Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 7:

Warton and another Oxford smoker of some distinction—the Rev. William Crowe, who was Public Orator from 1784 to 1829—are both said to have been, like Prior, rather fond of frequenting the company of persons of humble rank and little education, with whom they would drink their ale and smoke their pipes.

Mr. A.D. Godley, in his "Oxford in the Eighteenth Century," gives an excellent English version of the Latin original of one of the Christ Church "Carmina Quadragesmalia," which affords much the same picture of the daily life of an Oxford Fellow in the days when George I was king. This good man lives strictly by rule, and each returning day—
Ne'er swerves a hairbreadth from the same old way.
Always within the memory of men
He's risen at eight and gone to bed at ten:
The same old cat his College room partakes,
The same old scout his bed each morning makes:
On mutton roast he daily dines in state
(Whole flocks have perished to supply his plate),
Takes just one turn to catch the westering sun,
Then reads the paper, as he's always done;
Soon cracks in Common-room the same old jokes,
Drinking three glasses ere three pipes he smokes:—
And what he did while Charles our throne did fill
'Neath George's heir you'll find him doing still.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about smoking in the presence of ladies. Gostanzo, in Chapman's "All Fools," 1605, says:

And for discourse in my fair mistress's presence
I did not, as you barren gallants do,
Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco.

And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date, gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.

When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.

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