Penny Magazine

No. 220 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Sep. 5, 1835

ILLUSTRATIONS OF TOBACCO-SMOKING.

THERE is certainly no human habit with which so many curious considerations are connected as with that of tobacco-smoking. The habit is more perfectly artificial than almost any other in which man indulges; and there are few which are more repulsive to the natural taste. It is generally disagreeable to those who do not practise it; those who do, have, in the first instance, acquired it with effort and difficulty; and many of those who try are unable to acquire it at all. Now the wonder is, how it happens that a habit of this description, which seems to contain in itself fewer elements of propagation than almost any other, should exceed all others in the extent of its diffusion. In extent, it embraces the circumference of the globe; it comprehends every class of people,--from the most savage to the most refined,--and includes every climate, from Siberia to the equator, and from the equator to the extreme south.

What renders this the more surprising is the comparatively recent period within which the habit has become thus extended: 250 or 300 years is a short time for a habit to gain all but universal prevalence. We have given some attention to the history of this habit, regarding it as a sort of phenomenon well worthy of the best attention that could be applied to it; and the result is, that we see no reason to doubt that America is the source from which the usage has extended to all other countries. Having witnessed the devotion to the use of this herb of the entire population in Turkey, Persia, and other eastern countries, and the refinements which they have thrown into the art of smoking, we were at one time disposed to question whether the usage could be so recent in the East as we know it to be in Europe, particularly as it seems difficult to form an idea of a Turk or Persian separately from the pipe which is now so indispensable to him, and which occupies so serious a portion of his time and attention. It has indeed been contended that the East did possess the herb before the use of it was imported from America into Europe; but we are persuaded that this is an error. Tobacco-smoking is never mentioned in Oriental works of an earlier date, which minutely describe the usages of the Orientals--'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' for instance; neither is it noticed by any old travellers, although, from the prominent place it occupies and the ceremonies connected with it, there must in both instances have been frequent allusion to it, if it then existed.

The Chinese, indeed, according to Bell, pretend to have been tobacco-smokers for many ages. But there was probably some misunderstanding here, either on the part of Bell or his informants. They may certainly have had the habit of smoking, but hardly of tobacco-smoking. They might formerly, as now, have smoked other substances than tobacco; and the assertion, as made or understood, did not perhaps distinguish between the general habit of smoking and the particular use of tobacco. There is every probability that the Chinese first received tobacco from India, to which country the seeds of the plant were first taken by the Portuguese in the year 1599.

For nearly thirty years subsequently to that period the Portuguese had settlements in the Persian Gulf, and it appears to have been during this time that the use of tobacco was introduced into Persia. We may presume that the Portuguese created the taste, and supplied the commodity from India; besides which the Persians themselves had then, and always have had, much personal intercourse with that country. This is not merely a matter of conjecture, for, in 1628, two years after the expulsion of the Portuguese from the gulf, we find the Persians still obtaining large supplies of tobacco from India. Sir Thomas Herbert, who was that year in Persia, relates the following circumstance which occurred as Casbin. "It seems that forty camels, entering laden with tobacco out of India, (the drivers being ignorant of a late prohibition, the king sometimes commanding and restraining as reason of state invited,) Mamet Ally-beg, the favourite (wanting his piscah * ), commanded the penalty to be executed, which was to crop their ears and snip their noses; offering withal to his angry justice a dismal sacrifice of forty loads of tobacco, which was put into a deep hole that served as a pipe, and being inflamed, in a black vapour gave the citizens gratis, for two whole days and nights, an unpleasing incense."

