<h3>XIII</h3>
<h3>SMOKING BY WOMEN<span class="totoc"><SPAN href="#toc">ToC</SPAN></span></h3>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="margin-bottom: .25em; font-style: normal;">
<span class="i4">Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;<br/></span>
<span class="i4">They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Isaac Hawkins Browne</span>, <i>circa</i> 1740.</p>
<br/>
<p>A story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh by John Aubrey which seems to
imply that at first women not only did not smoke, but that they
disliked smoking by men. Aubrey says that Raleigh "standing in a stand
at Sir R. Poyntz's parke at Acton, tooke a pipe of tobacco, which made
the ladies quitt it till he had done." But this objection, whether
general or not, soon vanished, for, as we have seen in a previous
chapter, the gallant of Elizabethan and Jacobean days made a practice
of smoking in his lady's presence. It seems certain, moreover, that
some women, at least, smoked very soon after the introduction of
tobacco; but it is not easy to find direct evidence, though there are
sundry traditions and allusions which suggest that the practice was
not unknown.</p>
<p>There is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth herself once smoked—with
unpleasant results. Campbell, in his "History of Virginia," says that
Raleigh having offered her Majesty "some tobacco to smoke, after two
or three whiffs she was seized with a nausea, upon observing which
some of the Earl of Leicester's <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></SPAN></span>faction whispered that Sir Walter had
certainly poisoned her. But her Majesty in a short while recovering
made the countess of Nottingham and all her maids smoke a whole pipe
out among them." The Queen had no selfish desire to monopolize the
novel sensations caused by smoking. An eighteenth-century writer,
Oldys, in his "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," declares that tobacco
"soon became of such vogue in Queen Elizabeth's court, that some of
the great ladies, as well as noblemen therein, would not scruple to
take a pipe sometimes very sociably." But these stories rest on vague
tradition, and probably have no foundation in fact.</p>
<p>King James I in his famous "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," hinted that
the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his
delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie,
that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or
else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's
style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two
references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before
King James blew his royal "Counter-blaste," Cob, the water-bearer,
says that he would have any "man or woman that should but deal with a
tobacco-pipe," immediately whipped. Prynne, in his attack on the
stage, declared that women smoked pipes in theatres; but the truth of
this statement may well be doubted. The habit was probably far from
general among women, although Joshua Sylvester, a doughty opponent of
the weed, was pleased to declare that "Fooles of all Sexes haunt it,"
<i>i.e.</i> tobacco.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></SPAN></span>The ballads of the period abound in rough woodcuts in which tavern
scenes are often figured, wherein pewter pots and tobacco-pipes are
shown lying on the table or in the hands or at the mouths of the male
carousers. Men and women are figured together, but it would be very
hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her
hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies
before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad
characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good
Fellows," and beginning:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Come hither, mine host, come hither!<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Come hither, mine host, come hither!<br/></span>
<span class="i2">I pray thee, mine host,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Give us a pot and a tost,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And let us drinke all together.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p class="noin">The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a
woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One
man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other
pipes—one for each man—and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is
plainly a convivial soul; but there is no pipe for her, and such
provision was no doubt unusual.</p>
<p>There is direct evidence, too, besides the story in the first
paragraph of this chapter, that women disliked the prevalence of
smoking. In Marston's "Antonio and Mellinda," 1602, Rosaline, when
asked by her uncle when she will marry, makes the spirited
reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking
of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have
a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the
ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></SPAN></span>'tis
more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to
smoking could be quoted from other plays.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is certain that from comparatively early in the
seventeenth century there were to be found here and there women who
smoked.</p>
<p>On the title-page of Middleton's comedy, "The Roaring Girle," 1611, is
a picture of the heroine, Moll Cutpurse, in man's apparel, smoking a
pipe, from which a great cloud of smoke is issuing.</p>
<p>In the record of an early libel action brought in the court of the
Archdeacon of Essex, some domestic scenes of 1621 are vividly
represented. We need not trouble about the libel action, but two of
the <i>dramatis personæ</i> were a certain George Thresher, who sold beer
and tobacco at his "shopp in Romford," and a good friend and customer
of his named Elizabeth Savage, who, sad to say, was described as much
given to "stronge drincke and tobacco." In the course of the trial, on
June 8, 1621, Mistress Savage had to tell her tale, part of which is
reported as follows:</p>
<p>"George Thresher kept a shoppe in Romford and sold tobacco there. She
came divers tymes to his shoppe to buy tobacco there; and sometimes,
with company of her acquaintance, did take tobacco and drincke beere
in the hall of George Thresher's house, sometimes with the said
