Chapter 3 Part 3
TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT (continued)—
SELLERS OF TOBACCO AND PROFESSORS OF
SMOKING—
ABUSE AND PRAISE OF TOBACCO
Some of the apothecaries whose shops were in most repute for the
quality of the tobacco kept, took pupils and taught them the
"slights," as tricks with the pipe were called. These included
exhaling the smoke in little globes, rings and so forth. The
invaluable Ben Jonson, in the preliminary account of the characters in
his "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, describes one Sogliardo as
"an essential clown ... yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman
that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to
learn to take tobacco and see new motions." Sogliardo was accustomed
to hire a private room to practise in. The fashionable way was to
expel the smoke through the nose. In a play by Field of 1618, a
foolish nobleman is asked by some boon companions in a tavern: "Will
your lordship take any tobacco?" when another sneers, "'Sheart! he
cannot put it through his nose!" His lordship was apparently not well
versed in the "slights."
Taking tobacco was clearly an accomplishment to be studied seriously.
Shift, a professor of the art in Jonson's play, puts up a bill in St.
Paul's—the recognized centre for advertisements and commercial
business of every kind—in which he offers to teach any young
gentleman newly come into his inheritance, who wishes to be as exactly
qualified as the best of the ordinary-hunting gallants are—"to
entertain the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco; as first, to give it
the most exquisite perfume; then to know all the delicate sweet forms
for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of
the Cuban ebolition, euripus and whiff, which he shall receive, or
take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it
please him."
Taking the whiff, it has been suggested, may have been either a
swallowing of the smoke, or a retaining it in the throat for a given
space of time; but what may be meant by the "Cuban ebolition" or the
"euripus" is perhaps best left to the imagination. "Ebolition" is
simply a variant of "ebullition," and "ebullition," as applied with
burlesque intent to rapid smoking—the vapour bubbling rapidly from
the pipe-bowl —is intelligible enough, but why Cuban? "Euripus" was
the name, in ancient geography, of the channel between Eubœa
(Negropont) and the mainland—a passage which was celebrated for the
violence and uncertainty of its currents—and hence the name was
occasionally applied by our older writers to any strait or sea-channel
having like characteristics. The use of the word in connexion with
tobacco may, like that of "ebolition," have some reference to furious
smoking, but the meaning is not clear.
If one contemporary writer may be believed, some of these early
smokers acquired the art of emitting the smoke through their ears, but
a healthy scepticism is permissible here.
The accomplished Shift promises a would-be pupil in the art of taking
tobacco that if he pleases to be a practitioner, he shall learn in a
fortnight to "take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the
Tiltyard, if need be, in the most popular assembly that is." The
Tiltyard adjoined Whitehall Palace and was the frequent scene of
sports in which Queen Elizabeth took the greatest delight. Here took
place, not only tilting properly so called, but rope-walking
performances, bear- and bull-baiting, dancing and other diversions
which her Majesty held in high favour. Consequently the Tiltyard was
constantly the scene of courtly gatherings; and if smoking were
permitted on such occasions—as Shift's boasting promises would appear
to indicate—then it may be reasonably inferred that Queen Elizabeth
did not entertain the objections to the new practice that her
successor, King James, set forth with such vehemence in his famous
"Counterblaste to Tobacco." There is, however, no positive evidence
one way or the other, to show what the attitude of the Virgin Queen
towards tobacco really was. A tradition as to her smoking herself on
one occasion is referred to in a subsequent chapter—that on "Smoking
by Women."
Although tobacco was in such general use it yet had plenty of enemies.
It was extravagantly abused and extravagantly praised. Robert Burton,
of "Anatomy of Melancholy" fame, like many other writers of his time,
was prepared to admit the medicinal value of the herb, though he
detested the general habit of smoking. Tobacco was supposed in those
days to be "good for" a surprising variety of ailments and diseases;
but to explore that little section of popular medicine would be
foreign to my purpose. Burton believed in tobacco as medicine; but
with regard to habitual smoking he was a worthy follower of King
James, the strength of whose language he sought to emulate and exceed
when he denounced the common taking of tobacco "by most men, which
take it as tinkers do ale"—as "a plague, a mischief, a violent purger
of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned , the
ruin and overthrow of body and soul." No anti-tobacconist could wish
for a more whole-hearted denunciation than that.
Thomas Dekker, to whose pictures of London social life at the opening
of the seventeenth century we are so much indebted for information
both with regard to smoking and in respect of many other matters of
interest, was himself an enemy of tobacco. He politely refers to "that
great Tobacconist, the Prince of Smoake and Darkness, Don Pluto"; and
in another place addresses tobacco as "thou beggarly Monarche of
Indians, and setter up of rotten-lungd chimney-sweepers," and proceeds
in a like strain of abuse.
One of the most curious of the early publications on tobacco, in which
an attempt is made to hold the balance fairly between the legitimate
use and the "licentious" abuse of the herb, is Tobias Venner's tract
with the long-winded title: "A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning
The taking of the Fume of Tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe
too licenciously use. In which the immoderate, irregular, and
unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best
manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated." Venner described
himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in
London in 1637. Venner says that tobacco is of "ineffable force" for
the rapid healing of wounds, cuts, sores and so on, by external
application, but thinks little of its use for any other purpose. Like
others of his school, he attacks the "licentious Tobacconists
[smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their
health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie
fume."He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own
personal objection to the "detestable savour or smack that it leaveth
behind upon the taking of it"; from which one is inclined to surmise
that the doctor's first pipe was not an entire success. With an
evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the
"savour," refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what he
considers its valuable medicinal qualities, and he goes so far as to
give "10 precepts in the use of" tobacco. The sixth is "that you drink
not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie
Tobacconists are wont"—there must be no alliance, in short, between
the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that
you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the
taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an
houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The
suggestion that the smoker, when he has finished his pipe, shall wait
for half an hour or so before he ventures into the outer air is very
quaint.
