Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

Another sign of the complete change which has come over the attitude of most folk towards tobacco is to be seen in the permission of smoking at meetings of committees and councils, where not so long ago such an indulgence would have been regarded as an outrage. Many of the committees of municipal councils and other public bodies now permit smoking while business is proceeding. It has even become usual for members of the House of Commons to smoke in committee rooms when the sitting is private; and cigars and cigarettes and pipes are now lighted in the lobby the moment that the House has risen. A very thin line thus separates the legislative chamber itself from the conquering weed. A further step forward (or backward, according to each reader's judgment) was taken on July 21, 1913, when smoking was allowed at the sitting of the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills-one of the committees which does not conduct its business in private. On this occasion, after the luncheon interval, two members entered the committee room smoking, one a cigarette the other a cigar. The former was soon finished; but the latter continued to shed its fragrance on the room. Naturally the chairman, Mr. Arthur Henderson, was appealed to. He gave a diplomatic reply. It had been held, he said, by two chairmen that smoking was not in order at the public sessions of a Standing Committee; and, of course, if his ruling were formally asked he would be bound to follow precedent. He said this with a suavity and a smile which disarmed any possible objector. Nobody raised the formal point of order; so other members "lighted up," and the proceedings went on peacefully to the appointed hour of closing.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent Carlyle-an inveterate smoker-a box of cigars in February 1865. In his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote-"Dear Ruskin, you have sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in answer? It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi

'We are such stuff,
Gone with a puff-
Then think, and smoke Tobacco!'"

In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin's guests found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.

Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker. He is said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out of courtesy to his illustrious guest.

It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in the day-an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished smokers would subscribe-when Sir William laughingly replied, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened bards."

The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened birdseye" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, in "Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.

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