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Title: St Nicotine of the Peace Pipe

Author: Edward Vincent Heward

Release date: April 8, 2018 [eBook #56946]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST NICOTINE OF THE PEACE PIPE *** 



Cover image

Transcriber’s Note: The title of this book
is given both as ‘St Nicotine of the peace pipe’ and ‘St
Nicotine or the peace pipe’. Readers may decide for themselves
which is most fitting.






[i]


ST NICOTINE

OR

THE PEACE PIPE




[ii]





Drawn & Engraved by F. W. Fairholt


Tobacco Plants.


1. Nicotiana Tabacum; 2. N. Rustica; 3. N. Persica.


[By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ld.






[iii]


ST NICOTINE

OF

THE PEACE PIPE


BY

EDWARD VINCENT HEWARD


WITH 4 FULL PAGE PLATES AND 5 TEXT CUTS



Imprimatur of Routledge publishing company



LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Ltd.

New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

1909


[iv]




[v]


INTRODUCTORY


The history and associations of tobacco carry the thoughts
back to the jubilant days when Good Queen Bess was the
idol of her people, to the stirring times when bounding
gaiety and lusty banter found expression in unrestrained
mirth as readily in the open street as within doors. The
writer’s aim in the following chapters has been to bring
together (in a somewhat desultory way, it may be) the
chief features of interest which the story of the ‘Indian’s
herb’ presents to us to-day. The social element undoubtedly
dominates all others; this, coupled with the
primitive belief in its medicinal properties, at once secured
for it the good-will of men longing for knowledge of the
New World and ever ready to adopt an indulgence so
alluring. That this feeling was universal is shewn by the
rapidity with which the smoking habit spread over the
Earth wherever there was a human habitation. No less
remarkable is the sturdy tenacity with which men everywhere
stuck to it despite the determined opposition of
potentates and pontiffs.


In the eyes of her votaries St Nicotine’s virtues are
rare and manifold. Indeed all sorts of pretty things have
been said and sung in her praise, and as becomes a faithful
devotee at her shrine the writer believes them all as implicitly—well,
as a child believes fairy tales. Many a non-smoker
when questioned about his indifference to her
gracious influence has heaved a pensive sigh and lamented
Dame Nature’s ill-usage in denying him the taste for the
nicotian incense. Consolation comes not to him when
told that the good genius has knit together a brotherhood
who, regaled with her balmy breath, realize the touch of
nature which makes the whole world kin; that on her
approach petty vexations vanish into space, and fancy,
untrammelled, roves in Parnassian bowers, or sees in the
vapour rising from the bowl nebulous forms resembling
those in the far-off starry sky.


[vi]


The demon of insomnia flies from her presence, and
upon the sleepless she breathes ‘tired nature’s sweet
restorer.’ Faith born of experience bears willing testimony
to this priceless virtue. Once upon a time, too remote to
recall the year, it befell the writer of these lines to suffer
from the effects of insomnia. Wakeful nights followed by
comatose days passed into months, and the relief the poet
Young had wooed in vain still held aloof. At last fortune
smiled. Walking with a friend one evening a cigar was
proffered him. Not being a smoker he declined the weed.
Again urged to try it (without any suggestion of its narcotic
properties) he did so and smoked it to the end. That night
he fell into a sleep so profound that on waking the next
morning the hours that had fled seemed but as a moment.
Years have rolled by since then, but not an evening has
passed unsolaced by the gentle anodyne.


Opponents of tobacco-smoking generally base their
objection on the rather shaky ground of what they with
emphasis term, ‘principle.’ A case of the kind cropped
up a few years ago when Professor Huxley related the
story of how he had become a convert to the creed of the
tobacconist. It runs as follows:—


‘When I was a young man I went with a party of my
friends to Holland. It happened that they were smokers
and I was not. I did my best to fortify myself in determined
resistance to the pernicious habit, which from my
standpoint I looked upon as wholly indefensible. The
tobacco plant belongs to a family of poisoners—certainly a
poisonous family, what then could be said in its favour?
Science and reason being opposed to it how could intelligent
beings submit to its sway, and with so much assumed
pleasure? Thus I mused with my back propped against
the hotel wall where in a cosy room inside my friends were
quietly enjoying themselves with their weeds and social
gossip. I fought with myself. I fought against the
seductive influence of the goddess, and failed. The flesh
was too strong for philosophy: I crept in and joined them
with my first cigar.’


A lady once confessed to the writer that she had all
unwittingly followed in the wake of a smoker whose cigar[vii]
shed on the air a fragrance so delicate that for a time it
was quite irresistible. Doubtless many another could, if so
minded tell of a similar experience. A good cigar indeed—Havana
or Cuban leaf for preference—is an inspiration.
A meerschaum pipe when ‘mellow, rich and ripe’ is a
treasure; but cigarettes are becoming, if they have not
already become, a nuisance.


Grateful memories of the weed are enshrined in the
literature of every language; and many an old and odd
volume have yielded to the gleaner the materials of which
the following pages are made up. Some parts have already
seen the light in the form of magazine articles, and for
permission to republish these the writer tenders his thanks
to Sir James Knowles, of the Nineteenth Century Review,
to the Editor of Macmillan’s Magazine, and to Sylvanus
Urban of the Gentleman’s Magazine.


And this may be the fitting place to acknowledge the
courtesy and kindness of the principal (Mr. A. C. Wood)
of the Statistical Office of H.M. Customs, who has
furnished the tabular statement, which appears below,
shewing the latest facts and figures on importations of
tobacco, on the rate of consumption per head of population
in the United Kingdom, and the revenue derived
therefrom.


Statistical Office,

H.M. Customs.


Since the date of your article there have been some
considerable changes in the fiscal position of Tobacco and
the following are the chief changes in rates of duty per lb.
since 1898:—






Unmanufactured Tobacco.
Cigars.
Foreign Cavendish.
Other Sorts.






S
D


S
D
S
D

S
D





1898
2
8


5
0
3
10

3
5





1900
3
0


5
6
4
4

3
10





1904 {
3
3
}
Strips
6
0
4
4
{
4
10
Cigarettes.




3
1½
3
10
Other Sorts.




3
0

Whole Leaf.










[viii]


The maximum limit of moisture allowed in manufacture
of Tobacco was fixed in 1887 at 35 per cent., and was
changed in 1898 to 30 per cent., and again raised in 1904
to 32 per cent.


The moisture naturally present in the kinds of Tobacco
now imported averages about 14 per cent. I mention
these facts because they are as you know of considerable
importance in making calculations of the quantities sold
over the counters of retailers to consumers.


Perhaps I may add that in 1904 differential rates were
levied on Stripped or Stemmed Tobacco, that is upon Leaf
from which the ‘midrib’ had been removed. The duty on
‘strips’ imported before the Budget was fixed at 3s. 1½d. the
lb., and at 3s. 3d. on Strips brought here afterwards, while
the duty on whole leaf Tobacco was settled at 3s. 0d. the lb.


I am, Sir,


Your obedient servant,


A. C. Wood,

Principal.


E. V. Heward, Esq.


UNITED KINGDOM

Tobacco. Financial Year 1904-5





Imports all kinds
Value
Quantity Retained for Home use (All kinds)
Consumption per head of Population
Revenue 1904-5




Lbs.
£
Lbs.
Lbs.
£




** 107,862,489
4,356,779

* 83,374,670
1.95
13,184,767




** 103,847,897

* Raw
80,896,242





4,014,592


2,478,428





107,862,489


83,374,670








[ix]


CONTENTS





INTRODUCTORY
v




An Indulgence which promotes sociality, mirth, and day-dreams—Men
        hold to the weed regardless of opposition—St
        Nicotine’s manifold virtues—The non-smoker’s
        incapacity for enjoyment of smoking—Brings sleep to the
        sleepless—Opponents base their objection on principle—Prof.
        Huxley’s experience—Havana cigar the ideal
        smoke—Acknowledgments to Editors and H.M.
        Customs.





A SYMPOSIUM




CHAPTER I
1




Part I





Tobacco smoking thought much of in Elizabeth’s reign—Drawing
        the smoke into the lungs and ejecting it through
        the nostrils provokes hilarity in the city—Sir John
        Beaumont’s Metamorphosis of Tobacco—Conceives the
        idea of a Parliament of the immortals to determine upon the
        composition of tobacco—Drayton on Beaumont’s early
        death—Jupiter calls a council to consider the odic essence
        which has calmed his anger—England’s great smokers
        from Raleigh to Dr. Parr give an account of their
        [x]experiences.





CHAPTER II
15




Part II





Carlyle as a persistent preacher of the gospel of silence with
        his pipe—Frederick the Great’s Tobacco Parliament—Carlyle’s
        early experience in smoking and his first pinch
        of snuff—Charles Lamb and his associates over the pipe—Bismarck’s
        Bund story—Divergent French views on the
        use of tobacco—Robert Hall, Spurgeon, Capt. Marryat,
        Fairholt, Inglis, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, all
        express opinions favourable to tobacco smoking.





CHAPTER III
29




THE HOME OF THE INDIAN WEED





Columbus secures Queen Isabel’s good-will and help—Overcomes
        all difficulties and sets sail in three small vessels
        from Palos on his great enterprise westward—Mutiny
        suppressed—San Salvador reached after three months’
        toil—The officers land—Natives friendly—Two captured
        and brought on board the Santa Maria—A gladsome
        sight meets their eyes—Cuba reached; the most beautiful
        island ever beheld—Clothed with perennial verdure—Two
        of the crew sent to explore—Natives discovered
        smoking fire-brands—They conceive a passion for
        smoking—Columbus collects rarities to take with him
        to Spain—Reports to the king and his consort the
        achievement of his project—Is received with honour and
        made high admiral of a new and powerful fleet with
        which he returns to the West Indies—Gonzalo Oviedo,
        Inspector-general of the newly discovered country—Fra
        Ramono Pane sends Peter Martyr the first written account
        of tobacco and native method of using it—Snuff-taking in
        France—The origin of the name tobacco—Red Indian’s
        [xi]use of the weed—Oviedo dislikes tobacco—The discovery
        of South America—The Aztecs of Mexico—The
        Italian traveller Benzoni describes the plant and its
        uses among the natives—His strong aversion to it—The
        origin of the plant related by the chief of the Susquehanna
        tribe.





CHAPTER IV
47




TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH AND CHARACTER





The Chancellor of the Exchequer on the consumption of
        tobacco—His condemnation of the smoking habit by
        those who have enough to eat—Board of Trade returns—Statistics
        on the past and present rate of consumption per
        head of population in England and other countries—The
        quantity of tobacco consumed compared with the
        average consumption of wheat and the money value of
        each—The use made of cast-away cigar-ends—The
        opinions of Michael Drayton and Robert Burton—Case
        against youths smoking—The Cuban leaf—The effects
        of smoking on the character of the Turks—Mr. E. W.
        Lane on the Oriental method of smoking—Clarendon’s
        views on tobacco’s influence in diplomacy—The three
        kinds of tobacco used in commerce—Botanical description—The
        chemist’s account of the composition of the
        weed—Shakespeare’s ‘hebenon’—Sir B. W. Richardson’s
        experiments with the smoke of tobacco—Tobacco
        innoxious compared with alcohol—Prof. Johnston’s
        experiments and observations—Observed effects on
        German thinkers—Pre-eminent among great smokers
        stand Hobbes, Newton, Parr, Aldrich, Hall, Carlyle and
        Tennyson—Experience the true guide.





CHAPTER V
73




THE USE AND ABUSE OF TOBACCO





Differences of temperament interfere with general enjoyment
        [xii]of the weed—Ground upon which all can agree—Its
        germicidal action demonstrated in laboratory experiments—Faith
        of our forefathers in tobacco’s all-healing
        properties—Particularly as a destroyer of insect life on
        plants and animals—Liebault’s account of Nicot’s
        introduction of tobacco into France and experiments on
        old sores and wounds—Fame of throughout Portugal,
        France—Catherine de Medici plants seeds of in her
        garden—George Buchanan’s distrust of anything which
        bears her name—Italy’s first instalment of the weed
        received from Spain—Spenser in the Faërie Queene
        speaks of ‘divine tobacco’—William Lyly calls it the
        ‘holy herb nicotian’—Henry Buttes on tobacco as a
        dietetic—Dr. Gardiner describes its use in medicine—Harleian
        Miscellany on tobacco—Dr. Thorius’s Hymnus
        Tabac—Pepys’ experience with tobacco—Dr. Willis on
        its prophylactic effects in the plague of 1666—Dr.
        Diemerbroeck finds it kills contagion during plague in
        Holland 1635-6—Coleridge in Cologne—Medical profession’s
        changed attitude towards tobacco—Mr. Solly,
        of St. Thomas’s Hospital, proclaims a crusade against
        smoking—Dr. Murray at a later date speaks highly in its
        favour from army experience—Private McCarthy’s quiet
        pipe in the hospital yard—Soldiers’ experiences in South
        Africa—Government’s changing practices in regard to
        contraband tobacco—Soldiers sent out in troop-ships
        have first claim.





CHAPTER VI
95




ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING





The beginnings of history—Ancestor worship—Man’s instinctive
        craving for narcotics and stimulants—Ancient historic
        allusions to smoking or burning of vegetable substances—Lieut.
        Walpole’s account of an Arabic MS. which came
        into his hands at Mosul—Nimrod a tobacco-smoker—Assyrian
        cylinders in the British Museum—Noah a
        smoker, a Greek Church tradition—The Moslem sage
        and the origin of the tobacco plant—Eulia Effendi’s
        [xiii]story of a tobacco pipe found in an old wall—Tobacco unknown
        in Turkey before 1610—Dr. Yates mistakes an
        Egyptian painting representing glass-blowers for a smoking
        party—Both Greeks and Romans inhaled fumes of tussilago
        through a reed or pipe for the cure of coughs and
        difficult breathing—Abbé Cocket and Dr. Bruce on old
        clay pipes found in Normandy and among ruins in Britain—Clay
        pipes found in Scotland and Ireland—Legendary
        lore respecting their origin and use—The weed and the
        Portuguese in India and Java—Palias and Meyen on the
        plant in India and China—The Lazarists, Gabet and
        Huc, in Tartary and Thibet—The cultivation and use of
        tobacco in China—The supposed antiquity of the habit
        among the Chinese, who in their prehistoric migrations
        may have carried seeds of the plant to America.





CHAPTER VII
117




A GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN JAPAN, AS DISCLOSED BY THE WEED





The Japanese—Marco Polo’s mention of Japan and its people—Pinto,
        Portugal’s pioneer in eastern seas—Lands at
        Nagasaki in 1545—Friendly reception—News of the
        event reaches Manila and Goa—Spanish merchant vessels
        with Francis Xavier speedily arrived at Bungo—Warm
        welcome—Tobacco and smoking, a new revelation to
        these primitive people—Good work done by Xavier and
        his coadjutors among the sick and needy—The Shogun,
        Iyeyasu, permits free intercourse and unrestricted trade—Spaniards
        and Portuguese accused of overreaching
        practices, and of draining the country of its gold—Jesuits
        and Friars swarm in Japan and bring upon themselves
        disgrace and ultimate expulsion—William Adams the first
        Englishman to set foot in Japan—His rapid rise in favour
        and fortune—The arrival of Dutch merchantmen—Helped
        by Adams to secure a trade basis at Firando—Adams
        desires to return home, but is put off from time to time—He
        writes letters to England telling of himself, and
        [xiv]inviting London merchants to trade with Japan—They
        do so, and vessels laden with merchandise are despatched
        under the command of Captain Saris, who bears a letter
        from King James to the Emperor of Japan, resulting in
        England’s first commercial treaty with that country—Adams
        dies in Japan after twenty years’ residence, loved
        and honoured by all.

          An Edict against smoking falls into abeyance—Family
        records of smoking in 1605-7—Excellent properties of
        tobacco-smoking enumerated by an old writer—Objections
        to its use—The theft of the golden pipe—Smoking
        now universal in Japan—An ‘At Home’—Men’s
        revolt against women’s authority as to when and
        where to smoke—Primitive habits among the peasantry—Cultivation
        and revenue—Sir Earnest Satow statistics—Reflections.		





CHAPTER VIII
142




STRAY LEAVES FROM THE INDIAN WEED





The late Poet Laureate’s (Tennyson) love of tobacco-smoking—Science
        detects poisonous elements in the
        exotic—The philosophy of smoking—The only thing in
        life that fumes without fretting and assuages the fretful—The
        bachelor’s love of seclusion with his pipe—Napoleon’s
        first and last attempt at smoking—A
        distraught youth and an Oriental sage, an eastern view
        of the virtue of the weed—Raleigh and the New World—His
        expedition to explore the coast of the El Dorado
        and win renown for England and his idolized Queen
        Bess—England’s first smokers—Hawkins, not Raleigh,
        the first to bring tobacco to this country—Raleigh and
        Queen Elizabeth—The wager as to the weight of the
        smoke exhaled from a pipeful of tobacco—King James’s
        ‘Counterblaste to Tobacco’—Its home cultivation and
        manufacture—Ben Jonson’s ‘Alchemist’—‘Bartholomew
        Faire’—Dr. Barclay on sophistication of tobacco—Old
        Rome smoked coltsfoot and leaves of the lettuce—Paper
        [xv]warfare over the virtues or vices of the Indian
        weed—Joshua Sylvester sends a ‘volley of holy shot’ against
        the ‘idolatrous weed’—Samuel Rowland’s ‘Knave of
        Clubbs,’ a humorous satire on tobacco-smoking—Eastern
        potentates’ treatment of smokers of the Frankish novelty—Russian
        atrocities inflicted on users of the weed—Foreign
        Governments begin to see in it an easy means of
        augmenting revenue—Peter the Great invites English
        tobacco merchants to Moscow in order to establish a
        factory there for the manufacture of tobacco—Queen
        Anne in Council disapproves of the scheme, and orders
        our Envoy to destroy the works and return the
        workmen to their homes.





CHAPTER IX
169




SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED





George Wither’s song on tobacco-smoking—Undergoes
        numerous alterations by later writers—Mr. Chappell,
        through Mr. Payne Collier, traces the original song to
        Wither—Bishop Fletcher succumbs to over-indulgence in
        the pipe—Rev. W. Bredon resorts to the hemp cut off
        the ends of the church bell-ropes as a substitute for
        tobacco—Raleigh carries the novelty to Court and makes
        smoking popular—Merriment in the city over the
        ‘tobacconists’—Ben Jonson’s mention of smoking—‘Every
        Man out of his Humour’—‘The Gipsies Metamorphosed’—‘Bartholomew
        Faire’—Dekker’s ‘Gull’s
        Horn Book’—His ‘Satiromastix’—Women smokers—The
        daughters of Louis XIV. smoke in their private
        apartments—England’s paper warfare over the merits or
        demerits of the weed—Joshua Sylvester supports the
        King’s ‘Counterblaste’—Heavy duty on tobacco and its
        ruinous cost to the consumer—Peter Campbell’s will—Sir
        Edwin Sandys on the sum paid for tobacco received
        from Spain—Dr. Everard on the ‘Wonderful Vertues of
        Tobacco taken in a Pipe’—Dr. Barclay’s Nepenthes—De
        Rochefort tells of smoking in rural England—Mentions
        [xvi]the case of a Spaniard using a bit of the cable
        end in lieu of tobacco—Of smoking in bed—Mission’s
        remarks about the effects of tobacco on Englishmen—His
        verses in praise of smoking—Dr. Aldrich, Dean of
        Christchurch, Oxford—His song on tobacco, to be
        smoked while singing—His higher claims to admiration.





CHAPTER X
184




THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY AND SMOKING PIPES





Various kinds and sources of supply—Qualities due to climate,
        soil or other causes—Natural qualities determine destination—Strong
        kinds find favour in North America, mild
        in Europe—Cuba’s leaf richest in excellences desired by
        smokers—Cuba’s make-up the model for the rest of
        the tobacco producing world—The effect of the McKinley
        tariff on Cuban cigar manufacture—The highly prized and
        priced Havana legitimas—Small area over which the
        Havana plant is grown—Harvesting and curing operations
        in Florida—Packing of bales for exportation—Bonded
        warehousing accommodation and its regulations—Different
        kinds of cigars suited to different seasons and climates—Manila
        cheroots, their kinds and manufacture—Government
        monopoly and its removal—Illicit growth of the
        plant by mountaineers—Number of employés, their work
        and wages—Cheroots used in lieu of coin—Various kinds
        of tobacco offered to the consumer—Invisible life infests
        tobacco leaves—Tobacco culture prohibited in England
        except in Physic Gardens—Removed in 1886—Failure
        of English cultivation—Manufacture of cigars—Inequality
        of Customs duty—Historical view of tobacco pipes—Clay
        pipes—Meerschaum, its origin and manufacture—Briar-root
        and other materials used for pipes.








[xvii]


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS





Tobacco Plant
frontispiece





face p.





Sir Walter Raleigh
”
6




Departure of Columbus (from a rare old painter)
”
22




Queen Elizabeth
”
132




A Chinese Pipe
112




Indian Pipe—Heads found in Mound City, Ohio
113




A Japanese Pipe
129




Duc de Sully
153




Early Seventeenth-century Smokers
173







[1]


ST NICOTINE


SYMPOSIUM

CHAPTER I


 Part I








Let me adore with my thrice happy pen


The sweet and sole delight of mortal men;


The cornucopia of all earthly pleasure,


Where bankrupt nature hath consumed her treasure;


A worthy plant springing from Flora’s hand,


The blessed offspring of an uncouth land.






Beaumont.








In the early days of her advent in these isles St Nicotine
stood high in the land. For she had come bearing credentials
from France and Portugal testifying to her many
virtues as a healer of the sick as well as a social comfort.
And sober-minded folk would sit outside their doors, pipe
in hand, placidly inhaling the grateful vapour of the precious
herb a kind Providence had sent them to assuage the ills
flesh is heir to. But the quick eye and ready wit of the
city wags saw the matter in a different light. The Spanish
fashion of smoking, namely, of drawing the smoke into the
lungs and ejecting it through ‘the organs of the nose,’
afforded them endless amusement, and sportive jests were[2]
heard on all sides about the men who made chimneys of
their noses. The important part the exotic played in life’s
comedy led the youthful aspirant to literary fame, Sir John
Beaumont, to think that he could not do better than soar
on the wings of the weed to the Parnassus he had already
in view. Barely twenty, full of exuberance and lofty ideals,
he poured forth his musings in a grand imitation of heroic
verse. His work is entitled, ‘The Metamorphosis of
Tobacco,’[1] (1602) and is dedicated to his friend ‘Maister
Michael Drayton,’ whom he asks to take up the lines,








Tobacco like, unto thy brain


And that divinely touched, puff out the smoke again.








Ambitious to excel and full of noble endeavour he exclaims,








Let me the sound of great Tobacco praise


A pitch above those love-sick poets raise.








He conceives the idea of a parliament of the elements
assembled to hear the complaint of Prometheus that his
work is imperfect. He calls for help, and the Earth is
invoked. But ‘Grandame Ops her grieved head did shake.’
She declares however that,








A plant shall from my wrinkled forehead spring


Which once enflamed with the stolne heavenly fire


Shall breath into this lifeless corse inspire.








Despite of Fate the elements combine to form the plant.
Their work accomplished, it is found that Tellus had
tempered too much terrene corruption in its composition.
But for this


[3]








The man that tasted it should never die


But stand in record of eternitie.








Jupiter is enraged at the daring attempt to usurp his divine
prerogative and banishes the plant to an unknown region.
After long searching the graces discover it in the palace of
the great Montezuma. They are royally entertained and
wish for no greater happiness than to remain eternally
regaling themselves with the vapour of the divine herb.
Another flight of fancy reveals the ‘sweet and sole delight
of mortal men’ as a nymph of Virginia receiving the visits
of Jupiter clad in the garb of a shepherd. Juno, ever
watchful over the movements of her lord, discovers the
intrigue, and with threatening gesture storms at the poor
thing and transforms her into the Indian weed.


It may be that the divine afflatus which Drayton, speaking
of Marlowe, says, ‘rightly should possess a poet’s brain,’
imaging ‘those brave translunary things that the first poets
had,’ had not yet descended upon the young poet of Grace
Dieu. But it cannot be denied him that his diction is
stately, and that at times he displays flashes of grandeur.
Chalmers remarks of him that he brought to his task ‘a
genius uncommonly fertile and commanding.’ All through
his brief career he had yearned after a true poet’s renown.
‘No earthly gift,’ he wrote, ‘lasts after death but fame.’
And he sighed over the thought that all his labour should
be left incomplete—‘That’s my vexation, that’s my only
grief.’ His longing for posthumous fame Drayton tenderly
notices in the following lines:








Thy care for that which was not worth thy breath.


Brought on too soon thy much lamented death.


But heaven was kind and would not let thee see


The plagues that must upon this nation be.








[4]


It is hard to say what plagues Drayton refers to, but it
does seem unkind of Elizabethan scholars to have so
neglected Sir John Beaumont, the purity and simplicity of
whose life and elevated tone of work place him in marked
contrast to his more versatile and distinguished brother,
Francis.


Leaving the domain of the poet let us turn our gaze for
a moment towards the heavens. Night’s sable mantle
shrouds a sleeping world, and all is repose save the spirit
of our dreams. Freed from control the ever active one
flits at will in the realms of fairy-land, overleaping all
difficulties, revelling in phantasms new and wonderful till
day dawns, when she returns to her abode in man’s heavy
brain to lighten the labour of his daily toil, and to store up
memories of a world closed to mortal eyes.


A distant murmur as of an approaching storm disturbs
the stillness of the night, from gathering clouds serpent-tongued
lightning flashes across the sky; the furies rage,
the curtains of the heavens open and lo! Jupiter appears
glowing with unwonted fire. He vows he will suffer no
longer the flouting scorn of imperious Juno, and with anger-distended
nostrils he sniffs the ethereal air. But what is
this that steals over his heated senses? Subduing, soothing,
consoling more sweetly than incense from Aphrodite’s
favoured altars. It ascends in cloudy wavelets from the
abodes of mortals. He determines to hold a council of
the gods and summons thereto the heroes of Earth famed
throughout Elysium for their knowledge of the odic essence
whose spirit has entered his own and quelled the rising of
a conjugal storm.


Silently there glides into view a host of genial witnesses
to St Nicotine’s balmy influence over the troubled spirits
of mortals. Leading the spectral throng are Ben Jonson[5]
and Drummond, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker and
Overbury, swathed in clouds of vapour as if comforting
themselves with the old delectable pastime. A little to the
rear, pale in the majesty of thought, are Shakespeare and
Bacon, Spenser and Newton. Leaning to his friend
Shakespeare, Bacon whispers, ‘No doubt the weed hath
power to lighten the body of mortals and enable them to
shake off uneasiness. But where is Raleigh? He paid
devotion to his divinity most constantly, and ought to be
able to speak of what return he got for all his worship.’


‘You know, Drummond, as well as I do, that I always
did love the weed, in spite of all that King James said
against it. Did I not make my prince of swaggerers,
Captain Bobadil (who was to me what Falstaff was to Will
Shakespeare) descant on the fragrant theme, thus:—


‘“I have been in the Indies where neither myself nor a
dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge have received the
taste of any other nutriment in the world for over a space
of one-and-twenty weeks, but the juice of this simple only.
Therefore it cannot be but ’tis divine—especially your
Trinadado; your Nicotian is good also. By Hercules! I
do hold it before any prince in Europe to be the most
sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered
for the use of man.”’


‘But, O worthy Ben, did not the master over-charge his
‘prentice when he allowed the braggart to lay on the tinsel
with so heavy a hand?’


‘Listen to me, my masters, let Ben Jonson read the
Untrussing of the Humorous Poet without blenching if
he can, for that might advance him in merit; he would
acknowledge that Thomas Dekker can kick.’


‘Hist! feather-brained gossip; proclaim not so loudly
thy kinship with the asinine family.’


[6]


Advancing with measured step the noble Raleigh appears
and is greeted with the cry:—








Hail, mighty Raleigh! to whose name we owe


The use and knowledge of this sovereign plant.








To which the illustrious knight made answer, ‘Not so,
gentle spirits of the past; to me it was not given to be the
discoverer, or the first to bring to my countrymen a
knowledge of the blessed herb whose sobering and soothing
virtues lend man strength to bear with tranquility the
injustice of the powerful. The honour you would do unto
me belongs of right to others who were before me in the
fray of battle and adventure. Humble service have I
rendered at her shrine, receiving thereby sweet refreshment
unstinted, even when on the threshold of thy domain, O
mighty Jupiter.


‘Yet, by your leave, I will relate something of the
wonderful tales told of this weed by the adventurers who
first brought tidings of it to Europe, and of the New World
and its people they had discovered in the far-off western
seas.





Sir Walter Raleigh.




‘The chiefs and headmen of the Indians avow that the
herb is a most precious gift of the Great Spirit who created
them, and who rules over the affairs of their daily lives.
He it was in ages long past, when all the different tribes were
warring one against another, had taught them the peace-inspiring
virtues of the plant. He it was who, out of a
fragment broken from the red rock, had fashioned for their
guidance the first peace-pipe. And it came to pass in this
wise: The Master of Life, the Great Spirit that broods over
creation, descended to the summit of the mountain; he
called his children together, and they obedient to the
divine command assembled in infinite numbers to hearken[7]
to his will. Then there came forth from the mountain a
voice, crying, “Listen, O children of the redskin, to the
words of your Great Father. Let your deliberations,
domestic as well as public, be conducted under the
soothing influence of the herb of life, the divine uppówoc.
Let the pipe be to you a symbol of peace between you
yourselves and all the tribes of men. In loving brotherhood
let it be passed from the lips of those famous in the
war of words as in the strife of battle; from those seated on
the front bench in the possession of treasure to those of
the hungry of the assembled senators who have nought but
who fain would have all. Let the smoke-cloud that
ascends from the calumet be to you a pledge of peace, of
personal amity and good-will. Then shall your compacts
one with another be held sacred before me, and the war-club
be buried deep in the earth. Henceforward shall
friendship and fraternity be yours for evermore—till, alas,
they of the pale face have grabbed from you your lands,
and the red man hath become a stranger and an outcast in
the country of his birth.”


‘Thus spoke the Master of Life to his children of the redskin.
Having fashioned with wondrous curves the emblem
of happiness out of stone of the red rock, he filled the bowl
with the leaves of the sacred herb, and commanded the
lightning to kindle it into flame. High up on the
mountain over their heads he smoked the first great
symbol of peace among the nations. He told the
assembled multitude that the rock, out of which the pipe
was made, was formed of the flesh of their grandfathers,
long ages ago, when the world was deluged and the people
of the earth destroyed. Seeing the gathering of the waters,
the children of the forest and of the prairie fled to the high
lands, thinking thus to save themselves. The waters[8]
pursued them; they were overwhelmed in one mighty mass
and their bodies were converted into the red sandstone
rock of the mountain, therefore is it good medicine.


‘Yet one escaped the flood. A maiden, Kwaptahw,
finding herself bereft of kindred, lay disconsolate on the
mountain ridge. Then it came to pass that espying her
from afar, the great war-eagle came to her side. She clung
to the lord of the air, and he carried her to a place of
safety high up on an adjacent cliff.


‘Then like the murmur of distant waters, the voice of
the great spirit gradually melted away.








“—The Master of Life ascending


Through the opening of cloud curtains,


Through the doorways of the heaven,


Vanished from before their faces,


In the smoke that rolled around him


The pukwana of the peace-pipe.”’








The shadowy form of great Elizabeth’s gallant courtier
gives place to the Shepherd of the Muse, who, as he passes,
beams upon his friend a countenance of supernal sweetness.
Then in a voice of dreamy reverie the genius of the
Faërie Queene addresses the Olympian deity after this
manner:—


‘While musing on the loves and adventures of chivalrous
knights and ladies fair, away from the busy haunts of men
in the wilds of Kilcolman,








Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar,


Keeping my sheep among the cooly shade


Of the green alders, by the Mulla’s shore;


There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out;


Whether allurèd with my pipe’s delight


Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about,


Or thither led by chance, I know not right;
[9]

Whom, when I askèd from what place he came,


And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe


The shepherd of the ocean by name,


And said he came from main-sea deep.


He, sitting me beside in that same shade,


Provokèd me to play some pleasant fit,


And when he heard the music that I made,


He found himself full greatly pleased at it;


Yet, æmuling my pipe, he took it in hond


My pipe—before that æmulèd of many—


And played thereon (for well that skill he conned):


Himself as skilful in that art as any.


He piped, I sung; and when he sung, I piped;


By change of turns each making other merry;


Neither envying other nor envied,


So piped we, until we both were weary.








‘Thus, O Jupiter, and you my fellow-denizens of Elysium,
would we hold sweet communion of soul. And then it was
I learnt of the right noble and valorous knight, the
exceeding comfort of the “soverane weed,” which the
elements in aforetime had formed for the solace of men and
gods; for nothing loth am I to say that I drew from the
pipe a foretaste of the peaceful joys of the blessed, and
therefore did I recognise in the divine herb a gift from
heaven, treasured up for mortals in Nature’s bounteous
store. It seemeth, however, that the immortal powers
swayed by imperious Juno had disowned the Virginian
nymph and had lost the healing balm she breathes upon
the chafed and fretful; yet, methinks, even Juno might find a
piquant pleasure in a few whiffs of the weed.


‘But if Raleigh denies himself the renown of being the
first to bring the Indian’s herb to his native country, he can
fairly lay claim to the pleasure of having first planted it in
Ireland. When he was Mayor of Youghall, and his abode[10]
the manor-house, he smoked his first pipe of tobacco in his
garden, sheltered by the spreading branches of four yew
trees that still may be seen forming a thatch-like covering
for a summer-house. And in this Youghall garden he
planted Ireland’s first instalment of the Indian weed. Ever
foremost among the high-souled and adventurous, he
neglected not other like humble things that he thought
would be of service to his fellow-creatures, for here, too, he
planted and cultivated Ireland’s greatest blessing, the
potato, which fostered by prudence, rapidly gave to that
wild and lawless land an abundance of food for the
impoverished peasantry. He planted likewise, the affane
cherry, and the sweetly perfumed wall-flower, which he had
brought from the Azores, and which may still be seen
growing on the banks of the Blackwater.


‘Much doubting me if aught I have said can profit this
goodly company, I will call upon one who has seen the
plant in its native soil and can describe its uses among the
Indians. For the herb, which is commonly called tobacco,
hath many names and divers virtues.’ Then rose before
the recumbent throng, the historian of England’s first
colony in the New World, Thomas Harriot, mathematician
and astronomer. He began:—


‘A brief and true report I will render you of what I
learned of the herb, the truth of which can be attested by
Ralf Lane, the worthy governor of the new found land of
Virginia. It befel me that I went out with a number of my
countrymen to that far-off land in the Western Seas the
great Columbus had discovered, that I might make record
of all that happened concerning us on that perilous venture.
It was undertaken by the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh, and
was under the command of Sir Richard Grenville. Soon
after we had made our peace with the natives, and they[11]
were of a peaceful race, not caring for bloody strife or for
plunder, we found them making a fume of a dried leaf,
which they rolled up in a leaf of maize, of the bigness of a
man’s finger. By rubbing a stone with a stick, in a cunning
way they had learned from some divine power, they contrived
to kindle fire and putting a light to the leaf they
smoked it, as is done by mortals in these days. It was the
leaf of an herb which is sowed apart by itself and is called
by the inhabitants uppówoc. They use it also in powder.
The leaves thereof being dried and crushed small, they take
the fumes or smoke thereof by sucking it through pipes
made of clay into their stomach and head, from whence
it purgeth superfluous humours, and it openeth all the pores
and passages of the body, by which means the use thereof
preserveth the body in health, and they know not many
grievous diseases, wherewithal people in England were
oftentimes affected.


‘This herb is of so precious estimation amongst them that
they think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith.
Whereupon they sometimes make hallowed fires and cast
some of the powder therein for a sacrifice; being in a storm
upon the waters, to pacify their gods they cast some into the
air and into the water: so a wear for fish being newly set
up they cast some therein and into the air; also after an
escape from danger they cast some into the air likewise;
but all is done with strange gestures, stamping, sometimes
dancing, clapping of hands, holding up hands, and staring
up into the heavens, uttering therewithal and chattering
strange words and noises.


‘We ourselves, during the time we were there, used to
smoke it after their manner, as also we did when we
returned home and found many rare and wonderful experiments
of the virtues thereof, of which the relation would[12]
require a volume by itself. The use of it by men and
women of great calling as else, and many learned physicians
bore testimony to its exceeding good qualities as a healer of
the sick and a comforter in adversity.’


Then rose England’s unexampled smoker, Dr. Parr,
renowned throughout Europe for his profound learning,
theology and Greek. Smiling benignantly under the
voluminous wig which furnished Sydney Smith with a droll
figure of speech, he recounts the story of how his smoking
had caused royalty to sneeze. This had happened on the
occasion of a dinner given in honour of the Duke of
Gloucester at Trinity College, Cambridge. Immediately
the cloth had been removed the doctor began his usual
practice of smoking his pipe. In the warmth of conversation
he blew clouds so vigorously that a general rising in
revolt took place led by his Royal Highness sneezing and
holding his nose.


As to its effect upon the learned doctor, his physician,
Dr. John Johnstone, explains that tobacco-smoking acted
upon his patient like a charm, allaying his abnormally
irritable nervous system. ‘It soothed him and assisted
his private ruminations; it was his consoler in anxiety, and
helpmate in composition. All who knew him had seen the
air darkened with the fumes from his pipe when his mind
was labouring with thought. Yet he lived the span of
years allotted to mortals, falling ripe at the age of seventy
eight.’ Thereupon a voice was heard protesting against
the practice of smoking, in all hours and all occasions,
even in the presence of ladies. ‘Were you then the divine
who refused to dine out or spend an evening with a friend
unless privileged to smoke when and where you pleased,
even in the drawing-room of ladies, nay, would oftentimes
single out the handsomest one to light your pipe?’


[13]


‘Truly your apprehension in this is in no wise at fault,
nor would I mislead you as to pressing the ladies into the
service of my pipe. I recognised that it was nature’s
behest to woman to impart to duller mortals light and
leading, and by watchful eye and ready wit to keep the
flame aglow. You did not profit by observation or
experience, else you would have learned this lesson.’


