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: The satirical Dekker might class "tobacconists" with "feather-makers, cobweb-lawne-weavers, perfumers, young country gentlemen and fools," but he bears invaluable witness to the devotion of the fashionable men of the day to the "costlye and gentleman-like Smoak." It was customary for a man to carry a case of pipes about with him. In a play of 1609 ("Everie Woman in her Humour") there is an inventory of the contents of a gentleman's pocket, with a value given for each item, which displays certainly a curious assortment of articles. First comes a brush and comb worth fivepence, and next a looking-glass worth three halfpence. With these aids to vanity are a case of tobacco-pipes valued at fourpence, half an ounce of tobacco valued at sixpence, and three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, "in money and golde." Satirists of course made fun of the smoker's pocketful of apparatus. A pamphleteer of 1609 says: "I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast from his mouth."
From Chapter 8: Parr was not a model smoker. He was brutally overbearing towards other folk, and would accept no invitation except on the understanding that he might smoke when and where he liked. It was his invariable practice, wherever he might be visiting, to smoke a pipe as soon as he had got out of bed. His biographer says—"The ladies were obliged to bear his tobacco, or to give up his company; and at Hatton (1786-1825) now and then he was the tyrant of the fireside." Parr was capable of smoking twenty pipes in an evening, and described himself as "rolling volcanic fumes of tobacco to the ceiling" while he worked at his desk. At a dinner which was given at Trinity College, Cambridge, to the Duke of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University, when the cloth was removed, Parr at once started his pipe and began, says one who was present, "blowing a cloud into the faces of his neighbours, much to their annoyance, and causing royalty to sneeze by the stimulating stench of mundungus." It is surprising that people were willing to put up with such bad manners as Parr was accustomed to exhibit; but his reputation was then great, and he traded upon it.
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