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 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, 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 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.’

‘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.’

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,’ 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 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 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!

[Illustration: 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, 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.’

‘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 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 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. 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.’

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