‘Your pardon, Dr. Parr, but I cannot conceive that you
properly maintained the dignity of your calling by such
discourtesy to the ladies. Of this am I conceived that had
you so behaved in the presence of my wife she would have
called you to better manners, unless, indeed, you had been
entreated by the ladies to smoke as you did and blow
fumes into their faces.’


‘Gently, gently, my sapient critic, mistake not the
significance of the argument, which is this: Woman by
divine command is man’s companion and helpmate through
their earthly career. Shut her out from all participation in
man’s social enjoyments, particularly one which like the
Indian weed brings to the ruffled mind solace and an
abiding peace, and there will spring up in her heart a
feeling of resentment, as of a rival, which may find vent in
lost tobacco or broken pipes. Therefore is it not well to
teach the ladies to take pleasure in your smoking habit
rather than leave them to find pleasure in putting
your pipe out? And to thee, O troubled one, whose
throne is the mighty Olympus, would I say that in St
Nicotine’s soothing charm dwells an antidote to Juno’s
censorious tongue, and in her clouds a shield against
Aphrodite’s gracious influence.’


A smile plays across the countenance of Jupiter, but
scorn flashes from Juno’s lustrous eyes. And Aphrodite
flutters her wings in dissent, for already she feels her sway[14]
over mortals yielding to the rising power of St Nicotine of
the peace-pipe. Casting her longing gaze towards the
place of her birth.








To the Cyprian shores the goddess moves


To visit Paphos and her blooming groves,


Where to the Power an hundred altars rise,


And fragrant odours scent the balmy skies.










[15]


SYMPOSIUM

CHAPTER II


Part II








A few more whiffs from my cigar


And then in Fancy’s airy car


Have with thee to the skies.


How oft the fragrant smoke upcurl’d


Hath borne me from this little world


And all that in it lies.






Thomas Hood.








Like a sun-gleam seen through a Scotch mist the hoary
head and set visage of the veteran thinker, Thomas Carlyle,
appears. As a persistent preacher of the gospel of silence
he will himself talk and talk on, seemingly oblivious to its
application to himself. Turning to his friend, Dr. Calvert,
he asks, ‘Why are we here? Really, I think it shocking
that we should run to Rome, to Greece, and leave all at
home lying buried in nonentity. Were I supreme chief
there should be a resurrection of the old English ages.
I will pit Odin against Jupiter, and find sea-kings that will
put Jason to shame. Ah, tobacco! It is one of the
greatest benefits that ever came to the human race.
Nobody ever came near me whose talk was half so good
as silence with my pipe. I would fly out of the way of
everybody, and would much rather smoke a pipe of[16]
wholesome tobacco than talk to anybody just now. I saw
in the weed the one element in which by European
manners men could sit silent together without embarrassment,
and no man was bound to speak one word more
than he had actually and veritably got to say. Nay, every
man was admonished and enjoined by the laws of honour,
and even of personal ease, to stop short at that point; at all
events, to hold his peace and take to his pipe the instant
he had spoken his meaning—if he chanced to have any.
The results of which salutary practice, if introduced into
constitutional parliaments, might evidently be incalculable.
Take for example, the Tobacco Parliament of Friedrich
Wilhelm. It had not the least shadow of a constitutional
parliament, nor even a privy council, as we understand
it, his ministers being mere clerks to register and execute
what he had otherwise resolved upon. But he had his
Tabako-Collegium; his Tabagie, or Smoking Congress, and
which made so much noise in the world and which in a
rough, natural way afforded him the uses of a Parliament on
most cheap terms and without the formidable inconveniences
attached to that kind of institution. In short, he had a
parliament reduced to its simplest expression; instead of
parliamentary eloquence he had Dutch clay pipes and
tobacco provided in abundance. And this was the
essence of what little intellect and insight there was in a
parliament; all that can be got out of any parliament.
Sedatives gently soothing, gently clarifying tobacco-smoke,
with obligation to a minimum of speech, surely give human
intellect and insight the best chance they can have.’


It was noticeable that the stern denouncer of talk did
not say how he, personally, would have liked a seat in a
‘parliament reduced to its simplest expression.’ Electrical
glances passed from one to another of the immortals,[17]
which clearly indicated that the inflexible one would have
kicked the seat from under him, and, taking his stand on
the eternal verities, would have lashed with the scorn of
his tongue the drowsy dogs into a full recognition of their
own worthlessness; would have compelled them to realise
that a deliverer was at hand, and that Carlyle was
synonymous with Cromwell.


Yet he would not overlook tobacco’s failings. Tobacco
he averred had done to the German populations important
multifarious functions. ‘For truly in politics, morality and
all departments of their practical and speculative affairs its
influence, good and bad, could be traced; influences
generally bad; pacificatory but bad, engaging them in idle
cloudy dreams—still worse, promoting composure among
the palpably chaotic and discomposed—soothing all things
into lazy peace that all things might be left to themselves
very much and to the laws of gravity and discomposition,
whereby German affairs came to be greatly overgrown with
funguses and symptoms of dry and wet rot.’ Here
Germany’s great chancellor broke in with hilarity, and said
how he was reminded—


‘Hold your tongue, Furst, till I have done.’ Relaxing
into a more social vein, Carlyle described how he became
a smoker from the age of eleven, and how his mother would
fill his long clay pipe, light it, take a whiff or two, and then
hand it to him. ‘And as to snuffing, I will tell you what
happened to me when I was a very little boy, perhaps not
more than four years old, and before I was admitted to the
dignity of trousers. I went to the house of two old ladies
who were fond of snuff. Their box to me was something
wonderful. Either as a cruel jest, or in utter foolishness,
they asked me to take a pinch, I, really, not knowing what
snuff was. Urged and instructed by the ladies, I took a[18]
very big pinch indeed. An explosion, or rather a succession
of explosions followed, and I thought my head was
blown off. My first experience of snuff was my first tragedy.’
Whereupon there fell upon the ear strange sounds as of
distant revelry re-echoed through ancient halls untenanted,
and Olympus rocked under a burst of Jovian laughter.


Charles Lamb, beaming with smiles, is ready to Lamb-pun
(lampoon) anybody or everybody, if he will but wa-wa-wait
a bit. And Leigh Hunt, aside to Wordsworth, whispers,
‘Lamb will crack a jest in the teeth of a ghost, and then
melt into thin air at the awful thought.’ While Coleridge,
of moody brow, brightens under the genial influence of
old comrades, and casting reflective glances around
him, lives again in the memory of those delightful evenings
spent with them, their pipes aglow, in the old hostel where
genial Elia and a host of genius loved to foregather.


Sincere, affectionate, loving Charles Lamb, whose child-like
heart, so easily touched with the sufferings of others,
was full of chivalrous devotion to the sufferer. He turns to
Wordsworth and explains his attitude towards the weed.
‘Tobacco was for years my evening comfort and my
morning curse. For two years I had it in my head to write
a poem on the charmer, but she stood in her own light by
giving me headaches that prevented me singing her praises.’


‘But, my worthy Lamb, you know that headaches come
not so much of smoking as of imbibing too freely of that
cheery October you like so well? And what strong coarse
stuff you would smoke to be sure! Do you remember that
even Dr. Parr was amazed at your prodigious powers, and
asked how you had acquired the habit?’


‘Ah, yes, I remember, I told him I had acquired it,’
(and here a sparkle of humour plays across his face) ‘by
toiling after it, as some men toil after virtue.’


[19]


‘And when your physician wisely admonished you, and
would have stopped further indulgence in the weed, at least
for a time, confess, naughty man, what was your reply?’


‘May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and
exhaled in a pun! And yet I would readily admit that,








For thy sake, tobacco, I


Would do anything but die!’








The eloquent Robert Hall, England’s greatest pulpit
orator, takes up the social theme and recounts his first
experience of the pipe. ‘My association with the fraternity
of smokers happened when I was a young man at Cambridge
under the guidance and somewhat severe admonition
of the learned Dr. Parr, whose pre-eminence among smokers
we all acknowledged. Thus early in life brought under the
soothing influence of the weed by so profound a scholar,
whose knowledge of Greek was the terror and admiration of
young men, and feeling the natural desire of youth to
imitate the great, I thought I could not in any better way
fit myself for his society than by adopting his habit of
smoking, and out of a long clay pipe like his. It was then
I developed a taste for tobacco which from that time
onward never left me. Being pressed on one occasion to
explain why I began the practice, I made answer that I was
qualifying myself for the society of a Doctor of Divinity, and
that my pipe was the test of my admission. Indeed, I
began to experience an ill-at-ease feeling whenever the weed
and its instrument were not within my reach. I did not
care to argue with those people who thought evil things of
smoking. If they did not like it I would merely advise
them to keep from it. For myself, I was perfectly contented
if they would let me alone, and allow me the mild
indulgence during my sojourn among mortals.’


[20]


The shade of Charles Spurgeon, the hero of the Tabernacle,
glides into view, holding to his lips a churchwarden
of ample proportions, as if inhaling the herb’s perfumed
breath with serene enjoyment. A veteran devotee at the
shrine of St Nicotine he claimed a foremost place among
Victorian smokers. Morning, noon and night, in season,
and, as many thought, out of season, he might be found
ensconced in some quiet nook, or perched on a wall,
diligently like a devout Parsee keeping the sacred fire
aglow, and drawing inspiration from the spiral wreaths as
they ascended heavenwards. It was to his nostrils as
frankincense, leading his thoughts to cerulean quarries in
the sky where gems of sparkling wit (or broad humour) were
to be gathered for the delectation of multitudes hungering
for even his smallest joke, or it might be, an oracular utterance
on the ‘Scarlet Lady.’ The Tabernacle towered high
in the land in those days, and the churchwarden put forth
a lengthening stem. And yet there were limits, outside
which even the High Priest of the Tabernacle could not be
permitted to roam, or to smoke the idolatrous Indian weed
unchallenged. Here he relates how a worthy dame of his
fold brought him to book on the subject—his everlasting
breathing of ’bacco—and demanded of him whether the
practice was orthodox: could he put his finger on any part
of the Bible and say, here is my authority? Whereupon
the pastor meekly answered, ‘no, madam. But we do read
in the Bible of the people passing through the valley of
Baca.’ ‘The valley of Baca! yes, here it is!’ From the
clouds leisurely blown around her a new light dawned on
her troubled conscience; the gage of battle was withdrawn,
and she believed with the implicit faith of a convert in her
prophet, priest and king. Others might stray from the
beaten track to gain a greener mouthful, ‘but for myself,’[21]
she exclaimed, ‘henceforward I shall rejoice in the path
that leads to the Tabernacle through the valley of
Baca!’


‘I love thee!’ exclaimed Captain Marryat, in the
impassioned strain of a Troubadour for the lady of his
heart, ‘I love thee! whether thou appearest in the form of
a cigar, or diest away in sweet perfumes enshrined in a
meerschaum bowl. I love thee with more than a woman’s
love; thou art a companion to me in solitude; I can talk
and reason with thee, avoiding loud, obstreperous argument.
Thou art a friend to me when in trouble, for thou advisest
in silence, and consolest with thy calm influence over
the perturbed spirit. I know not how thy power has been
bestowed upon thee; yet, if to harmonize the feelings, to
allow the thoughts to spring without control, rising, like the
white vapour from the cottage hearth on a morning that is
sunny and serene; if to impart that sober sadness over the
spirit which inclines us to forgive our enemies; that calm
philosophy which reconciles us to the ingratitude and
knavery of the world; that heavenly contemplation
whispering to us, as we look around, that all is good—if
these be merits, they are thine, most potent weed.’


‘A truce to superfine sentiment. Tobacco is all very
well as a check to over-vehemence in men, just as a snaffle-bit
is to a rampant horse; applied to the wrong person, it
will turn a sluggard into a seventh sleeper. But it has a
higher significance, such as you in your speculative
dreaming may never have thought of. Herr Carlyle, the
friend of the Fatherland, has told you his story of the use
and abuse of tobacco in Germany, now I will tell you mine,
just as the incident occurred in the old Bund of the times
that are past.


‘I went to see Rechberg, who was at work and smoking[22]
at the same time. He begged me to excuse him for a
moment. I waited a little while. By-and-by I got rather
tired of waiting, and, as he did not offer me a cigar, I took
one out of my case and asked him for a light, which he
gave me with a somewhat astonished expression of
countenance. But that is not all. At the meetings of the
Military Committee, when Rochow represented Prussia at
the Federal Diet, Austria was the only member who smoked.
Rochow, who was a desperate smoker, would have dearly
liked to smoke too, but did not venture to do so. When I
came in I also felt that I wanted to smoke, and, as I did
not see in the least why I should not, I asked the
Presiding Power for a light, which appeared to be regarded
both by it and the other powers with equal wonder and
displeasure. Obviously it was an event for them all.
Upon that occasion, therefore, only Austria and Prussia
smoked. But the other gentlemen considered it such a
momentous matter that they reported upon it home to their
respective governments. The affair demanded the
gravest consideration, and fully six months elapsed during
which only the two great powers smoked. Then Schrenkh,
the Bavarian Envoy, began to vindicate the dignity of his
position by smoking. Nostitz, the Saxon, yearned to do so
too, but he had not as yet received permission from his
minister; but as, at the next meeting, he saw that Bothmer,
the Hanoverian, lit a cigar, he (who had strong Austrian
proclivities, and some of his sons in the Austrian army)
came to an understanding with the Rechberg, for he also
drew a weed from its leathern scabbard, and blew a cloud.
The only ones now remaining were the Würtemberger and
the Darmstädter, neither of them smokers. But the
honour and importance of their respective States imperatively
exacted that they should smoke; and so, at the very[23]
next meeting, the Würtemberger brought out a cigar. I
can see it now—a long, thin, light-yellow thing! and
smoked at least half of it, as a burnt offering for his
fatherland!





Departure of Columbus.


(From a rare old painting.)




The important part tobacco has played in state affairs
would be amazing were it not so laughable; the weed
seems to break down barriers with a puff, and to clear the
way to mutual understandings where jealousy and infra
dig. blocked up the path. It once reached my ears that
England’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lord Clarendon,
made his office reek like a cabman’s shelter with the fumes
of the strongest tobacco. He would never listen to a word
against his favourite indulgence without rising in assumed
wrath in its defence, and would stoutly maintain that
tobacco possessed a potent spell over men’s minds,
disposing them towards the good side in all the important
affairs of life. And Lord Canning, too, could seldom be
seen without a cigar in his mouth.


‘But as to smoking in colleges and among youths
generally, I am firmly convinced that the practice is bad in
every way. No youth under the age of sixteen should be
permitted to take tobacco in any form, under pain of
physical chastisement or public prosecution.’


Prince Bismarck having thus delivered himself, the
honour of France demanded that the Grand Nation
should not remain silent in the halls of the immortals. An
animated chatter among the spectral throng ensues, and
mutterings which mark dissension are audible above the
general hum.


‘Indulgence in tobacco and alcohol are leading directly
to the total annihilation of conscience … the moral
sense is blunted, and degeneracy is spreading throughout
Christendom. Count Tolstoy is perfectly certain of it,[24]
according to communications which have reached me
through a medium of highly purified spiritual affinities.’


‘After dinner nothing ever was so good as a pipe, taken
with a glass or two of brandy—not that I cared for alcohol,
O dear no! but this I do say, that the more I smoked the
better I worked.’


‘The depopulation of France is directly involved in the
use of the pernicious plant called tobacco, as was proved
by my experiments on cocks and rabbits (Dr. Depierris).
The manufacture and sale of tobacco are, very properly,
entirely in the hands of the government; it can, therefore,
regulate the output, increase or diminish the quantity, or
cut off the supply altogether, if either one or the other
course be deemed advisable in the public interest. My
argument was, in the first place, based upon experiments
on animal organisms conducted under my own eyes, and
in the second place, on reports furnished by Prefects of
Departments. Those reports demonstrated the alarming
fact that in ten departments where each inhabitant smoked
on an average 1490 grammes of tobacco in the year, the
families having seven children and upwards were in the
proportion of sixty-eight in every 100,000 of the population;
while in ten other departments where the average consumption
of tobacco was only 451 grammes per head, the
proportion of families of seven children for every 100,000
inhabitants rose to eighty-one; the still-born children
numbered only 156, against 1124 in the former case.
Hence the significant inference that the use of tobacco led
directly to degeneracy of the human race.’


‘But tobacco may be used in moderation without injury,
if men would but keep away from the little glasses of
brandy, absinthe, and other similar liqueurs.’


‘Tobacco produces sluggishness and loss of will power.’


[25]


‘On dit, et c’est passé en proverbe; Le tabac c’est l’ami
de l’homme, il le console de la femme.’


‘Fumer, c’est obtenir une trêve à la tristesse, aux préoccupations
irritantes, aux petites misères de la vie, aux
chagrins domestiques, aux tracasseries d’un ménage mal
assorti; c’est aussi, en matiere de travaux intellectuels et
artistiques, se procurer, au moyen d’une surexcitation
légere, un développement, une clairvoyance d’idées qui
souvent vous fuient, c’est un refuge contre ce qui blesse ou
choque, contre le mécontentement de soi-meme ou d’autres;
c’est dans les professions manuelles, une diminution des
sensations de fatigue, d’ennui, de découragement; c’est
aussi, une annihilation du mal qui cause une atmosphere
froide, humide, malsaine, c’est enfin une jouissance émanant
d’une faible congestion au cerveau, un étourdissement
passager, une sorte d’ivresse légere qui caresse les idées et
les empeche de vagabonder.


‘En résumé, après tout ce qui s’est dit et écrit pour ou
contre le tabac, l’usage de cette plante est aujourd’hui
général; il constitue de nos jours une branche très
importante de culture, d’industrie et de commerce, et une
source de revenus considérable pour les Etats.’


The voice of Fairholt, of rare tobacco fame, claims attention.
‘Let us get out of the region of captious criticism
and come to the solid ground of fact. For is it not surpassing
strange that man still exists on earth if there be death
in the pipe? Is his life shorter, his morals worse, his
intellect weaker, than in the days of, say, Henry VIII.
before tobacco was known in Europe? For three hundred
years the poisonous drug, if such it be, circulated in the
veins of Europeans, and where is the degeneracy? They
are at this day, the most active, energetic and intellectual
beings that have ever peopled the planet. The learned[26]
doctor’s awful array of afflictions attested by experiments
on small forms of animal life have no terrors for them;
experiment and demonstrate as he may, experience is a
better teacher. Is there any reason why men should apply
to themselves the results of operations made upon creatures
that perish of old age while human beings are still in their
infancy?’


‘No, surely not,’ responds Inglis of Indian frontier fame.
‘Often did I regale my weary body and brain with a pipe
after a hard day’s sport with rifle and hound on the track
of the beasts of the jungle, or after a fierce bout with
the courageous wild boar, whose splendid fighting
qualities are little known out of India. It happens
occasionally that the huntsman finds himself far out on a
desolate track when








The night-cloud has lowered


And the sentinel star sets her watch in the sky.








At such times he turns with joy to his ready comforter, the
peace-pipe. Breathing in the fragrant breath his thoughts
are set free to wander at will; old places are revisited,
and lost memories revived, always tinged with pleasing
thoughts of the things most cherished and the faces most
loved. At peace with himself and the world, he gazes into
the starlit heavens and exclaims, “Hail! thou invigorator
of the weary, consoler of the sorrowful, uncomplaining,
faithful friend.’”


‘I too, would add my experience of the weed’s healthful
influence on weary humanity battling with plague and
pestilence in tropical lands.’ Here Sir Samuel Baker
relates how African savages had taught him the virtues of
the plant.


‘On that continent of dreadful night, yet so fascinating[27]
to the European explorer, where death in one form or
another confronts the traveller at every step, it fell to my
lot to be detained at the native village of Obbo during the
rainy season, in the midst of an indescribable steam of
poisonous vapours arising from a rank luxuriance of vegetation
to be seen in no other part of the world. Fever and
dysentery were carrying off the natives in large numbers.
My wife and myself were both down with fever, when the
old chief persuaded me to smoke tobacco, which in the
countries bordering on the Nile is cultivated and manufactured
in large quantities. I had never smoked in my
life, but I then commenced with Obbo tobacco and pipes,
and lived to bless the day I was wise enough to make the
experiment.


‘During our pleasant sojourn in the valley of Albara it
was my misfortune not to be a smoker. In the cool of the
evening we used to sit by the bamboo table outside the
door of our house and drink our coffee amidst the beautiful
scenery of a tropical sunset, with deep shadows falling into
the valley. But a pipe, the long chibouk of the Turk,
would have made our home a paradise. On our return to
Gondokora I found that the plague had visited the town
during our absence, and that the vessel we were to go in to
Khartoum was plague-stricken, many of the crew having
died of disease. I was so thoroughly convinced of the
purifying properties of tobacco that upon the circumstance
coming to my knowledge I at once ordered several pounds
of tobacco to be burnt on board, chiefly in the cabin, and
with the satisfactory result that we all escaped the plague.’


William Makepeace Thackeray grows pugnacious in
defence of his favourite indulgence, and asks, ‘What is this
smoking, that it should be considered a crime! I believe
in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival.[28]
The fact is that the cigar is a rival to the ladies and their
conqueror too. Do they suppose they will conquer? Let
them look over the wide world and see for themselves that
their adversary has overcome it. Germany has been
puffing for over three-score years and more, France smokes
to a man. Do they think they can keep the enemy out of
England? Pshaw! Look at Nicotiana’s progress. Ask
the club-houses. I, for my part, think it not at all unlikely
that a bishop may be seen now and then lolling out of the
Athenæum with a cheroot in his mouth, or at any rate, a
pipe stuck in his shovel hat.’


Bulwer Lytton waxes warm over the inestimable blessings
of the pipe. He declares that it is a great comforter, and a
pleasant soother! ‘Blue devils fly before its honest breath!
It ripens the brain, it opens the heart; and the man who
smokes thinks like a sage, and acts like a Samaritan.
He who doth not smoke hath either known no great
grief, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to
that which comes from heaven. What, softer than woman?
Yes, for the woman teases as well as consoles. Woman
makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege to
soothe. Woman consoles us it is true, while we are young
and handsome, when we are old and ugly, woman snubs
and scolds us. On the whole, then, woman in this scale
and the weed in that; Jupiter, hang out thy balance and
weigh them both; and if thou give preference to woman,
all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee—O Jupiter!
try the weed.’




[29]


CHAPTER III

THE HOME OF THE INDIAN WEED








The white man landed—need the rest be told?


The new world stretch’d its dusk hand to the old.


Each was to each a marvel, and the tie


Of wonder warmed to better sympathy.






The Island.








Looking back towards the source whence the old world
derived the Indian weed and the habit of smoking it, the
career of Columbus presents itself crowded with marvellous
exploits and instances of indomitable courage that have
left their imprint on men’s minds for all succeeding
generations. Though an old and oft-repeated story it has
an abiding interest for adventurous explorers whose
highest glory is to link themselves with the free and fearless
Vikings. His imagination aglow with the wondrous
story Marco Polo had told of his voyages in the far east,
and possibly under the prompting of Toscanelli whose
map was his guide, Columbus conceived the bold idea of
reaching India by sailing west. Difficulties inevitable to
so daring a project were met and overcome with the
patience born of genius. At last he gained the ear of
Queen Isabel, and to her he poured out his heart’s grief,
and made her acquainted with the dream of his life.
Pointing to his chart he pictured a new world teeming with[30]
every precious thing of earth, where wealth, and power,
and majesty, were to be won by courage and enterprise;
and all should be hers were he but equipped with royal
authority and means of transport. The sincere, impassioned
eloquence with which he pleaded the
reasonableness of his cause and its triumphant success
enlisted the sympathy of the noble-hearted Queen. She
entered with spirit into the grand scheme that was to
bring renown and riches to her impoverished country.
‘I will assume the undertaking for my own kingdom of
Castile,’ she exclaimed, ‘I will pawn my jewels if the
money you raise is not sufficient.’


On Friday, August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from
the bar of Saltos, near the little maritime town of Palos
(Andalusia), as admiral of the three small ships his
indomitable energy had brought together. His own vessel,
the Santa Maria, had been built expressly for the voyage,
and was manned by a crew of fifty ruthless, unskilful adventurers.
The two others were caravels named the Pinta
and the Niña; they were owned by the Pinzon family,
and were commanded, respectively, by Martin Alonzo
and his brother Vicente Yañez. In all one hundred and
twenty men embarked under the inspiriting influence of
Columbus on their perilous adventure into unknown seas.
Three months have well-nigh passed and yet no sign is
visible of the promised land. After enduring hardships
the severest, worn out by storm and tempest in regions
leading they knew not whither, their murmurs deepen into
open mutiny; the crew gathers round the great captain
with threats to throw him overboard unless he will turn
the rudder and sail home. The vision of Columbus rises
before us: tall, fair, blue-eyed, beaming with the confidence
of a life’s devotion to a great purpose, he confronts his[31]
boisterous crew, and, with chart in hand, once more
subdues them with an enthusiasm fired by profound
conviction. On the morning of October 12, a sailor,
Rodirego de Triano on board the Niña scanning the
horizon, calls to his mates to look out for land, pointing
to a dark mass looming in the distance. Then there
breaks forth from the mast-head the wild cry, Tierra!
Tierra! and the helmsmen steer their course into the
calm waters of San Salvador.


Here among the fair Bahamas where on Nassau’s most
conspicuous site is reared a statue to Columbus, let us
linger a moment while the great navigator and his
adventurers prepare for landing in order to take possession
of the new territory in the names of their Majesties,
Ferdinand and Isabel. Richly attired in scarlet and
plumes, and accompanied by the two Pinzons, with a
chosen escort bearing the standard of Spain, they enter
their boats and are rowed to the shore. With tears of joy
Columbus kneels and kisses the ground, while thanking
Heaven for the great mercy vouchsafed to him and his
companions. Very soon they become aware that the
island is populated; they see natives running hither and
thither, peering from among the trees that stretch down
to the shore, and making gestures to one another in
evident amazement. By-and-by they approach nearer
and nearer to the white men; now they throw themselves
on the ground in attitudes of wonder and supplication.
Columbus is struck with their child-like simplicity; he
reassures them, offering to each some trifling article—beads,
buttons, etc.—which they take with eager delight.
Their curiosity leads them to touch the hands and faces
of the white men, whose garments are a great surprise.
From a creek hard by canoes shoot out into the open,[32]
but the moment the occupants see the towering vessels of
the Spaniards with their flapping sails, amazement strikes
them dumb and motionless. Columbus directs his men
to capture them, but the spell broken, they struggle
desperately and plunge into the water. Two, however,
are secured and brought on board, where they are treated
with the utmost kindness by Columbus, for he wishes to
learn from them something of their language, their country,
and its products, particularly about gold and where it is
to be obtained.


The gladsome sight that everywhere met their eyes must
have been very refreshing to the weary mariners. As far
as the eye could reach there was a luxuriant vegetation,
and a forest of trees bearing an amplitude of rich and
varied fruit stretching down to the shore temptingly over-hanging
its sides, as if inviting the strangers to feast and
enjoy the good things of this Elysium. Perennial
springtime seemed to reign over the happy island, whose
inhabitants knew no want nor suffering. Its waters were
liquid sapphire and malachite, looking through which
could be seen graceful branching corals; sky-blue fishes
playing hide-and-seek with golden ones among a delicate
network of purple and yellow; there, too, were miniature
willows of lilac, and many another rare thing in the
mermaids’ pleasure gardens. Here and there the coast
was strewn with shells of exquisite beauty—trumpets for
Tritons; the king conch, out of whose pink lining lissome
fingers create lovely cameos; tiny rice shells, pink ones
like ladies’ finger-nails, and cowries, and many another
rare shell that, in the days of England’s shell mania, would
have realised a handsome fortune for the happy
possessor.


Sailing amidst these scenes of wondrous beauty they,[33]
sixteen days later, October 28, sighted the island of Cuba,
to which Columbus gave the name of Juana, in honour of
Prince Juan. In his selected letters, translated by R.H.
Major, F.S.A., Columbus says: ‘I followed the coast westward,
and found it so large that I thought it must be the
mainland, the province of Cathay, China.’ Continuing his
narrative he says, ‘And as I found neither towns nor villages
on the coast, but only a few hamlets with the natives of
which I could not hold conversation because they immediately
fled, I kept on the same route, thinking I could not
fail to light upon some large cities and towns.… Returning
to the harbour I had remarked, I sent two men
ashore to ascertain whether there was any king or large
cities in that part.’


Cruising in this region of enchantment, Cuba had fallen
upon his enraptured gaze like a vision of Eden. Soft and
gentle breezes, an azure sunlight sky, a rich luxuriant landscape,
the carolling of birds, exercised a powerful influence
over his imagination. He exclaims: ‘It is the most
beautiful island the eyes ever beheld. I am told that the
trees never lose their foliage, and I can well understand it,
for I observed they were all as green and luxuriant as in
Spain in the month of May. Some were in blossom and
others bearing fruit, others otherwise, according to their
nature. The nightingale was singing as well as other
birds of a thousand different kinds, and that in November,
the month in which I myself was roaming amongst them.’


After an absence of three days, the two men whom
Columbus had sent to explore returned. They had found
no king nor large city, but had come upon many small
hamlets with numberless inhabitants; yet nothing could be
seen that in any way corresponded to their ideas of settled
government. On their way back they for the first time[34]
witnessed the use of a herb which, says Washington Irving,
‘the ingenious caprice of man has since converted into an
universal luxury in defiance of the opposition of the senses.’
Among other tales, strange and wonderful, the two men told
how they had come upon naked Indians with lighted fire-brands
in their mouths, from which they drew in the fumes,
expelling them again through their nostrils! They were
simple, inoffensive people, and well disposed towards the
white men, whom they allowed to examine their fire-brands.
They had found them to be composed of the dried leaves
of a herb rolled up tightly in a leaf of maize. Lighting one
end of the roll, they put the other end between their teeth,
and inhaled the fragrant vapour with an air of placid enjoyment
which seems to have produced in the Spaniards a
craving for the weed that to this day has never left them.


Here was a race of beings living in happy ignorance of
the strifes and ambitions, the anxieties and vexations of
civilised man, reclining in every posture of ease while
breathing the fragrant odours of their treasured weed:
civilised man, indeed, gazed with amazement and longing.
Sweeter far than incense from Arabi was this new delight to
the Spaniards, it became a necessity; it was their morning
comforter that fortified them for the combat of the day, and
their evening solace. Thus it happened that the new world
gave to the old its first lesson in the art of regaling tired
nature with her own anodyne. Navarrete says: ‘The
habit has since become universal, and hence the origin of
the so much prized and so far celebrated havanas.’


With the experiences of a new world just dawning upon
them, the explorers were prepared at every step to encounter
prodigies of a startling character. So far, however, they
had seen nothing to cause them apprehension; nothing had
yet fallen in their way more interesting than these primitive[35]
people clad merely in nature’s copper-coloured cuticle, and
adorned with ornaments of pure gold and rare and curious
shells intermingled with their braided locks. And yet still
more strange, these very simple-minded children of nature
looked up to the white men as visitors from the spirit-land
of their dreams, and with awe and wonder made offerings to
them of whatever things they esteemed most precious. The
ships in the offing with flapping wings had come from the
blue beyond their ken, and the white men were denizens of
the skies. This curious idea—so soon to be dispelled
by the rapacity and cruelty of the Spaniards—which the
natives had conceived of the strangers is alluded to by
many early writers who afterwards visited the new world.
Sir Francis Drake, in The World Encompassed (1572-73),
speaking of the North American Indians, says: ‘They
brought to the ship a little basket made of rushes and filled
with a herb which they called tabah.… They came now
a second time bringing with them as before had been done,
feathers and bags of tabah for presents, or rather, indeed,
for sacrifice, upon this persuasion that we were gods.’


The chief object Columbus had in view, that indeed which
had secured him the powerful influence of the Church, was
not merely the discovery of the marvellous country of the
East Indies, mentioned by Marco Polo, but the conversion
to Christianity of the Grand Khan who ruled over the land.
To this end, and to obtain for him friendly treatment, he
bore for the Khan a royal letter of introduction signed by
their Christian majesties of Spain.


Meanwhile, Columbus had been busily occupied in
collecting the spoils of his easily acquired possessions in the
West India Islands, in readiness to return home and render
an account to his magnanimous friend and protectress,
Queen Isabel, of the perils of his voyage and the ultimate[36]
realisation of his dreams. His own vessel, the Santa Maria,
having run aground had to be abandoned, but the Niña
was soon made ready for him, and without undue delay the
little craft weighed anchor on January 16, 1493. On his
arrival in Spain the Court was at Barcelona, and thither
Columbus journeyed, attended by his train, bearing the
trophies of his adventure. He was received by the king
and queen with every mark of royal favour. Seated in
their presence, he displayed to their eager gaze the specimens
he had brought for their acceptance of various products of
the new found land: virgin gold, cotton, mysterious plants
(assuredly the tobacco plant would be here), birds of rare
plumage, and animals of unknown species. But rising in
importance above all these things were nine native Indians
for conversion and baptism to attest to the reality of his
triumph. Though the Grand Khan had not been seen, yet
in presence of these Indians even the learned Bishop of
Talavera could no longer look askance at the great navigator
as a vain dreamer not altogether free from suspicion
of magic. In grateful remembrance of Her Majesty’s bounty
and enthusiastic protection, Columbus presented to her the
casket which had contained the jewels she so generously
gave up for his use, now filled with pure gold, as an earnest
of what was in store for Spain in their Majesties’ new
dominions. The casket is preserved to this day in the
sacristy of the cathedral at Grenada.


Columbus was of too active a disposition to indulge his
well-earned repose; the old craving for adventure and
exploration left him no peace. Under royal command a
fleet worthy of his grand scheme of conquest and colonisation
was prepared for him, consisting of three large galleons
and fourteen caravels, carrying 1,500 men, and all things
necessary for the establishment of a new colony. He was[37]
invested with supreme authority as admiral, viceroy, and
captain-general of all islands and continents in the Western
Ocean. Second in authority was Gonzalo Fernandez de
Oviedo, who accompanied the expedition bearing the royal
commission of inspector-general of the West India Islands.
By the end of September 1493 the fleet was speeding its
way towards the Far West, and with favouring gales was
wafted straight amongst the Windward Islands. Had some
good genius guided their course across the deep in order to
disclose to them the beauties of the new world, no fairer
island could have been found than the one which, on that
bright morning in January 1494 lay before the adventurers
as the great master mariner steered his vessel into the safe
harbour of Hayti—land of mountains. The climate was
perfect; a perpetual summer was tempered by cool
mountain breezes and periodical showers, which swept
in from the Atlantic. By the banks of this beautiful
harbour, on the north shore, Columbus planted the first
Spanish settlement, and in grateful tribute to the Queen he
named it Isabella. The country, which in all probability
he believed to be the continent he was in search of, he
named San Domingo, a name which soon disappears from
the records, substituted by that of Hispaniola. From this
island came to Europe the first written allusion to the use
of tobacco by the natives. It is from Fra Ramono Pane,
a Franciscan, whom Columbus had left at Hayti. In a
letter to his friend Peter Martyr, Queen Isabel’s secretary,
he tells him of a curious practice said to be common among
the natives of rubbing the dried leaves of a herb into a
powder, and then with a hollow forked tube, two prongs of
which they put up their nostrils while holding the lower
one in the powder, ‘they drew the powder into their noses,
which purges them very much of humours.… The[38]
cane or tube is about half a cubit long.’ This description
would seem to indicate snuffing rather than smoking. It
seems clear that we have here come upon the origin of the
practice of titillating the olfactories which towards the close
of the sixteenth century, had become, says Molière, ‘la
passion des honnetes gens.’ Catherine de Medici became
one of the earliest devotees to the new indulgence; fashion
led the poudre à la Reine through the courts of Europe,
where elegant dilettanti vied with each other in the display
of jewelled snuff boxes filled with odeur de Rome, or other
right puissant sternutatories, not always of a harmless kind.
Prelates and abbés were enamoured of the delightfully-scented
refresher, and in Spain they did not scruple to
place their brilliant boxes on the altar for their use, in spite
of Pontifical ordinances and anathemas from Urban VIII.
and Innocent XII. Physicians, carried away with the
belief that a grand sternutatory had been discovered,
proclaimed its advent to a grateful people, and prescribed
its use liberally; for, said they, ‘it must needs do good
where the brain is replete with many humours, for senselessness
or benumming of the brains, and for a hicket that
proceedeth of repletion.’ Yet there were divisions in the
ranks of medical men; there were different sides of the
question, different interests or tastes to be considered. Had
not the Duc d’Harcourt suffered martyrdom in the new
cause in order to please Louis le Grand? The Court
physician, Monsieur Fagon, devoted his brilliant talents to
a public denunciation of the new vice which, springing
from heathen soil, was fast spreading over Christendom!
Unhappily for the success his eloquence merited, in the
warmth of his oratory he so far forgot himself as to dip his
fingers into his waistcoat pocket and take copious pinches
of tabac en poudre in order to refresh his fickle brain.


[39]


The early writers on the smoking habit were perplexed
about the origin of the name given to the weed. Many
favoured the opinion that the plant and its use had first
come under the observation of Europeans in the island of
Tobago. This notion is shewn to be incorrect in a work
bearing the rather long and ambitious title of Tobago: a
Geographical Description, Natural and Civil History,
together with a full Representation of the Produce and
other Advantages arising from the Fertility, excellent
Harbours, and Happy Situation of that Famous Island.
The author says, ‘I do not recollect any author who has
given a clear account of this name; and as many have
expressed a doubt whether the island was so called from
the herb, or the herb from the island, I hope the curious
and inquisitive reader will be well pleased to see that
matter set in its true light; for the fact is that neither the
island received its name from the herb, nor the herb from
the island. The appellation is, indeed, Indian, and yet
was bestowed by the Spaniards. The thing happened thus:
the Caribbees were extremely fond of tobacco, which in
their language they called kohiha, and fancied when they
were drunk with the fumes of it the dreams they had were
in some sort inspired. Now their method of taking it was
this: they first made a fire of wood, and when it was
burnt out they scattered upon the living embers the leaves
of the plant, and received the smoke of it by the help of
an instrument that was hollow, made exactly in the shape
of the letter Y, putting the larger tube into the smoke, and
thrusting the shorter tubes up their nostrils. This instrument
they called tabago, and when the Admiral Christopher
Columbus passed to the southward of this island he judged
the form of it to resemble that instrument, and thence it
received its name.’