The Turks seem to have received the habit and the commodity immediately from Europe, about the same time that Persia received it from the East. Indeed, the inhabitants of Eastern Turkey may have taken it from the Persians, or in the same way that the Persians themselves did. Sir Thomas Herbert, when at Bagdad, (which, a few years before, had been in the possession of the Persians,) mentioning the coffee-houses, which he calls "Coho-houses," where the inhabitants assemble towards evening "to sip coffee, a Stygian liquor, black, thick, and bitter," says, that in these houses they also inebriated themselves with arrack and tobacco. Sandys, an earlier authority, who was at Constantinople in 1610, is more explicit and satisfactory on the subject, and expressly describes tobacco-smoking as a habit new to the Turks. He says, "They also delight in tobacco: they take it through reeds that have joined unto them great heads of wood to contain it,--I doubt not but lately taught them, as brought them by the English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust through the nose of a Turk, and so to be led in derision through the city), no question but it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless, they will take it in corners, and are so ignorant therein, that that which in England is not saleable doth pass here among them for most excellent." This probably means no more than that the Turks did then, as they and other eastern people still do, prefer a milder kind of tobacco than that which has been commonly used in England. The pipes he describes are just the same as those now in common use, except that the large bowl is now of earthenware. We on our part have also retained the use of the original diminutive and slender pipes, the small capacity of which is adapted rather to the extreme dearness of the commodity when first introduced than to its comparative cheapness at present.

In England, tobacco was first introduced about the year 1578, according to Stow, who adds that Sir Walter Raleigh was the person that brought it into use, when all men wondered what it meant. Yet he says, in the same page, that tobacco was brought to England, and made known there in 1656 by Sir John Hawkins. He probably means that it was brought in 1656 as a curiosity, and in 1678 as an article of consumption.

Malcolm has preserved a tradition which existed in the parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, that Sir Walter Raleigh used to sit at his door smoking with Sir Hugh Middleton in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. "The custom was probably promoted," adds Malcolm, "through the public manner in which it was exhibited, and the aromatic flavour inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties. Indeed, the two last motives are alone adequate to establish a custom ten times more loathsome than King James describes tobacco-smoking to be."

Stow, who speaks of tobacco as "a stinking weed, so much abused to God's dishonour," seems to say that the use of tobacco gained ground but slowly during the reign of Elizabeth; but adds that, when he wrote (1631), it was "commonly used by most men and many women:" at any rate it does not seem to have met with any serious opposition in the Queen's time. Spenser, in the 'Faery Queen,' calls it "divine tobacco;" whether he indulged in the use of it does not appear, but he probably spoke thus respectfully of it out of compliment to his friend and patron Sir Walter Raleigh. Tobacco, however, has everywhere had a storm of opposition to encounter at some period of its history in every country. It was not exempt in England from this its peculiar lot. James ascended the throne, and tobacco was called "divine" no more. About the time that the Turkish Vizier was thrusting pipes through the noses of smokers, and the Shah of Persia was cropping their ears and snipping their noses, the British Solomon was writing a book against the same unhappy class of persons. It is doubtful whether this monarch's famous 'Counterblast to Tobacco' had even a temporary effect in checking the practice, except within the sphere of the court, among those who lived in dependence of his favour. We extract a few passages which seem best to illustrate the estimation in which tobacco-smoking was held by the king, and the forms in which the usage then appeared. The following shows that the habit was at that time indulged with greater excess and less decency than at present.

"And for the vanities committed in this filthy custom, is it not great vanity and uselessness that at the table, a place of respect, of cleanness and of modesty, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco pipes, and puffing of the smoke one to another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof to exhale across the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men that abhor it are at their repast. * * * But not only meal time, but no other time nor action, is exempted from the public use of this uncivil trick. And is it not a greater vanity that a man cannot welcome his friend now, but straight they must be in hand with tobacco [quite an oriental custom this.] No, it is become, in place of a cure, a point of good fellowship, and he that will refuse to take a pipe with his fellows (though by his own election he would rather feel the savour of a stink) is accounted peevish and no good company, even as they do with tippling in the cold eastern countries. Yea, the mistress cannot in more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair hand a pipe of tobacco."

The case being thus, the king had certainly some cause to be angry. The next extract is richly characteristic both of the king and the custom.

"Is it not the greatest sin of all, that you, the people of all sorts in this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honour and safety of your king and commonwealth, should disable yourselves in both. In your person that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's sabbath, but you must have a reekie coal brought you from the next poor house to kindle your tobacco with. * * * Now how you are by this custom disabled in your goods, let the gentry of this land bear witness, some of them bestowing three, some four hundred pounds a year upon this precious stink, which I am sure might be bestowed upon many far better uses."

