Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

There was plenty of smoking among undergraduates at Oxford in those days, as may be seen in such books as "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green," and Hughes's "Tom Brown at Oxford," both of which date from 1861. When Tom, after a reading-bout, thought of going out—"there was a wine party at one of his acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of a dozen other places." Cigars were the fashionable form of smoke. When Tom offers his box to Captain Hardy, that worthy's son says: "You might as well give him a glass of absinthe. He is churchwarden at home, and can't smoke anything but a long clay," with which the old sailor was accordingly supplied.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

Grave wits, who, spending farthings four,
Sit, smoke, and warm themselves an hour.

The allusions in the Spectator to smoking in the coffee-houses are frequent. "Sometimes," says Addison, in his title character in the first number of the paper, "sometimes I smoak a pipe at Child's and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-man, over-hear the conversation of every table in the room." And here is a vignette of coffee-house life in 1714 from No. 568 of the Spectator: "I was yesterday in a coffee-house not far from the Royal Exchange, where I observed three persons in close conference over a pipe of tobacco; upon which, having filled one for my own use, I lighted it at the little wax candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has induced and fostered a spirit of comradeship.

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