Venner goes on to give a terrible catalogue of the ills that will
befall the smoker who uses tobacco "contrary to the order and way I
have set down." It is a dreadful list which may possibly have
frightened a few nervous smokers; but probably it had no greater
effect than the terrible curse in the "Jackdaw of Rheims."
Another tract which may be classed with Venner's "Treatise" was the
"Nepenthes or the Vertues of Tobacco," by Dr. William Barclay, which
was published at Edinburgh in 1614. This is sometimes referred to and
quoted, as by Fairholt, as if it were a whole-hearted defence of
tobacco-taking. But Barclay enlarges mainly on the medicinal virtues
of the herb. "If Tabacco," he says, "were used physically and with
discretion there were no medicament in the worlde comparable to it";
and again: "In Tabacco there is nothing which is not medicine, the
root, the stalke, the leaves, the seeds, the smoake, the ashes." The
doctor gives sundry directions for administering tobacco —"to be used
in infusion, in decoction, in substance, in smoke, in salt." But
Barclay clearly does not sympathize with its indiscriminate use for
pleasure. "As concerning the smoke," he says, "it may be taken more
frequently, and for the said effects, but always fasting, and with
emptie stomack, not as the English abusers do, which make a smoke-boxe
of their skull, more fit to be carried under his arme that selleth at
Paris dunoir a noircir to blacke mens shooes then to carie the
braine of him that can not walke, can not ryde except the Tabacco Pype
be in his mouth." He goes on to say that he was once in company with
an English merchant in Normandy—"betweene Rowen and New-haven"—who
was a merry fellow, but was constantly wanting a coal to kindle his
tobacco. "The Frenchman wondered and I laughed at his intemperancie."
It is a little curious, considering the devotion of latter-day men of
letters to tobacco, that in their early days so many of the men who
wrote on the subject attacked the social use of tobacco with violence
and virulence. Perhaps, courtier-like, they followed the lead of the
British Solomon, King James I. Their titles are characteristic of
their style. A writer named Deacon published in 1616 a quarto entitled
"Tobacco tortured in the filthy Fumes of Tobacco refined"; but Joshua
Sylvester had easily surpassed this when he wrote his "Tobacco
Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize
so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a
Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon," 1615.
Controversialists of that period rejoiced in full-worded titles and in
full-blooded praise or abuse.
Deacon, as the title of his book just quoted shows, was very fond of
alliteration, and one sentence of his diatribe may be quoted. He
warned his readers that tobacco-smoke was "very pernicious unto their
bodies, too profluvious for many of their purses, and most pestiferous
to the publike State." Much may be forgiven, however, to the
introducer of so charming a term of abuse as "profluvious." Deacon's
book takes the form of a dialogue, and after nearly 200 pages of
argument, in which the unfortunate herb gets no mercy, one of the
interlocutors, a trader in tobacco, is so convinced of the iniquity of
his trade, and of his own parlous state if he continue therein, that
he declares that the two hundred pounds' worth of this "beastly
tobacco" which he owns, shall "presently packe to the fire," or else
be sent "swimming down the Thames."
Many good folk would seem to have associated smoking with idling. In
the rules of the Grammar School at Chigwell, Essex, which was founded
in 1629, it is prescribed that "the Master must be a man of sound
religion, neither a Papist nor a Puritan, of a grave behaviour, and
sober and honest conversation, no tippler or haunter of alehouses, no
puffer of tobacco." A worthy Derbyshire man named Campbell, in his
will dated 20 October 1616, left all his household goods to his son,
"on this condition that yf at any time hereafter, any of his brothers
or sisters shall fynd him takeing of tobacco, that then he or she so
fynding him, shall have the said goods"—a testamentary arrangement
which suggests to the fancy some amusing strategic evasions and
manœuvres on the part of the conditional legatee and his watchful
relations.
A converse view of smoking may be seen in Izaak Walton's "Life" of Sir
Henry Wotton, who died in 1639. Walton says that Wotton obtained
relief to some extent from asthma by leaving off smoking which he had
practised "somewhat immoderately"—"as many thoughtful men do." The
italics are mine.
Tobacco, as has been said, was praised as well as abused
extravagantly. Much absurdity was written in glorification of the
medicinal and therapeutic properties of tobacco, but a more sensible
note was struck by some lauders of the weed. Marston wrote in 1607:
Musicke, tobacco, sacke and sleepe,
The tide of sorrow backward keep.
An ingenious lover of his pipe declared ironically in the same year
that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a
thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a
niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he
continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for
he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part
with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays,
1606, calls tobacco "the gentleman's saint and the soldier's idol." A
little-known bard of 1630—Barten Holiday—wrote a poem of eight
stanzas with chorus to each in praise of tobacco, in which he showed
with a touch of burlesque that the herb was a musician, a lawyer, a
physician, a traveller, a critic, an ignis fatuus, and a whiffler, i.e. a braggart. The first verse may suffice as a specimen:
Tobacco's a musician,
And in a pipe delighteth,
It descends in a close
Through the organ of the nose
With a relish that inviteth.
These are merely a few examples of both the praise and the abuse which
were lavished upon tobacco at this early stage in the history of
smoking. It would be easy to fill many pages with the like
testimonials and denunciations, especially the latter, from writers of
the early decades of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the most curious
thing in connexion with the immense number of allusions to smoking in
the literature of the period is that there is no mention whatever of
tobacco or smoking in the plays of William Shakespeare. As Edmund
Spenser, in the "Faerie Queene," speaks of
The soveraine weede, divine tobacco,
it may be presumed that he was a smoker. |