This seems hardly credible, and Brand suggests that Scotch pounds are intended. This is possible; but we are to bear in mind that tobacco was then very costly, and, as it seems, more abundantly used in the upper and middle classes than at present. Besides, it also appears that a person had to provide pipes for visiters and guests, which must have extended his expenses greatly beyond what his own indulgence of the habit required.

The following pious sentence is exquisite in its way:-

"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke."

The king, in concluding his fulminations against tobacco-smoking, characterizes the habit as--"A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and, in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."

The same monarch was wont to profess that if he were to invite the devil to a dinner he should have the following three dishes,--"1st. a pig; 2nd. a poll of ling and mustard; and, 3rd. a pipe of tobacco for digesture."

We shall give our remaining space to a few other early allusions to the use of tobacco, and anecdotes concerning it which we have collected from various sources.

In 1616, a Derbyshire gentleman, name Peter Campbell, made his will, bequeathing to his eldest son all his household goods towards housekeeping, on the condition that if thereafter any of his brothers or sisters should find him smoking tobacco, that he or she so finding him should become entitled to the said goods or the full value of them in money. The king's 'Counterblast' probably had its effect on this person.

Lilly, in the History of his Life and Times, mentions a clergyman of Buckinghamshire who, according to this account, was a very able person, "but so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco (and I suppose not too much drink) he would cut the bell-ropes and smoke them." This is another fact seeming to show that tobacco was a costly commodity at that time.

Francis Quarles, in his 'Emblem' (first printed in 1630), has one hieroglyphic which represents the being who with him is the representative of human nature, or of mankind at large, as seated upon a globe (the world), to which he is chained by the leg. He is occupied in smoking from a pipe exactly like the present common pipes of clay. The following is the commencement of the poem which accompanies this cut:-

"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes

Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise

To follow nature's too affected fashion,

Or travel in the regent walk of passion;

Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at fear,

Or play at fast and loose with smiles and tears;

Come, burst your spleens with laughter to behold

A new-found vanity, which days of old

Ne'er knew: a vanity that has beset

The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet:

That has condemned us to the servile yoke

Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke.

But stay! why tax I thus our modern times,

For new-born follies and for new-born crimes?

Are we sole guilty, and the first age free?

No: they were smoked and slaved as well as we.

What's sweet-lipt honour's blast but smoke? What treasure,

But very smoke, and what's more smoke than pleasure?"

And in this strain he goes on to the end of the chapter. The following quaint thought is quoted by Brand from an old collection of epigrams. It is entitled 'A Tobacconist,' a term which formerly described one who used as well as one who sold tobacco.

"All dainty meats I do defy: Which feed men fat as swine;
He is a frugal man indeed: That on a leaf can dine.
He needs no napkin for his hands: His fingers' ends to wipe,
That keeps his kitchen in a box,: And roast meat in a pipe."

We must conclude our illustrations with one more passage, quoted also by Brand, from an imitation of Young by Hawkins Browne, Eq.

: "Critics avannt, tobacco is my theme;; Tremble like hornets at the blasting steam.; And you, court insects, flutter not too near; Its light, nor buzz within its scorching sphere.; Pollio, with flame like thine, my verse inspire,; So shall the Muse from smoke elicit fire.; Coxcombs prefer the tickling sting of snuff,; Yet all their claim to wisdom is--a puff.; Lord Fopling smokes not--for his teeth afraid:; Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade.; Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;; They love no smoke except the smoke of town; But courtiers hate the puffing tribe--no matter,; Strange if they love the breath that cannot flatter.; Its foes but show their ignorance; can he; That scorns the leaf of knowledge, love the tree?; Yet crowds remain who still its worth proclaim,; For some for pleasure smoke, and some for fame;; Fame, of our actions universal spring,; For which we drink, eat, sleep, smoke--ev'ry thing."

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