated the catastrophe. It is noticeable that Dickens speaks of the three worthies as professed smokers, a remark which suggests that such dare-devils, men who would take cigars as a matter of course and for enjoyment, and not merely out of a complimentary acquiescence in some one else's wish, were comparatively rare.

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