Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 2: Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, would appear to have been a smoker. In a letter addressed to him, John Watts, an alderman of London, wrote: "According to your request, I have sent the greatest part of my store of tobaca by the bearer, wishing that the same may be to your good liking. But this tobaca I have had this six months, which was such as my son brought home, but since that time I have had none. At this period there is none that is good to be had for money. Wishing you to make store thereof, for I do not know where to have the like, I have sent you of two sorts. Mincing Lane, 12 Dec. 1600."
From Chapter 5: Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen. In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring "to be remembered by the witty smoakers of Hawsted." A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a "History and Antiquities of Hawsted," and in describing Hawsted Place, which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment called the smoking-room—"a name," he says, "it acquired probably soon after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as it stood." I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum could have made the assertion that the room was called the smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century. No mention in print of a smoking-room has been found for the purposes of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689. In Shadwell's "Bury Fair" of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary heroes of a bygone day, "While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred, witless drunkards with you in your smoking-room." As Mr. Oldwit himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends, "We'll into my smoking-room and sport about a brimmer," there was probably some excuse for his wife's remark. These country smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor being flagged for safety's sake; and the "stone-parlour" in many a squire's house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no doubt, abundant smoking.
|
