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 11:

Among the chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some of the clubs. At the Athenæum the only smoking-room used to be a combined billiard-and smoking-room in the basement. It was but a few years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when the alterations were made in 1900. This new smoking-room is a very handsome, largely book-lined apartment. At the end of the room is a beautiful marble mantelpiece of late eighteenth century Italian work. At White's even cigars had not been allowed at all until 1845; and when, in 1866, some of the younger members wished to be allowed to smoke in the drawing-room, there was much perturbation, the older members bitterly opposing the proposal. "A general meeting was held to decide the question," says Mr. Ralph Nevill, in his "London Clubs," "when a number of old gentlemen who had not been seen in the club for years made their appearance, stoutly determined to resist the proposed desecration. 'Where do all these old fossils come from?' inquired a member. 'From Kensal Green,' was Mr. Alfred Montgomery's reply. 'Their hearses, I understand, are waiting to take them back there.'" The motion for the extension of the facilities for smoking was defeated by a majority of twenty-three votes, and as an indirect result the Marlborough Club was founded. The late King Edward, at that time Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the defeated minority at White's, and to have interested himself in the foundation of the Marlborough; where, "for the first time in the history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was everywhere allowed." By "smoking" is no doubt here meant everything but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick Club at the beginning of the present century. The late Duc d'Aumale was a social pioneer in pipe-smoking. His caricature in "Vanity Fair" represents him with a pipe in his mouth, although he is wearing an opera-hat, black frock-coat buttoned up, and a cloak.

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