George, and sometimes with his father and his brothers. And sometimes
shee hath had a joint of meat and a cople of chickens dressed there;
and shee, and they, and some other of her freinds, have dined there
together, and paid their share for their dinner, shee being many times
more willing to dine there than at an inne or taverne."</p>
<p>Elizabeth was evidently of a sociable turn, and <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></SPAN></span>though she turned her
nose up at a tavern, there seems to have been little difference
between these festive dinners at Mr. Thresher's "shopp," where
Mistress Savage indulged her taste for ale and tobacco, and similar
pleasures at an inn or tavern.</p>
<p>Some of the references to women smokers occur in curious connexions.
When one George Glapthorne, of Whittlesey, J.P., was returned to
Parliament for the Isle of Ely in 1654, his return was petitioned
against, and among other charges it was said that just before the
election, in a certain Martin's ale-house, he had promised to give
Mrs. Martin a roll of tobacco, and had also undertaken to grant her
husband a licence to brew, thus unduly influencing and corrupting the
electors.</p>
<p>Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev.
Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his
journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from
other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost
him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with
her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the
journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but
needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence
to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal
virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."</p>
<p>In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the
originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated,
but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane,
who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></SPAN></span>Vall, Norfolk.
Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn,
as his "Afextinat wife," the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous,
tells her "Sweet Hart"—"I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I
pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret
sed." How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with
cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did
not care to be long without a supply. In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited
Stow's "Chronicles," and continued them "onto the end of this present
yeare 1631," wrote that tobacco was "at this day commonly used by most
men and many women."</p>
<p>Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century
would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country.
Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign
of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St.
Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which
is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their
pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking,
which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my
Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them."
What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk?
Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among
women in the west of England. Dunton, in that <i>Athenian Oracle</i> which
was a kind of early forerunner of <i>Notes and Queries</i>, alluded to
pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the
French traveller, who was here in 1698, <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></SPAN></span>after remarking that
"Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take
it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the
<i>very</i> Women? What Occasion is there for that <i>very</i>? We wonder that
in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and
why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall
wonder that the Women of Middlesex do <i>not</i> take Tabacco: And why
should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant
Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his
catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize
about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!</p>
<p>Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of
travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of
England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed
at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself
quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that
according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with
strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are
of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits
where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our
visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company,
the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half
the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health
you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the
table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which
is a general custom as <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></SPAN></span>well among women as men, who think that
without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it
dissipates the evil humours of the brain."</p>
<p>Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall
might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is
certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few
female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a
sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the
seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her
pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at
Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an
elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same
writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that
smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for
the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for
smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion"
because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant
persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to
meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that
recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more