[40]


Among the continental tribes, however, smoking instruments
were found which, in variety of form, originality of
design, and skilful execution, equal the best productions of
Europe; indeed, they have to the present day served as
models for the rest of the world. Those who, inspired by
Cooper born-ideals of the noble savage in his native wilds,
long for a sight of real Indian life, unspoiled by contact with
civilised man, will now look in vain across the American
continent. The Indian, to his sorrow, soon learnt the vices
of the white man who, by craft and arms, ousted him from
his heritage. Occasionally, however, far up the Mississippi
valley, or on the confines of the Canadian forests, the desire
may, to some extent, be appeased. The observer may with
admiration note the fine physique, the strongly marked
physiognomy, the untrammelled freedom of these primitive
lords of the land. Old chiefs may be seen gravely smoking
by their wigwams, while reclining against the trunk of a
fallen tree and discussing among themselves the prospects
of war or peace, or perhaps congratulating themselves on the
accession to their numbers of some neighbouring tribe. A
little way off young warriors are furbishing up arms for the
chase, or war as may be. Others are elaborately ornamenting
with carving and paint their curious tobacco pipes,
some of wood with long stems adorned with feathers, some
cut out from the treasured red pipe-stone brought from the
mountain quarry. Economy of the precious weed is not
overlooked, and the inner bark of the red willow is peeled
into fine shavings and when dried over a low fire is mixed
with the tobacco leaves. Their tobacco pouches well filled
they may start on the chase or the war path, assured that
they are well provided with refreshment for many days.


Europe, however, is indebted to Oviedo for the most
intelligent account of the tobacco plant, and the method[41]
commonly adopted by the Caribs of preparing and using it.
During his tenure of office in the West Indies he collected
an immense amount of information relating to the inhabitants,
their country and its products, the results of which he
published in 1526, under the title of Historia natural y
general de las Indias. In the Seville edition of 1535 is an
engraving of the smoking instrument used by the Caribs.
It is of the form already described. Oviedo says of it that
‘it is about a span long; when used the forked ends are inserted
in the nostrils, the other end being applied to the
burning leaves of the herb. In this manner they inhale the
smoke until they become stupefied. And when forked
canes cannot be procured, they make use of a straight reed
or hollow cane, and this implement is called tabaco by the
Indians.’ Oviedo speaks disparagingly of the smoking
habit, and classes it amongst their evil customs as a thing
very pernicious, and done in order to produce insensibility.
Remarking on the prevalence of the habit, he says that the
consumption of tobacco by the various tribes of the Indians
is of universal and immemorial usage, in many cases bound
up with the most significant and solemn tribal ceremonies.
No matters of importance to the tribe or the family can be
conducted, no compact can be held binding, that has not
been ratified by the passage of the great pipe, be it the pipe
of peace or the pipe of war—the calumet or the tomahawk—from
the lips of one chief to those of the others of the conference.
The pipe, then, is their great seal, the solemn
pledge of friendship, good faith, and such qualities as the
chivalry of the forest suggests to the untutored mind. Although
Oviedo regards unfavourably the practice of smoking,
he evidently prized the plant, as we read that on his return
home he cultivated it in his private gardens. This is but
one step removed from its enjoyment in the pipe, and who[42]
can say that in his retirement he did not take that step?
Las Casas speaks so slightingly of his work as to say that it
contains almost as many lies as pages. Las Casas, the
renowned friend and protector of the poor oppressed
Indians, could certainly speak with confidence on matters
relating to the West India Islands. He had gone to the
colony in the train of Nicolas de Ovando in 1502, and
settled in Cuba as parish priest and vicar-apostolic of the
islands. Possibly his intimate knowledge of the cruelties
practised by his countrymen on the unoffending natives and
their insatiable greed of gold, had turned him against all
highly-placed officials in the colonies. He agrees with
Oviedo, however, in dislike of tobacco-smoking. He says:
‘I cannot see what benefit can be derived from it.…
However extensive it may be in other countries (and common
no doubt it is there) the habit has become so general
in this [Spain] that, to the discredit of parents, it is even
followed by children.… The eternal cigar is seen in the
mouths of old and young, even in that of the ragged
urchin.’


The third voyage of Columbus to the Far West, resulting
in the discovery of the South American continent, brought
the Spaniards into contact with new races well advanced in
the arts of civilisation as compared with the condition of
the inhabitants of the islands, and opened the way for
intercourse and the development of mutual interests of no
common order. What use they made of this brilliant
opening, leading to the conquest of Mexico and Peru, is
told in the fascinating pages of Prescott. Well might the
eyes of the Spaniards be dazzled by the splendours they
beheld in the palace of the great Montezume, where, on the
occasion of their reception by the Emperor, cigars were
handed to the guests inserted in tubes of richly-carved gold,[43]
tortoise-shell, or silver; or they imbibed the soothing
pleasures of the ‘intoxicating weed called tobacco mingled
with liquid amber.’ And while thus engaged a troop of
almost phantom-like tumblers and jugglers gaily disported
themselves before their wondering eyes. The after-dinner
smoke, so dear to middle age, is a vestige of that civilisation
which, before the onward march of the Spaniards, vanished
like the mist of the morning. Our excellent guide through
these realms of a shadowy past relates how the Aztecs
would smoke after dinner to prepare for the siesta with as
much regularity as an old Castilian does now. When dinner
was over they rinsed the mouth with scented water, and an
officer of the Court would then with much ceremony hand
to the king his pipe. They smoked out of pipes made of
polished and richly-gilt wood, inhaling the fragrant fumes of
tobacco mixed with other aromatic herbs.


Girolamo Benzoni of Milan took a strong dislike to the
Indian weed, and saw in it only a noxious plant whose
fumes poisoned the pure breath of heaven. Like every
European who visited the newly discovered countries of the
West, he had his attention drawn to the herb the Indians
loved, and in his History of the New World through
some portion of which he travelled in 1642-45, he describes
the tobacco plant as growing in ‘bushes, not very large,
like reeds, that produce a leaf in shape like that of a
walnut, though rather larger.’ He says it is greatly
esteemed by the natives and the slaves whom the
Spaniards have brought from Ethiopia. He then describes
the method of preparing it for smoking, which corresponds
pretty nearly with the process in operation at the present
day in America, and tells us that ‘when the leaves are in
season they pick them, tie them up in bundles, and
suspend them near their fireplaces till they are very dry;[44]
and when they wish to use them, they take a leaf of their
grain (maize) and putting one of the others into it they
roll them round tightly together; then they set fire to one
end, and putting the other end into the mouth they draw
their breath up through it, wherefore the smoke goes into
the mouth, the throat, the head, and they retain it as long
as they can, for they find a pleasure in it; and so much do
they fill themselves with this cruel smoke that they lose
their reason. And there are some who take so much of it
that they fall down as if they were dead, and remain the
greater part of the day or night stupefied. Some men are
found who are content with imbibing only enough of this
smoke to make them giddy, and no more. See what a
wicked and pestiferous poison from the devil this must be!
It has happened to me several times, that going through
the provinces of Guatemala and Nicaragua, I have entered
the house of an Indian who had taken this herb, which, in
the Mexican language, is called tobacco, and immediately
perceiving the sharp fetid smell of this truly diabolical and
stinking smoke, I was obliged to go away in haste and
seek some other place.’ These strong words call forth the
remark from his translator, Admiral Smith, that ‘surely
the royal author of the famous Counterblast must have
seen this graphic and early description of a cigar!’
Though in the same key, Benzoni’s is but a feeble breath
compared with the fulmination of our British Solomon
against the ‘lively image and pattern of hell,’ or the
‘Stygian fumes from the pit that is bottomless!’ The
fame of the Indian weed as a healer of the sick had not
reached Europe when Benzoni published his travels
through the Spanish possessions of the West, but its
medicinal property had not escaped his acute observation.
He gives a drawing of the medicine man putting three of[45]
his patients through a course of his tobacco treatment.
The first is represented freely imbibing the fumes of
tobacco, the second is just dropping his pipe, and himself
off to sleep, and the third swings in a hammock attended
by the doctor. Benzoni relates how in La Espanola and
the adjacent islands sick men went to the place where the
smoke was to be administered, and when they were
thoroughly intoxicated by it, the cure was mostly effected.
‘On returning to his senses the patient told a thousand
stories of his having been at the council of the gods, and
other high visions.’


And as to the origin of the plant, let the old chieftain of
the Susquehanna tribe himself relate the story. It will
merely be necessary to introduce him to the reader seated
with his family, and a few braves gathered around him,
listening to the words of a Swedish missionary, who
expounds to them the creed of the Christian and the
scriptural narrative of our first parents. The sermon over,
the old chief, with easy grace and measured words, replies:
‘What you have told us is very good, we thank you for
coming so far to tell us those things you have heard from
your mothers; in return we will tell you what we have
heard from ours.


‘In the beginning we had only flesh of animals to eat,
and if they failed they starved. Two of our hunters having
killed a deer and broiled part of it, saw a young woman
descend from the clouds, and seat herself on a hill hard by.
Said one to the other, “It is a spirit, perhaps, that has
smelt our venison; let us offer some of it to her.” They
accordingly gave her the tongue. She was pleased
with its flavour, and said, “Your kindness shall be
rewarded, come here thirteen moons hence and you shall
find it.” They did so, and found where her right hand[46]
had touched the ground maize growing, where her left
hand had been, kidney-beans, and where she had sat they
found tobacco!’




[47]


CHAPTER IV

TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH AND CHARACTER








But oh, what witchcraft of a stronger kind,


Or cause too deep for human search to find,


Makes earth-born weeds imperial man enslave,


Not little souls, but e’en the wise and brave?






Arbuckle.








Is smoking injurious to health? is an old and oft-repeated
question which has agitated men’s minds for fully
three centuries, and out of which has grown a literature of
peculiar interest, now signalised by royal Counterblasts
and Papal Bulls, now rising in grateful pæans for the
blessing conferred on weary humanity by the weed whose—








quiet spirit lulls the lab’ring brain,


Lures back to thought the flights of vacant mirth,


Consoles the mourner, soothes the couch of pain,


And breathes contentment round the humble hearth.








The utterances of the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir
Michael Hicks Beach, calling attention to the vast consumption
of tobacco in these islands have given force and
significance to the question, and naturally they suggest the
further inquiry as to how we stand in the matter in relation
to the past and to other civilised nations. On the threshold
of the inquiry figures present themselves pointing directly to
the conclusion that the British nation is spending upon the[48]
indulgence almost as much money as it does on the time-honoured
staff of life, our daily bread. Certainly this
aspect of the subject is somewhat startling. If the
consumption of tobacco has grown to such a magnitude
that it threatens to exceed that of wheat, then, clearly its
consideration has become a question of national importance.
It is the purpose of this chapter to lay before the reader
some facts, statistical, botanical, and chemical, relating to this
Indian weed which has done more to set good people by
the ears than the whole world of Flora besides. To this
end it will be necessary to ponder for a brief space on the
skeleton forms and figures embalmed in State Blue Books.


Board of Trade returns are not what may be called
recreative reading for leisure hours, but looked at good-naturedly
we soon come to regard them as we should
sure-footed sumpter mules carrying the account books of
commerce. A little searching and sifting among their
packs, brings us upon figures which plainly tell the story of
a steady, constant growth of the smoking habit, and that it
has, within the last half-century, increased in strength more
than two-fold. The ratio per head of the population, briefly
stated, is as follows: In 1841, when the population of
Great Britain, and approximately of Ireland, was 26,700,000,
the quantity of tobacco cleared through the Custom-house
for consumption in this kingdom was 23,096,281 lbs.,
or 13¾ ounces for each inhabitant. In 1861, with a
population of 28,887,000, the quantity of tobacco imported
for home consumption amounted to 35,413,846 lbs.,
showing that its use had increased to 19½ ounces per head.
Ten years later (1871) the proportion was 23 ounces for
each person. And in 1891 the ratio per head had risen to
26 ounces; the quantity imported being 60,927,915 lbs.
for a population of 38,000,000. Put plainly, this increase[49]
of consumption may only mean that the man who, in 1841,
smoked only one pipe a day, in 1891 found himself so
much better off that he could afford to smoke two.


Here, however, we come upon an important factor which,
in calculating the weight of tobacco actually consumed,
must be taken into account. Dr. Samuel Smiles, in the
course of his investigations into the subject, discovered that
in the process of manufacturing the leaf into the tobacco of
commerce, water was added to the extent of 33 per cent. of
the whole. The Statistical Office of the Customs has
courteously furnished the writer of these lines with the
further information that ‘Raw tobacco when imported
contains naturally 13 per cent. of moisture, but when it is
cut up for sale, the total moisture must not exceed 33 per
cent.’[2]


In estimating the weight of the weed actually consumed,
it will be necessary to make an addition of 20 per cent. to
the weight of the manufactured leaf imported. Since 1891
there has been a gradual increase in the quantity imported.
In the financial year 1904-5 the total of all kinds amounted
to 107,862,489 lbs. Of this 83,374,670 lbs. was retained
for Home use, giving 1.95 lbs. per head of the population,
and yielding a revenue to the national exchequer of
£13,184,767.


As to the cost to the nation of this enormous quantity of
tobacco, the official returns state that the declared value in
1895 was, for manufactured £1,256,313, and for unmanufactured
£2,097,603, together £3,353,916. It is
clear, however, that these figures can have little or no
significance from the consumer’s standpoint. Besides the[50]
declared value and the Customs duty, there is to be taken
into account the cost of manufacture and all the expenses
incidental thereto; the retail dealer’s profits, varying from
about 20 per cent. in the poorer districts, to 75 per cent. in
the best west-end shops. It may be mentioned also that
the Customs duties vary, according to the kind of the
tobacco imported, from 3s. 6d. to 5s. a pound weight, and
that the price for which it is sold to the merchant, ranges
from 1s. 6d. per pound. No satisfactory data upon
which a fair estimate can be based are to be found here.
But, if an average price per ounce be taken, as a starting
point, of the charge made by the tobacconist to the
consumer of all the various kinds, from the patrician
Havana to the plebeian ‘rough-cut,’ then we may arrive at
a fairly reasonable estimate. Sixpence an ounce is rather
below than above the average price paid for the weed. At
this rate, however, a total annual expenditure is reached of
£31,304,108. Then there is the almost endless variety of
nick-nacks which accompany the use of tobacco, from the
dhudeen and metal tobacco box of the Irish peasant, to the
lordly, gold-mounted meerschaum and amber pipe, with
cases, pouches, jars, pipe-racks, and all the paraphernalia
the nicotian epicure demands for the use and adornment of
his favourite indulgence. And how is the cost of these
accessories to be obtained? If, out of the 40,000,000
inhabiting these islands there should be 10,000,000
smokers, each spending on an average 2s. 6d. only a year
on these things, then would the annual outlay to the
consumer mount up to the grand total of £32,554,108.


Again the writer has to acknowledge his indebtedness to
the statistical branch of the Customs for the interesting
information that the quantity of wheat consumed in this
kingdom in 1895 was about 27,500,000[51]
quarters—770,000,000 lbs.—and that the average value was 24s. a
quarter, making a total value of £33,000,000. Thus we
see how nearly the sum expended upon tobacco-smoking
approaches to the sum spent upon wheat. Comparing the
quantities of the two commodities we can only say, so
much the better for the consumer of wheat, who obtains in
weight about fifteen times more of bread than he could
purchase of tobacco for the same sum—bearing in mind
that wheat requires 45 per cent. of water for its conversion
into bread. And herein lies the secret of the large
consumption of tobacco: bread is so cheap, the poor man
can afford to indulge in a little more of his comforter than
he could formerly.


Commenting upon the vast increase in the consumption
of tobacco, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was so mindful
of the public interest as to give expression to his matured
conviction that ‘Everything spent on tobacco by those who
have enough to eat is waste.’ Acknowledging himself to
be a non-smoker, and perhaps prejudiced, he would only
appeal to smokers whether this was not waste: ‘It is
calculated,’ said Sir Michael, ‘by the Customs authorities
that no less a value than £1,000,000 is literally thrown
into the gutter in the shape of the ends of cigarettes and
cigars. It is all the better for the revenue, but I think it
may be a subject of consideration for smokers.’


Looked at broadly, all such considerations are relative—relative
to the numbers who smoke and to their ability to
spend. Naturally we turn to our neighbours across the silver
streak and ask what they are doing; are they more frugal
than we are in the use of the weed? Germany, always to
the fore where painstaking and close attention to minutiæ
is required, tells us that Holland uses the leaf at the rate
of a trifle over 7 lbs. per head of her population; Austria,[52]
3.8 lbs.; Denmark, 3.7 lbs.; Switzerland, 3.3 lbs.; Belgium,
3.2 lbs.; Germany, 3 lbs.; Sweden and Norway, each 2.3
lbs.; France, 2.1 lbs.; Italy, Russia, Spain may be classed
together with a consumption of 1¼ lb.; while the United
States rises in the scale to 4½ lbs. for each inhabitant.
There is much virtue in figures; they give us the comforting
assurance that after all we are not so bad as our neighbours
by a pound or more, taking the average consumption of
the leading nations of the world. So we may be permitted
a little longer to smoke our pipe in peace undeterred by
fearful forebodings of evil to come.


But then the whole world smokes, and what the whole
world does must surely have some show of justification. It
is estimated that two thousand millions of pounds weight
are consumed every year, and that its money value far
exceeds five hundred million pounds sterling; its production
finds remunerative employment for countless thousands of
families. In America alone the tobacco plantations cover
an area of 400,000 acres, and in the labour of cultivation
40,000 persons win their daily bread. And what of the
million of money wantonly thrown into the gutter every
year? The smoker may well pause over his pipe and
consider what this may really mean. One million pounds
divided among forty million people would give sixpence to
each. That every man, woman, and child should in this
manner waste sixpence a year is doubtless much to be
deplored; in the eyes of our excellent guardian of the
public purse it is reprehensible. But is the whole of this
money or money’s worth really lost past recovery? Investigations
made at the instance of the Board of Inland Revenue
concerning the fate that befalls cigar ends have been the
means of revealing a curious aspect of our complex social
system. Amid the crowd, the bustle and din of struggling[53]
humanity, glimpses may be caught of a quiet fellow-being
plodding along the highways and byways of the great
metropolis, with a bag slung over his shoulder, and his
eyes fixed on the gutters intent upon picking up these
unconsidered trifles, or wending his way to the side door
of some hotel or hall where convivial souls do congregate
of an evening, and there doing a little private business with
the janitor, who pours into his bag these spoils of the
night’s revelry. And so it comes about that out of the
gutters and waste places of the earth there ultimately return
to the manufacturer the sorry remains of the once-treasured
Indian weed. Many a young hopeful of slender purse hugs
with pride his penny or twopenny cigar clad in a new
coat, little dreaming of its having in a former existence
shone, glow-worm like, in another sphere. Then there are
‘fancy mixtures’ made up for the pipe, enticingly scented
with an odour unknown to the weed, and which, as if
ashamed of the connection, vanishes in the burning,
leaving not a trace behind, save wonder at what can have
become of it, for the smoker gets none. And have we not
always in view the lowly wayfarer along life’s by-paths,
whose feet have trodden thorny places and stumbled,
maybe? He sees in the castaway an emblem of himself,
and fraternally picks out of the gutter a little consolation
for the buffets of the day; for tobacco has been aptly
called the poor man’s anodyne. And so life is rounded off
with a smoke. Possibly thoughts such as these mingle
with the smoker’s reflections on the subject of waste to the
consideration of which Sir Michael invited their attention.
But the economic phase the question presents may
be safely left to settle itself; for, after all, the cost of
the indulgence is the merest trifle compared with the
price paid for it in, say, Jacobean time, when paternal[54]
governments, out of a too tender regard for the interests of
their loving subjects of mean estate, levied a tax upon
tobacco which if converted into the coinage of the present
day would be equivalent to six or seven times the sum for
which it may now be purchased from the tobacconist.
Curiously enough, another Michael (Drayton), well-nigh
three hundred years ago (Polyolbion, 1613), raised his voice
more in sorrow than in anger against the extravagance of
his times, as compared with the days








Before the Indian weed so strongly was embrac’t,


Wherein such mighty summes we prodigally waste.








In this love of the weed, and the extravagant sums
expended upon it, is to be found the key to Robert Burton’s
high praise and vigorous condemnation, uttered in one
breath, of tobacco. As an example of Elizabethan nervous
vigour the passage is worth quoting:




Tobacco! divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco! which
goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and
philosopher’s stones; a sovereign remedy to all diseases; a
virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and
medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most
men, who take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief,
a violent purge of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish,
and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body
and soul.




Democritus Junior did not mince matters, either in
writing or when indulging in lusty banter with bargemen on
the Thames.


Of more vital importance than the price paid for it is
the consideration of its effects on health and character, and,
if we would view the subjects in its larger bearings, on our[55]
physical and moral organisation it is obviously necessary
that we should








Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find


Where nature moves, and rapture charms the mind.








At the outset, however, it cannot be too strongly emphasised
that there is no question as to the baneful action of
tobacco in any form on growing youths. Until the age of
adolescence is safely passed, or till the riper age of one and
twenty has been attained, there should be no thought of
smoking. The tests and experiments of physiologists, the
untrained observation of laymen, and the accumulated
experience of civilised nations are agreed in this conclusion.
Remarks pointing to the rapid growth of the smoking
habit among youths were made by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in his recent Budget speech, where, commenting
upon the augmented revenue from tobacco, he said it was
mainly due to the vast consumption of cigarettes, which
were specially attractive to our youthful population. ‘I am
told,’ Sir Michael added, ‘of one manufacturer who makes
two millions of cigarettes a day who hardly made any a
few years ago.’


Every-day observation bears out the statement that the
cigarette is the chosen smoke of youths. Go where we will,
in crowded streets or country lanes, boys of the tender age
of from nine or ten years upwards are almost constantly
met with, smoking paper cigarettes, who were they better
advised would prefer toffy, as was the case a few years ago.
Surely every one knows that children cannot go on smoking
tobacco with impunity, without, in fact, doing themselves
life-long injury. Since parents are too heedless of their
children’s welfare to prevent them from pursuing a practice
the inevitable results of which will, by-and-by, appear in[56]
stunted, weakly growth and the train of evil which follow on
deranged nerve-tissue, it would seem to be no more than
humane that the Legislature should step in and prohibit the
sale of tobacco in any form to children under the age of
say, sixteen. Already some of the states of North America
have instituted penal enactments for the protection of
children against the indulgence, which to them is
pernicious.


But what shall be said of the young man whose downy
lip bears testimony to his approaching majority—the age
when life is a romance and the future aglow with roseate
dreams? He knows himself to be the hope and pride of
his parents, that in him is centred all sorts of brilliant
possibilities. Nothing could be more fitting, he thinks,
than that he should proclaim to the world that he is now a
man by airing the park with his first cigar. And who so
heartless as to say him nay? He now becomes confidential
with the tobacconist, and learns from him the names of the
choicest brands, as the Vegueras, the kind specially prepared
for the Prince of Wales, selected from the finest
growths of the plant raised in the Veulto Abajo district of
Cuba, as well as the outer signs of many another rich and
rare leaf from the gardens of the Queen of the Antilles, or
from the plantations of the Indian Archipelago. By-and-by
his whole energies will be devoted to the service of his
king and country, doing the world’s roughest work away out
in the wilds of Africa, or administering justice, it may be,
among lawless tribes in Imperial India; and many a time,
when belated on a desolate track with nothing to cover him
but a blanket borrowed from his trusty peon, he will draw
from the recesses of a deep pocket or knapsack a homely
briar-root with more real pleasure than he ever felt when
smoking the choicest cigar on the Mall.


[57]


The temperament of each individual or of a race is an
important factor in a judicious consideration of the subject;
it opens out a field of inquiry of no ordinary interest, more
particularly as regards eastern nations. By temperament
physiologists mean certain physical and mental characteristics
arising from the predominant humours of the body.
Galen in the second century was perhaps the first to employ
the term to designate, according to the teachings of the old
school, the condition of the four elements of the body—the
blood, choler, phlegm, gall—and the varying combinations
of these, recognised to-day as the sanguine, lymphatic,
nervous, or bilious temperaments. Interest in this aspect
of the subject is heightened when we consider the marvellous
effect the consumption of tobacco has had on races
inhabiting Western Asia. Speaking on this curious point
in the Indian Section of the Imperial Institute in February,
1896, Sir George Birdwood called attention to the change
wrought in the character of the Turks by its use. He
remarked that




in ancient times the Scythians were a ceaseless scourge to
the neighbouring nations; that they were referred to by the
prophet Jeremiah as a ‘seething caldron,’ ever boiling over
in fierce and cruel eruptions from the North. Where are they
now? They have become the modern Turks; and the magic
which changed them from restless, destructive nomads into the
quiet and only too conservative sedentary Turks, Von Moltke
tells us in his Letters from Turkey was none other than the
acquired American habit of smoking tobacco.




Coming from so profound an observer of men as the great
German strategist, this testimony to the influence of the
Indian weed on human character is to be accepted as a
valuable contribution to our knowledge. And yet, viewed
in the light of recent events in Turkey, the marvellous[58]
transformation mentioned would seem to be hardly yet
completed. Besides, may not other influences tending to
modify the character of the Turks be found in their four
centuries of intermarriage with tribes of a less turbulent
disposition, as with Persians and Circassians, than the fiery,
stubborn mountaineers from whom they had descended?
It seems but reasonable to think so. Let us hasten,
however, to note that other distinguished travellers in
Turkey speak to the same effect, and that they, too, attribute
the change to the sobering and soothing action of
tobacco upon them. Dr. Madden, whose Travels in
Turkey and Egypt were published in 1829, says (i. 16)
that




the pleasure the Turks had in the reverie consequent on the
indulgence in the pipe consisted in a contemporary annihilation
of thought. The people really cease to think when they
have been long smoking. I have asked Turks repeatedly
what they have been thinking of during their long reveries,
and they replied ‘Of nothing.’ I could not remind them of
a single idea having occupied their minds; and in the consideration
of the Turkish character there is no more curious
circumstance connected with their moral condition.




Further testimony to Nicotiana’s benign sway over
human character is borne by Mr. E. W. Lane, the talented
translator of the Arabian Nights and author of the
Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. In this
latter work Mr. Lane says that




in the character of the Turks and Arabs who have become
addicted to its use it has induced considerable changes, particularly
rendering them more inactive than they were in
earlier times, leading them to waste over the pipe many hours
which might be more profitably employed; but it has had
another and better effect—that of superseding in a great[59]
measure the use of wine, which, to say the least, is very injurious
to the health of the inhabitants of hot climates.…
It may further be remarked in the way of apology for the
pipe, as employed by the Turks and Arabs, that the mild kinds
of tobacco generally used by them have a gentle effect; they
calm the nervous system, and, instead of stupefying, sharpen
the intellect.




He next pays a high tribute to the Oriental method of
smoking, and assures the reader that the pleasures of
Eastern society are considerably enhanced by the use of
the pipe, adding, ‘It affords the peasant, too, a cheap
and sober refreshment, and probably often restrains him
from less innocent indulgences.’ Mr. Layard and Mr.
Crawfurd, whose large experience of Eastern peoples is
known to the world, have each recorded his opinion to the
effect that the use of tobacco has contributed very much
towards the present sobriety of Asiatics. The presence of
an array of witnesses such as these to the power of the pipe
to subdue the savage breast naturally suggests the thought
of a new field of operations for its use. That laudable
organisation, the Peace Society, which seeks to combat
man’s militant instincts by such persuasions as fall short of
the shillelagh, ought certainly to find in the Indian’s peace-pipe
with a well-filled tobacco-pouch a coadjutor for the
propagation of its amiable doctrines; at any rate, a pioneer
that would prepare the soil for the seed and the advent of
the millennium. Lord Clarendon, when Minister of
Foreign Affairs, used to excuse his room reeking with the
fumes of tobacco by declaring that diplomacy itself was a
mere question of the judicious application of tobacco
between opposing plenipotentiaries. The pipe, indeed,
has always been recognised as a good diplomatist. If you
want time to consider well before committing yourself to an[60]
answer you find that the pipe won’t draw, though you puff
and puff; then, having gained time and cleared your
thoughts, the pipe mends, a cloud is formed, and out of
chaos comes light, and now you are ready with your argument,
though you may begin with, ‘your pardon, friend,
but what were we talking about?’ If diplomacy can be
soothed and led out of thorny paths into pleasant ways,
then assuredly a useful career awaits the weed in the
House, where the magic of its suasive breath would subdue
a bellicose Parliament into easy complaisance, and so confer
an inestimable blessing on a weary Legislature.


But it would be well to take a closer view of this
marvellous weed which enters so largely into our domestic
economy, dipping into our purses, affecting in some measure
our health and habits, in a way, too, that leads people to
think that surely a mischief-loving Puck lurks among its
alluring leaves, delighting to send its votaries, some into
dreams of Elysium, others into visions of—another place.
Nicotiana, the name science has bestowed on the plant in
recognition of the services of Jean Nicot in spreading a
knowledge of it over Europe, more particularly as regards
its supposed medicinal properties, is a member of a large
and varied family of the natural order Solanacæ, one of the
largest genera, containing about 900 species. The whole
family is more or less suspicious; some members are
decidedly bad, as, for example, the deadly nightshade,
henbane, and mandrake, evil names which startle the
timorous and all self-respecting people. Relief, however,
comes, and confidence is restored, when we learn that
linked with Nicotiana as twin sister is our old and esteemed
favourite the potato, whose humble services to hungry
humanity are incalculable. Yet out of the leaves and fruit
of this useful and innocent member of the family chemists[61]
extract a deadly poison called solanine, which they describe
as an acrid narcotic poison, two grains of which given to a
rabbit caused paralysis of the posterior extremities, and
death in two hours. Traces of this poison are also found
in healthy tubers. And yet nobody was ever poisoned by
eating potatoes; far from this, many in times of scarcity
have died for want of them. Considering these things,
smokers may possibly comfort themselves with the thought
that tobacco does not stand alone in evil repute, that even
a vegetable which enters so largely into the composition of
humanity as does the potato contains a portion—an infinitesimal
portion it is true, but still some portion—of the
element of evil which seems to permeate more or less all
things earthly. But let them reserve their judgment until
the evidence of the chemist has been heard. It may be
urged, too, that the highly prized virtues of the tomato, a
family connection, might be taken into account in estimating
the sins of the shady ones. The love-apple of Eris, far
from creating discord, gives unalloyed pleasure, affording
the epicure a gastronomic delight.


The genus Nicotiana comprises upwards of forty species,
of which five only are cultivated for tobacco, and, of these,
three stand out conspicuously as the best and most favoured
ones of commerce. In botany they are designated:—(1)
Nicotiana Tabacum; (2) N. rustica; (3) N. persica.
They differ one from another chiefly in the degree of
thickness of the midrib and fibres, and in the evenness of
the leaves, which are usually hairy and somewhat clammy
feeling. The first mentioned is the typical tobacco plant
of America, whose home is still where Raleigh’s first
colonists to the New World found it, in Virginia. From
its leaves is prepared the great bulk of the tobacco consumed
in this country, as well as in America. It is a[62]
strong, handsome, flowering perennial, growing in latitudes
varying from about 40° Fahr. to the tropics. And a most
voracious feeder, it quickly exhausts the richest soils, yet it
is so hardy that it will thrive in almost any soil and anywhere.
In tropical lands, however, particularly such as are
light, dry, and rich in potash, it flourishes most luxuriantly,
and attains its fullest and healthiest development, sometimes
rising to the grand altitude of 15 feet, though 6 feet
is the usual limit of its upward growth. The root is large,
long, and fibrous; the stalk or central stem is erect, strong,
of the thickness of a man’s wrist, and hairy; towards the
top it divides into branches. The leaves embrace the stem
from the base; they are large, symmetrical, lanceolated,
and of a pale-green colour, measuring usually 2 feet by
18 inches. From the summit of the branching stalks
clusters of rose-coloured flowers are produced of a bell-shape,
the segment of the corolla being tapering and
pointed; the seeds are contained in long sharp-pointed
pods, and are so small that in one ounce no fewer than
100,000 have been counted.


Next in order of importance in a commercial sense ranks
the Syrian plant, N. rustica. It is nevertheless a native of
America which transplantation into Syrian soil has greatly
improved in all those qualities which commend themselves
to delicate smokers. It differs from its sister plant of Virginia
chiefly in its dwarf-like stature, for it seldom attains a
higher growth than three or four feet, and its leaves are not
so symmetrical; they are of an ovate shape, and are not
attached to the centre stem, but issue from the branching
stalks, which in the season bear green flowers; the segment
of the corolla is rounded. This, too, is a hardy plant,
flourishes well in almost any latitude, and ripens earlier
than the N. Tabacum. For some years back it has been[63]
largely cultivated in Germany, Holland, and the countries
bordering on the Mediterranean; indeed, it at one time
flourished rapaciously in our own fields, flowering from
midsummer to Michaelmas. From its leaves are obtained,
under the varying conditions of soil and climate, the kinds
of tobacco vended to the consumer under the names of
Turkish, Syrian, and Latakia. And on account of its retaining
much of its primitive colour all through the process
of drying and manufacture it is recognised in commerce as
‘green tobacco.’


In the third variety we have the beautiful white flowering
Persian plant, from whose oblong stem-leaves is prepared
the famous Shiraz tobacco, N. persica. It is now recognised
as a native of Persia, though its original home is undoubtedly
across the Atlantic. Being slow to ignite, this
aromatic weed does not lend itself readily to the cigar; but
surely the difficulty might be overcome by using an Indian
wrapper. The planters of Dindigul, or, as Sir W. W.
Hunter gives the name in the Imperial Gazetteer of India,
Dindu-Kal (Rock of Dindu), are now sending to Europe
large quantities of their fine flavoured tobacco leaf which
would form a very good wrapper for this fragrant but slow-burning
weed.


There is a fourth variety named Nicotiana Finis, which
has found much favour in the private gardens of England.
It is not so symmetrical as those just mentioned, its leaves
are small, widely separated, in fact, rather straggling; but
under the training of a skilled gardener it is made to assume
a bushy form. Its chief attraction is found in the delicate
white flowers which it produces; these during the daytime
droop, but at sundown they generally assume an erect
posture and become firm, then the petals expand and the
flower emits a delicious perfume, sweeter far than jessamine.[64]
In the tobacco plant English florists and gardeners have
found an accessory for filling up vacant spots in their
shrubberies with good effect; and the side-beds along a
carriage drive, or the shelves in a greenhouse, can be
pleasingly diversified by selections from the varying kinds
the genus Nicotiana presents. As an ornamental flowering
plant it is certainly worthy of a place among the many
charming indigenous and exotic shrubs which nowadays
adorn private grounds. Then its uses either as a fumigator
or as a wash are such as all experienced gardeners know well
how to appreciate; in either form it is a powerful prophylactic,
readily destroying insect pests and the germs of
blight.


Let us now pass into the domain of the chemist and view
for a while the operations of this modern magician as he
summons the genii of the Indian weed to appear before
him in all their naked deformity, and compels them to
yield up their secrets. There is no poetry in the chemist’s
crucible; imagination fails to lend a transient charm to the
grim constituents of the bewitching leaf. Here, in his
silent retreat, the analyst weighs and measures, tests and
resolves into their original elements whatever things, foul or
fair, come into his hands. He weighs a pound of the prepared
leaves, steeps them in water, and subjects them to
distilation; presently there rises to the surface a volatile,
fatty oil which congeals and floats. It has the odour of
tobacco and is bitter to the tongue; on the mouth and
throat it produces a sensation similar to that caused by
long-continued smoking. Taking a minute particle on the
point of a needle he swallows it, and immediately experiences
a feeling of giddiness, nausea, and an inclination to vomit.
And yet the quantity obtained of this evil thing from the
pound of leaves is barely two grains. Now he adds a little[65]
sulphuric acid to the water, and distils with quicklime;
soon there is dislodged from the hidden cells of the leaves
a small quantity of a volatile, oily, colourless, alkaline fluid,
the prince of the genii—nicotine. The odour of an old
clay pipe grown black with age hangs about it: it is acrid,
burning narcotic, and scarcely less poisonous than prussic
acid, a single drop having the power to kill a dog. It boils
at a temperature of 482° Fahr., and rises into vapour at a
point below that of burning tobacco, consequently it is
always present in the smoke. Evaporating one drop of this
subtle essence you are at once seized with a feeling of suffocation,
and experience difficulty in breathing. Distilled
alone in a retort yet another element is called up of an oily
nature, which resembles in its chief characteristics an oil
obtained by a similar process from the leaves of the foxglove
(Digitalis purpurea). This also is acrid and poisonous;
one drop applied to the tongue of a cat brought on convulsions,
and, in two minutes, death. All these evil things the
chemist tells us dwell in the heart of the Indian herb, and,
mingling with other unseen elements, lure men on to their
fate. In the mystical glare of his laboratory there looms
into shape before our mental vision the spectral form of the
King of Denmark, in Hamlet, telling of the dark deeds done








With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,


And in the porches of my ears did pour


The leprous distilment; whose effect


Holds such an enmity with blood of man


That swift as quicksilver it courses through


The natural gates and alleys of the body.[3]








[66]


And memory recalls the case of the Comte de Bocarmé
who was executed at Mons, in 1851, for poisoning his brother-in-law
with nicotine, in order to obtain reversion of his
property. The simple though crafty Hottentot, too, finds in
the juice of tobacco a potent agent wherewith he can rid
himself of the snake that, unbidden, glides into his kraal.
Under the influence of one drop the reptile dies as instantly
as if struck by an electric spark.


