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.
All-virtuous Herbert! on whose every part Truth might spend all her voice, fame all her art!— was a smoker, as we know from a very curious passage in his well-known autobiography. He appears to have smoked not so much for pleasure as for supposed reasons of health. "It is well known," he wrote, "to those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily be believed, or hath been observed in any else, which sweetness also was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take tobacco, which towards my latter time I was forced to take against certain rheums and catarrhs that trouble me, which yet did not taint my breath for any long time." The autobiography was written about 1645, so as Lord Herbert did not smoke till towards the latter part of his life—he died in 1648—he clearly was not one of those who took to tobacco in the first enthusiasm for the new indulgence.
From Chapter 8: smoking was frowned upon, even in places where hitherto it had been allowed. In 1812 the authorities of Sion College ordered "that Coffee and Tea be provided in the Parlour for the Visitors and Incumbents, and in the Court Room for the Curates and Lecturers; and that Pipes and Tobacco be not allowed; and that no Wine be at any time carried into the Court Room, nor any into the Hall after Coffee and Tea shall have been ordered on that day." The use of tobacco for smoking, as I have said, had reached its nadir—in the fashionable world, that is to say—but the dawn follows the darkest hour, and the revival of smoking was at hand, thanks to the cigar. |
