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 4: Whether the use of tobacco prevailed as generally among the Cavalier forces is less certain; but as King Charles hated the weed, courtiers may have frowned upon its use. One distinguished cavalier, however, either smoked his pipe, or proposed to do so, on a historic occasion. In Markham's "Life of the Great Lord Fairfax" there is a lively account of how the Duke, then Marquis, of Newcastle, with his brother Charles Cavendish, drove in a coach and six to the field of Marston Moor on the afternoon before the battle. His Grace was in a very bad humour. "He applied to Rupert," says Markham, "for orders as to the disposal of his own most noble person, and was told that there would be no battle that night, and that he had better get into his coach and go to sleep, which he accordingly did." But the decision as to battle or no battle did not rest with Prince Rupert. Cromwell attacked the royal army with the most disastrous results to the King's cause. His Grace of Newcastle woke up, left his coach, and fought bravely, being, according to his Duchess, the last to ride off the fatal field, leaving his coach and six behind him.
From Chapter 6: John Philips, the author of "Cyder" and the "Splendid Shilling," was an undergraduate at Christ Church, during Aldrich's term of office, and no doubt learned to smoke in an atmosphere so favourable to tobacco. In his "Splendid Shilling," which dates from about 1700, Philips says of the happy man with a shilling in his pocket: Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or Pun ambiguous or Conundrum quaint. But the poor shillingless wretch can only doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers; or from tube as black As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet, Exhale Mundungus, ill-perfuming scent. >The miserable creature, though without a shilling, yet possessed a well-coloured "clay." It is significant that the writer of a life of Philips, which was prefixed to an edition of his poems which was published in 1762, after mentioning that smoking was common at Oxford in the days of Aldrich, says apologetically, "It is no wonder therefore that he [Philips] fell in with the general taste ... he has descended to sing its praises in more than one place." By 1762, as we shall see, smoking was quite unfashionable, and consequently it was necessary to explain how it was that a poet could "descend" so low as to sing the praises of tobacco.
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