A distinguished physician and man of science, Sir B. W.
Richardson, has tested the tobacco leaf and all its
component parts with a thoroughness which puts to flight
all doubts as to what it is ‘men put into their mouths to
take away their brains.’ The chief results of his experiments
may be briefly summarised. Although evident
differences prevail in respect to the products arising from
different cigars, different tobacco, and different pipes, there
are certain substances common to all varieties of tobacco-smoke.
Firstly, in all tobacco-smoke there is a certain
amount of watery vapour which can be separated from it.
Secondly, a small quantity of free carbon is always present;
it is to the presence of this constituent that the blue colour
of tobacco is due. It is this carbon which in confirmed
and inveterate smokers settles on the back part of the
throat and on the lining of the membrane of the bronchial
tubes, creating often a copious secretion which it discolours.[67]
Thirdly, the presence of ammonia can be detected in small
quantity, and this gives to the smoke an alkaline reaction
that bites the tongue after long smoking; it is the ammonia
that makes the tonsils and throat of the smoker so dry,
and induces him to quaff as he smokes, and that partly
excites the salivary glands to secrete so freely. This
element also exerts an influence on the blood. Fourthly,
the test of lime-water applied to the leaf shows the
presence of carbonic acid. In the smoke the quantity
differs considerably in different kinds of tobacco; to the
action of this constituent Sir B. W. Richardson traces the
sleepiness, lassitude, and headache which follow upon
prolonged indulgence of the pipe. Fifthly, the smoke of
tobacco yields a product having an oily appearance and
possessing poisonous properties; this is commonly known
as nicotine, or oil of tobacco, which on further analysis is
found to contain three substances, namely, a fluid alkaloid
(the nicotine of the chemist), a volatile substance, having
an empyreumatic odour, and an extract of a dark resinous
character, of a bitter taste. From this comes the smell
peculiar to stale tobacco which hangs so long about the
clothing of habitual smokers—if the smell be from good
Eastern-grown tobacco many persons think it wholesome.
It is nevertheless this extract which creates in those unaccustomed
to its use a feeling akin to sea-sickness. Hence
it appears that the more common effects are due to the
carbonic acid and ammonia liberated in the process of
smoking, while the rarer and more severe symptoms are due
to the nicotine, the empyreumatic substance, and the resin.


As to the effects of tobacco-smoking upon the human
body Sir Benjamin Richardson would appear to see no
reason for thinking that it can produce any organic change,
though it may induce various functional disturbances if[68]
carried to excess. These are such as all young smokers
experience more or less severely, according to their
temperament and the quality or strength of the tobacco
they use. There can be no question that the first attempt
at smoking reveals phenomena which plainly show that to
become one of the initiated in the service of Nicotina a
certain ordeal must be passed through if the novice would
rank among her votaries. It may be of use to remark that
the stronger kinds of tobacco are the products of the
Virginian and Kentucky plantations; French tobacco too is
quite as strong, they contain from six to eight per cent. of
nicotine; Maryland and Havanna tobaccos, also those of
the Levant, generally average two per cent., while the
products of Sumatra and China barely contain one per
cent. of nicotine. The general conclusion Sir Benjamin
Richardson deduces from his experiments is such as might
be fairly expected from an eminent physician of large
experience, unbiassed by prejudice. In this judicial sense
he remarks that tobacco ‘is innocuous as compared with
alcohol; it does infinitely less harm than opium, it is in no
sense worse than tea, and by the side of high living
altogether it compares most favourably.’ But on the
question of youths smoking he speaks most decisively
against even the smallest indulgence in tobacco before the
system is matured. His words are: ‘With boys the
habit is as injurious and wrong as it is disgusting. The
early “piper” loses his growth, becomes hoarse, effete,
lazy, and stunted.’


The late Professor Johnston, of Durham, gave his
attention to the subject, and in the eminently useful work
on the Chemistry of Common Life he minutely describes
the results he obtained from a careful analysis of tobacco
leaves. These in all essential particulars are such as have[69]
already been mentioned. Although he points out the
highly poisonous nature of some of the constituents of
tobacco, he yet speaks regretfully of his inability to derive
from smoking the soothing pleasures mentioned by others,
particularly by Dr. Pereira, who remarking on its tranquillizing
effects when moderately indulged in, says that ‘it is
because of these effects that it is so much admired and
adopted by all classes of society, and by all nations,
civilised and barbarous.’ Mr. Johnston continues:




Were it possible amid the teasing, paltry cares, as well as
the more poignant griefs of life, to find a mere material soother
and tranquillizer productive of no evil after-effects and
accessible alike to all—to the desolate and the outcast equally
with him who is rich in a happy home and the felicity of
sympathising friends—who so heartless as to wonder or regret
that millions of the world-chaffed should flee to it for solace?
I confess, however, that in tobacco I have never found this
soothing effect. This no doubt is constitutional, for I cannot
presume to ignore the united testimony of the millions of
mankind who assert from their own experience that it does
produce such effects.




He draws attention to the effects of tobacco on the
Turks, and speaking of the drowsy reverie they fall into
under its influence, asks if it is really a peculiarity of the
Turkish temperament that makes tobacco act upon them
as it does, sending the body to sleep while the mind is
alive and awake.




That this is not its general action in Europe (he remarks)
the study of almost every German writer can testify. With
the constant pipe diffusing its beloved aroma around him the
German philosopher works out the profoundest of his results
of thought. He thinks and dreams, and dreams and thinks,
alternately; but while his body is soothed and stilled, his[70]
mind is ever awake. From what I have heard such men say,
I could almost fancy they had in practice discovered a way of
liberating the mind from the trammels of the body, and thus
giving it a freer range and more undisturbed liberty of action.
I regret that I have never found it act so upon myself.




These reflections of the sympathetic Professor may be
very grateful to the habitual smoker, who influenced by a
natural feeling of attachment, looks lovingly on his pipe and
pouch, as he would on old friends grown dearer with time;
the older and more worn the closer he clings to them, till
by-and-by he talks to them as would primitive man to his
fetish. But this amiable weakness needs to be looked
firmly in the face, and if it cannot bear scrutiny, if the
indulgence be found hurtful to body or mind, it must go;
thrown out of the window if need be, with a resolve not to
go out and look for it, to restore it to its old niche, though
the old pouch may contain Mr. J. M. Barrie’s beloved,
Arcadia Mixture.


Undoubtedly we have among us, and have had in
England since the days when Raleigh introduced the
‘Indian’s herb’ into the royal palace and made it agreeable
to his queen and fashionable everywhere, some remarkable
examples of great smokers occupying the highest positions
in the domain of intellect. Instances crowd the memory.
The tall, dark figure of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
presents itself, he whose Leviathan and other philosophical
works stirred into activity the intellect of Europe, and
who attained the ripe age of ninety-two. Sir Isaac Newton
smoked, even in the presence of the lady who honoured
him with well-meant attentions. Seated one day quietly
by his side, happy in anticipation of what the future might
bring forth, Sir Isaac suddenly seized her hand—now the
blissful moment had arrived!—but, instead of tenderly[71]
pressing it within his own, he probed her little finger into
the bowl of his pipe to remove some obstruction. The
story told by Sir David Brewster points a moral—ladies
should be chary of lavishing their affection on philosophers,
they are so very absent-minded. Divinity furnishes a host
of devotees to the pipe. Leading the throng are Dr.
Henry Aldrich, of Christ Church, Oxford; Dr. Parr, whose
Greek was the admiration of ripe scholars and the terror of
little boys; who overwhelmed his friends with torrents of
eloquence and clouds of tobacco-smoke; Robert Hall,
England’s greatest pulpit orator, and many another divine
burned incense continually at the shrine of Nicotiana;
while towering in the forefront of the great tobacco-smokers
of the Victorian age are the figures of Carlyle and
Tennyson. But these illustrious examples of great tobacco
smokers are, in respect to the whole community, altogether
exceptional, and may be regarded as having no more
bearing on any general rule applicable to all men than had
their individual capacity for imbibing, say, ‘sweet waters.’
It may be observed, however, that those who pass severe
censure on the smoking habit seem to overlook the fact
that men do not eat or drink tobacco; that the prudent
smoker is quite contented if its ambient fumes gently float
about him, regaling his olfactory sense. It can never
satisfy reasonable inquiry to be told that deadly results
follow the administration, not of the smoke, but of a single
drop of the essential oil of tobacco to a dog, that dies of
old age at fifteen years; or to a rabbit, that breeds seven
times a year and dies at the age of five. Far above
theorising there is the teaching of experience, and if each
would-be smoker will in this, as in other things, be guided
by this unfailing monitor, and act upon the dictates of
common sense, no harm will come to him.


[72]


There are people of so gloomy a temperament that they
would not let a man cultivate a flower-garden or listen to
the songs of birds on the Sabbath; who look upon music
as a sensuous indulgence, and reading as idleness. To
these we have nothing to say; it is their misfortune to think
and feel so. Stripping the argument of the puerilities and
exaggerations of prejudice, let us recognise the broad fact
that men of every nation and in every climate do smoke;
a fact that is universal needs no apology.


The prophylactic properties of tobacco will be considered
from an historical point of view in the next chapter,
headed, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tobacco.’




This chapter first appeared in The Nineteenth Century for
May 1897. Mr. W. T. Stead, commenting upon it in his
Review of Reviews, agreed with the writer’s firm stand against
juvenile smoking, and expressed the opinion that ere long an
act of Parliament would be entered in the Statute Book
prohibiting the sale of tobacco to youths under the age of 16.
Unavailing efforts to this end were subsequently made by
private members of the House of Commons. At last the
Legislature has taken up the subject, and under the tactful
conduct of the measure of Mr. Herbert Samuel, the Under-Secretary
for the Home Office, a Bill has passed the third
reading making the sale of cigarettes to children illegal. This
step in the right direction will have the effect of awakening
public attention to the subject, and of stirring up parents to
a more watchful supervision over their children’s habits.






[73]


CHAPTER V

THE USE AND ABUSE OF TOBACCO








Ye hot, ye cold, ye Rheumatick draw nigh;


In this rich leafe a sovereign dose doth lie.


We’ll cure ye all; Physick ye need not want,


Here, ’tis i’ th’ gummy inside of a plant.






—1670.








Though differences of temperament may not allow everyone
the mild indulgence of the pipe, all are interested in
learning that in the leaves of the Indian’s weed dwells a
friendly genius ready to protect us from the virulent attacks
of the myriad host of invisible life which floats around us,
in some cases infecting the air we breathe, the food we eat,
and the water we drink. This assurance comes to us from
the bacteriologist, whose experiments conducted under the
microscope, demonstrate that contact with the smoke of
tobacco destroys the vitality of microbes. Especially
comforting is it to know this at the season of the year when
the air lies heavily upon the land.


Here, then, we come upon ground interesting alike to
the smoker and the non-smoker, for both will agree that
it is infinitely better to let the weed spread its wings on the
blast and breathe in the face of the foe than to go
unprotected through unwholesome air laden, it may be,
with noxious germs.


[74]


It is also gratifying to learn that our forefathers, in
whose wisdom all right-minded people, of course, fondly
believe, were not wholly wrong in their estimate of the
manifold virtues of their beloved herb. With the largeness
of faith which belongs equally to the infancy of research
and the springtime of life, they believed with the implicit
faith of childhood in its all-healing powers. And the
learned in the secrets of Nature proclaimed to suffering
humanity that out of the heart of the New World had come
a remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to. But if facts
grew too strong for faith to grapple with, and overthrew their
Dagon, this one consolation remains to testify to their just
appreciation of the weed, namely, that it can, and does,
destroy contagious germs.


Early in the seventeenth century, physicians at home and
abroad had observed a connection between the use of
tobacco and freedom from the dread pestilence which at
times swept over the land. Doctors Gardiner and Lewis,
Thorius and Diemerbroeck, Hoffman and Willis have left
records of their experience of cases where tobacco proved
to be efficacious, administered either in fume or liquor,
lotions or unguents. No doubt their treatment was somewhat
crude, and their concoctions (marvels of simplicity)
were not always successful, and, needless to say, that
modern therapeutics takes no account of their remedies.
But their discovery that tobacco was destructive of insect
life on animals as well as on vegetables, that it cleansed old
wounds and sores and suffered them to heal ‘comfortably,’
surely redeems them from a multitude of sins committed in
the name of tobacco.


Glancing back to the early records of its advent in
Europe we come upon Liebault in 1570 discoursing
pleasantly on the marvellous virtues of the herb, and learn[75]
of him that it owes its introduction into the fashionable
world to Jean Nicot. He says, ‘Although it be not long
since it hath been known in France, notwithstanding,
deserveth palm and price, and among all other medicinable
herbs it deserveth to stand in the front rank, by reason of
its singular virtues, and, as it were, almost to be held in
admiration, as hereafter you shall understand.…
The herb is called Nicotiane, of the name of him that gave
the first intelligence thereof into this realm—as many other
plants have taken their name from certain Greeks and
Romans, who, having been in strange countries for service
of their commonweals, have brought into their countries
many plants which were before unknown. Some have
called it the Queen’s herb, because it was first sent to her,
as hereafter shall be declared by the gentleman that was
the first inventor of it, and since has by her been given to
divers people for to sow, whereby it might be planted in
the land. Others have named it the Grand Prior’s herb,
for that he caused it to multiply in France, more than any
other, and for the great reverence that he bears to his herb,
because of the divine effects therein contained. Notwithstanding,
it is better to name it Nicotiane, the name of
him that sent it into France, first, to the end that he may
have the honour thereof, according to his desert, for that
he hath enriched our country with so singular an herb.’


Jean Nicot, Lord of Villemain, and Master of the Requests
of the French King’s household, was sent as ambassador to
the Portuguese Court in 1559, remaining there until 1561.
On the occasion of his visiting the state prisons of Lisbon,
the keeper, being a gentleman, as Liebault states, presented
him with specimens of a strange herb, which had just
arrived in Port from Florida, shipped by a Flemish
merchant. Nicot’s curiosity was aroused and he took an[76]
early opportunity of purchasing from the merchant a
quantity of the prepared leaves, and some seeds of the
plant. Learning from him what use the Indians made of the
weed, and their manner of smoking it, he began to experiment,
first upon himself (as all good practitioners should
do) and liking it, he caused some of the seeds to be sown in
his garden, where to his great joy they grew and multiplied
exceedingly. There can hardly be a doubt that Nicot had
been told by the merchant that the Indians expressed a
juice from the leaves with which they cured the wounds
received in battle, and that he had made this known
to his domestics. For Liebault says that the Lord
Ambassador was one day advertised of a young man of
kin to his page who had made assay of the herb, bruised
and in liquor, upon an ulcer he had upon his cheek near
unto the nose, coming of a Noli me tangere, which began
to take root already at the gristle of the nose, wherewith
he found himself marvellously eased. Whereupon Nicot
caused the said young man to be brought before him, and
after a minute inspection he ordered the sufferer to continue
the treatment eight or ten days longer. Nicot now hurried
off to the King of Portugal’s physician and informed him
of the case, and together they watched the progress of the
cure. By the end of ten days the physician was enabled to
certify that the Noli me tangere was ‘utterly extinguished’
and the face ‘comfortably healed.’ Shortly afterwards
Nicot’s cook almost cut off his thumb with a great chopping
knife, and he too, flew to the new remedy for relief, and
after five or six dressings was likewise comfortably healed.
A captain presented his son to the Lord Ambassador and
besought him to exert his healing art upon the boy, who
was grievously afflicted with the King’s evil. And unto
him was assay made of the liquor of the herb, and again its[77]
curative powers were asserted in the complete removal of
the disease. Next came a gentleman from the fields,
craving the Lord Ambassador to cure him of a wound in
his leg, which for a space of two years had tortured him
and rendered the limb useless. Nicot, filled with generous
enthusiasm, readily acceded to his appeal, and lotions and
unguents were prepared for him, with instructions how to
apply them. In ten days’ time he again presented himself,
and with overflowing gratitude declared that the ulcer had
disappeared, and that he had now perfect use of his leg.
Many other similar Noli me tangere cases and their
comfortable cure are recorded by Liebault and Monardes.
News of the potent influence of the weed, now commonly
called the Ambassador’s herb, over bodily infirmity spread
with amazing rapidity, and out of every nook and corner of
the kingdom there flocked to the Ambassador sufferers of
all sorts and conditions, praying to be healed of their
Noli me tangere. Nicot’s garden was now a centre of
attraction for fashionable loungers: his house had already
become an infirmary; and great was the rejoicing when the
maimed, the sick, and the wounded threw away their
crutches, sound of body and full of faith. From the
recital whereof it plainly appears that though names may
change, poor humanity remains pretty much what it was
in the beginning, and none wax so fat in fame or fortune
as those who minister to its weaknesses.


But Nicot’s work as a healer of the sick with the Indian
weed was not yet completed; there were patients at home
demanding his immediate attention. Hearing that Lady
Montague was dying at St. Germains of an ulcer ‘bred in
the breast,’ which of course was none other than our old
friend Noli me tangere in the form of cancer, and for
which no remedy could ever be found, though the Countess[78]
of Russe had consulted on her friend’s behalf the most
eminent physicians of the realm, Nicot, with commendable
promptitude, despatched to the king a quantity of the
weed, sending therewith precise instructions how to prepare
and administer it. With this first instalment he wrote
describing it as having a peculiarly pleasant taste, and
oddly enough, he bestowed upon it his own name, saying,
‘Nicotiane est une espèce d’herbe de vertu admirable
pour guérir toutes ulcères et autres tels accidents au corps
humain.’ This letter is said to be still preserved in the
Chateau Belem. To the Queen Mother he presented
seeds of the plant which she caused to be sown in the
royal gardens. This wondrous product of the new-found
world, where all was strange and clothed in the garb of
mystery, created a lively interest in France. But Europe
had hardly yet emerged from the glamour of the Dark
Ages, when every important event was governed by invisible
agencies, and magic alone could explain the inexplicable.
Catharine de Medici would secretly consult her magician
before entering upon any of her numerous dark designs.
Parenthetically it may be mentioned that George Buchanan,
the Scotch philosopher and tutor to our James I., had so
strong an aversion to Catharine de Medici that in one of
his Latin epigrams, where he alludes to tobacco being
called d’herbe Medici, he warns all who value their health
to shun the herb, not that in itself it is hurtful, but being
called by so vile a name it must needs become poisonous.
A single instance may suffice to indicate the kind of
interest the weed on its first introduction into France
awakened in the French court. Gathered round the
queen’s table are some of the brightest wits of the gay
capital, discussing with eager curiosity the marvellous
story told of the Indian’s herb in the despatch just received[79]
from Nicot. Listening to these things the Comte de
Jarnac felt irresistibly impelled to do something significant
of the occasion, and springing from his seat he hastened to
the house of his dearest friend to repeat the story. His
friend was ‘short-breathed,’ suffering indeed from a severe
attack of asthma. Unfolding the packet containing his
share of the precious herb, Jarnac directed an attendant to
distil it; this done, he added to the liquor some euphrasy
(eyebright). Then presenting the decoction to the
patient, he explained to him with the eloquence born of a
new faith that the spirit of the herb would enter into his
own and would assuredly expel the demon of asthma.
Thus urged and entreated, the sufferer swallowed the
potation, and wonderful to relate, if we are to believe the
zealous chronicler, the man who but a little while before
was gasping for breath was now comfortably healed!


Clearly then tobacco owes its introduction into the
highest ranks of European society to its credentials as a
healer of the sick. Immediately after France had received
her first instalment, along with Nicot’s laudatory account of
its marvellous virtues, Italy obtained the herb direct from
the hands of Cardinal Santa Croce on his return from his
nunciature in Spain, and for years it bore in his honour
the name of Erba Santa Croce. Castro Duranti celebrated
the event in Latin verses, wherein he ascribes to the
Indian’s herb the efficacy of a charm over every malady,
and extols the cardinal for his service in bringing it,
coupling his name with his distinguished ancestor, who
brought to Rome a portion of the true cross. He assures
the reader that their services rightly considered








Procure, as much as mortal man can do,


The welfare of our souls and bodies too.








[80]


Tidings of the pleasing delusion of tobacco’s wonderful
curative properties reached these shores towards the close
of the sixteenth century, when the pipe was already
installed in almost every chimney-nook. Needless to say
that lovers of the weed received the intelligence with
warmth, and held to the new belief with a steadfastness
nothing could shake. Some of England’s foremost poets
and dramatists signalized their high appreciation of the
exotic’s rare attributes in imperishable literature. Edmund
Spenser, for example, was a great smoker, and as we have
already seen, when he and Raleigh met in Ireland they
would sit together by the hour over a soothing pipe, while
holding delightful contests of responsive versifying. In the
Faërie Queene is a sweet passage telling how Belphœbe
hastened into the woods to gather herbs to heal the
wounded Timais:








For she of herbs had great intendiment,


Taught of the Nymph which from her infancy


Her nursed had in true nobility:


There, whether it divine Tobacco were,


Or Panachea, or Polygony,


She found and brought it to her patient dear,


Who all this while lay bleeding out his heart-blood near.








In a similar vein William Lyly, Queen Elizabeth’s court-poet,
speaks of the weed in his play entitled The Woman
in the Moone. Pandora, having wounded a lover with a
spear, urges her attendant to gather








… Balm and cooling violets,


And of our holy herb nicotian,


And bring withal pure honey from the hive,


To heal the wound of my unhappy hand.








Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, and a host of other playwrights[81]
and pamphleteers found in the new indulgence a
source of endless amusement, and belaboured ‘Tobacconists’
with rare sallies of wit and humour.


Authors learned in the materia medica of those days tell
of wonderful cures wrought by this Sana Sancta Indorum.
In a booklet bearing the rather droll title of Dyet’s Dry
Dinner (1599) Henry Buttes informs the reader that
‘Tobacco cureth any grief, dolour, imposture, or obstruction
proceeding of cold or wind, especially in the head or
breast. The fume taken in a pipe is good against rumes,
hoarseness, ache in the head, stomach, lungs, breast, etc.,
also in want of meat, drink, sleep, or rest.’ The dyspeptic
and the sleepless are invited to banquet upon a dry
dinner, and they will assuredly find in the pipe a never-failing
remedy for their several ailments. The uplifted
author feels himself impelled to give expression to his high
appreciation of the new regimen in verse, and exclaims,








Fruit, herbs, flesh, fish, whitemeats, spice, sauce, all,


Concoct are by Tobacco’s Cordiall!








Proceeding with his description of a dry dinner and
elaborating many mysterious complications of the human
system and their complete removal by the use of tobacco,
he says that he ‘names his book, Dyet’s Dry Dinner, not
only Caminum Prandium, without wine, but Accipritinum,
without all drink, except tobacco, which also is but dry
drink.’ And as to the first introduction of tobacco into this
kingdom, he informs us that it was ‘translated out of the
Indies in the seed or root, native or sative in our own
fruit-fullest soil. The Indian name for the plant is Peicelt,
surnamed tobacco, by the Spaniards of the Ile Tabago.
Yet we are not beholden to their tradition. Our English
Ulisses, renowned Syr Walter Rawleigh, a man admirably[82]
excellent in navigation and Nature’s privy counsell, and
infinitely read in the wide boke of the worlde, hath both
farre fetcht it and deare bought it, the estimate of which I
leave to other; yet this all know, since it came into request,
there hath been Magnus Fumi Questus; and Fumi-Vendulus
is the best Epithite for an Apothecary.’


How enraptured medical men were with the new herb,
believing that at last they had discovered the panacea of
their happiest dreams, may be learned from Dr. Gardiner’s
Trial of Tobacco. On the title page of this rare quarto
volume, published in London in 1610, the author describes
in prolix detail the contents of his book, thus:—‘Wherein
his (tobacco’s) worth is most worthily expressed: as in the
name, nature, and qualitie of the same hearb—his speciall use
in physick, with the right and true use of taking it, as well for
the seasons and times, as also the complexions, dispositions,
and constitutions of such bodies and persons as are fittest,
and to whom it is most profitable to take it.’ He asks:
‘What is a more noble medicine, or readier at hand, than
tobacco?’ And he informs the reader that although he is
an old man he undertakes the task of compiling the book
in order to supply a proper knowledge of the plant so much
in use among Englishmen. For the cure of the asthmatical,
and such persons as are of a consumptive tendency, he
prescribed liberally of Foliorum Sana Sancta Indorum
combined with other medicaments unknown to modern
therapeutics, and which may be readily accredited with
very effectual properties—effectual, one would think, in
dispelling the extravagant belief of the learned leeches of
those days in tobacco as a ‘soverane remedy.’ How
people managed to take such concoctions as Dr. Gardiner
prescribed and live is beyond conception: their Spartan-like
endurance shines out conspicuously under a treatment[83]
which embraces ‘tobacco gruel,’ ‘tobacco wine,’ also,
tobacco made up into a kind of soup, or syrup, with
sufficient sugar. The patient is recommended to drink the
decoction hot, as a medicine good against the plague.


A glimpse of the strange notions which entered the
heads of our forefathers respecting the medicinal virtues of
the Indian weed may be gained from a perusal of the curious
collection of odds and ends of social and literary gossip,
contained in the Harleian Miscellany. Under the head
of Tobacco the writer says he once knew some persons who
every day ate several ounces of the herb without
experiencing any sensible effect; and from this he infers
that, ‘Use and custom will tame and naturalize the most
fierce and rugged poison, so that it will become civil and
friendly to the body.’ In the hands of the chemist it is
perfectly true that some of the most virulent poisons can be
made subservient to the healing art, and yield to the
physician some of the most helpful medicines known to
pharmacy; but it would be unwise to the last degree for the
uninitiated in the mysteries of the laboratory to experiment
upon himself in the vain belief that use and custom will
carry him safely through the ordeal. The writer goes on to
say that, ‘Some anatomists tell us most terrible stories of
sooty brains and black lungs, which have been seen in the
dissection of dead bodies, which when living had been
accustomed to tobacco. I know a curious woman in the
North, that does very great feats in healing the sick by a
preparation of tobacco. And our learned and most
experienced countryman, Mr. Boyle (experimental philosophy)
does highly recommend tobacco for pains, which are
often epidemical in cities and camps.’ He appears,
however, to have a wholesome dread of such experimenting,
for he consoles himself now and then by remarking that[84]
‘custom and conversation will make the fiercest creature
familiar.’ Yet he seems quite unable to break away
from the common belief, that, ‘the qualities, nature,
and uses of tobacco may be very considerable in
several cases and circumstances, although King James
himself hath both writ and disputed very smartly against
it.’ The reader is next informed that a French author in
the Journal of Science (1681) has ‘writ a peculiar tract on
tobacco, wherein he commends it for bringing on sleep;’
an idea probably derived from Dr. Thorius’ Hymnus Tabaci
(1625) which passed through many editions in London,
Paris, and Utrecht. In this elegant Latin poem Thorius
playfully alludes to the drowsiness tobacco-smoking produced
upon the gods:—








… The gods Bacchus, Liber,


Jove, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, Apollo,


Lustily through their nose the smoke did take,


As if another Ætna they would make.


The goddesses, pleas’d with the novelty,


Laugh’d all the while, but when they did see


How much to sleep that night the gods were given,


Angry, decreed it should be banish’d Heav’n.








The purifying action of tobacco-smoke on unwholesome
air was fully recognised in Pepys’ time, when during the Great
Plague of 1665-6 the pipe was to be seen in almost every
mouth. Pepys like others sought protection in the weed,
and purchased roll-tobacco to ‘chaw.’ Alas, poor man, it
took away his apprehension! In his immortal diary is a
note under date, June 7th. 1665:




This is the hottest day that I ever felt in my life. This
day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane, see two or
three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and,
‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ writ there, which was a sad[85]
sight to me, being the first of the kind that to my remembrance
I ever saw. It put me in an ill-conception of myself and my
smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to
smell and chaw, which took away my apprehension.




Clearly Pepys was not a ‘tobacconist,’ but surely he
should have known better than to have ‘chawed’ the
black twist.


Dr. Willis, physician in ordinary to Charles the Second,
speaks highly of the valuable antiseptic properties of tobacco.
In his work entitled, A Plain and Easy Method of
Preserving (by God’s Blessing) Those That are Well From
the Infection of the Plague (1666) he remarks upon the
exemption from the pestilence of houses where tobacco was
stored for manufacture or sale.




Nor indeed were those persons affected who smoked
tobacco, especially if they smoked in the morning, a time
when the body is more susceptible to outer influences than
it is later in the day. For the smoke of the plant secures
those parts which lie most open, namely, the mouth, nostrils,
etc., and at once intercepts and keeps the contagion that
floats in the air from the brain, lungs, and stomach. It
also stirs the blood and spirits all over, and makes them
throw off any contagion that may adhere to them.




In another treatise on the subject Dr. Willis makes equally
shrewd remarks on the use of tobacco among soldiers and
sailors. He says, ‘Tobacco taken in the vulgar way at the
mouth through a pipe has effects not only manifold but
diverse,’ and he explains that its use, when it may be had,
seems not only necessary but profitable for soldiers and
mariners, for that it renders them both fearless of any
danger, and patient of hunger, cold, and labour.’ Army
experiences of recent years bear testimony to the beneficial
use of tobacco in almost the same words.


[86]


The learned Dutch Physician, Dr. Diemerbroeck, of
Utrecht, in his Tractatus de Peste (1635-6) lays stress on
the good which he found to come of smoking tobacco.
So fully was he persuaded of its powers to kill contagion
that for his own sake he smoked almost continuously while
attending upon his patients in the hospitals at Nimeguen
during the prevalence of the great plague in Holland. He
began the day with a pipe; after dinner he would take two
or three more, and a like number after supper; and if at
any time he felt himself affected by his surroundings he
immediately had recourse to the weed, which he regarded
as his comforter in affliction and preserver from the plague.
Dr. Diemerbroeck would seem to have been a model
officer of health. Armed with his chosen instrument he
gallantly charged the enemy at all hours and in all places,
striding along the aisles of death unscathed. His services
were invaluable, and ought surely to have been utilised
over a larger area than they were. As Smoking Sanitary
Commissioner he might have visited, say, Cologne, where
much to the advantage of the inhabitants, more particularly
to visitors, he doubtless would have founded a Tabako-Collegium.
Coleridge would then most likely have been
spared his discomfiture and precipitate rout on his
encountering there ‘seventy-two separate and well-defined
stinks.’ The Farina Brothers doubtless loved their quaint
city whose quainter smells have passed into a proverb,
and were animated with sublime ideas of patriotism when
they concocted their sweet-smelling waters which were to
bring back to it wealth and renown. Their success has
equalled their genius: all the world is grateful for Eau de
Cologne.


We now approach the threshold of new and more
enlightened views of the uses of tobacco. From the first[87]
inception of the idea of its possessing curative properties it
passed through two distinct phases in the medical world.
First it was received as a heaven-sent boon to suffering
humanity, and was applied with a lavish hand for the cure
of every malady. Then followed bitter experiences of pain
and even death inflicted in cases where it had been fondly
hoped relief would be obtained. We see medical practice
struggling in a dim uncertain light towards fuller knowledge,
yet baffled at every step. Reluctantly the doctor is driven
to forsake his new love, and again we see him turning to
the plants of his native soil for the realisation of the great
dream of his life,—a panacea, which to him meant all that
the philosopher’s stone could signify to the alchemist; and
once more we hear of Solar Elixirs, and of occult
medicaments prepared from herbs gathered in the glimpses
of the moon; for it was argued that the ruling heavenly
bodies from whose energy divine had sprung all life, must
assuredly have provided remedies for the evils with which
life is burdened. The reaction which followed upon the
disappointment was so strong that tobacco became the
shibboleth of the profession, whose leading spirits denounced
as charlatans all who ventured to remain faithful to the
creed of the tobacconist. This second stage reached its
culmination half a century ago, when Mr. Lizars, and Mr.
Solly, of St Thomas’s Hospital, inaugurated a crusade
against tobacco, holding forth on the physical and mental
misery, leading to insanity, which must inevitably follow
its use in any form. One instance among many may
suffice to indicate Mr. Solly’s method of terrifying smokers.
He speaks of a young clergyman of his acquaintance who
could only write his sermons under the stimulus of a pipe;
he admits that his discourses were eloquent, even brilliant,
and profitable to listen to. Then Mr. Solly, pointing an[88]
admonitory finger, utters the solemn warning—‘but the
end of that man is not yet!’


Fortunately there is no longer need to consider whether
the weed deserves the hard things said of it, or whether it
is to be ranked among the chief blessings a beneficent
Providence has conferred upon this nether world. These
things are settling themselves in their proper places under
the critical eyes of modern science, and the larger and
more rational views derived from experiences in the field,
the camp, and the hospital. Conspicuous among medical
treatises of recent years, wherein the subject is dispassionately
surveyed, may be mentioned that of Dr. John C.
Murray, of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Remarking upon the
observed curative effect of tobacco-smoking on the sick
and wounded in the Franco-German war, he says that its
healing virtues were so obvious to an army surgeon of his
acquaintance that from being strongly opposed to the use
of tobacco he became a convert, in so far that he actually
purchased cigars and presented them to the wounded, in
consequence of having observed that their smoking
assisted recovery. ‘This experience,’ adds Dr. Murray, ‘is
contrary to what has been enunciated as theory, or deduced
from isolated examples taken from the hospitals. Practical
observation from previously healthy men must, however,
be allowed precedence of speculation when inferred from
disease.’ This admission marks a decided advance towards
harmonising the faults of speculative reasoning with
the actual experience of every-day life.


Taking a general survey of army medical officers’ reports
of work done in the hospital-camps, he finds evidence in
abundance supporting the view that tobacco-smoking does
in some indefinable way mitigate suffering and help to a
speedy recovery. Not only were the good effects manifest[89]
in the comfort it afforded the men on the march, but
chiefly in the camp and the hospital, where under its soothing
influence the wounded were often snatched from death
and the sick restored to health. An amusing incident of
a wounded soldier’s love for his pipe is noted in a lady’s
diary kept while occupied as a nurse in a British hospital.
Private McCarthy while under chloroform had just had
one of his toes amputated by the surgeon. The wound
bled freely, and the surgeon, after binding it up, left strict
injunctions that the man was not to put his foot down. It
happened that the nurse was called away to another patient
for a few minutes, but before leaving she reminded the
patient of the doctor’s orders about remaining still. On
her return, to her astonishment the man was nowhere to
be seen. After some searching she discovered him by
traces of blood on the floor, quietly seated in the yard
smoking his pipe. To her admonition about disobeying
orders, and concern for the injury he was likely to do
himself, he paid no heed, and continued smoking in happy
indifference. Better success attended her endeavour to
bring him to a repentant frame of mind when she told him
of how he had disfigured the floor with his blood. Then
he rose and quietly returned to his bed, saying, ‘Indeed,
ma’am, I could not help going to have a pipe, for sure,
that was the nastiest stuff I ever got drunk on,’—alluding
to the taste of the chloroform.


Besides being a social comfort to the soldier on the
march and in camp, the wholesomeness of the weed has
long been recognised in the Army. Lord Wolseley on the
occasion of his rapid dash to Coomassie gave proof of his
belief in its prophylactic properties when on landing at
Cape Coast Castle he caused pipes and tobacco to be dealt
out to the men. George Gilham, of the 2nd Battalion,[90]
Rifle Brigade, writing from the ranks tells of his experiences
on the march, and says, ‘The climate about Cape Coast
Castle is bad, and the stenches we came upon almost
knocked us over. But the General had pipes and tobacco
served out to us with orders to smoke for protection. I
was then no smoker, but I soon managed to learn the art.’
And Corporal J. C. Ives, of the Buffs, bears pathetic testimony
to the soldiers’ love of a pipe of tobacco during some
hard service, fighting the Zulus. After describing a fierce
encounter with the enemy he concludes with this lament:
‘The worst of all was we had no tobacco, the last having
been already issued. We did not know we had so little in
our possession when we sold some to the Kaffirs in charge
of the track oxen. When we found all was gone we would
have given double the value of it, but it was too late, and we
were induced to try experiments with dry tea-leaves, grass,
and coffee grounds. Some of the men found a herb which
they smoked, but this had the effect of making their heads
swell to such an extent that they had to be attended by the
doctor.’ On another occasion when the 91st Highlanders
came within sight, and greeting cheers had resounded on
the still night air, he says, ‘When our friends arrived the
first question from the Ekowe garrison was, “Have you any
tobacco?” Oh, that smoke! The same night we were
served out with a tot of rum, white biscuits and a small
piece of tobacco, luxuries subscribed for by the inhabitants
of Port Natal.’


With innumerable experiences such as these before them
it is difficult to understand the action of the Home
authorities in dealing with contraband tobacco seized by
Custom-house officers. Some years ago a ton of tobacco
and cigars was seized at Portsmouth, the whole of which was
buried in order to get rid of it. A protest was made, and[91]
the reasonableness of distributing, instead of wasting, such
seizures of tobacco among the men of the Army and Navy
could not be gainsaid; and it was satisfactory to learn that
the Revenue Department had been moved to issue directions
to the proper officers to, in future, supply troop-ships
with seized tobacco at the rate of one ounce per diem for
each man. But this humane practice was soon discontinued;
indeed, the arrangements for the disposal of
seized tobacco present some curious features, and have
varied considerably from time to time. The course pursued
with such seizures, including that unreleased by consignees
from the bonded warehouses at the London Docks, had
been the very primitive one of burning it in an instrument
known and recognised as the ‘Queen’s tobacco-pipe.’
Possibly some outdoor officer of Customs hit upon the
device in order to shield himself from blame for thus
wasting good stuff. It was a huge instrument of enormous
ventrical capacity and would fume away hundreds of tons
in a few hours. Then an afterthought of economy crept in,
and suggested that the ashes might make good manure.
They were accordingly sold to agriculturists for what they
would fetch; a ton of the ashes it was found served as
tillage for four acres of ground. But this monster pipe is
now put out; it was arranged that future seizures of contraband
tobacco, and also such as remained in Bond
unclaimed on account of its having sustained damage in
transit from the place of exportation, should be thrown
upon the market for sale, a course which did not commend
itself to the trade, nor to the palate of dainty smokers. In
face of the difficulty another arrangement was made for its
disposal; the criminal lunatics confined in certain
Government asylums were thought of, and gratuitously provided
with tobacco from this source. Large quantities were[92]
also supplied to certain public botanical gardens where
tobacco is required for the destruction of insect life, and
which would otherwise have to be purchased at the public
expense. If after meeting these demands a sufficient
quantity of tobacco was available, then troops ordered on
foreign service were furnished with a supply for use on the
voyage. Strange to say, even this small chance of obtaining
a little comfort for the men who are to fight our battles
in foreign lands under hardships which tax the strongest
powers of endurance has ceased. Troop-ships at the best
of times are none too comfortable, and anything that can
be done towards making those on board contented would
be a distinct gain to the Service. Both policy and humanity
indicate a little generous treatment of the men upon whose
prowess the existence of the Empire so largely depends. It
is hard to believe that criminal lunatics can have a better
claim to the indulgence than our soldiers.


Referring to the antiseptic properties of tobacco, Dr.
Murray says that he is fully convinced from close observation,
that though it does not produce ozone it is an
excellent disinfectant; and he mentions instances of ladies
who, while attending upon their relatives laid up with a
fearful epidemic malady, recognised, as if by intuition, the
advantage of smoking. On one occasion a lady came into
the sick-room where he was seeing a confluent case of epidemic
small-pox puffing a cigar, and upon his remarking it
she pointed to the patient with a triumphant air more eloquent
than words. Whereupon Dr. Murray with a touch of old-fashioned
chivalry says, ‘I immediately bent to her as a
Master.’ In the same gay vein he continues: ‘I have
myself seen, and also been informed, that many ladies
during the current epidemic have given pronounced evidence
of their faith in the antiseptic virtues of tobacco by[93]
selecting the smoking compartments when travelling by
rail, and not a few have even in severe cases while waiting
upon their relatives trusted to tobacco as a safeguard. I
am happy to add that so far they have rejoiced in an
immunity from the most contagious disease with which the
present age is acquainted.’


Drs. Klein, Tassinari, Werke and other distinguished
bacteriologists have carried their investigations into this
interesting field of research with marked success.


Dr. Klein, of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, says that
‘direct experiment proves that tobacco-smoke has a decided
germicidal effect; it is not known, however, which is the
active principle in the tobacco-smoke.’ He also remarks
that the popular idea which has again sprung up of
tobacco’s prophylactic powers, ‘is well supported by
laboratory experiment.’ Dr. Tassinari, adopting the
microscopical methods of Pasteur, illustrates his investigations
into the subject and the results obtained by a series
of charts. These results may be briefly summarised. He
found that the smoke of tobacco in some cases entirely
destroyed, in others retarded the development of, micro-organisms.
For example, the bacilli of Asiatic cholera
and pneumonia were in every instance destroyed by the
smoke of tobacco irrespective of the kind or quality of the
tobacco used. Anthrax bacilli and the bacilli of typhoid
offered greater resistance, the latter indeed were but little
affected by the smoke. He makes an odd remark about
the surprising growths of germs found by the microscope
adhering to the coating of the teeth, and says that as
tobacco-smoke destroys them, it is a preventive of decay;
should it darken the enamel, the ashes of the weed used as
a dentifrice will make them whiter than before.


Similar investigations have been made in Spain and[94]
Germany. Werke saturated a cigar with a liquid fully
impregnated with cholera bacilli and found that in twenty-four
hours every germ was destroyed. He next placed
bacilli upon dry tobacco leaves; in this case they were
rendered harmless in half an hour. In other trials a
contact with the leaf of three hours was required for their
destruction. Strange to say, damp tobacco was the least
effective; the germs struggled hard for existence, and held
out for three days before yielding up their lives to the
superior genius of the weed. A fifty per cent. solution of
tobacco over-mastered them in twenty-four hours. But it
is in burning tobacco, when its elements are liberated from
their confinement, that the battle is most decisive. Werke
says, that when he tested them with the smoke of tobacco
every germ was rendered incapable of propagating disease
in less than five minutes.


Though the medical man whom duty calls to densely-crowded,
unwholesome districts fortifies himself against
attack from the invisible foe with a Manila or Cuban leaf,
he protests emphatically against the smoking habit which
has recently cropped up among boys. The boy-smoker,
besides being a nuisance, is rendering himself physically
and mentally unfit for the duties of life.




[95]


CHAPTER VI

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING


Like Horace’s greybeard, we are all more or less prone to
look lovingly towards the past, to regard the days of our
forefathers as the good old times in which they played their
part in life’s drama on a larger and nobler scale than we do,
or are capable of doing. In this spirit of admiration for
antiquity we see the beginnings of that hero-worship which
with the Greeks gradually developed into their beautiful
mythology. They, above all other people, delighted to
extol the powers and achievements of their ancestors; they
clothed them with the attributes of deity, and strove to
emulate and honour them in all manly deeds; thus they
exalted their own conceptions of life, and idealised the
course of their national existence. And yet this innate
tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable
regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed
most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious
student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the
antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer
ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age
constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista
to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of
the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. Then it
is we see the present linked with the past in one unbroken[96]
chain; our knowledge is enlarged, and we recognise the
unity of our race. Needless then to say that it is in no
narrow spirit of mere curiosity that the wise men of Europe
have devoted much labour and learning to the task of
discovering if the habit of tobacco-smoking, now so
common all over the world, existed in Eastern countries
before the discovery of America by Columbus.


It is justly claimed for the subject that it possesses
interest for a much larger class than professed ethnologists;
that it is invested with an absorbing fascination for every
earnest student of the history and habits of mankind. For
it is maintained that nothing but a deep-seated craving in
the nature of human beings for narcotics and stimulants
can explain the immediate, rapid, and over-mastering
success with which the passion for tobacco spread over
the world after its introduction into Europe by the
Spaniards. That this should have been so, seems to point
directly to the conclusion that before the discovery of the
New World the tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its
leaves were unknown elsewhere. Let it be remembered,
however, that we have to take into account the farther
East, more particularly China, the Cathay of our forefathers,
who had found every approach leading into the
interior jealously guarded against intrusion from the
barbarian of the outer world.


Scattered through the pages of ancient historians and
naturalists are some curious allusions to a practice
occasionally indulged in of inhaling the fumes of burning
vegetable substances, either for pleasure’s sake or for
medicinal purposes. A few of these may suffice to indicate
the shifts men were put to in remote times in
order to appease their longing for narcotics of one kind or
another.


[97]


Herodotus says that the Messagetæ, or Scythians,
possessed a tree bearing a strange fruit which, when they
met together, they cast into the fire and inhaled its fumes
till they became intoxicated, in much the same way as the
Greeks did with wine. What this strange produce was we
learn in book IV., cap. 78, where he relates the story of
the Scythians making themselves drunk with hemp-seed.
They crept with it under their blankets, and, throwing it on
red-hot stones, inhaled the fumes arising therefrom.
Simple narrations such as these fall in quite naturally with
one’s ideas of primitive man adapting himself to his
circumstances. The Father of History never indulges in
flights of fancy or creations of the imagination; it is enough
for him to render a straightforward account of such things
as came under his own eyes, or of events as they had been
related to him. But when we come to a modern writer
who tells a smoking-story of far-back times, relating, indeed,
to none other than the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord,’
(enjoying, we may assume, a quiet pipe after a day’s hard
riding across country), then doubt begins to take possession
of the mind, and we are inclined to let that tale go for
what it is worth. Lieutenant Walpole is responsible for
the story that, when he was at Mosul, there came into his
hands a very old Arabic manuscript, in the opening chapter
of which the ancient scribe declared that Nimrod used
tobacco. Application of the higher criticism to this relic of
antiquity would be quite out of place; why, indeed, should
men seek to be wise above what is written? But let us
look a little farther into what Mr. Walpole has to narrate
of the people among whom he sojourned, respecting their
indulgence in the social pleasure of the pipe. From his
highly interesting work on The Ansayrii, or The Assassins
(published in 1851) we gather that while at Mosul he was[98]
so impressed by the prevalence of the habit of smoking
among all classes, that he made diligent inquiry of the
learned of the land respecting its origin; for he felt convinced
that nothing European, much less American, could
possibly have crept into this remote district of the Old
World, whose inhabitants were living as their fathers had
lived for ages. ‘In the East,’ he writes, ‘it is rare to find
a man or a woman who does not smoke. Enter a house,
and a smoking-instrument is put into your hand as
naturally as you are asked to sit down.’ Mr. Walpole had
not long to wait before his new friends found means of
satisfying his curiosity and of quickening the interest already
awakened within him as to the antiquity of the habit. A
venerable sage disclosed to his wondering eyes the
manuscript aforesaid. It filled over a hundred closely-written
pages, and was divided into eight chapters, in the
first of which was related the story of Nimrod. The origin
of the different opinions for and against tobacco are enlarged
upon in its pages; this, by the way, seems to imply that
the Koran had not settled the disputed point; but then
these Hashishins, who had found tobacco a far more
grateful comforter than their fiery hashish, were not good
Moslems. Unfortunately for Mr. Walpole, the happy
owner of the priceless document, this inestimable relic of
antiquity, was a bibliomanist whom nothing could induce to
part with it; but he tells the reader that it was being
copied—a lengthy process. Youthful exuberance of spirit
marks Mr. Walpole’s joy at the discovery. ‘Lovers of the
weed,’ he exclaims, ‘may reasonably hope that the
elucidation of the Assyrian history will show us Nimrod
making kief over the chibouk, and Semiramis calling for
her nargilleh. It would enhance the grace of Cleopatra
could we imagine her reclining on a divan of eiderdown[99]
toying with Marc Antony as she plays with her jewelled
narpeesh.’ His enthusiasm is kindled by glowing tales of
Eastern life, stretching back to the remotest ages; he sees
the folly of entertaining for a moment the thought that
Asia could be indebted to America for the luxury of the
pipe. ‘We can hardly suppose,’ he writes, ‘that in the
comparatively short space of time since the continent of
America was discovered by us, the habit could have spread
through Europe to the very utmost corners of Asia; that
the Burman would smoke his cigar as he does, and the
wild man of the forest of Ceylon would make his hand into
a bowl and smoke out of it. These people, perfect wild
beasts, double up the hand, curving the palm, and thus
form a species of pipe; a green leaf protects the hand;
within this the weed is placed, and thus they smoke. This
is certainly the youth of smoking. Adam may have
practised this method, even in the days of his innocence.’


It is, perhaps, a pity Mr. Walpole did not feel
satisfied with this display of youthful gaiety. Possibly he
saw that something was still wanting; that his new-born
idea of an Eastern origin for the weed he loved was too
weak to stand without support. At that very moment
some evil genius whispered in his ear the fun of sending
the reader a wool-gathering to the British Museum. Then
it dawned upon him that among the marvels of antiquity
the excavations of Botta and Layard were laying bare to an
astonished world was an Assyrian relic which would bear
oracular testimony to the truth of the old Arabic manuscript
found at Mosul, and that henceforth Nimrod must be
regarded as the paladin of the pipe. So Mr. Walpole goes
on to say: ‘If the curious reader will go to the British
Museum he will there see an Assyrian cylinder, found at
Mosul, and presented to the Institution by Mr. Badger,[100]
whereon is represented a king smoking from a round
vessel, attached to which is a long reed.’ Hours have
been spent in vain at the British Museum in making careful
search for this interesting object. Doctor Wallis Budge,
who presides over the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities,
knows nothing of a cylinder bearing an inscription of a
king smoking a pipe. He has, however, a record to the
effect that Mr. Badger, on February 8th, 1845, gave the
Museum ‘the squeeze of an inscription, the impression of
a seal, and a bronze object.’ Doctor Budge warily
remarked: ‘I must remind you that in 1845 all sorts of
nonsense was talked about Assyrian objects; but that two
men [a second writer had been mentioned who had
evidently copied, on faith, from Mr. Walpole] should state
such a thing without verification is remarkable. I am
sorry for your wasted time—and my own!’ Assyrian
cylinders in the British Museum are numerous, and interest
in them is heightened by written explanations in our own
tongue placed by the side of each of the markings upon
them, giving also the date or period to which the object
belongs. The student is thus enabled to grasp with his
senses lessons in history which, without this aid, would be
vague and unreal. Yet, so grotesque are some of the
figures, that little need for wonder if the eye of faith
should discover what it seeks for.


The ascetic of the Greek Church, however, can eclipse
this story of Nimrod and the Assyrian monarch who loved
his pipe, with a tradition carefully preserved in its archives
of Noah himself, tempted by the Evil One, having fallen
under the intoxicating fumes of tobacco. The ingenuous
scribe relates (though this may be apocryphal) that Noah,
resting upon the summit of Mount Ararat after his toils on
the swollen waters, happened to place his hand on a[101]
tobacco-pipe charged with the comforting herb, and Satan,
envious of his happiness, urged the patriarch to prolong the
indulgence until sleep fell upon his eyes. Where the soil is
ready for the seed the merest figment takes root and
flourishes abundantly.


Persons of a poetic temperament who find in speculative
dreaming pleasure more satisfying than aught they can
derive from the study of prosaic reality, usually turn their
thoughts towards the East, to the land of mystery and
gorgeous imagery, where man first awoke to a wondering
contemplation of the phenomena of nature, asking himself
what the earth and sky could be, and marking out in bold
outline as he gazed into the star-lit firmament the signs by
which we to-day recognise the zodiac. Entering these
regions of hoary tradition, the marvel-loving wanderer from
the West finds his path strewn with relics of our early
progenitors; here he may revel in endless variety of
legendary lore garnered from rich fields of poetic fancy.
Does he wish to learn of the Moslem sage the origin of the
weed whose balmy breath








From East to West


Cheers the tar’s labour, or the Turkman’s rest?








Let him listen to his words as he relates how the Prophet,
walking in his garden at early dawn, came upon a viper stiff
with cold, lying in the grass. ‘Full of compassion, he took
it up and warmed it in his bosom; but when the reptile
recovered, it bit him. “Why art thou thus ungrateful?”
asked the Prophet. The viper answered: “Were I to
spare thee, another of thy race would kill me, for there is
no gratitude on earth. By Allah, I will bite thee.” “Since
thou hast sworn by Allah, keep thy vow,” said the Prophet,
and held out his hand to be bitten. But as the reptile bit[102]
him, the Prophet sucked the poison from the wound, and
spat it on the ground. And lo! there sprang up a plant
in which the serpent’s venom is combined with the
Prophet’s mercy, and men call it tobacco.’


Unhappily for the champions of Asia’s prior claim to the
weed, those enchanted mirrors of Arabian social life,
The Thousand And One Nights, reflect no sign, not the
faintest shadow of aught resembling circling eddies from the
tobacco-bowl. In the early days of the new indulgence its
lawfulness was warmly disputed in Mahomedan countries.
Both Sultan and Shah looked with suspicion at this new
device of the Giaour, and inflicted the severest punishment
upon all who ventured to console their sorrows with the
pipe. In the warmth of conflicting opinion, the Koran was
appealed to, and a Moslem ascetic was found who read to
the faithful a passage (from a revised version, no doubt)
wherein it was foretold that, ‘In the latter days there shall
be men bearing the name of Moslem, but who are not really
such, and they shall smoke a certain weed which shall be
called tobacco.’ A device so simple, giving the American
name of the plant, could deceive no one but those who were
willing to be deceived. It helped, however, to smooth the
way towards the desired reconciliation; and then the
Turkish traveller, Eulia Effendi, contributed towards a
peaceful solution of the much-vexed question the best fruits
of what little ingenuity he possessed. He declared that he
had found, deeply embedded in the wall of an old edifice,
so old that it must have been reared long before the birth
of the Prophet, a tobacco-pipe which even then smelt of
tobacco! The pious frauds of Moslem ascetics could not
go beyond this. Here was the sanction of antiquity, if not
of the Prophet, for the indulgence they all loved, before
which Sultan, and Shah, and Koran gradually gave way,[103]
yielding to St Nicotine the mild sway she holds over her
votaries. And it must needs be admitted that the claim for
a knowledge of tobacco in Western Asia before the days of
Columbus has no stronger prop to rest upon than this pipe
found in the crevice of an old wall, and which still smelt of
tobacco,—dropped in by some poor Turk fearful of the
torture in store for him if caught smoking. Russell, in his
narrative of a visit to Aleppo in 1603, says that tobacco-smoking,
then so commonly indulged in at home, was
unknown there. And Sandys, writing of the Turks as he
found them in 1610, speaks of tobacco as just introduced
into Constantinople by the English. How rapidly the taste
for the weed spread over the countries of the near East, and
the hold it had taken upon all classes, is shown in many a
homely saying among the people, such as, ‘A pipe of
tobacco and a dish of coffee are a complete entertainment;’
or, in the Persian proverb that, ‘Coffee without tobacco is
meat without salt.’


Doctor Yates had gone to the land of the Pharaohs for
enlightenment on things hidden from the vulgar; and
among other things rare and wonderful which presented
themselves to his astonished gaze, he gravely assures the
reader of his Modern History and Condition of Egypt
(published in 1843) that on the wall of an ancient tomb at
Thebes he saw a painting in which was represented a
smoking-party; beings of our own species sitting together
enjoying, possibly, social chat over the fragrant weed.
Here was indeed one of those touches of nature which
makes the whole world kin. Standing in the mystic glow
of an Egyptian sky, in the living presence of the marvellous
works of men’s hands wrought six thousand years ago, his
imagination bridges the space of ages, and he realises the
unity of our race in the familiar scene before him. The[104]
uplifted doctor did not recognise in the painting a
representation of the ancient art of glass-blowing. The
tricks the imagination plays upon us at times would be very
amusing were it not for the ruffle they give to one’s self-love.
Some men, rather than admit they were, or could be
deceived, will hold to their error through all time and in
the face of every rebuff.


It is not improbable that some varieties of the tobacco-plant
may be indigenous to the Old World. There are
about forty, of which seldom more than three are cultivated
for consumption as tobacco; Virginia (Nicotina tabacum),
Syrian (Nicotina rustica), and Shiraz (Nicotina Persica).
Diligent research, however, extending over many years, has
failed to bring to light any evidence of the existence in
Europe or western Asia of either of these plants before the
Spaniards discovered America. The allusions made by
Dioscorides, Strabo, and Pliny to a practice common
among both the Greeks and the Romans of inhaling the
fumes of tussilago and other vegetable substances, have no
bearing on tobacco-smoking, nor on any general habit.
They refer rather to the use of certain herbs as remedies
for affections of the throat and chest, used much in the
same way as our forbears used certain other herbs for the
cure of similar ailments. Most people condemned to suffer
the rigours of an English winter have experienced kitchen-treatment
of the kind, when shrouded in a blanket over a
bowl of steaming medicaments they lay siege to the citadel
held by the bacteria of influenza. From Pliny we learn
that a tribe of unknown barbarians burned the roots of
a species of cypress, and inhaled the fumes for the reduction
of enlarged spleen—a malady very common among the
inhabitants of the plains of southern India. He tells us
also (xxiv., 84) that the Romans smoked coltsfoot through[105]
a reed or pipe for the relief of obstinate cough and
difficult breathing. Here it may be of interest to mention
the discovery in recent years of a small description of
smoking-pipes, resembling in size and form the cutty of the
Scot or the dhudeen of the Irish peasant, among Roman
structures, both in these islands and on the Continent.


Dr. Bruce, in his History of the Roman Wall, speaking
of these pipes, asks: ‘Shall we enumerate smoking-pipes
amongst the articles belonging to the Roman period?
Some of them have, indeed, a medieval aspect; but the fact
of their being frequently found in Roman stations along
with pottery and other remains, undoubtedly Roman,
should not be overlooked.’ The Abbé Cocket had found
similar clay pipes in the Roman Necropolis near Dieppe,
and in his work on subterranean Normandy he says they
must surely have belonged to the seventeenth century.
But, on subsequently hearing of Doctor Bruce’s discovery
of similar pipes in his exploration of the Roman Wall, he
reverted to his first opinion, that those he had himself
found were indeed Roman. Since then Baron de
Bonstetten has investigated the subject; and in his work
entitled Recueil des Antiquités he gives drawings of these
pipes, and declares his opinion to be that they are fair
specimens of European smoking-instruments in use before
the days of Columbus, and possibly before those of Julius
Cæsar. That smoking-pipes have been found among
authentic Roman remains is beyond question. What use
the Romans made of them we have already learned from
Pliny; and doubtless the Roman soldier, on outpost duty
in this fog-begirt island, would often have need of whatever
little comfort he could get out of his small pipeful of
coltsfoot.


Both in Ireland and Scotland somewhat similar pipes[106]
have been picked up in remote places, and have been
attributed by imaginative country folk to the fairies and
elves, to the Celts and to the Danes. Raleigh’s sowing
the seeds of Ireland’s first tobacco-plant in his garden at
Youghal is lost sight of in a desire to yield to antiquity the
credit due to modern enterprise. About a century ago (to
be exact, in the year 1784), the fine Milesian imagination
was afforded an opportunity of soaring into the glorious
region of an indefinable past, when the headman of every
village was indeed a king. In an ancient tomb—far too old
to bear the vulgar indication of a date—which had been
opened at Bannockstown in Kildare, there was found
firmly held between the teeth of the silent occupant a
tobacco-pipe, small, but perfectly formed. Here, then,
was positive proof of the antiquity of smoking in Ireland,
ages, possibly, before the Saxon or Danish barbarian had
invaded her shores. This important discovery naturally
created a commotion among the learned of the Emerald
Isle, which soon found mellifluent expression in the
Journal of Anthologia Hibernica. Visions of a revivified
Celtic history, clothed in the poetic vestments
which properly belong to a venerable, half-forgotten past,
rose to cheer young Ireland’s aspirations; and now could
be sung with renewed fervour,—








Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,


Bright beams of the past, which she cannot destroy.








It is not pleasant to be robbed of a cherished belief.
The awakening breaks upon the shores of romance as
would a London fog on a Swiss lake; yet it must needs be
said that under the critical eye of the expert the vision
dissolved, and left but an Elizabethan pipe behind. For
such, indeed, was the fate that befell the famous Celtic[107]
tumulus and pipe of Bannockstown in Kildare. Stories,
fanciful and fairy-like, relating to small pipes found in
Irish by-paths, are mentioned in Mr. Crofton Crocker’s
Fairy Legends of Ireland. The peasant who picked up
one of these always knew that it belonged to the
Cluricaunes, ‘a set of disavin’ little devils,’ he would
explain, ‘who were always playing their thricks on good
Christians;’ and with a few words of choice brogue he
would break it and throw the bits away. Ireland,
however, does not stand alone in that legendary lore
wherein pipes have played their little part in life’s romance.
In Worcestershire there still lingers, or did linger until the
scream of the locomotive startled the woods out of their
sylvan dream, a fairy tale of Queen Mab having held her
court at a spot near old Swinford, where a number of
smoking-pipes had been found, so small that none other
than fairy fingers could have made them for fairy mouths.
So there grew up among the country folk gifted with a light
fancy, the belief that Queen Mab had presided at her
revels in the dell, distributing among her troop the fairy
pipes they had found, while sighing on the breeze,








Come away elves, while the dew is sweet,


Come to the dingles where the fairies meet.








Leaving the aerial domain of fairy-land, our thoughts are
wafted to Central Asia, still in search of an Eastern birthplace
for the weed. In the writings of a Hindoo physician,
examined by Doctor Mayer of Konisberg in the course of
his Eastern researches, it is stated that tobacco was first
brought into India by the Franks in the year 1609, that is
to say, nearly a century after its introduction into Europe.
The date agrees well with the progress the Portuguese had
at that time made in establishing themselves in India.[108]
For nearly a century they had been in possession of Goa;
they held important seats of commerce in various other
parts of India, and had command of the greater part of the
oriental trade. These earliest of European explorers in
the far East, having about the close of the fifteenth century
made a successful passage round the Cape of Good Hope,
were not slow to secure for themselves a footing on the
western shores of Asia, and onward to the Indian
Archipelago. Wherever they settled they introduced the
American habit of smoking, and eagerly was it adopted by
the different peoples with whom they had dealings. In the
annals of Java, tobacco is stated to have been imported
into that island, and the habit of smoking it taught to the
natives by the Portuguese in 1601. To the Portuguese
and the Spaniards, fortified later by the prodigious puffing
powers of the Dutch, may be fairly ascribed whatever
credit may be due for spreading a knowledge in the
Eastern World of the habit which, for weal or for woe, has
exercised a more potent witchery over man’s life than
probably any other indulgence, largely modifying and
usually soothing and sobering his temperament. It seems
but reasonable to suppose that if the plant and its use as
a narcotic had been known in the East generally,
independently of Europe, the indefatigable Jesuits, who
penetrated into almost every nook of the Old World likely
to afford a see to Rome, would have made the discovery
and noted the fact with their usual accuracy. The
illustrious traveller and naturalist, Palias, however, takes a
different view of the question. ‘Amongst the Chinese,’
he writes, ‘and amongst the Mongolian tribes who had
the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking
is so general, so frequent, and has become so necessary
a luxury, the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem[109]
to have taken theirs, so original; and lastly, the preparation
of the dried leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and
then put into the pipe, so peculiar that they could not
possibly have derived all this from America by way of
Europe, especially as India, where the practice of smoking
is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China.’
But surely this reasoning is merely an example of drawing
inference from insufficient data; from what at best bears
the appearance only of probability.


The learned botanist, Meyen, speaking of China in
relation to the habit of smoking, deals with another and
more pertinent aspect of the question. ‘It has long been
the opinion,’ he remarks, ‘that the use of tobacco, as well
as its culture, was peculiar to the people of America; but
this is now proved to be incorrect by our present more
exact acquaintance with China and India. The consumption
of tobacco in the Chinese Empire is of immense
extent, and the practice seems to be of great antiquity, for
on very old sculptures I have observed the very same
tobacco-pipes which are still used. Besides, we know the
plant which furnishes the Chinese tobacco; it is even
said to grow wild in the East Indies. It is certain that
this tobacco plant of eastern Asia is quite different from
the American species.’ The tobacco grown in China is
very light in colour and almost tasteless, possessing a very
small amount of the essential oil, one or two per cent. as
against seven or eight per cent. yielded by the Virginian
plant. Experiment, however, has brought to light the fact
that climate and soil are really answerable for all the
difference between the two kinds; that the Nicotiana
tabacum of America for example, when transplanted into
Syrian soil, has after a few years’ cultivation lost its marked
characteristics and become a light-coloured, mild tobacco,[110]
like the Shiraz herb. Meyen’s argument would have had
more value if he had been able to assign a date to the
sculpture on which he had observed representations of
tobacco-pipes, or if he himself had seen and examined
specimens of the tobacco-plant said to grow wild in the
East Indies. As his statement lacks the certainty which
authenticated facts alone can give, it leaves the question
still unanswered. The two Lazarists, MM. Gabet and Huc,
whose zeal and heroic enterprise carried them safely through
the wildest districts of Tartary and Thibet, make no
mention of the practice of smoking among the inhabitants
of those countries; though in China they had noticed outside
tobacconists’ shops an effigy of the tobacco plant,
which they took to be a representation of the royal insignia
of France, for they speak of it as the fleur-de-lis. Doubtless
China rose in their estimation when they beheld so
flattering an acknowledgment of its indebtedness to the
grand nation for the blessing the herb conferred on an
unworthy people. But if such were their impression they
greatly erred. The inhabitants of the Celestial Empire
(Tin-shan) entertained notions of a very different character.
Their country (Chung-tow) occupied the centre of the
earth, and all beings outside their borders they regarded
as Fan-qui, barbarian wanderers, or outlandish demons.
The exalted ideas they had formed of themselves led them
into the happy delusion that they were the lower empire of
the celestial universe. ‘In the heavens,’ says M. Pingré,
‘they beheld a vast republic, an immense empire, composed
of kingdoms and provinces; these provinces were the
constellations: there was supremely decided all that should
happen, whether favourable or unfavourable, to the great
terrestrial empire, the empire of China.’ Their historians
carry back the traditions of their country to a period so[111]
remote (millions of years) that Europe can only be conceived
of as primeval forest, and its inhabitants as barely emerging
from their protoplasmic swamps. It is, moreover, a
country of fantastic oddities, of topsy-turvy notions of the
proprieties of every-day life; where you are constantly
meeting with gentlemen in petticoats and ladies in trousers,
the ladies smoking and the gentlemen fanning themselves:
where ladies of quality may be seen toddling like animated
walking-sticks, while stout fellows sit indoors trimming dainty
head-dresses for them. Go outside the city and you find
greybeards playing shuttlecock with their feet or flying
curious kites, and others chirruping and chuckling to their
pet birds which they have brought out to take the air,
while groups of youths gravely look on regarding these
juvenile pastimes of their elders with becoming approval.


Early in the course of European adventure in the far
East, travellers who, under various disguises had succeeded
in penetrating into the interior of China, found in some
provinces the cultivation of tobacco ranking among the
foremost of their agricultural productions. Bell, in his
Travels in Asia (Pinkerton’s Edition, 1811), speaking of
China, says: ‘I also saw great plantations of tobacco which
they call “Tharr,” and which yield considerable profits.
It is universally used in smoking in China by persons of all
ranks and both sexes; and besides, great quantities are
sent to the Mongols, who prefer the Chinese method of
preparing it before any other. They make it into gross
powder like sawdust, which they keep in a small bag, and
fill their little brass pipes out of it without touching it with
their fingers. The smoke is very mild, and has a different
smell from ours. It is reported that the Chinese have had
the use of it for many ages.’ Tobacco and the habit of
smoking it are mentioned in the annals of the Yuen[112]
dynasty, about two centuries before Columbus had discovered
America. Those who cry down every other than
an American origin for the weed, assert that the Chinese
product is not tobacco, but some other herb used in the
same way. Botanists, however, have shown this opinion
to be erroneous. The great plain of Ching-too Foo is
noted as the region where the culture and manufacture of
tobacco are conducted on a more extensive scale than in
any other part of the empire. In this plain the district of
Sze-Chuen stands out prominently as the great centre and
mart of the industry; from its plantations are exported
large quantities of tobacco to other parts of China, to Yun-nan,
Hoo-nan, Han-Kow, and also to Se-fan in Thibet.
To Han-Kow alone are annually exported about fifty
thousand piculs,—say, about three thousand tons. The
best is grown in the district of Pe-Heen: the next quality
is the product of Kin-lang Heen; and an inferior kind is
grown in the plantations of She-fang Heen.





A CHINESE PIPE.




Europeans who have visited this tobacco-producing
district speak of a practice common among the inhabitants[113]
of rolling up tobacco for smoking in a separate leaf into
cylindrical form, of the size of a large cigar. This simple
circumstance is suggestive; it recalls to the memory what
the first European adventurers in the New World have told
us of the way the natives made up their herb for smoking.
The Spaniards had observed the natives of Cuba and of
Central America doing precisely the same thing; rolling up
tobacco in a leaf of maize, or of the tobacco-plant, for
smoking in the same way as do these denizens of the
Flowery Land. And our countryman, Thomas Harriot,
the historian of Raleigh’s first colonists, in his Brief and
True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,
says: ‘Soon after we made our peace with the natives we
found them making a fume of a dried leaf, which they
rolled up in a leaf of maize, of the bigness of a man’s
finger … putting a light to the leaf as they
smoked it, as is done by all men in these days.’ This
identity of practice and habit points to a new link in the
chain of evidence, connecting the inhabitants of the New
World with the nations of eastern Asia, more particularly
with China.





INDIAN PIPE-HEADS FOUND IN MOUND CITY, OHIO.




Bearing on the ethnological aspect of the subject is the
fact that pipes have been found on many different occasions
in the ancient earth-mounds of Ohio, in the valley of the[114]
Mississippi, and in Mexico, some of which are carved in
the form of human heads of an unmistakably Mongolian
type. Soon after the discovery of America the question of
the origin of its inhabitants became a fertile source of
conjecture among speculative thinkers. Probably Gregorio
Garcia, a missionary who had for twenty years lived in
South America, was the first to reject the general opinion
that they were a new race of beings sprung from the soil
they inhabited, and to suggest for them an Asiatic source.
He published his views on the question in a work entitled
The Origin of the Indians of the New World
(Valencia, 1607), wherein he expresses himself as opposed
to the autochthonous character of the inhabitants, and
points out reasons for thinking that the country had been
peopled by Tartars and Chinese. Brerewood also, in
his Diversities of Languages and Religions (1632-5),
assigned the American people an Eastern, and chiefly
Tartar, origin. But Hugh Grotius argued that North
America was peopled from a Scandinavian stock, though
probably the Peruvians were from China. Coming to more
recent times may be mentioned Professor Smith Barton of
Pennsylvania, who, in his New Views of the Origin of
the Tribes and Nations of America, contends that they
are descended from Asiatic nations, though he is unable to
point to any particular source from which they have
emanated. And John Delafield’s Enquiries into the
Origin of the Antiquities of America lead him to the
conclusion that the Mexicans were from the riper nations
of Hindustan and Egypt, and that the more barbarous
red men were from the Mongol stock. Alexander von
Humboldt during his travels in South America gave
the weight of his vast knowledge and shrewd observation to
a consideration of the subject. In their habits of life, in[115]
their arts and leading ideas, and in their form of government,
in their personal appearance—as the yellowish hue of
their complexions and the Chinese cast of features, more
particularly as noticed among the tribes of Peru and Brazil—he
saw indubious evidence of an Asiatic origin. Everywhere
he discerned indications, not of a primitive race, but
of the scattered remnants of a civilisation early lost. It is
to be earnestly hoped that an inquiry so full of deep
interest may not be allowed to die out for want of
organised effort to examine and establish the prehistoric
connection of these early inhabitants of America with the
Old World, possibly with the earliest dynasties of Egypt,
before the ravages of time and advancing civilisation have
effaced all traces. These traces are still visible and within
reach; they are revealed in the buried cities of Central
America, in elaborate inscriptions on the massive stonework
of Mexico and Guatemala, and in other decorative
masonry of a people who have left behind no other
vestige of their existence, saving the outcast wanderers
who still haunt the forest and prairie.


The question, then, naturally arises, may not the Chinese
and other half civilized nations of Asia, in their prehistoric
migrations to the shores of America, have carried with them
not only a knowledge of the tobacco-plant and its use, but also
the seed of the plant? Certainly they would do so at one
period or another with such things as could be conveniently
carried for the supply of their immediate wants. A knowledge
and use of the tobacco-plant in China, before the days
of Columbus, is established; incidental mention is made of
tobacco or some other plant that may be used in like manner,
in their national records of the year 1300. It has been the
custom of every writer on the subject to decry all attempts
to seek for the origin of the habit in any part of the Old[116]
World. Doctor Cleland, in his learned treatise on The
History and Properties of Tobacco (Glasgow, 1840), dismisses
the inquiry as the growth of wild assertions by
Eastern travellers, or, at best, a mere tradition of the people
among whom they travelled, and ‘obviously of no conceivable
weight, from the love of antiquity which is so well
known a mania of the inhabitants of oriental countries.’
This summary treatment may be convenient, but it is not
convincing; nor is it consistent with the open spirit of fair
inquiry which would characterise all endeavour to arrive at
truth, or to extend the sphere of knowledge.


After all, then, we find ourselves in presence of the not
improbable hypothesis of an Eastern origin for the tobacco-plant
and the habit of smoking its leaves. Let it be conceded
that in this we have an instance, among many other
of the Chinaman’s way of forestalling the rest of mankind;
that it was he who, long ages ago, first planted in American
soil the perennial weed which Europe to-day presents to him
as a new indulgence discovered by Western enterprise.


It must be borne in mind, however, that we have still to
deal with another Eastern nation, namely Japan, whose history
and associations are closely interwoven with the commerce,
customs and culture of China. China in the past
was to Japan what Greece in olden times was to Rome.
The younger nation derived from the elder much of its
knowledge in the arts and habits of life. Viewed in this
light it seems altogether reasonable to suppose that if the
tobacco plant and the practice of smoking its leaves were
known in China before the discovery of America the Japanese
would not be ignorant of these things. The question will
be considered in the next chapter.




[117]


CHAPTER VII.

A GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN JAPAN.


Extending our survey to Japan we come among a people
who interest us greatly in many ways. Their dress is neat
and picturesque, their personal appearance pleasing, and
closer acquaintance makes us feel well-disposed towards
these children of the Rising Sun. For they are very polite
and show great solicitude towards the Western stranger, and
do all they can for his comfort. We observe with sympathy,
and perhaps a touch of amusement, their primitive simplicity
of manners and habits, which are all the more piquant
because of their naturalness. Their native genius has in
recent years revealed itself in a ready apprehension of immediate
circumstances and in an intelligent adaptability to
new conditions, as well as in wise forethought. Their devotion
to duty and disregard of self when the honour and
interests of their country are at stake shone out brilliantly
during the great conflict now happily ended. But this brief
observation would be incomplete without mention of the
animating and sustaining principle of their religion, Shintoism.
Their child-like belief in a spirit-world where their ancestors
are looking down upon them cannot fail to influence them
for good in every thought and deed.


We must go back six hundred years for the earliest
European mention of Japan. In 1298, Marco Polo, at the[118]
end of his long wanderings in eastern countries, found himself
a prisoner at Genoa. The enforced leisure brought him
the happy thought that he would put in writing an account
of his experiences. Of Japan he says, ‘Zipangu is an island
towards the East,’ and adds, ‘The inhabitants are civilized
and well-favoured.’ But Europe had not yet awakened to
the glorious career of conquest and commerce which fate
had in store for her. Two and a half centuries later the
Portuguese explorer, Fernao Mendez Pinto, while cruising
in Eastern waters bound for Macao, was driven by storm on
to the Japanese coast near Nagasaki. The people with
whom he came in contact were friendly and willing to barter
for such things as he had for disposal. Tidings of the place
and the people and of the favourable reception accorded
him were not long in reaching the Portuguese at Goa and
the Spaniards at Manila, and vessels laden with merchandise
were speedily on their way to the new and promising mart
of commerce.


With the Spanish expedition of 1549 came the good and
pious Jesuit, Francis Xavier, full of zeal, bent upon the conversion
of the natives to the true faith. On their arrival at
the port of Bungo they were received with open arms by a
people who seemed to know no guile. So favourably was
the good missionary impressed that he exclaims in the narrative
of his sojourn among them,[4] ‘I have never found a
nation among the infidels which has pleased me so much.
They are men endowed with the best of dispositions, of excellent
conduct, free from malice and gall. I know not
when to have done when I speak of them. They are truly
the delight of my heart.’ And there is abundant evidence,
speaking of the deep impression the saintly Xavier and his[119]
colleagues made upon the receptive minds of the gentle
Japanese. For these good men had come to them well
provided with medicines, and were not unskilled in the
treatment of disease. Their untiring labours among the
sick and needy, their sympathy with the poor and destitute
won all hearts, and gratitude spread their praises throughout
the land. The wise Shogun, Iyeyasu, was not unobservant
or unmindful of his people’s interests. Fully alive to the
good work the strangers were doing he granted them permission
to go where they pleased throughout his dominions.
To the merchants also he granted similar privileges, allowing
them to carry on unrestricted trade with the inhabitants.
From the first the merchants had done well. As they unfolded
package after package of their wares for inspection
wonder waxed into childish delight, and the shredded leaves
of the tobacco-plant which the sailors smoked in pipes was to
these primitive people a revelation. Fancy pictures the little
people taking to the new indulgence with an amused twinkle
in the eye like youngsters just come into possession of a new
toy. And here we come upon evidence, full and convincing,
that before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spaniards tobacco
was unknown in Japan. Testimony to the foreign
origin of the plant is borne by the people themselves, who
knew no name for it and readily adopted the West Indian
word ‘tabaco.’ It is remarkable that this Carib name, with
slight variations in the spelling, should have spread to every
country.


The story of Europe’s early intercourse with Japan in
regard to the conduct of both the Spaniards and Portuguese
contains much that is painful and humiliating. For a few
years the priests in the propagation of the gospel, and the
merchants in their trade, prospered equally well. By-and-by
it became too glaringly apparent for even the simplest[120]
of the natives to mistake that they were being deceived
and robbed by the strangers. The first serious mischief
began in 1597. Xavier had left Japan for China, and his
just and accomplished coadjutors had been succeeded by a
host of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustine and other
friars who had flocked in from Goa, Malacca, Macao and
other Portuguese settlements, all of whom commenced
their career by setting the Japanese laws and usages at
defiance. Speaking of the foreign traders, an old writer
declares that they were by dishonest means rapidly
draining away the golden marrow of Japan. And the
progress made in proselytising is shown in the fact that within
a few years of their arrival there were in Nagasaki alone no
fewer than twelve parish churches and several monasteries,
presided over by a bishop. Merited retribution, stern and
swift, came in 1616 with the accession to the Shogunate of
Hidetada, and eventually ended in 1637 in the total
expulsion of the Portuguese and Spaniards from Japan.
It is noteworthy that the Dutch residents sided with the
Japanese and gave of their best and bravest during the
prolonged sanguinary conflict.


A gleam of brighter vision breaks upon the scene when
we touch upon the period which brought the first Englishman
to Japan. The story of the Elizabethan mariner,
William Adams, in relation to the place and the people,
does something to redeem Europe’s ill fame in that faraway
land. He was a Kentish man, who, in his youth, had
been apprenticed to a shipbuilder at Limehouse. At the
end of the term he entered the Royal Navy as navigating
officer. We next find him in his thirty-second year (1598)
seized with an overmastering passion for foreign adventure.
In the capacity of pilot-major he joined a Dutch merchant
fleet of five vessels bound for the East Indies. Their[121]
course lay by way of Cape Horn, in rounding which stormy
seas scattered the ships. Two were lost, two found their
way back to Holland, the remaining one called the Charity
alone reached the far East. This latter was commanded
by Adams. Tempest-tossed and worn-out, he, with his
crew of twenty-four men were cast ashore on the Japanese
island of Kiushiu, after a voyage which had lasted two
years. He landed on Japanese soil on the 19th of April
1600, and in such a plight that out of a crew of twenty-four
Adams, in one of his letters home, says, ‘There were
no more than six besides myself that could stand upon
their feet.’ They were taken to Osaka in order to give an
account of themselves to the great Shogun, Iyeyasu. Adams
speaks of the house in which the potentate dwelt as
wonderful and costly, and gilded with gold in abundance.
Called upon to declare his nationality and business he
produced his charts and explained through an interpreter
(doubtless a Portuguese), whence he had come, adding,
‘We are a people that seek friendship with all nations.’
The Portuguese, jealous of their interests in the island,
represented the English and the Dutch as pirates living by
plunder on the high seas, having no country of their own.
At the close of the examination Adams was placed under
arrest and detained thirty-nine days. He says that he was
well treated. Something in his manner gained upon the
Shogun; he gradually rose in favour, notwithstanding the
efforts of his enemies to damage him and his country.
Their motives were seen through; the sagacious Iyeyasu
in a moment of exasperation declared that, ‘if devils from
hell visited his country they should be treated like angels
from heaven so long as they behaved like gentlemen.’
The Shogun was not slow in forming a just estimate of
Adams. Indeed, his manly bearing and simple straightforwardness[122]
gained him friends among high and low. We
next hear of him at Court teaching Iyeyasu the craft of
shipbuilding, the outcome of which was the construction of
two ships on the European model. Adams says, ‘Now
being in such grace by reason, I learned him some points
of geometry and the understanding of the art of
mathematics, with other things. I pleased him so much
that what I said he would not contrary.’ It is pleasant
to read of this manly Elizabethan sailor coming into
honours and wealth in this far-off country by sheer native
honesty of purpose and scholastic attainments. His royal
master raised him to the rank of Samurai, and bestowed
upon him an estate at Phebe, near Yokosuka. Richard
Cocks, a merchant adventurer and member of the East
India Company, describes the place, and says that it
consisted of ‘above one hundred farms or households,
besides others under them, all of which are his vassals; and
he hath power over them, they being his slaves; and he hath
absolute power over them as any tono or King in Japan
hath over his vassals.’ Needless to say that the feudal
system was then in full force in Japan. To the end of his
life Adams maintained the character which had earned him
this responsible position. Let us hope that three centuries
after Iyeyasu the Great the Japanese discern in our people
something of the same steadfastness that in those early
days won their good-will. William Adams stood thus in
favour when in 1609 two armed Dutch ships put into the
harbour of Denzin. The commander sought out Adams,
and, reminding him of his former connection with the
Dutch merchant service, claimed his good offices for the
advancement of Holland’s commercial interests with Japan.
No more was desired than a footing for trade such as had
been granted to the Portuguese. So reasonable a request[123]
appealed to the fair-minded Englishman, and he readily
gave his word to do what he could for them. Again the
Portuguese interfered and denounced the Dutch as
heretics and outlaws from Christendom, and altogether
untrustworthy. This calumny, however, had no effect.
Adams succeeded in obtaining the desired privilege. But
the distrust of all Europeans, created by the artifice and
unscrupulous dealings of the Portuguese, led the Shogun to
restrict the Dutch to the port at which they had landed.
They, however, established a factory at Firando. Mr. W. E.
Griffis in his admirable history of Japan, commenting upon
the influence of the Dutch in that country, says, ‘After a
hundred years of Christianity and foreign intercourse the
only apparent results of this contact with another religion
and civilization were the adoption of gunpowder and firearms
as weapons, and the use of tobacco and the habit of
smoking.’


To round off the story of our countryman in Japan, it
may be well to tell of the great yearning that came over
him to return home to the wife and two children he had
left at Limehouse. The Shogun, however, was loth to part
with him, and his appeals for leave to do so, made, he
says, ‘according to nature and conscience,’ were put off
from time to time. When at last permission was granted,
circumstances had arisen which prevented acceptance.
Adams, however, was not unmindful of the interests of his
native country. His desire to get into communication
with England is shown in a letter which he addressed as
follows:


‘To my unknown friends and countrymen, desiring this
letter by your good means, or news, or copy of this, may
come into the hands of one or more of my acquaintances
in Limehouse, or elsewhere, or in Kent, in Gillingham by[124]
Rochester.’ His description of Japanese character might
have been written to-day, so well does it accord with our
present knowledge of the inhabitants of the Great Britain of
the East. Adams says, ‘The people of this Island of Japan
are of good nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in
war; their justice is severely executed without any partiality
upon transgressors of the law. They are governed in great
civility: I mean not a land better governed in the world by
civil policy.’ In October, 1611, he addressed a letter to
‘The Worshipful Company of London Merchants,’ urging
them to send merchandise to the ports of Japan. In the
simple words of a sailor he tells them that he is a ‘Kentish
man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles
from Rochester and one mile from Chatham, where the
Queen’s ships do lie.’ Before the letter reached them they
had heard through the Dutch of Adams and his position in
Japan, and had sent him letters, advising him of their
intention to despatch goods to Japan. In April, 1612,
three English vessels laden with merchandise, and commanded
by Captain John Saris, sailed from the London
Docks for the far East. They arrived at Bantam (Java) in
October of the same year. How little time was reckoned
with in those days is shown in the circumstance that Saris
thought well to remain at Bantam until the beginning of the
following year, knowing all the while that he bore a letter
from King James to the Emperor of Japan. He sailed in
the Clove with a crew of seventy, and sighting the coast
near Nagasaki, he, two days later, anchored in the haven of
Firando. Here Adams met him and arranged for a visit to
the Shogun, who was then at Sumpu. Thither they repaired,
accompanied by a Japanese interpreter and two followers.
They carried with them presents to the value of 720 dollars
for Iyeyasu and the State officers. They started on their[125]
journey on the 7th of August, and arrived at their destination
on the 6th of September. On the 8th they had an audience
of the Shogun, to whom they delivered the English King’s
letter for the Emperor. They were graciously received,
and Iyeyasu in return sent to King James five screens and
a letter for His Majesty, conveying a free licence to English
subjects to enter any of the ports of Japan for trade purposes.
Thus was established in the year 1613 the first treaty of commerce
between England and Japan.


In the midst of all these things our hero had met with a
fair damsel in Japan with whom he mated, and who bore
him a son and a daughter—Joseph and Susanna. And, to
complete the romance, we are told that there are to-day
Japanese who pride themselves on being able to trace their
descent from this Elizabethan mariner whom the greatest of
their Shoguns loved to honour.[5]


In Japan, however, as in other countries into which the
Indian weed had been introduced, it was not allowed to take
root and flourish unopposed. Protests, strong and loud, were
got up by the old-fashioned folk against the new-fangled indulgence
from the ‘Nanban’—country of the southern barbarians.
So strenuously did they proclaim it to be the ‘fool’s
plant,’ the ‘poverty weed,’ the ‘barbarian’s herb,’ that at
last they won over the Shogun to their side. In 1612 he
issued an edict forbidding his subjects to either use tobacco
or to plant seeds of it. It is curious to notice how, in this
remote region, the witchery of the weed set good men and
true warring over its virtues or vices on exactly the same
lines as were being fought over at the same time in England,
and in each case with a precisely similar result. Like the[126]
historic Counterblaste of our British Solomon and the fulminations
of two popes, their efforts to put out the pipe were
unavailing. Indeed, as usually happens in conflicts of the
kind, opposition begat opposition, till at last the will of the
many triumphed over the prejudice and power of the few.
The people had tasted the forbidden leaf and liked it so well
that each offered to share with his neighbour the pleasure and,
if need be, the punishment attached to the indulgence. So
in course of time the edict died a natural death, and was
decently buried under a mild ceremonial wherein the Shogun
enjoined his loving subjects to be careful and not let themselves
be seen smoking outside their houses. Rein, in his
Industries of Japan, says of this edict, ‘of all the laws of
the Tokugawa rule probably none has proved so ineffectual
as the edict of 1612 against the smoking and planting of
tobacco.’


The earliest native record of tobacco is found in an old
family chronicle of an eminent physician named Saka, of
Nagasaki; it is dated 1605, and runs as follows: ‘In this
year tobacco was brought in ships of the Nanban people,
and was shown near Nagasaki; it was known in Bungo (the
Portuguese settlement) from the beginning and in Sasuma’—a
district noted to this day for the superior quality of its
tobacco. A further note on the subject occurs two years
later, 1607, and is to the effect that, ‘of late a thing has
come into fashion called tabako; it is said to have originated
out of the Nanban, and consists of large leaves which are cut
up, and of which one drinks the smoke.’ In the same record
incidental allusion is made to the supposed medicinal properties
of the Indian weed, a notion derived from the natives
of America and propagated in Europe with much insistence
by Jean Nicot. The writer is never weary of chronicling the
fact that, ‘a thing has been coming out of the Nanban[127]
called tabako, with which all classes of Japanese regale
themselves. It is said to be a cure for all diseases; but,
notwithstanding this, some people have got sick through
drinking the smoke. Now, since no medical work contains
directions for the treatment of such patients, no medicine for
their relief could be offered them.’


The distinguished writer, Kaibard, protested loudly against
the barbarian novelty; he compares it with tea and with saké—a
beer made from rice—and roundly condemns tobacco-smoking,
saying, that far from yielding benefit to anyone it
injures the consumer in many ways. It is not worth while,
he considers, to chide the common people for smoking, but
he expresses surprise and indignation that gentlemen and
superior persons should take pleasure in a custom imported
from over the seas and taught them by strangers. On the
other hand, a learned treatise called ‘Ensauki,’ translated by
Sir Ernest Satow, enumerates some of the excellences discovered
in the weed. These are:


(1) It dispels the vapours and increases the energies.


(2) It is good to produce at the beginning of a feast.


(3) It is a companion in solitude.


(4) It affords an excuse for resting now and then from
work, as if in order to take breath.


(5) It is a storehouse of reflection, and gives time for
the fumes of wrath to disperse.


But on the other hand are objections to its use such as
the following:


(1) There is a natural tendency to hit people over the
head with one’s pipe in a fit of anger.


(2) The pipe comes sometimes to be used for arranging
the burning charcoal in the hibacki.


(3) An inveterate smoker has been known to walk[128]
among the dishes at a feast with the pipe in his mouth [the
dishes resting on mats ranged along the floor].


(4) People knock the ashes out of their pipes while still
alight and forget to extinguish the fire; hence clothing and
mats are frequently scorched by burning ash.


(5) Smokers spit indiscriminately in the hibacki, foot
warmers, or kitchen fire; also, in the crevices between the
tatami which covers the floor.


(6) They rap the pipe violently on the edge of the fire-pot.


(7) They forget to have the ash-pot emptied till it is
full to overflowing.


It is easy to see how pointed admonitions such as these,
thrown broadcast upon Japanese smokers, would yield a
handsome crop of good manners. The Japanese are, and
have always ranked among, the foremost of polite people—a
grace natural to their fine sensibility. Rather than hit
his friend over the head with his pipe in a fit of temper, the
valiant Japanese will put his fingers into the burning hi-ire
in order to change the venue of his annoyance. A trait of
their child-like character comes well into view in a story
told of one, Oka, a famous judge, whose book of anecdotes
and wise decisions Sir Ernest Satow has rendered into
English. The work is entitled Oka Inseidan, and the
story is of,


‘The Theft of the Golden Pipe.’


Once upon a time a wealthy man was the happy owner
of a rich and rare kiseru (tobacco pipe) made of silver,
inlaid with gold and precious stones. It happened on one
occasion, after calling to his servants to bring him the
tobacco-bon that he might indulge in a breath of fragrance
from his treasured kiseru, that he was told the pipe was[129]
gone, and no one knew whither. Search was made for it
high and low, in likely and unlikely places, but all in vain.
Then did they remember their renowned Oka, the wise.
They appealed to him for counsel, and made him acquainted
with the cause of their grief. He, shrewd man, questioned
the household, and on learning that a poor fellow living in
the neighbourhood had been seen smoking a pipe of great
value he found out the truth respecting it in the following
ingenious manner. But here, in order to better understand
the story, it will be well to explain the Japanese method of
smoking. It is the custom of each smoker to roll the
tobacco between his fingers into a ball of the exact size
required to fit the bowl of the pipe, so that when turning
the pipe sideways to light it at the live charcoal it should
not fall out; after every two or three whiffs a fresh ball is
introduced. The smoker will thus occupy himself by the
hour listlessly making fresh ones while he smokes, utterly
oblivious it may be to what he is doing, but from constant
practice his nimble fingers with automatic precision invariably
makes the tiny ball of the size needed to fix it securely in the
bowl. And now, let us hearken to the words of Oka, and
learn of the sage how he recovered the lost pipe and
brought the culprit to justice. ‘Unseen by the suspected
one, I found out a way of watching him while seated on his
mat idly toying with a pipe. Snugly hidden behind a paper
screen I made slits in it for my eyes, for thought I, if
the pipe be not his own he will make up tobacco balls too
large or too small to fit the bowl, then shall I know the[130]
truth. Thus ensconced, peering through the holes I had
made for my eyes, I beheld in the man’s hands a pipe of
surpassing beauty. I saw that he took from his tobacco-pouch
some shreds of the weed and rolled them up, and in
blissful ignorance of other eyes than his own to see and
admire his chased kiseru he caressingly handled it, and fed
it with the pabulum of peace. But when he bent forward
to the brazier and turned the bowl on one side to catch a
light from the live coal the little ball of tobacco fell out—it
was too small for the bowl! Again and again this same
thing happened.’ Then did Oka reveal himself to the
already convicted felon and charge him with the theft,
saying, ‘Had the pipe been thine own, O son of infamy,
long and constant usage would have taught thy fingers to
make up the tobacco balls of the size needed to fit the
bowl.’ This process of reasoning was conclusive. The
culprit was taken before the tribunal of justice and punished
according to the enormity of his offence. That no shadow
of unworthy doubt may rest upon the seat of wisdom, the
veracious chronicler adds, that when the unhappy man was
formally charged with the crime, he, with deep humility
confessed his guilt; whereupon the judge restored to the
rightful owner the lost golden pipe, and the fame of Oka,
the wise spread throughout the land.





A JAPANESE PIPE.




To-day the smoking of tobacco in Japan is universal;
so completely has the practice entered into the daily habits
of Japanese life that high and low, rich and poor—and of
both sexes—have come to look upon the introduction of the
tabako-bon—containing all their curious smoking apparatus—on
the occasion of the arrival of a visitor, as a social
function which could not be neglected without giving
offence. Even in the poorest man’s house the tobacco
tray, with its fire-pot and ash-pot, is an essential part of the[131]
furniture. Visit the humblest abode and there will be
placed before you all the tiny equipment for a smoke; but
their weed is almost tasteless; certainly, it can do nobody
any harm. Formerly the tiny cup of tea was always the
prelude to social gossip; now, however, for some reason or
other the pipe takes precedence of the cup. Surely a wise
choice, for in the pipe he had found a soother of the
ruffled frame, calming the unruly member which the tea-cup
sets free to dilate with eloquence on the virtues—or
their opposite—of the dear absent ones; helping the fair
devotee to unbosom herself of old confidences too heavy to
be longer borne, and to form new and undying friendships—till
the next tea meeting. Assuredly, wherever Eve’s
daughters congregate there will the tea-pot—the genius
of quickened sensibilities—be the favourite fetish.





Queen Elizabeth.




Let us take a peep at a reception, an ‘At Home,’ where
a dark-eyed daughter of Japan reposes luxuriantly on a
carpet of many colours. By her side is an arm-rest, and
a gorgeous screen adorned with wondrous figures in
prismatic hues protects her from obtrusive view. Two
English ladies are her visitors; they are ushered through
a long corridor, covered with thick matting of a fine texture,
into the reception hall. Passing into a large well-proportioned
room, they are agreeably surprised with the
simplicity and tasteful character of the furniture, which
consists of a row of small lacquer tables and chairs, placed
at intervals of a few yards; by the side of each chair is a
large bronze urn of ornamental design, filled with
symmetrically shaped pieces of glowing charcoal. Raising
the eyes to the walls they see that these are covered with
a heavy yet delicate paper artistically painted with birds and
flowers; and the wainscoting, panels and window-frames,
are of a highly polished black lacquer. Over all there[132]
seems to hang a drowsy luxurious atmosphere, quite in
keeping with the old-world ease and courtly manners of
their truly polite hostess. Meanwhile female servants
have noiselessly placed before them the tabako-bon, upon
which rests a gold-dotted lacquered case, delicately made of
leather-paper; it is about eighteen inches long, and twelve
broad, and stands the height of three fingers. On the
removal of the lid the first things which strike the eye are
three chased little tobacco-pipes, each enclosed in a silk
lined case, which in form so nearly resembles the calausilia
that it is called the kiseru-gai—pipe snail. The bowl of
the pipe is a fairy-like thing of the size and shape of an
acorn-cup, and is of finely wrought silver; the stem, about
six inches long, is of thin lacquered bamboo, and the
mouthpiece is of brightly polished metal. The pouch
holding the tobacco is also of stamped leather, and is
finely decorated with lacquer and silver work. But the
tobacco is something wonderful; though an exotic of the
genus nicotina-tobacum of America, it has cast off its native
characteristics and become a light-coloured delicate weed,
which lissome fingers have cut into flossy shreds as fine as
gossamer and as soft as cocoon silk. As the usages of
polite society in Japan require that the visitors should
smoke while chatting, the hostess taking a few shreds of the
weed between her fingers and rolling them up into pellets
to fit the tiny bowls urges her guests to join in the grateful
pastime. One of the ladies, however, declines the proffered
pipe, saying, ‘Arigato, tabako-o nomimasen,’ (thank you,
I don’t drink tobacco) at which the hostess with wondering
eyes asks if she is under a vow! She thinks that ladies
everywhere smoke; that to do so is a binding rule of the
unwritten law of social intercourse. But on the other
guest accepting a pipe, saying, ‘tabako-o nomimas,’ (I[133]
drink tobacco) the charming hostess nods and laughs, and
with her own delicate fingers tries her best to light the pipe
with an English match, and only after repeated attempts
can she accomplish the difficult feat. While thus occupied
a sprightly, intelligent, little gentleman enters, and is introduced
as the husband of the hostess. He is brimful of
Western ideas, and readily joins his wife in ceaseless
questions concerning England and the English; more
particularly he seeks information about the habits, manners
and government of the country; for he is most anxious to
learn whether what he has just heard in the city is really
true, namely: that in England no gentleman is allowed to
smoke in the presence of a lady without first obtaining her
permission. He cannot credit it, but he explains that the
question is greatly perturbing men’s minds in Japan. It is
feared that if this Western custom should spread and take
root amongst them, men’s authority over women would
be gone; certainly their pre-eminence would be seriously
imperilled. The visitors try to reassure him. They tell
him that as a rule gentlemen do pay this deference to ladies
out of considerations of delicacy, as behoves men towards
women, as well as from a chivalric regard for ladies
generally. But this was a line of argument he seemed
unable to follow; he was dominated with the idea that the
custom if adopted in Japan would be the thin end of the
wedge which ultimately would sever men from their proper
control over their wives and women-folk generally. With a
countenance expressive of perplexity and dismay he foretold
of endless domestic storms issuing from the fuming pipe. It
was not without amusement that the English ladies witnessed
this curious reflex of a Western spectre which a few idle
people have raised for their diversion, and it required some
effort to suppress their feelings. They did their best, however,[134]
to smother the emotion; but the spectacle presented to
their imagination of wives boxing their husbands’ ears for
daring to smoke in their presence without leave, and all the
varied scenes of the battle of the pipes fought over the
domestic hearth, was too much for them. Warming to the
subject the bellicose little gentleman exclaimed, ‘The
enemy outside our gates we can grapple with and overthrow,
but a Western idea, and a fickle one like this, who
can seize and vanquish? I have myself but recently suffered
through this innovation, but it shall be the last time.’ And
he so far forgot his native politeness as to declare that he
would smoke when and where he pleased, and if the ladies
did not like it they might leave the room. He added, ‘I
do so in virtue of my right as a man. The assumed right
of the women in Europe to determine whether a man may
smoke or not is an unwarrantable licence, and is all put
on in order to bring men under their authority in other
and more important affairs; in any case, it subtracts from
the power of men, and there can surely be no reason in this,
as it involves limitations to their authority which must
inevitably provoke confusion and conflict. I can find no
reason for making distinctions—for smoking before men
and not before women when it is not a thing forbidden by
law or morals.’ The ladies endeavoured to soothe the
ruffled feelings of their irate host; they assured him that
nothing is farther from the thoughts of intelligent gentlewomen
than the folly of trying to subvert the order of
nature; that the deference paid to ladies in such matters
by their kinsmen is the outcome of good breeding, and it
is always appreciated in that sense. ‘There are a few
women, perhaps, who having much time and little to do
make it their hobby to cry out for the unattainable, and
whom the gods may some day punish by giving them what[135]
they crave for; but these women are of no account in the
general estimate of the sum of Western domestic life;
their voices are loud, but their judgment is weak. On the
other hand, there are in Europe ladies of the highest rank
who, out of pure love of doing good, devote the best part
of their lives and fortunes to the noble purpose of relieving
the needs of the destitute, and raising the lowly and
suffering into better estate. Little room then for
wonder that Englishmen are proud to do them honour.’
Though appeased in some measure, he was not wholly convinced
that danger was not somewhere lurking in their
alluring argument. Let it be noted, however, that young
Japan is outgrowing such apprehensions; he is no longer
restive under the restraints imposed upon his primitive
habits, and his conception of the relationship of the sexes
is in accord with European ideas. Western ideas, indeed,
are his ideas; and, he shows how fully he recognises the
superiority of European civilization, by equipping himself
with all the most destructive engines of warfare.


Like the workmen of the busy cities, the Japanese
peasant carries with him wherever he goes his pipe and
tobacco-pouch slung to his obi, a bright-coloured girdle,
made usually of a peculiar kind of silk interwoven with
flowers. They hang behind, suspended from a silken
cord fastened to the obi by means of a netzuke—a
sort of carved button made of cornelian or agate.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, their peculiar
smoking apparatus does not lend itself readily to indulgence
while at work or when walking. To enjoy the
solace of the weed, the smoker must squat on the ground
and array his smoking utensils in order; but this little
drawback seldom hinders him. When the desire for the
pipe comes upon him it must be appeased; and is it not[136]
written in the learned Ensauki that the pipe ‘affords an
excuse for resting now and then from work, as if to take
breath?’ Certainly, the intelligent Japanese never suffers
an opportunity to pass unimproved by rest and reflection
over the vapour of his beloved pipe as it ascends on high,
mingling with the pure breath of heaven; while possibly the
lingering ashes suggest to his contemplative mind the
mutability of all things earthly—for who can price for
another the thing which his soul valueth?


Passing along the unbeaten tracks of Japan the wayfarer
from the West occasionally comes upon picturesque scenes
of peasant life of a character which combines primitive
simplicity of manners with something of the art and
refinement of what we are accustomed to associate with
advanced civilization, but which with them springs from a
gentle, susceptible nature, always kindly, but quick to
resent affront. Turning into a roadside inn he may meet
with a party of well-to-do peasants on their homeward way
from the market of a neighbouring town, and observe with
quiet amazement the public exhibition they make over
the bath; they are very fond of bathing, but in their
manner of using the tub they have views peculiar to
themselves. Fish and rice are in large demand, and of
these, with a plentiful supply of vegetables, they make a
hearty meal. After dinner tiny cups of tea are served to
each guest by dark-eyed damsels whose appearance recalls
to memory the nursery pictures of our childhood representing
our first parents in the garden of Eden. When the
candles are brought in smoking and story-telling follow
till bed-time. Then, spreading blankets on the floor, and
with a block of wood hollowed to fit the head for a pillow,
they are soon on their way to the land of Nod, announcing
their arrival in a fine symphony of cracked bassoons.


[137]


As everybody smokes in Japan the rate of consumption
per head of the population is considerably greater than with
us. And shops for the sale of tobacco and all its
accessories are to be seen in every street in the big towns,
and in every village which has shops at all; even along the
country roads there are stands where all these things can be
had for the merest trifle. On the sign the tobacconist
exhibits to denote his vocation is painted a leaf of the
plant, and by the side there are two hieroglyphics which
are understood to intimate that he keeps only the best
tobacco, procured from the famous kokubu in the Osumi
district. The name bears a significance similar to that of
Virginia with us. But the taste of the weed grown in this
favoured district is not such as commends itself to English
smokers; it is too sweet, and on this account is but little
exported to Europe. It is used here for mixing with other
kinds of a more pungent character: French tobacco would
be all the better for the admixture. But to do this in
France, where the cultivation, manufacture and sale of
tobacco is a Government monopoly, would perhaps
interfere with the public revenue.


The Japanese method of raising crops of tobacco, of
curing and manufacture, is in all essentials similar to that
of other countries where tobacco-culture is a staple industry.
The seed-beds of the young plants are protected against too
great cooling from radiation on spring nights by straw roofs
about a metre high. Towards the end of April, in the
warmer districts, the shoots are strong enough to be
transplanted into the open fields, where they are placed in
rows usually along the sides of crops of barley which
by this time has passed its bloom. In cooler districts
this operation is delayed until June. But, as tobacco-culture
is widely spread throughout the islands, the seasons[138]
for planting and reaping necessarily differ according to the
varying temperatures of this plutonic region of sulphurous
springs and earthquakes. Besides the pleasure of smoking,
the Japanese, like ourselves, have found many uses for
tobacco. For destroying insects on plants, nothing is so
effectual as dosing them with a liberal decoction of the
juice. Like all other orientals the Japanese have to wage
perpetual warfare with those plagues of the flesh that invade
every house. In order to check their ravages, he places
leaves of the plant in crevices where they usually hide in
ambush against the hour for making their nocturnal attack.
Mosquitoes, too, are numerous, hungry, and of good size,
but in the magic breath of the weed he has found a potent
spell which soon overcomes the enemy and lays him low.
All he finds it needful to do, is simply to seat himself on his
mat in his toy-like house and enjoy the double pleasure of
knowing that he is vanquishing the foe while puffing his
wee pipe and twirling up pellets to fit the thimble-like bowl.
He has discovered, too, that Saint Nicotine is a dispenser of
other inestimable blessings. As a healer of many maladies—cutaneous
affections, some forms of eye disease, and
other like disturbers of a tranquil life—he believes in her
implicitly, and lotions made of the juice extracted from the
leaves of the plant are in almost daily use among the
poorer classes.


Young Japan having entered with a light heart and buoyant
into the stream of European life no longer cares for the
old ways of his fathers, and finds his chosen smoke in the
new paper cigarette fashioned in the Western world. Of these
he partakes so liberally that many millions are imported
every year, the total value of which, according to the Consular
Report, comes to about £40,000. To such proportions
has the tobacco industry grown that in Osaka (the[139]
Manchester of Japan) no fewer than forty factories provide
remunerative employment for thousands of work-people—chiefly
women and girls. In 1895 Japan exported close
upon three million pounds weight of tobacco, the estimated
value of which was £23,466. Under the influence of an
overmastering passion to mould their institutions on the
model of those of Europe, the Government have thought well
to lay hands upon the tobacco industry; henceforward it is
to be a Government monopoly. Referring to the Japanese
Budget of 1897-8, Sir Ernest Satow, in the Diplomatic and
Consular Report on Trade and Finance for the fiscal year
1897-8, discusses the question. The Bill was passed in
the session of 1896, and the monopoly is to come into
force at the beginning of 1898. The principle of the
scheme is, that tobacco grown in Japan shall be delivered in
the leaf to the Government at a fixed rate. The Government
will then sell it to the manufacturers at rates which will ensure
substantial relief to the depleted exchequer, to the extent,
possibly, after all expenses of collection, etc. are met,
of about half a million sterling. The annual yield of the
tobacco fields of Japan is estimated at 90,000,000 lbs., its
market value of £90,000, and the gross revenue therefrom
at £1,000,000. Here Sir Ernest Satow’s incisive criticism
comes into play. He shows that to realize this sum a tax of
over 100 per cent. must be levied, and that this would bring
up the price to the consumer to double what it is now. He
points out that tobacco leaf can be imported into Japan at
10c. per lb., add to this the import duty, namely 35 per cent.,
and the result will be that the Government will try to sell
its tobacco at 21⅑c. and this, too, in face of the fact that imported
tobacco can be sold for 13.5c. per lb. There is a
further important consideration telling against the Government
scheme, namely: that as the tobacco intended for exportation[140]
does not come under the monopoly the producer
can send his unmanufactured leaf out of the country, have
it prepared for use and brought in again ready for the retail
dealer, and still compete successfully with the Government.
Sir Ernest adds that, ‘Were the simple system adopted, in
operation in England, of warehousing, it is estimated that
with the same tax a revenue of at least £1,000,000 could
be obtained.’ The monopoly scheme was severely criticised
in the Senate, and it was thought that it would be amended,
but up to the date of Sir Ernest’s report nothing had been
done in this direction.


The marvellous transformation which has taken place
in Japan within the last thirty-five years has hardly left a
vestige behind of the old order of things which so charmed
the eyes of the stranger from the West. Even in the remote
villages the peasantry, as if ashamed to be themselves, are
entering upon new paths and disguising their primitive habits
of social life under the garb of Western modes and manners.
The graceful native costume is supplanted by the distortions
of dress which the caprice of art sends forth from Paris as if
to render humanity ridiculous. It is not a pleasing sight to
look upon Japanese ladies enduring torture in their efforts
to accommodate themselves to Western fashion and finery.
And the men, skewered up in sombre broad-cloth, lose the
ease and dignity which by nature’s gift is theirs. Would it
not be well, while gathering the fruits of old European culture,
for this Eastern people to preserve their native habits,
works and ways, all those things which are the natural product
of their race and climate? Of course, in commerce, the observance
of the eternal verities, as Carlyle would say, forms
the basis of all healthy and lasting good.


There is, however, one cheerful sign in the present-day
habits of this most interesting people: through all the toils[141]
and vicissitudes of their new and exalted path in life they
resolutely keep the pipe aglow, mindful of the wise words
of the Ensauki that in the vapour of the fragrant weed is a
storehouse of reflection where the fumes of anger are suffered
to disperse.




[142]


CHAPTER VIII.

STRAY LEAVES FROM THE INDIAN WEED.








The pungent, nose-refreshing weed,


Which, whether pulverised, it gain


A speedy passage to the brain,


Or, whether touched with fire, it rise


In circling eddies to the skies,


Does thought more quicken and refine


Than all the breath of all the nine.






Cowper.








How dearly the late Poet Laureate, Tennyson, treasured
his briar-root; how with his ‘silent friend’ he would seek
seclusion, drawing unfailing solace from an inexhaustible
tobacco jar, belongs to the social history of our times. In
the fulness of their hearts, lovers of the weed have declared
that in it they have found ‘the only thing in life that fumes
without fretting.’ If to this excellence be added the further
one of assuaging the fretful, we shall have the whole philosophy
of smoking in a nutshell. Because of these rare
virtues paterfamilias will now and then forego the social
distinction of occupying the paternal chair that he may enjoy
the comforts of a quiet pipe away from all the blessed cherubs
of domesticity. For these, the idolised bachelor, weary of
loving attentions (the ungrateful being!) will watch his opportunity
for flight, and slipping away unseen, will make off[143]
to his favourite hiding-place. Briskly entering his den he
surveys with twinkling eye his own undisputed domain, with
pipe-rack and weeds, benches and books, rifle and rod, all
in undisturbed (dis)order. Tenderly he handles his favourite
calumet, bestows the pabulum of peace, and awaits the
sweet solace which will soon dispel the worries and passions
born of strife in life’s warfare.


Many an over-wrought brain has thus received the balm
that stays the rash hand or the fevered spirit from hurrying
to a reckless end. Surely no one need wonder at the
smoker’s devotion to his pipe, nor be so uncharitable as to
class his troubles and trials and their happy deliverance
with the mere fancies of a lazy man in search of excuse for
an idle habit. Let us not be hard on the smoker. Do we
not all know men who would fain indulge in a social whiff
now and then with their friends were it not for the warnings
of an inward monitor who will not be trifled with? The
man who had conquered Europe was himself conquered by
a pipe of tobacco. An oriental pipe of wonderful beauty
and inventive skill was presented to Napoleon by a Persian
ambassador. Though he was an immoderate snuff-taker
he had never smoked, but he would try this pipe. It was
duly charged with tobacco and lighted, says Constant, but
His Majesty, instead of drawing up the smoke in the usual
way, merely opened and shut his mouth with mechanical
regularity. Losing patience, he exclaimed, ‘Devils!
There is no result!’ It was remarked that he had made
the attempt badly, and he was shown how to smoke
properly. But the Emperor simply reverted to his
automatic performance; the pipe went out, and Constant
was desired to relight it. This done, he again instructed
his master in the proper method of smoking. Determined
not to be balked again, the Emperor resolutely drew up the[144]
smoke, and, swallowing it, it came out by his nostrils and
blinded him. As soon as he recovered breath he cried out,
‘Away with it! Oh, the hog! Oh, my stomach! My
stomach turns!’ This was Napoleon’s first and last experience
of smoking. Then let those whom St Nicotine
favours thankfully own her benign sway and be comforted.
The placid oriental, when his wives rave, or affliction
smites him, will stroke his beard—if he have one—and
thank Allah for the good gift








Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides,


His hours, and rivals opium and his brides.








An old Persian legend, brought to light by Lieutenant
Walpole, tells the story of a virtuous youth distraught at
the loss of a loving wife. A holy man looks tenderly upon
the disconsolate one, and tells him of a balm for his
affliction. ‘Go to thy wife’s tomb, son of sorrow,’ says the
anchorite, ‘and there thou wilt find a weed. Pluck it,
place it in a reed, and put fire to it, then inhale the smoke
thereof. This will be to thee wife and mother, father and
brother, and, above all, will be a wise counsellor, and
teach thy soul wisdom and thy spirit joy.’ The Homeric
strain of this Eastern sage breathes of implicit faith in his
native Shiraz tobacco. For doubtless he, a dweller in








… the land where the cypress and myrtle


Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;


Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,


Now melts into sorrow, now maddens to crime,








had often experienced its influence on a wounded heart.
Indeed, the history and associations of the plant, from its
wild Indian home to the remotest East, are full of romance
of more than ordinary interest. For, like most things
transatlantic, whether products of the soil or of the brain, it[145]
rapidly became universal, spreading literally like wild-fire
wherever man was to be found. Everywhere it was
esteemed a close comfort, a priceless possession, and to its
rare qualities were ascribed almost miraculous powers.
The persistency with which men have stuck to the weed,
after once experiencing its soothing effects, ranks among
the most remarkable examples history affords of the rapid
development of a new taste and the formation of a new
habit; a habit that, after the lapse of three centuries and
more, grows stronger day by day, keeping full pace with the
increase of population, until now it is too deeply rooted
ever to be extirpated, even by taxation, however weighty.
Viewed in its political aspect, the career of the Indian
weed presents a striking illustration of popular opinion
ultimately triumphing over prejudice and power.


Here let us take a cursory glance back to the heroic age
when the marvellous weed which has almost revolutionised
men’s habits all over the world, and created a new industry
giving employment to millions of human beings, was first
imported into these islands.


A halo of romance surrounds those jubilant days; but, in
the eyes of Englishmen generally, Sir Walter Raleigh stands
out prominently as the hero to whom the honour is due of
giving his countrymen their first instalment of tobacco.
England had just awakened to the reality of a new world
of wonders and boundless wealth lying unexplored in the
far West; a land where everything touched turned to
gold. The far-famed discoveries and conquests of the
Spaniards, their fabled El Dorado, drew forth the daring
and enterprising from every corner of Europe. Stirred by
an overpowering desire to see the marvels, and share in the
treasures of the terra incognita which was in all men’s
mouths, our hardy sea captains, Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh,[146]
and a host more of England’s sturdy sons, sailed the
Spanish main, bent upon achieving fame or fortune, yet
caring little what lot befell them if only renown were won
for their idolised Queen Bess. They encountered the
mild Indian, and explored a portion of his glorious land,
teeming with a rich luxuriance of vegetation such as their
eyes had never before beheld. But what of El Dorado,
the famed city of gold and precious stones, hemmed in by
golden mountains, whose splendour and immense treasure
beckoned them onward? Alas! the gorgeous phantasm of
the New World, like the glories of the setting sun, melted
away before their advancing steps. And yet many a poor,
dispirited wayfarer in the pursuit of the alluring ignis
fatuus found comfort and consolation in the humble weed
which the natives supplied to him and taught him how to
use. In testimony whereof, listen to honest Jack Brimblecombe
in Westward Ho! ‘Heaven forgive me! but
when I get the leaf between my teeth, I feel tempted to sit
as still as a chimney and smoke to my dying day.’ And
faithful old Yeo pours forth his pent-up gratitude for the
comfort he derives from the Indians’ herb in a stream of
consolation for the lonely and afflicted, assuring us that when
all things were made none was made better than this. And
here he enumerates the blessing breathed upon the weary
and worn traveller in those far-off lands by the herb, like
unto which there is not another under the canopy of
heaven.


In the summer of 1584, Raleigh, his imagination aglow
with brilliant colonisation schemes which should eclipse
those of Spain, sent out an expedition to explore the coast
of the new continent. On July 13, the party, under
Captains Amadas and Barlowe, took possession of the
territory which Raleigh subsequently named Virginia, in[147]
honour of the Queen. In the following year a second
expedition was despatched, conveying one hundred and
seven souls, whom, with Master Ralph Lane at their head
as the governor of the new colony, Raleigh had inspired
with his own ardent hopes and plans for the founding of a
new settlement that should, in course of time, rival the
Spanish conquests. The adventure, however, was not
attended with the success anticipated. The party remained
in the new territory from August 17, 1585, to June 18, 1586,
when Sir Francis Drake, with his fleet, returning along the
coast from his victorious raid in the West Indies, called at
their port, and, learning their discontent, brought them back
to England. They took care, however, not to return
empty-handed; a large quantity of tobacco, which the
natives had prepared for them, was stowed on board the
vessels, with a variety of instruments for preparing and
using it. It can well be imagined that Master Lane would
take pride in exhibiting himself to London’s gazing
multitude smothered in Indian clouds. The learned
Camden speaks of Lane as the original English smoker.
It is remarkable that there should have been so much
uncertainty, even in Eliza-Jacobean times, as to the date
when tobacco was first received in this country and the
person by whom it was first introduced. The painstaking
annalist, Stow, says that tobacco came into England about
the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth (1577). But
Aubrey, speaking of Sir Walter Raleigh, says that ‘he was
the first that brought tobacco into England and into fashion
(1686). In our part of North Wilts—e.g. Malmesbury
Hundred—it came first into fashion by Sir Walter Long.
They had first silver pipes. The ordinary sort made use of
a walnut shell and a straw. I have heard my grandfather,
Lyle, say that one pipe was handed from man to man[148]
round the table. Sir Walter Raleigh, standing in a stand
at Sir Ro. Poyntz parke at Acton, took a pipe of tobacco,
which made the ladies quitte it till he had donne.’ The
author of a gossipy Tour in Wales (Pennant), in 1810,
speaking about the great houses and their associations, says
that Captain Price, of Plasyollin, with Captains Myddelton
and Koet, on their return from the Azores in 1591, ‘were
the first who had smoked or (as they called it) drank
tobacco publicly in London, and that the Londoners
flocked from all parts to see them. Pipes were not then
invented, so they used the twisted leaves, or segars. The
invention is usually ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh. It
may be so, but he was too good a courtier to smoke in
public, especially in the reign of James.’ Again, in the
1659 translation of Dr. Everard’s Panacea (Antwerp,
1587), it is remarked that ‘Captain Richard Grenfield and
Sir Francis Drake were the first planters of it here
(England), and not Sir Walter Raleigh, which is the
common error; so difficult is it to fix popular discoveries.’
These few selections show us how easily origins are lost
sight of.


It seems ungracious to pluck a plume from one so
eminently distinguished for important services rendered to
his Queen and country as Sir Walter Raleigh; yet nothing
in history is more certain than that the common belief
crediting him with the first introduction of tobacco into this
country is a myth. History, whilst awarding him the palm
for potatoes, points to Sir John Hawkins as the first to
bring to his countrymen the peaceful pleasures of the pipe.
Certainly, the weight of probabilities are in his favour.
Taylor, the Water Poet, says: ‘Tobacco was first brought
into England in 1565, by Sir John Hawkins.’ And
Edmund Howes, in his continuation of Stow’s Annals[149]
says: ‘Tobacco was first brought and made known by Sir
John Hawkins about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen for many years after, though at this day it is
commonly used by most men and many women.’ These
accounts correspond with Hawkins’s second voyage, viz.,
October 18, 1564, returning September 20, 1565. Confirmatory
evidence comes from John Sparkes, the younger,
who, in his account of this voyage, says that Hawkins,
ranging along the ‘coast of Florida for fresh water, in July
1565, came upon the French settlement there under
Landoniere, where the natives, when they travel, have a
kind of herbe dryed, which with a cane and an earthen cup
in the end, with fire and the dryed herbe put together, they
do suck through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke
satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live four or five
days without meat or drink, and this all the Frenchmen
used for the purpose.’ Hearing these wonderful stories
told of the Indian’s herbe, nothing could be more
natural than that Hawkins should make trial of it for
himself, and, liking it, secure specimens of the plant for
cultivation and use at home. To see and hear and get all
he could, was the sole end and aim of his ploughing the
Spanish main. Bearing in mind that he got back to
England in September 1565, we see that the statements of
Taylor, the Water Poet, and Howes, the annalist, that
tobacco was brought by Sir John Hawkins in 1565, are
consistent and reliable. Collateral evidence on the point
is to be found in L’Obel’s work on Botany,[6] written in
1570, wherein he says: ‘Within these few years the West[150]
Indian tobacco-plant has become an inmate of England.’
This of itself is conclusive against the Raleigh theory.
But let us look a little further into the matter. In 1570,
Raleigh was a youth of eighteen, and had just gone to
France to fight in the Huguenot cause. Again, in the
State Archives, there is still extant an edict issued by Queen
Elizabeth against the use and abuse of tobacco, dated
1584—the year Raleigh’s first expedition sailed to the New
World.


It is amusing to find Queen Elizabeth fulminating
against the pipe she afterwards so willingly countenanced in
the mouth of her favourite knight. But then Sir Walter
was in every way a splendid man, the typical gallant and
hero in England’s heroic age. Tall, dark, handsome, a
noble brow, commanding voice and mien, he drew to his
side willing hands ready to do his behest, be it what it
might. A gay courtier, his dress was of the richest, and
priceless gems sparkled on every finger. And so it came
about that his proud Queen would quietly sit by his side,
would playfully call him Walter, and listen to his tales
of daring deeds and sufferings endured all for Good
Queen Bess. And had he not won for her a new land full
of rich promise, which, for her sake, was named Virginia?
And thus they would talk on, Sir Walter smoking his finely-wrought
silver pipe in peace, forgetful of the fair, if frail,
Maid of Honour, Bessy Throgmorton, listening, maybe,
behind the arras. Alas! poor mortal man. The untoward
affair at last broke upon Elizabeth like a thunderstorm in a
serene sky, and our gallant hero became an outcast from
the favour of his Queen.[7]


[151]


Among the many anecdotes told of Raleigh’s practices with
his pipe may be mentioned that of his outwitting the Queen
in a wager she laid with the gallant knight respecting the
weight of the smoke which exhaled from a pipeful of tobacco.
‘I can assure your Majesty,’ said Raleigh, ‘that I have so
well experienced the nature of it that I can exactly tell even
the weight of the smoke in any quantity I consume.’ ‘I
doubt it much, Sir Walter,’ replied Elizabeth, thinking only
how impossible it must be to catch the smoke and put it in
a balance, ‘and will wager you twenty angels that you do
not solve my doubt.’ Whereupon Raleigh drew forth a
quantity of the weed, placed it in finely adjusted scales, and
having ascertained its weight, commenced to smoke it, carefully
preserving the ashes. These at the finish he weighed
with great exactness. Then would it dawn upon her Majesty
how the wager was to end. ‘Your Majesty,’ said Raleigh,
‘cannot deny that the difference hath evaporated in smoke.’
‘Truly, I cannot,’ was her reply. Then, turning to those
around her, who were eying with amusement this curious play
on the pipe, she continued, ‘Many labourers in the fire have
I heard of (alluding to alchemists) who turned their gold into
smoke, but Sir Walter is the first who has turned smoke into
gold.’


But the Indian weed had a hard fight to hold its ground
in Europe and Asia in face of the most resolute opposition
from potentates, statesmen, and priests. In England








The gentleman called King James


In quilted doublet and great trunk breeches,


Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches,[8]








signalised himself and his reign by profound learning and
ponderous invective hurled against the innocent plant,[152]
amongst whose alluring leaves there lurked the ‘lively image
and pattern of hell.’ His Counterblaste to tobacco[9]
is of itself an historic monument to his genius, which posterity
does well to preserve that there may be something in
hand to attest the just appreciation of his ‘loving subjects’
in early recognising in him a Solomon! Though, to be sure,
some will have it that the irreverent Henri Quatre was the
first to see the fitness of the designation, Solomon, for the
son of Mary, Queen of Scots. And yet his astute minister,
the Duc de Sully, professed to have discovered in the flickering
illuminations of this northern light ‘the wisest fool in
Christendom.’ Historians who think it incumbent upon
them to explain every human phenomenon or prodigy, have
perplexed themselves with vain endeavours to unravel this
curious compound of Machiavellian craft, fussy self-conceit
and imbecility. Looking to his preternatural insight into
the uncanny domain of the Black Arts, his mental conflicts
with the de’il, witches and warlocks, and long nebbit things,
the problem his character presents might perhaps form a
fitting study for the modern school of psychology.


With the beginning of the seventeenth century commenced[153]
a literary warfare over the virtues and vices of St Nicotine,
which lasted intermittently down to the present day. Mr.
Solly, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, in the middle of last century
strove valiantly in the columns of the Lancet to get up
a crusade against smoking. All the leading members of the
medical profession took part in the affray; irrefragable statistics
were piled up one upon the other as ramparts from behind
which Mr. Solly proclaimed that there was death in the
pipe; and the rapid degeneracy of the human race, to him
everywhere apparent, was to be regarded as the inevitable
consequence of indulgence in the pernicious weed. Had[154]
Mr. Solly referred to the text-book left by the royal founder
of his faith, he would have learned the right use and value
of trenchant utterance, and as a physiologist, would have
gained knowledge never imparted in St. Thomas’s Hospital.





DUC DE SULLY




The royal Counterblaste proclaims that ‘smoke becomes
a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it
makes a kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of men,
soyling and infecting with an unctuous and oyly kind of soote,
as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after
death were opened.’ ‘Have you not reason then to be
ashamed and to forbear this filthie noveltie, so basely
grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly mistaken in
the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against
God, harming yourselves both in person and in goods, and
raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanitie upon
you; by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered
at by all forraine civil nations, and all strangers that
come among you, to be scorned and contemned.’ King
James clinches his argument with a logical acumen there is
no resisting. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘since we imitate the beastly
and slavish Indians in taking tobacco, do we not imitate
them in walking naked? as they do’—an extraordinary idea
to occur to one accustomed to wear dagger-proof quilted
dress—‘preferring glass beads and feathers to gold and
precious stones? as they do; yea, why do we not deny God
and adore the devil? as they do.’ Then comes his famous
climax: ‘A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the
nose, harmful to the orgain (brain), dangerous to the lungs,
and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the
horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.’ If, after
this display of royal indignation, stiff-necked ones still cast
fond looks at the ‘emblem of hell,’ let them turn their attention
to the King’s words of wisdom stored up in a Collection[155]
of Witty Apothegms. Things that before were obscure
to mental vision are here illuminated with a new
radiance; it is made clear to us that ‘tobacco was the lively
image and pattern of hell, for that it had, by illusion, in it
all the parts and vices of the world whereby hell may be
gained—to wit, first: It is a smoke; so are the vanities of
this world. Secondly: It delighteth them that take it; so
do the pleasures of the world delight the men of the world.
Thirdly: It maketh men drunken and light in the head;
so do the vanities of the world, men are drunken wherewith.
Fourthly: He that taketh tobacco saith he cannot leave it,
it doth bewitch him!… And, further, besides all this,
it is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking,
loathsome thing, and so is hell.’ But James had his
moments of gaiety; he could jest over the arch enemy, and
it would be most unfair to his memory to pass by any playful
attempt at jocularity that for an instant flickered over his
dreary brain. In the treasury of wisdom already mentioned,
we are told that his Majesty once remarked that ‘if he were
to invite the devil to dinner he should have three dishes:
1. A pig; 2. A pole of ling and mustard; and (3) a pipe
of tobacco for digesture.’


There is a passage in the Counterblaste which seems to
point directly to Raleigh; it runs as follows: ‘Now the
corrupt baseness of the use of this tobacco doeth very well
agree with the foolish and groundless first entry thereof
into this kingdom. It is not so long since the first entry
of this abuse amongst us here, as this present age can very
well remember both the first author and the form of the first
introduction of it amongst us. It was neither brought in
by king, great conqueror, nor learned doctor of physick.
With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some
two or three savage men were brought in, together with this[156]
savage custom. But the pity is, the poor, wild, barbarous
men died; but that vile, barbarous custom is yet alive, yea,
in fresh vigour, so as it seems a miracle to me how a custom
springing from so vile a ground, and brought in by a
father so generally hated, should be welcomed on so
slender a warrant.’ The mention of ‘two or three savage
men’ clearly indicates the return of Raleigh’s first expedition
in 1584, when Captain Amadas and Barlowe brought
with them two American Indians, whose appearance in the
streets was regarded as one of the sights of London.
James’s inveterate enmity towards Raleigh would seem to
have originated at their first encounter at Burghly, in
Lincolnshire, when the King faltered out: ‘On my soul,
mon, I hae heard but rawley o’ thee,’ a clumsy attempt at a
pun. Doubtless Raleigh’s noble bearing and rich attire
would touch James’s inordinate self-importance, which
seems to have at all times blinded him to a proper sense of
decency, according to Sir Anthony Weldon’s simple, graphic
presentation of him. On the King boasting that, had the
English crown not been offered to him, his Scotch army
would have taken it for him, Raleigh, indignant, made the
injudicious remark: ‘Would God that had been put to
the test.’ ‘Why?’ asked James. Raleigh recovering himself
replied, ‘Your Majesty would then have known your
friends from your foes.’ Aubrey says that James never forgave
this speech. One by one, Raleigh was stripped of all
his offices; and before the end of the first year of James’s
reign (November 4, 1603) he was lodged in the Tower on
a false charge of treason, and after fifteen years’ imprisonment
was judicially murdered by order of the King.
Speaking of this event, Sir Anthony Weldom remarks,
‘How this kingdom was gulled in the supposed treason of
Sir Walter Rawley and others who suffered as traytors,[157]
whereas to this day it could never be knowne that there
ever was such treason, but a mere trick of State to remove
some blotches out of the way.’ When Raleigh’s fate drew
nigh, ‘he took a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to
the scaffolde,’ says Aubrey, ‘which some female persons
were scandalised at; but I think ’twas well and properly
donne to settle his spirits.’


Speaking of this noble victim of James I., Sir Walter
Besant, in his handsome volume on Westminster, says,
‘Raleigh was brought to Old Palauce Yard to die. The
day chosen for his execution was Lord Mayor’s Day, so
that the crowd should be drawn to the pageant rather than
to his execution.’ The body lies buried in the chancel of
St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, where, near by, a
tablet informs the visitor that




Within the walls of this church was deposited the body of the
great Sir Walter Raleigh, Knt., on the day he was beheaded
in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, 29 October, Ann. Dom. 1618.








Reader, should you reflect on his errors,


Remember his many virtues,


And that he was a mortal.










Considering the deep sympathy the nation has always
evinced for the ill-fated yet illustrious knight, it is almost
incredible that no monument has ever been erected to his
memory. Raleigh was truly great in all those things which
mankind loves to honour and perpetuate. In him
patriotism, valour, and magnanimity stand out conspicuously
in an age of heroes. Though endowed with a
glowing, wildly-romantic imagination, he has left in his
various writings evidence of extensive reading, keen insight,
and sound judgment. The improvements he effected in
naval architecture alone entitle him to the lasting gratitude
of his country. The concluding lines of his History of[158]
the World written when the death sentence had been
passed upon him and all his hopes of life had fled, are
considered to be the finest and grandest example of prose
in the English language. That Raleigh would not surrender
his natural nobility of character to flatter the most
abject monarch[10] that ever sat on the throne is to his everlasting
honour, and marks him as a typical Englishman.


Through the medium of the notorious Star Chamber, the
King, in 1614, directed his efforts ostensibly to restrain the
consumption of tobacco; in effect, to put an end to the
infant colony of Virginia. For this purpose a bill was
drawn up, addressed to ‘Our Right Trustie and right well
beloved Cousin and Counsellor, Thomas, Earle of Dorset,
our High Treasurer of Englande, Greeting.’ Then follows
a rather perplexing, verbose preamble, the drift of which
seems to be the hatching up of excuses for heaping upon
tobacco a monstrous load of taxation for the avowed
purpose of relieving ‘many mean persons’ of the heavy
expense the habit of smoking entailed.


He tells his ‘loving subjects’ that smoking is an ‘evil
vanitie, whereby the health of a great number of people is
impayered, and their bodies weakened and made unfit for
labour, and the estates of many mean persons so decayed
and consumed, as they are thereby driven to unthriftie
shiftes onley to maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof.’
After further admonition and warning of evils in store for
the obdurate, the Act proceeds: ‘We do therefore will[159]
and command you, our Treasurer of Englande, and herebye
also warrant and authorise you to give orders to all
Customers, Comptrollers, Searchers, Surveyors and other
officers of our Portes, that from and after the six-and-twentieth
Day of October next comynge, they shall demand
and take to our use, etc., etc., the sum of Sixe shillings and
8d. upon every pound weight thereof, over and above the
custome of 2d. upon the pound weight usually paid heretofore.’
The penalties for evading payment were, forfeiture
of cargo, ‘and such further Penalties and coporal punishments
as the qualitie of suche so high a Contempt against
Our Royal and Expresse Commandmente in this manner
published shall deserve.’


The imposition, equivalent to about thirty shillings of
our present money, had a startling effect on the tobacco
trade of the country; but when merchants found out that
it was meant to apply only to the tobacco imported
from Virginia, they naturally had recourse to other markets,
as Spain and Portugal, whence it was brought in at the old
rate of twopence on the pound that had satisfied Elizabeth.
Agriculturists, too, saw in the change an opportunity for
extending the home cultivation and manufacture of tobacco,
and readily availed themselves of it, particularly in
Yorkshire, where all the operations connected therewith
were well understood. On the King learning what they
were doing, he hastened to promulgate a further edict
forbidding husbandmen ‘to misuse and misemploy the soyle
of this fruitful kingdom,’ beginning with the words,
‘Whereas we, out of the dislike we have to tobacco.’
Thus expressed, his case against the weed is placed in a
more intelligible light than that which he had in the first
instance thought it expedient to disclose. However absurd
his reasoning, his policy succeeded only too well. Besides[160]
dealing a crushing blow to the young colony, his action
had other far-reaching effects. It created a daring race of
smugglers, who did a thriving contraband trade in tobacco
with pirates on the Spanish main; and home dealers saw
in the greatly enhanced price of the weed a temptation to
‘sophisticate’ too powerful to be resisted. Scattered
through the literature of that period may be found some
curious allusions to the practice, as in Ben Jonson’s
Alchemist, where Abel Drugger, speaking in praise of his
tobacconist, says:








He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not


Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil;


Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,


…


But keeps it in fine lilly pots, that, opened,


Smell like a conserve of roses, or French beans.


He has his maple block, his silver tongs,


Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper.








In Bartholomew Faire he presents us with a picture of
one, Ursula, a vendor of roast pig, bidding her servant
‘Look to’t, sirrah, you had best! three pence a pipe full I
will ha’ made of all my whole half pound of tobacco, and a
quarter of a pound of coltsfoot, mixed with it too, to eke it
out.’ That sophisticating practices were growing apace
may be gleaned from Dr. Barclay, of Edinburgh, who in
his Nepenthes (1614) speaks of ‘tobacco merchants
apparelling European plants with Indian coats and
enstalling them in shops as righteous and legitimate
tobacco.’ (How very conservative we English are!)
‘Some others, indeed, have tobacco from Florida that they
sophisticate and farde in sundrie sorts with black spice,
galanga, aqua-vitæ, Spanish wine, anise seedes, oyle of
spicke, and such like.’ Less expensive materials than[161]
these were more commonly used (and perhaps still are), as
the leaves of rhubarb, dock, burdock, plantain, oak and
elm, also chickory and cabbage leaves steeped in tar-oil.


If the manufacturers of these and less innocent
‘mixtures’ really find themselves unable to withstand the
pressure from without for a cheap smoke, let them confine
their sophisticating ingenuity to simple vegetable products,
such, for instance, as satisfied Dame Ursula. Coltsfoot or
the leaves of the lettuce, being slightly narcotic, would
form a harmless make-belief for the good folk who
persuade themselves that they could not sleep a wink were
they deprived of their evening comfort. Ages ago both
Greeks and Romans, according to Dioscorides and Pliny,
found comfort in smoking through a reed or pipe the dried
leaves of coltsfoot, which relieved them of old coughs and
difficult breathing. We can picture the legionary in
Britain’s bleak atmosphere, while pacing the Roman Wall,
trying to console himself in his lonely vigil with the vapour
from his ‘elphin pipe,’ fragments of which have been found
among the ruins of those early memorials to the Scots’
persistent determination to travel southwards. And as to
the lettuce, it has been famous since the time of Galen
(Claudius Galenus), who asserts that he found relief from
sleeplessness by taking it at night. Regardless of these
things, the Nicotian epicure of to-day enjoys the inestimable
advantage of luxuriating in the delicate aroma of the
Cuban leaf, while fancying himself wafted on his upward
way to Nirvana. The charming simplicity that leads to
this ideal conception of existence is most refreshing; the
being so lost to the outer world can hardly be blamed if he
says rude things when compelled to touch Mother Earth.


But King James had not yet done with tobacco. A
monarch of his remarkable idiosyncrasy, as displayed in his[162]
creation of a new and lucrative business for the sale of
distinguished titles and high offices of State, where he
himself possessed the sole monopoly, would naturally see
his way to a further stroke of ‘good business’ in the
tobacco market. Accordingly, we are not surprised to
learn that, viewing with a jealous eye the flourishing state
of the new industry, the idea occurred to him that the
State coffers might be replenished by taking a still deeper
interest in the weed. Hence the issue of a royal
proclamation to his loving subjects that they were
forbidden to deal in tobacco unless they purchased Royal
Letters Patent granting them a license to do so. These
could only be procured, on payment of a yearly sum, from
the persons who farmed from the King the right to enforce
and collect the tax. In the Stafford Letters, compiled
by Gerrard, relating to the collection of the new tax, it is
stated that ‘some towns have yielded twenty marks, £10,
£5, £6, fine and rent; none goes under. I hear that
Plymouth hath yielded £100 and as much yearly rent.…
The tobacco licences go on apace; they yield a
good fine, and a constant yearly rent.…’ In some
instances a life-lease to deal in tobacco was granted on
payment of a lump sum. As to the King’s method of
dealing with State affairs of the kind, let Sir Anthony
Weldon speak from personal knowledge. He says of the
King that ‘he was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the
circumventing any great man. He had a trick of cousen
(cozen) himself with bargains under hand, by taking £1,000
or £10,000 as a bribe, when (at the same time) his Counsel
was treating with his Customers to raise them to so much
more yearly; this went into his Privy purse; wherein he
thought he had over-reached the Lords, but consented
himself; but would as easily break the bargain upon the[163]
next offer, saying he was mistaken and deceived, and
therefore no reason he should keep the bargain. This was
often the case with the Farmers of the Customs.’


There is a document in the State Archives which throws
a curious side-light on the King’s ideas of statecraft. The
settlers in Guiana had become tobacco-planters, and
required a trade-charter with this country. A charter was
granted them, in which a clause was inserted to the effect
that one-tenth of the tobacco grown there should go to the
King. Thus, in a roundabout way, the King became a
tobacco merchant.


The concern which the King had professed for the
‘many mean persons’ of decayed fortune in debt for
tobacco had not resulted in helping them out of their
difficulties, but rather the contrary. From Aubrey we
learn that its cost had risen to the value of silver. He
says, ‘I have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours
say that when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham
market they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in the
scales against the tobacco. Now (1680) the Customes of
it are the greatest his majestie hath.’ In various
documents of the period, tobacco is mentioned amongst
the most expensive luxuries. Even in Elizabeth’s reign its
price ranged from 10s. to 18s. a pound, according to the
quality.


Meanwhile, jovial spirits were amusing themselves with
a lively paper warfare over the virtues and vices of the rare
Indian plant that, according to the King, had bewitched
them. Early in the fray (1602), appeared anonymously a
booklet entitled, Work for Chimney Sweepers, or a
Warning to Tobacconists, calling the smoker’s attention to
the necessity for securing the services of one of those
useful members of the community. At that time it was[164]
the fashion among gallants of the weed to draw the smoke
into the lungs and to eject it ‘through the organs of the
nose, with a relish that inviteth,’ says the gay, laughing,
Doctor Barton Holiday, who took such a wicked delight in
tormenting King James at Woodstock in his play of the
Marriage of the Arts. This was speedily answered by
A Defence of Tobacco, printed by Richard Field for
Thomas Man, wherein the author shows that the ‘warning’
should have roosted at home, where, in its absence, zeal
had outrun discretion, and had thereby damaged the cause it
would fain have served.


Verbose titles, full of alliteration, fire and fun, were much
appreciated by the militant writers of this period. Witness
the following heading to a poem against tobacco by Joshua
Sylvester, Gent., the favourite poet of King James:
‘Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered (about their
eares that idely idolize so base and barbarous a weed; or
leastwise over-love so loathsome a vanitie), by a volley of
Holy shot, thundered from Mount Helicon.’ After this
brave warning we are prepared to hear that








Hell hath smoake


Impenitent tobacconist to choake.


Though never dead, there shall they have their fill;


In heaven is none, but light and glory still.








Samuel Rowlands in his Knave of Clubbs (1611) writes
in a lighter strain, and asks:—








Who durst dispraise tobacco whilst the smoke is in my nose,


Or say, but fah! my pipe doth smell! I would I know but those


Durst offer such indignity to that which I prefer;


For all the brood of blackamoors will swear I do not err,


In taking this same worthy whiff with valiant cavalier,


But that will make his nostrils smoke, at cupps of wine or beer,
[165]

When as my purse can not afford my stomach flesh or fish,


I sup with smoke, and feel as well and fat as one can wish.


…


Much victuals serve for gluttony, to fatten men like swine,


But he’s a frugal man indeed that with a leaf can dine,


And needs no napkins for his hands his fingers’ ends to wipe,


But keeps his kitchen in a box, and roast meat in a pipe.


This is the way to help down years, a meal a day’s enough;


Take out tobacco for the rest by pipe, or else in snuff,


And you shall find it physical; a corpulent, fat man,


Within a year shall shrink so small that round his waist you’ll span.


It’s full of physic’s rare effects, it worketh sundry ways:


The leaf green, dried, steep’t, burnt to dust, have each their several praise.








While Englishmen smoked, and laughed at their King’s
wondrous ways, or growled at his tenacious grip upon their
pockets, Eastern potentates were treating their subjects, as
only despots can, for daring to indulge in the Frankish novelty.
In Persia, where but recently jealous strife raged for sole
possession of the tobacco industry, Abbas I., of dread
memory, cut off the lips of those who smoked, and the
noses of any who ventured to snuff. On one occasion he
threw an unfortunate man, whom he discovered selling
tobacco, into a fire along with his goods. Yet, by-and-by,
this demon of cruelty himself was enthralled by Nicotiana’s
charms, and became one of her most fervent devotees.
The Turks, under Amurath IV., were similarly punished
for infringing his edict against smoking. Sir Edwin
Sandys, of Pontefract, in his travels in 1610, bears testimony
to similar acts of cruelty by Mahomet IV. During his stay
in Constantinople he witnessed the punishment of a Turk
who had been caught solacing the burden of life with the
vapour of his new-found joy. Short-lived was the sturdy[166]
beggar’s happiness; he was dragged before the tribunal, and
condemned to the torture of having a hole pierced through
the cartilage of his nose, and a pipe inserted therein.
Then, in order to render the punishment more impressive
to the multitude, he was seated on the back of an ass with
his face to the tail, and driven through the streets of the
city, while criers proclaimed his offence and its merited
punishment, according to the law of the Sultan. Not less
cruel were the punishments inflicted upon Russian smokers,
who, under the Tsar Michael Fedorowitz, were publicly
knouted for using tobacco in any form; in some instances
their nostrils were split open. If guilty of a second offence,
death alone could wipe out the crime. The ambassadors
of the Duke of Holstein, who visited Moscow in 1634, relate
that they were eye-witnesses of a public exhibition of this
kind, where eight men and one woman were punished with
the knout for selling tobacco. By way of palliating this
Russian atrocity, they were informed that houses in Moscow
had been set on fire by smokers falling asleep and dropping
their lighted pipes.


Oppression, however, like persecution in another sphere,
brought succour to the smoker; for, despite every form of
opposition and punishment, men quietly went on comforting
themselves with the weed, until at last their bitterest foes
became their best friends, and gratefully acknowledged
the benign sway of St Nicotine.


There is a peculiar interest, not without instruction, in
observing the change that came over governments with
regard to the consumption of tobacco. One after another
they began to recognise a new and most useful virtue in the
outcast weed, one which had too long remained hidden.
Straightway they took the exotic under their paternal protection,
and handsomely were they rewarded for their acknowledgment[167]
of her value to mankind. By-and-by, many an
anxious custodian of an empty treasury came to look upon St
Nicotine as a divinity








… that cures, a vapour that affords


Content more solid than the smile of lords,








and as they gathered in their golden harvest of taxation,
blessed the name of their benefactress.


In illustration of this change may be mentioned the action
which Peter the Great took with the view of establishing
tobacco culture and manufacture in his dominions. In the
tenth volume of M. de Martin’s magnificent work on the
treaties and conventions concluded by Russia with other
nations from 1710 to 1801, there is a paragraph which
states that Peter the Great, having determined that tobacco
should be cultivated and manufactured in Russia, sought
in England the necessary workmen, machinery, implements,
etc., for transmission to Moscow. Englishmen knew little
at that time of the remote Tsardom of Muscovy, but on
learning the wants and wealth of the monarchy, enterprising
merchants were not slow to undertake the performance
of all that was required of them. Accordingly, a party of
skilled workmen, with engineers, was soon on its way to
Moscow with all necessary material for setting up and working
a tobacco factory. When, later, the English Government
was apprised of what had been done, ‘Her Majesty, Queen
Anne, in Council, was pleased to manifest her profound dissatisfaction,
especially in that they proceeded to the realm
of Moscow to the cultivation of the native products of her
Majesty’s dominions, and in that they have brought to Moscow
for this purpose the requisite English workmen and
material, which is contrary to the interests and usages of the
kingdom of Great Britain.’ Orders were immediately sent[168]
to our envoy at Moscow to not only return the workmen to
their homes, but to privately and secretly destroy all the
materials, machines and instruments of production.


It is not a little amusing to learn how energetically the
envoy carried out the order of destruction. He relates at
considerable length in his home despatch how he and his
secretary (a private secretary undoubtedly) spent a night in
breaking up all the machinery and laying waste the material;
how he afterwards explained to the Tsar that the object of
his zealous operations in smashing up the plant was to save
his Majesty’s subjects from a burdensome monopoly and
thus, really, to encourage and enhance the tobacco trade in
Russia. Remembering that the Tsar was Peter the Great,
we are not surprised to learn that our excellent envoy was
listened to with impatience.




[169]


CHAPTER IX.

SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED.








Why should we so much despise


So good and wholesome an exercise


As early and late, to meditate?


Thus think, and drink tobacco.






G. W.








Ancient and delightful George Wither, while suffering for
conscience’ sake imprisonment in the Marshalsea, found a
never-failing comfort in his beloved Indian weed. Its soothing
vapours moved him to meditation; the earthen pipe, the
burning weed, the vanishing fumes, and the ashes left behind,
were to him emblems of the transitory nature of man’s earthly
career. Musing thus, he poured forth his thoughts in a poem
which has taken a firmer hold on the popular taste than any
other of the countless songs composed on the subject of
tobacco. It has undergone numerous alterations, but in
every instance for the worse. In a mutilated form, and with
a second part added, it is found among the ‘Gospel Sonnets’
of the Rev. Ralph Erskine, of the Scottish Church. It is
the ‘Smoking Spiritualized’ which is still in print among the
ballad-vendors of the east end of London. It reappeared
with variations in Mr. J. H. Dixon’s ‘Songs and Ballads of
the Peasantry of England’; and again in the Rev. James
Plumptre’s ‘Tobacco is an Indian weed.’ So popular had[170]
the song become that Dr. Hague, in 1805, set the words to
music, and Mr. Samuel Wesley, at a later date, adapted them
to a tune said to be still in vogue. Yet, out of the multitude
of admirers who so readily adopted and adapted Wither’s
song, no one seems to have cared to acknowledge the source
of his inspiration. But for the diligent research of Mr. Payne
Collier, the student might have remained forever in ignorance
of its true parentage. Turning to Mr. Chappell’s ‘Popular
Music of the Olden Time’ we come upon the following
passage relating to this song:—‘The earliest copy’ says Mr.
Chappell, ‘I have seen is in a manuscript volume of poetry
transcribed during James’s reign and which was kindly lent
to me by Mr. Payne Collier. It there bears the initials of
G[eorge] W[ither] a very likely person to have written such a
song. A courtier poet would not have sung the praises of
smoking—so obnoxious to the King as to induce him to
write a Counterblaste to Tobacco—but Wither despised
the servility which would have tended to his advancement
at Court.’ The original song, the first verse of which is at
the head of this chapter, runs as follows:—








The earthen pipe so lily white


Shows that thou art a mortal wight;


Even such—and gone with a small touch:


Thus think, and drink tobacco.






And when the smoke ascends on high,


Think on the worldly vanity


Of worldly stuff—’tis gone with a puff;


Thus think, and drink tobacco.






And when the pipe is foul within


Think how the soul’s defiled with sin—


To purge with fire it doth require:


Thus think, and drink tobacco.
[171]





Lastly, the ashes left behind


May daily shew to move the mind,


That to ashes and dust return we must:


Thus think, and drink tobacco.








As a soother of sorrow in wedded life, the story told by
Camden of good Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London,
shews how over-indulgence in the weed may carry its
votary farther than he wots of. For his sins, people would
say, the Bishop had to endure the plague of a scolding
wife. The burden became greater than he could bear; he
sighed for the peace that failed him, and in his distress he
fell to smoking so immoderately that at last his weary spirit
took flight on the wings of the weed to the realms of rest
he longed for. There is a pathos in the story that awakens
a kindred feeling; one can see the peace-loving prelate
quietly slipping away from the domestic storm, and, finding
sanctuary in his attic, yielding himself a willing martyr to
the solace of St Nicotine. Indeed, if the truth must be told,
the clergy, ever since her advent in these islands, have
been noted votaries at her shrine. Instances crowd upon us.


A curious example is found in the pages of the astrologer
Lilly’s Memoires published in 1715, thirty-four years after
his death. We are told of one, William Bredon, vicar of
Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, who was so far given over
to the taking of tobacco in a pipe that when his supply was
run out he would cut off the ends of the bell-ropes and
smoke the bits. But this unworthy lover of his pipe was
profoundly learned in Eastern lore, particularly that which
related to judicial astrology. It may well be, that, along
with his learning, he derived from the same source his
knowledge of hashish. The practice of inhaling the fumes
of burning hemp, was, as we have already seen, common in
the near East, before tobacco had reached the Moslem.


[172]


It is next to impossible to dip into the pages of the
early playwrights and pamphleteers without coming upon
mirthful allusions to the new indulgence. Ben Jonson,
Thomas Dekker, Samuel Rowlands, and a host of other
writers in those jubilant days, found in the weed and the
habits of smokers a never-failing source for good-natured
raillery.


In Every Man out of his Humour we learn that the
rage for tobacco had spread to the provinces. One,
Sogliardo, is described as essentially a clown, yet so
enamoured of the name of gentleman that he will have it
though he buys it. He comes to town every term to learn
the manners of polite society, and readily falls a victim to
men of the Bobadil type, who sees in the novelty a new
field of enterprise. Jonson describes their methods, and
speaks of a bill posted in St. Paul’s churchyard notifying
fledglings from the country that instruction in the art of
taking tobacco can be arranged for. It affords us a glimpse
of the smart men-about-town three centuries ago who lay
in wait for inexperienced youth. It runs as follows:—




‘If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford
any young gentleman of the first, second, or third
head, more or less, whose friends are but lately
deceased, and whose lands are but new come
into his hands, that, to be as exactly qualified as
the best of our ordinary gallants are, is affected to
entertain the most gentleman-like 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 the
practice of the Cuban ebolition, Euripus, and
Whiffe, which he shall receive or take in here at[173]
London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if
it pleases him. If there be any such generous
spirit that is truly enamoured of these good
faculties, may it please him but by a note of his
hand, to specify the place or ordinary where he
uses to eat and lie, and most sweet attendance
with tobacco and pipes of the best sort shall be
ministered. Stet, quæso, candide lector.







EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SMOKERS




After King James had sent forth his famous
Counterblaste in 1604, declaring to the world that
tobacco was the ‘lively image and pattern of hell,’ it was
not unusual to hear the weed associated with the arch
enemy. And rare Ben would seem to have been nothing
loth to trim his sails to the new breeze. In his masque
entitled The Gipsies Metamorphosed he is so considerate
as to wish that his Majesty’s nose may be protected from
the smell of








Tobacco with the type


Of the Devil’s glyster pipe.








[174]


The play accorded so well with the King’s humour that he
commanded a repetition of the performance. At that time
tobacco-smoking was commonly indulged in at theatres.
In Bartholomew Fair a pleasure seeker, named Coke,
enters a puppet show and asks of the master, ‘Ha’ you
none of your pretty impudent boys, now, to bring stools,
fill tobacco, fetch ale, and beg money, as they have at
other houses?’


We pass on to the pages of Thomas Dekker—Dekker
the gay, the light-hearted, and always good-humoured, who
says of himself that, ‘the imagination runs to and fro, the
fantasie flies round about, the vital spirits walk up and
down, yea, the very pulses shew activities, and with their
hammers are still beating, so that in my very dreams it is
whispered in my ears that I must be up and doing
something.’ Among his many delightful sketches of
social life in London, the Gulls Hornbook may well rank
first. He makes sport of the young gallants of the city who
affect the fashionable habit of ‘taking tobacco,’ and
instructs them how to handle, in the most approved style,
the implements with which they are to be provided. In
the same bantering tone he apostrophises tobacco thus:
‘Make me thine adopted heir, that, inheriting the virtues
of thy whiffs, I may distribute them among all nations, and
make the fantastic Englishman above all the rest more
cunning in the distinction of thy roll-Trinidado, leaf and
pudding, than the whitest toothed blackamore in all
Asia.’


In one of those unaccountable freaks of temper which at
times seem to take possession of genius Jonson, in the
The Poetaster made an unprovoked attack upon Dekker,
who, in no way daunted, flew to arms, and in his
Satiromastix or the Untrussing of the Humerous Poet,[175]
proved himself to be no unworthy match for his more
ponderous assailant. In this masterpiece of Dekker’s we
come upon the earliest allusion to women smokers.
Asinius Babo meeting with friends proffers his pipe saying,
‘’tis at your service, gallants, and the tobacco too; ’tis
right good pudding I can tell you: a lady or two took a
pipeful or two at my hands and praised it ’fore the heavens.’
We learn from Aubrey that in his day (1680) it was
considered very improper for ‘feamale persons’ to take
tobacco. But women’s curiosity respecting the new allurement
to indolence with which men were so greatly
enamoured very naturally led them to taste the forbidden
leaf. Bearing on this point is a piquant story told by
Miss Pardoe in her admirable History of the Court of
Louis XIV. The Grand Monarque had a great aversion
to tobacco, and no one ventured to smoke in his presence.
But his daughters had noticed how comfortable and cosy
the men of the Swiss Guard looked while smoking their
pipes, and longed for a more intimate acquaintance with the
novelty. They grew weary of the restraints of the court
circle and sought freedom in their own apartments. On
one occasion, when the Dauphin had at a late hour quitted
the card-table, he heard noises of revelry while passing their
quarter of the Palace. Entering to ascertain the cause, he
was astonished to find the princesses engaged in smoking.
Their pipes had been borrowed from the officers, who
doubtless were instructing them how to make clouds, rings
and squirts. Miss Pardoe speaks strongly; she says that
when the princesses became weary of the ‘gravity and
etiquette of the court circle they were accustomed to
celebrate a species of orgie in their own apartments, after
supper.’ But after all were they not Eve’s daughters—what
else could be expected?


[176]


In England the paper warfare over the merit or demerit
of the ‘Indian’s weed,’ signalized by King James, lasted
well through two centuries. Beginning with some slight
skirmishing, as in Work for Chimney Sweepers we come
to a doughty champion of the royal cause in the person of
‘Josuah Sylvester, Gent:’ he who with quixotic valour
sent forth a ‘Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount
Helicon.’ In dedicatory lines addressed to George, Duke
of Buckingham, he invokes the aid of the royal favourite to
enable him to overthrow the








… Proud oppression


Of th’ Infidel, usurping faith’s possession,


That Indian tyrant, England’s only shame


Thousands of ours he here hath captive taken,


Of all degrees kept under slavish yoke


Their God, their good, King, country, friends, forsaken,


To follow follie, and to feed on smoke.








Scanning the horizon he discovers Satan, enraged, working
in short circuit two smoky engines—‘guns and tobocco
pipes vented from the infernal pit.’ In this turgid style he
pours out his puerile conceits much in the manner of his
royal patron, whose good opinion he won so fully that
James made him his Court poet.


The levy of a duty on tobacco so excessive as that which
King James imposed namely, six shillings and tenpence—equivalent
to about thirty shillings of our present money—upon
every pound weight imported or grown in the country,
coupled with great extravagance in its use brought ruin to
many families, just as does over-indulgence in strong drink
to those who are not satisfied with the moderation which
reason dictates. In the case of tobacco the ruin was in
money, whereas with alcohol in excess ruin comes to body
and mind as well as purse. Our excellent guide along the[177]
by-paths of literature, John Aubrey, from whom we have
gleaned many things respecting the use of tobacco, says, ‘In
my early days (temp. Charles the First) tobacco was sold for
its weight in silver.’ And in the family account-books of
well-to-do people that have come to light we get occasional
glimpses of its cost. A book of household expenses kept
by Sir Henry Oglander, of Nunwell, in the Isle of Wight
(1626), contains an entry of five shillings paid for eight
ounces of tobacco. The price varies on different dates,
according to the quality of the weed. Virginian seems to
have been the favourite growth, though Spanish is the more
frequently mentioned. A worthy old gentleman named
Peter Campbell, living in Derbyshire, was so incensed
against the smoking habit that in his Will, making over his
household goods to his eldest son, Roger, he inserted a
special clause to the effect that if at any time either his
brothers or his sisters ‘fynd him smoking of tobacco he
shall forfeit all or their full valew.’ Roger, who loved his
pipe, would be lucky indeed if he escaped the watchful
eyes of his five brothers and three sisters.


Sir Edwin Sandys, Member of Parliament for Pontefract,
(1620) grew alarmed at the prodigious quantity of tobacco
consumed in this country, and inquiring into the matter
found that Spain was sending to England tobacco to the
value of £100,000 a year for which in payment ‘we sent
our cloths and other merchandise.… Nay, that sum
will not pay for all the tobacco we have from thence;
they have more from us every year: £20,000. So that
there goes out of this kingdom as good as £120,000 for
tobacco every year!’ He would have opened wide his
eyes with amazement if some genius had whispered in his
ear that under Edward VII. the duty alone on the quantity
consumed in these islands would amount to over[178]
£13,000,000 a year. The increased and constantly increasing
consumption of tobacco, prodigious as it was in the eyes
of our forefathers, was not peculiar to England. Dr.
Everard in his treatise on the Wonderful Virtues of
Tobacco taken in a Pipe[11] says that its use had spread with
amazing rapidity all over the known world, and that its
cultivation and manufacture gave employment to millions of
people who, were the consumption stopped, would probably
perish for want of food. He likens the rise and progress
of the industry to Elias’s cloud, ‘which was no bigger than
a man’s hand.… It hath suddenly covered the face
of the Earth: the low countries, Germany, Poland, Arabia,
Persia, Turkey; almost all countries drive a trade in it,
and there is no commodity that hath advanced so many
small fortunes to gain great estates in the world.’ The
translator adds, ‘Scholars take it much, and many grave
and great men take tobacco to make them more serviceable
in their callings.… Soldiers and seamen cannot but
want it during their arduous duties in cold and tempestuous
weather. Farmers, ploughmen, porters, labourers, plead
for it, saying, they find great refreshment by it.’


English smokers cared little for the fulminations against
the indulgence issued from high places. Even a taxation
which in these days would provoke a riot merely drew from
them a mild growl. An example of this more excellent
way is found in Dr. Barclay’s Nepenthes, or the Vertues
of Tobacco. In the tranquil spirit of a devotee of St
Nicotine he addresses to ‘My Lord Bishop Murray’ the
following lines:


[179]








The statelie, rich, late conquer’d Indian plaines,


Foster a plant, the princess of all plants,


Which Portugall, after peril and paines,


To Europe brought, as it most justly vaunts;


This plant at home the people and priests assure,


Of his goodwill, whom they as God adore;


Both here and there it worketh wonderous cure,


And hath much heavenlie vertue hid in store.


A stranger plant shipwrecked on our coast,


Is come to help this colde phlegmatic soyle,


Yet cannot live for calumnie and boast,


In danger daylie of some greater broyle.


My Lord, this sacred herbe which never offendit,


Is forced to crave your favour to defend it.








The author’s exalted idea about the great value of the
weed was a reflex of the Indian’s belief in its all-healing
properties, a notion which through the Spaniards and
Portuguese had become the common property of Europe.
This is the animating thought running through the work.
He has set his heart upon curing suffering humanity of
every malady, and he complacently likens himself to
Hercules going out into the world to wage war on disease
and corruption. ‘I have armed myself with a box for his
bag,’ says the learned doctor, ‘and a pipe for his club; a
box to conserve my tobacco, and a pipe to use it.’ He
foresees a time coming when the medicinal virtues of the
herb will be so well understood that the services of
physicians may be dispensed with, particularly in cases of
defluxion and catarrh. Warming to his work and holding
up the native home of the plant to be a ‘Country which
God hath honoured and blessed with this holy herbe,’ he
flourishes his club defiantly in the face of ‘the unlearned
leiches’ who dare to say evil things about Nicotiana; ‘God
willing,’ he means to ‘overcome many maladies.’ In[180]
practical work, however, though equally earnest, he is a
long way behind his contemporary, Dr. Gardiner, whose
Trial of Tobacco has already been noticed.


By the middle of the seventeenth century, tobacco-smoking
had become a confirmed habit even in remote
rural districts, and was duly recognised and provided for by
every housewife. Monsieur Jorevin de Rochefort in his
travels in England (1672) tells a homely story of his sitting
down to supper with a friend in Worcester, where, on the
meal being finished, they set on the table half a dozen
pipes and a packet of tobacco for smoking. On inquiry
he was told that it was a common practice to smoke after
supper, indulged in by both men and women, who said
that without tobacco one cannot live in England, for the
smoke dissipates the evil humours of the brain. He goes
on to relate his further experience on the next day,
saying:


‘Whilst we were walking about the town he asked me if
it was the custom in France, as in England, for children on
setting out for school to carry in their satchel along with
their books a pipe of tobacco, which their mother had taken
care to fill early in the morning, in the belief that it would
serve them instead of breakfast.’ Surely our French friend
was grossly imposed upon. No English mother would for
a moment entertain such a notion. We are next told that
at the accustomed hour every one laid aside his book to
light his pipe; and that the master smoked with them and
taught the youngsters how to hold their pipes and draw in
the tobacco-smoke; thus using them to the habit from
youth, believing it absolutely necessary for health’s sake.
The story told him by his Worcester friend put him in
mind of a Spaniard whom he had met at the seaport of
Calabria. The man, not being able to procure tobacco, cut[181]
off a piece of the cable with which he filled his pipe and
drew down the smoke thereof as if it were the precious weed.
He speaks, also, of an Irishman who falling ill was not
allowed his usual pipe of tobacco. He submitted for some
time, but he became so low and so melancholy that he
could take nothing but a little tobacco, which was at last
permitted him, with the result that in a short time he
recovered perfect health. ‘I have known,’ says Rochefort,
‘several persons who, not content with smoking in the day,
went to bed with their pipes in their mouths. Others who
have risen in the night to take tobacco with as much
pleasure as they would have received in drinking Alicant or
Greek wine.’ Profligate smokers such as these deserve no
encouragement or sympathy; they rank in the class of the
besotted.


Rarely do we meet with more sympathetic words in
favour of the weed than in Mission’s Memories of Travels
over England, which he published in 1697. Tobacco-smoking,
he says, was commonly practised both by men
and women, particularly in country places. His
observations led him to remark that smoking makes the
generality of Englishmen taciturn, thoughtful, and, alas,
melancholy; he adds that the use of tobacco ‘not only
breeds profound theologists, but also begets moral
philosophers.’ And in a sonnet, which bears some
resemblance to the verses of George Wither, he shows us
that he had himself imbibed something of the melancholy
and philosophic spirit he speaks of. The lines run as
follows:








Sweet smoking pipe; bright glowing stove,


Companion still of my retreat,


Thou dost my gloomy thoughts remove,


And purge my brain with gentle heat.
[182]

Tobacco, charmer of my mind,


When like the meteor’s transient gleam,


Thy substance gone to air, I find,


I think, alas, my life’s the same!


What else than lighted dust am I?


Thou show’st me what my fate will be;


And when thy sinking ashes die,


I learn that I must end like thee.








A more robust, nay, hilarious, spirit pervades the
utterances of Dr. Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch,
Oxford, who in devotion to the weed surpassed even Dr.
Parr of cloud-compelling fame. The genial don had
found in the pipe a solace for his somewhat fretful
temperament; it disposed him to look upon life with the
benevolent composure of a mind at peace with the world.
Indeed, the love he bore his pipe, says his biographer, Sir
John Hawkins, was so excessive as to be an entertaining
topic of discourse in the University. The belief that the
Dean and his pipe were inseparable, led to wagers being
laid on the chance of finding him without it. With the
keen wits for fun and mischief, characteristic of schoolboys,
students would now and then warily peer into his sanctum
at early morn or dewy eve, in the hope of settling the
disputed point. On one occasion the doctor, learning the
object of their visit at an early hour in the morning, readily
fell in with their humour, and declared to the foremost boy,
that, ‘Your friend has lost. I am not smoking, only
filling my pipe.’ The Dean’s geniality comes out well in
his humorous ‘Catch on Tobacco,’ which appeared in his
second book of The Pleasant Musical Companion,
published in 1687. He tells us that it is ‘to be sung by
four men at the time of smoking their pipes.’ The first
verse is as follows:—


[183]








Good! good, indeed!


The herb’s good weed;


Fill thy pipe, Will, and I prithee, Sam, fill,


For sure we may smoke and yet sing still;


For what say the learned? Vita fumus,


’Tis what you and I, and he and I, and all of us sumus.








If the so-called ‘Smoking Concerts’ of to-day were carried
out in strict accordance with the founder’s instructions,
each being supplied with the legitimate materials, the
public would then get the amusement implied in the
designation, ‘Smoking Concert.’


Before taking leave of the amiable Dean, it is but just to
his memory to say a word on his higher claims to
admiration. It is recorded of him that he distinguished
himself in every branch of divine and human learning;
that he promoted religion and virtue with application and
zeal during his tenure of office at the noble college of
Christchurch, much of whose present lustre and beauty it
owes to his efforts. His biographer ranks him among the
greatest masters in the composition of church music; his
anthems number about twenty. Yet, being a man of
genial humour, he found diversion for his leisure moments
in the production of pieces of a lighter description, as,
‘Hark! the bonny Christchurch Bells,’ which at one time
had a great vogue.




[184]


CHAPTER X.

THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY AND SMOKING PIPES.


The various kinds of tobacco and the sources of supply are
exceedingly numerous. Every country, indeed, has
attempted to cultivate the plant and reap a share of the
rich harvest it yields to the planter and to the government.
Special qualities, as of wine, belong to particular localities,
outside of which they cannot, by any skill or coaxing, be
raised. A puzzling example of nature’s fickle moods in the
production of the plant was found a few years ago in
Sumatra, where on one side of a field a leaf was yielded
rich in all the qualities delicate smokers desire, and on the
other side, but a few yards off, a very inferior plant grew.
So far as an experienced cultivator could see the conditions
were alike: seed, soil, and culture and aspect were the
same. And as is the case with wines, the crops vary in
richness and delicacy of flavour with the seasons of their
growth, so that in some years the yield is of much greater
value than in other years, though tobacco of the ‘Comet
year’ has not yet been proclaimed in commerce. The
natural properties of certain classes of tobacco render
them especially suited for cigar-making; others are best
fitted for smoking in pipes, and there are numerous qualities
which are valuable for snuff-making. National tastes and
habits again frequently determine the destination of the[185]
weed. Thus, heavy, full-flavoured cigars and strong pipe-tobacco
are in favour in North America, while in Europe,
lighter, and more brisk-burning are sought after. By far
the most valuable tobaccos in the world are grown in Cuba,
and the richest of all is found in the gardens of Vuelta
Abajo in the north-west district; after which come the
products of Partidas and Vuelta Arriba. A large portion
of the tobacco is made into cigars in the island, but
considerable quantities are exported to Europe for mixing
with commoner kinds to give Havana flavour to home-made
cigars. Cuba, though no longer the emporium of the
tobacco world, still ranks first among the favoured places of
the earth for the finest growths of the plant. In culture
and make-up, in classification and nomenclature of the
different kinds of tobacco, the Queen of the Antilles is, as
she has always been, a model to the tobacco-producing
world. Foremost among her thousand factories stands the
Royal and Imperial of La Hondradez. It occupies a whole
square, and is looked upon as one of the sights of Havana.
Before the McKinley tariff cast gloom over the Home
industry, this factory, alone, produced nearly two millions
of cigarettes daily; and the total number of cigars exported
in 1889 was about two hundred and fifty millions. Under
the McKinley tariff the exportation of cigars declined
rapidly to about one half this number, with the consequent
loss of employment for factory operatives. On the other
hand, however, the exports of unmanufactured leaf rose in
like proportion. The highest class of Cuban cigars called
‘Vegueras,’ are prepared from the finest growths of the
plant raised in Vuelta Abajo. Here, the plant growing in
its native soil attains its richest perfection. The soil is a
light sandy loam, very rich in potash and lime, and as the
heat and humidity are great it is an ideal site for the[186]
tobacco plant. In the preparation this valuable leaf is
never damped with water, as is done with the inferior kinds,
but when it is just half dry it is rolled, and thus the full,
natural and most delicately flavoured qualities are retained.
Next come the ‘Regalias’ which are treated in a similar
way; but genuine Havanas are seldom to be had in
Europe. The area in which these plants are grown is so
small that it is physically impossible all the cigars sold
under these names can be real Havana ‘legitimas’; and
the price they command places them beyond the reach of
ordinary smokers. So it happens that the cigars made in
Europe from any Cuban tobacco are usually classed as
‘Havanas.’


Of the many different methods of harvesting and
preparing the leaves of the plant for commerce, one of the
best is said to be that recently adopted in Florida. The
latest results would seem to justify the sanguine hopes of
the planters that by-and-by they will produce a tobacco in
all essential particulars equal to Havanas. They trust
mainly to a new method of reaping. Instead of waiting,
as in the old way, until the whole field is ripe, they keep a
close watch on the crop, and as each leaf becomes ripe,
which a skilled eye readily detects, it is taken from the
stalk and placed with other fully ripened ones in a broad-bottomed
basket, or tray, and carried to the curing-house.
Here the leaves are sorted and sized, strung and hung up
in rows and tiers, and when all the field has been gathered
leaf by leaf, and the other operations completed, the
steaming apparatus is brought into action—hot-water pipes
leading to evaporating pans—and the proper degree of heat
secured to produce the desired fermentation. By dint of
care in the regulation of the heating apparatus, so as to
secure the proper temperature in the curing rooms, and in[187]
the collection of the leaves undergoing the process of curing
at the proper moment, the delicate aroma considered to be
peculiar to the best Cuban growths is secured in greater
perfection than could be attained under the old method of
leaving the gathering until the whole field had ripened. It
is reported from the district that the longer time expended
in the somewhat tedious operation of collecting each leaf
separately as it becomes ripe, is more than compensated
by the lessened labour of indoor work. Then there is the
superior texture, colour, weight and richness over those
which the old plan yielded. There still remains, however,
for consideration, the all-important factors of soil and
climate, and whatever else in nature may go towards
determining the ultimate fate of the plant. It is thought
that all the favouring conditions are in Florida harmonized
more perfectly than in any other part of the United States.


Housing and curing operations completed, the leaves being
quite dry and crisp, they are loosely tied in bundles (a leaf
being used for the purpose) of about a dozen, called ‘hands,’
and lightly packed together for the Home market. The tobacco
intended for exportation receives much more care in the
packing. Each bundle is placed carefully in a hogshead or
other large receptacle in such a manner as not to injure the
leaf in any way. In some cases the midrib—the fibre which
runs through the leaf—is removed before exportation, an
operation which has given rise in commerce to the designation
‘stripes,’ a term by which large quantities of tobacco is
known in the market. When a hogshead is about one
quarter filled a powerful lever-press is employed to compress
and consolidate the tobacco. This pressing is repeated at
each successive stage of the packing till the whole is a dense
and compact mass, weighing from a thousand to twelve hundred
pounds. On arrival at the London Docks, where immense[188]
bonded warehouses extend as far as the eye can reach,
unshipment takes place among some hundreds of other similar
imports. Here it remains until the duty demanded by the
Custom House officer is paid. The period of bondage
may last three years, a small rent being charged for the accommodation.
Before releasing it from bond the consignee
will unpack the tobacco for the purpose of ascertaining
whether it is perfectly sound, or has sustained damage in
course of transit; for it happens sometimes that the material
is found to be hardly worth the duty imposed. In this case
the consignee is not compelled to release it; it is left with
the Crown officials to make such use of it as they may deem
fit. How they dispose of such tobacco is remarked upon
in the chapter headed, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tobacco.’


In looking over the various sorts of tobacco presented by
the tobacconists to the consumer we need not touch upon
the delicate ground of ‘vested interests.’ It will suffice our
present purpose if we notice merely that from the same
hogshead a selection and classification is made of the leaves
according to the shade of colour, and that the lightest
coloured (the mild) ones are reserved for less liquoring and
pressure than is given to the darker coloured leaves. ‘Returns,’
for example, is the product of the lightest leaves and
less pressure. A large quantity of water used in the process
of liquoring has the effect of darkening the colour and giving
strength to the flavour of the tobacco. By extreme watering
and pressure is produced the kind so dear to the sailor
called ‘pigtail,’ as well as the less pungent ‘sag,’ of which
there are two sorts, fine and common, the difference consisting
of the fineness or coarseness of the shreds into which
the leaf is cut. These and many other odd circumstances
in the manufacture give the different degrees of strength
and flavour sought for by the varying tastes of smokers.


[189]


In the opinion of experienced smokers a new cigar is
never good; like wine, the weed requires age to bring it to
perfection—the highly prized excellences, a mild, cool aromatic
smoke. Curiously enough, the marks of a mite on
the outer leaf are the true signs of matured years, when the
cigar is fitted to regale the jaded senses and dispose the
most obdurate of men to relax into sociality. But these
seductive touches by an invisible hand are well known to
the manufacturer, and are sometimes artificially produced by
means of acid. Fancy or experience has suggested different
kinds of cigars for different seasons of the year, or climates.
The Havana is thought by connoisseurs to be the most agreeable
for summer or hot countries, and for winter or cold
climates a principe is preferred; while the thoughtful and
imaginative are assured that there is no leaf like the Manila.
And as regards the Manila there is something to warrant the
suggestion. The tobacco of Luzon when mixed with that
of the Gapanian plantation is considered to make the very
perfection of all cheroots. Its excellences consist in a delicate
flavour combined with a slightly soporific quality:
properties which render it so pleasantly alluring to the imaginative,
and which to some smokers suggest the use of
opium in its preparation; this, however, is not so; to the
climate and soil alone are due the grateful pleasures of this
most solacing smoke. There are three different and distinct
growths of the tobacco-plant in the Philippines. A strong,
aromatic tobacco is grown in great abundance in the province
of Cagayan in the island of Luzon, and the district
of Gapan in Pampanga produces a leaf of a very mild
and agreeable flavour, while from Bisayas a tobacco much
inferior to either is raised. In the manufacture of the poorer
kind it is a common practise to use a leaf of the best as an
envelope wrapped round, in order to impart to it a better[190]
appearance. From the first planting of tobacco in the
Philippines until July, 1881, the entire industry had been in
the hands of the Spanish Government, who visited illicit
production with severe pains and penalties. Yet, notwithstanding
the vigilance of the mounted police who scoured
the country districts to strike terror into the lawless, the
natives living far up the mountain glens of Ylocos and Pangasinan,
though leading the roving life of huntsmen, contrived
to cultivate patches of the tobacco-plant, for which they
always found a ready sale to the traders who at the proper
season visited the neighbourhood.


Since the monopoly was abolished, private enterprise,
stirred by the wholesome stimulus of competition, has
developed and improved the tobacco industry very considerably,
with the help of large numbers of diligent hard-toiling
Chinamen. This important branch of commerce in Manila
provides employment for twenty thousand women and sixteen
thousand men. The men are employed almost wholly
in making cigarillos for Home consumption; while to the
women is allotted the more important task of cheroot-making
for exportation. Here the great factories are situated, each
of which affords accommodation for about a thousand work-people.
The men and women work in separate factories;
those for the women are divided into long rooms along the
whole length of which are ranged low tables. At each table
a dozen young women are seated, presided over by an old
woman whose duty is to try and maintain order among the
girls and see that there is no waste of material, for to each
table a certain quantity of tobacco is weighed out. If the
proportionate number of cigars is not produced, woe betide
the hapless one: on pay day deductions for waste come into
the reckoning.


But however interesting the workers and their work may[191]
be, the visitor seldom cares to prolong his stay where a
thousand voices are in full chatter and stone hammers are
incessantly beating, on wooden tables, leaves of the plant in
readiness for the lissom fingers of the girls who roll them up
into cheroot form. These women of weeds earn good
wages—from eight to ten dollars a month—which amply
suffices to get them all the comforts they need and leave a
fair margin for dress, of which they are as proud, if not as
prodigal, as the gayest of their European sisters. A novel use
for cigars was found in the Philippines some years ago. Copper
money being very scarce, quite inadequate to the daily requirements,
cigars were passed from one person to another
in lieu of coin, to the small satisfaction of the one in whose
hands they had from friction become unsaleable.


It is noteworthy that even tobacco-leaves, the avowed
destroyers of insect life, should themselves be the prey of
some form of the ubiquitous microbe. Besides the mite
just mentioned that speckles the outer leaf of old cigars, a
more ravenous one has been discovered working its will on
Indian cigar-leaf. In a recent issue of Indian Museum
Notes, Mr. Cote gives an interesting account of the works
and ways of an insect that drills tiny round holes in tobacco-leaves,
so small indeed that they had escaped observation
until the havoc wrought awakened alarm. The pest tunnels
its way through the leaf, irrespective of strength or flavour,
even the Trichinopoli is not beyond its taste. And it
multiplies so rapidly that much valuable leaf is soon
rendered worthless for smoking. Its method of working
has suggested the name of weevil. The Indian tobacco
industry, therefore, has now to reckon with a new and
unscrupulous competitor in the form of the ‘cigar weevil.’
It would be a boon to long-suffering humanity and a
triumph for the bacteriologist if he could manage to set one[192]
tribe against another of these evil-doers, to their mutual
destruction. If they are like living things in the natural
world they will have their foes and their struggles for
existence. The old lady’s belief that microbes have pink
eyes and ravenous teeth may not be perfectly accurate, yet
judging from their insidious attacks on unsuspecting mortals
we are warranted in assuming that they have other very
effective means of combat. The spectacle of internecine
warfare going on in their little world, as revealed under the
microscope, would afford from its novelty an exhibition
worth going miles to see.


The tobacco-plant is not now cultivated in England.
James the First thought it shameful that so pernicious a
plant should be permitted to take root in our rich and fruitful
soil, and caused an edict to be issued prohibiting its
cultivation within the British Islands. The King’s
apologists find reason for the prohibition in his Majesty’s
concern for the interests of the young colony of tobacco
planters settled in Virginia. Be this as it may, Adam
Smith (Wealth of Nations) on economic grounds condemns
the enactment, saying, ‘Home cultivation of tobacco has
on this account most absurdly been prohibited through the
greater part of Europe which necessarily gives a monopoly
to the countries where its cultivation is allowed.’


To the impoverished treasury of Charles the Second its
importation was made to yield revenue at a rate equivalent
to about thirty shillings a pound weight of our present
money, and through the agency of his ministers enacted in
‘Laws and Regulations concerning Tobacco’ (15 Car. II.
c. 7. 12. Par. II. c. 34.) that, ‘Tobacco is not to be
planted in England on a forfeiture of 40s. for every rood of
ground thus planted.’ This restriction however was ‘not to
extend to the planting of tobacco in Physic Gardens, in[193]
quantities not exceeding half a pole, and also, on forfeiture
of £10 for every rood of ground.’ These prohibitory
measures remained in force until April 1886, when English
farming being in in extremis the Government granted
permission to grow the plant in the United Kingdom,
under certain precautions and restrictions for the purpose
of safe-guarding the revenue. Several land-owners in Kent,
Norfolk and Essex, tried their prentice hand in the new
husbandry, notably, Messrs. James Carter & Company of
Bromley, whose first crop seemed to give fair promise of
future success. Their sanguine expectations however were
short-lived. What with hampering restrictions on the one
hand and our fickle climate on the other, it soon became
too apparent that English agriculturists must not look to
the Indian weed for the much needed succour. The
crops raised proved to be unmarketable. The cultivation
of the tobacco-plant in these islands is no longer
authorized.


The Home manufacture of cigars from foreign leaf
however increased by leaps and bounds, and now affords
remunerative employment for many thousands of work-people
in London alone. There are also large tobacco
factories in the chief seats of industry and commerce
throughout the kingdom. This is due in great measure to
the heavy tax levied upon foreign made cigars imported
into this country, namely, six shillings on every pound
weight—i.e., double the sum charged on tobacco in the
leaf. This great difference would seem to afford the
unscrupulous an incentive to fabricate spurious high-priced
cigars under foreign names. Looked at in this light it may
be a question worth the consideration of the Board of
Customs whether or not it would be well to lessen the
difference between the two rates of duty—to raise the one[194]
and lower the other—with advantage to both the consumer
and the revenue.


Our gossip about the Indian weed may now be brought
to a close with a few words about its co-partner, the pipe.
For even tobacco-pipes, like all other products of men’s
ingenuity, awaken interest all the more engrossing when
little else remains to tell the story of those who made them
and used them. They carry the imagination back to those
shadowy palaces of the Incas and Aztecs, where equally
shadowy potentates smoked out of pipes made of precious
metals, or of highly polished and richly-gilt wood. Pipes
indeed, present features highly interesting to a much larger
class than to professed ethnologists. The wide region
over which they are found, buried in mounds and tumuli
extending from the north-west coast of America to the
plains of Patagonia, tell us how universal was the habit of
smoking on that vast continent; while similarity of
structure suggests a common origin. Curious specimens
have been found in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio,
Iowa, and in the great Mississippi valley, varying from the
simplest forms made out of baked clay with a plain
cylinder or urn, to others of a class, very uniform in type,
cut out of porphyry in a single piece. These latter have
a slightly convey base measuring about four inches in
length, and one inch broad, with the bowl on the centre.
A fine hole pierces the pipe from end to end of the base to
the bottom of the bowl, the opposite end being obviously
designed for the smoker to hold in the hand. Others are
remarkable for a fine display of artistic skill in the carving
of birds, mammals, reptiles and human heads, often fanciful
and grotesque, but always vigorously expressed. In
Mexico elaborately moulded and ornamented pipes have
been found, along with others of a type almost identical[195]
with our common clay pipe. And in British Columbia
pipes are occasionally met with in the possession of the
native Indians, moulded and carved by themselves in
almost every variety of fantastic form, and with tracery that
would do no discredit to modern art. These are for the
most part made of blue slate-clay, and have intricate pierced
work carried through the tube. In old Indian grave-mounds
Messrs. Squier & Davis, in the course of their
explorations in 1846-7, found pipes cut into the form of
human heads, the features on which were singularly truthful
and expressive; and what was still more remarkable was
their strikingly Mongolian type, a circumstance which lends
support to the hypothesis that in the remote past the
American continent was peopled from the eastern part of
Asia. Some of the pipes found in these mounds represented
animals peculiar to the lower latitudes. On one pipe the
otter is shown in the attitude of holding a fish in its mouth:
on another the heron has seized a fish; the hawk is
grasping a small bird, and with its beak is in the act of
tearing it to pieces. Almost every bird and animal
common to the country is found boldly carved on the pipes
of the aborigines of America.


The material for pipes mostly sought after by the natives
is the beautiful and easily wrought red sandstone of the
Coteau des Prairies. The calumet, which plays an
important part in their civil and religious observances, is
made from this source, chiefly on account of the legend
respecting its origin and the origin of smoking, mentioned
in the first chapter. One can hardly help seeing in the
handiwork shown in the make of these curious smoking
instruments points of contact with the social condition and
intelligence of the makers. From the short nostril tube
of the Caribs to the feathered peace-pipe of the continental[196]
tribes is an advancement in the social scale, such as we see
in the difference between the hole in the ground for a bowl
made by natives of central India, who use a leaf for a tube,
and the richly adorned chibouk of the Turk. This view
affords us a glimpse of primitive man struggling to adapt
his surroundings to his needs, according to the degree of
intelligence to which he has attained.


The ordinary pipe so extensively used in England is made
from white clay, found chiefly at Purbeck, in Dorsetshire,
and Newton Abbot, in Devonshire. But, in recent years,
the heath briar-root of France for pipes has come largely
into use. Perhaps no material for pipe bowls stands in
higher favour than meerschaum—a fine, white clay
consisting chiefly of magnesia, silica and water. The best
kinds are found in pits in the Crimea and along the
peninsula of Heracleati in Asia Minor. It is soft and
porous: the finest specimens are almost transparent.
When first taken out of the pits it makes lather like soap-suds.
The workmen employed in digging it up say that
if left for long lying about it forms itself into froth. Thus
the foam of the sea of past ages, driven by the winds into
sheltered cavities and hollow places of the earth, comes at
last to render service to St Nicotine; and in our meditative
moods is brought vividly before the mind the fabled birth
of the goddess of love, laughter and beauty. According to
the old Greek myth it was just off the coast of Paphos
(Cyprus) that Aphrodite arose from amid sea-foam that
covered the mutilated body of old, sleepy, Uranus, who in
a drowsy moment had rolled down the cliff into the sea.
Springing thus into being she was seen by the three
daughters of Zeus (the seasons) who carried her to Olympus,
and all the gods admired her for her beauty. There are
connoisseurs who fancy that the meerschaum pipes coming[197]
from this region impart to the tobacco a peculiarly delicate
flavour. Constantinople is the great mart for the sale of
meerschaum, as Vienna is for its manufacture into pipes.
The material is so extremely difficult to manipulate that the
uncertainty attending its successful manufacture gives a
high value to the better kinds. The meerschaum is soaked
in water for twenty-four hours and then turned in a lathe.
In this process the clay often proves to be too porous, and
is on this account rejected: this will happen as many as
seven times out of ten.






FOOTNOTES




[1] On the title-page is a picture of a bi-forked hill with a tall
Virginian tobacco plant growing in the cleft. A scroll bears
the motto, Digna Parnasso et Apolline. There is an excellent
copy of the work in the long-room of the British Museum.






[2] In 1904 the maximum limit of moisture was fixed at 32 per
cent. The moisture naturally present in the kinds now
imported averages 14 per cent.






[3] Possibly hebenon is here employed for henbane, a name
sometimes applied to tobacco by writers in Jacobean times.
William Strachey, in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia
Britannica (1610), speaks of the tobacco-plant as ‘like to
henbane.’ John Gerard in his description of the plant calls it
‘henbane of Peru.’ French writers of the same period had an
unlimited vocabulary for tobacco, and among their names for it
may be found ‘Peruvian henbane’ (jusquiame de Peru). If
this view be admitted, then we have in ‘hebenon’ the only
reference to tobacco the whole of Shakespeare’s works contain.






[4] Japan and her People. By Andrew Steinmetz, 1860.






[5] Adams died full of honours in 1620, and was buried on the
summit of a little hill at the end of an inlet called Goldsborough.






[6] Stirpium Adversaria Nova. Dedicated to Queen
Elizabeth, by Mathias de L’Obel, Botanist, London, 1571.
Another edition was published at Antwerp in 1576.






[7] The Queen could not brook the least defection of a courtier
from absolute devotion to herself.






[8] “The Witches’ Frolic,” Ingoldsby Legends.






[9] This work first appeared anonymously in 1604, and it is
doubtful if an original copy is extant. Dr. Richard Garnett
courteously informs the writer of these lines that there is not
one in the British Museum. Professor Arber, however, has preserved
a copy of it in his English Reprints. Arber says, ‘How
early its royal authorship was avowed I know not, but it was
generally known long before its insertion in the collected edition
of the King’s works’ in (1616).


Since the above was written Mr. Thomas Arnold, of Hong-Kong,
has informed the author that he possesses a copy—the
only one extant—of the original edition, supplied to him by the
late Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Piccadilly.






[10] It is difficult to speak of James I. in measured terms. The
reader is referred to Sir Anthony Weldon’s Court and Character
of King James (Smeeton’s reprint, 1817). Raumer, ii. p. 200,
says of James: ‘He was a slave to vices which could not fail to
make him an object of disgust.’ Also, Winwood’s Memorials.






[11] Published at Antwerp, 1659, and translated by I.R.
Dedicated to the Merchants and Planters of Tobacco.