write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in
their hands."</p>
<p>From the evidence so far adduced it may fairly be concluded, I think,
that during the seventeenth century smoking was not fashionable, or
indeed anything but rare, among the women of the more well-to-do
classes, while among women of humbler rank it was <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></SPAN></span>an occasional, and
in a few districts a fairly general habit.</p>
<p>The same conclusion holds good for the eighteenth century. Among women
of the lowest class smoking was probably common enough. In Fielding's
"Amelia," a woman of the lowest character is spoken of as "smoking
tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenely and swearing and
cursing"—which accomplishments are all carefully noted, because none
of them would be applicable to the ordinary respectable female.</p>
<p>The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of Tobacco," in
Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been
made, wrote:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.<br/></span>
<span class="i0"> * * * * * * *<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Citronia vows it has an odious stink;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">She will not smoke (ye gods!)—but she will drink;<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p class="noin">and the same writer describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by
the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the
sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have
disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be
found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a
smoke. In an early <i>Spectator</i>, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny
Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and
good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was
frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall
fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></SPAN></span>brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or
smokes."</p>
<p>In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of
Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth
century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a
Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the
alarming question—Did Irish ladies chew?</p>
<p>It has sometimes been supposed that the companion of Swift's Stella,
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, was addicted to smoking. In the letters which
make up the famous "Journal to Stella," there are several references
by Swift to the presents of tobacco which he was in the habit of
sending to Mrs. Dingley. On September 21, 1710, he wrote: "I have the
finest piece of Brazil tobacco for Dingley that ever was born." In the
following month he again had a great piece of Brazil tobacco for the
same lady, and again in November: "I have made Delaval promise to send
me some Brazil tobacco from Portugal for you, Madam Dingley." In
December, Swift was expressing his hope that Dingley's tobacco had not
spoiled the chocolate which he had sent for Stella in the same parcel;
and three months later he wrote: "No news of your box? I hope you have
it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of
the Brazil tobacco has not affected it." The explanation of all this
tobacco for Mistress Dingley is to be found in Swift's letter to
Stella of October 23, 1711. "Then there's the miscellany," he writes,
"an apron for Stella, a pound of chocolate, without sugar, for Stella,
a fine snuff-rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and
a large roll of tobacco which she <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></SPAN></span>must hide or cut shorter out of
modesty, and four pair of spectacles for the Lord knows who." The
tobacco was clearly not for smoking, but for Dingley to operate upon
with the snuff-rasp, and so supply herself with snuff—a luxury, which
in those days, was as much enjoyed and as universally used by women as
by men.</p>
<p>Even Quakeresses sometimes smoked. A list of the sea-stores put on
board the ship in which certain friends—Samuel Fothergill, Mary
Peisly, Katherine Payton and others—sailed from Philadelphia for
England in June 1756, is still extant. In those days Atlantic passages
were long, and might last for an indefinite period, and passengers
provisioned themselves accordingly. On this occasion the passage
though stormy was very quick, for it lasted only thirty-four days. The
list of provisions taken is truly formidable. It includes all sorts of
eatables and drinkables in astonishing quantities. The "Women's
Chest," we are told, contained, among a host of other good and useful
things, "Balm, sage, summer Savoury, horehound, Tobacco, and Oranges;
two bottles of Brandy, two bottles of Jamaica Spirrit, A Canister of
green tea, a Jar of Almond paste, Ginger bread." Samuel Fothergill's
"new chest" contained tobacco among many other things; and a box of
pipes was among the miscellaneous stores.</p>
<p>The history of smoking by women through Victorian days need not detain
us long. There have always been pipe-smokers among the women of the
poorer classes. Up to the middle of the last century smoking was very
common among the hard-working women of Northumberland and the Scottish
border. Nor has the practice by any means yet died out. In May 1913, a
woman, who was charged with <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></SPAN></span>drunkenness at the West Ham police court,
laid the blame for her condition on her pipe. She said she had smoked
it for twenty years, and "it always makes me giddy!" The writer, in
August 1913, saw a woman seated by the roadside in County Down,
Ireland, calmly smoking a large briar pipe.</p>
<p>It is not so very long ago that an English traveller heard a
working-man courteously ask a Scottish fish-wife, who had entered a
smoking-compartment of the train, whether she objected to smoking. The
good woman slowly produced a well-seasoned "cutty" pipe, and as she
began to cut up a "fill" from a rank-smelling tobacco, replied: "Na,
na, laddie, I've come in here for a smoke ma'sel."</p>
<p>The <i>Darlington and Stockton Times</i> in 1856 recorded the death on
December 10, at Wallbury, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in the
110th year of her age, of Jane Garbutt, widow. Mrs. Garbutt had been
twice married, her husbands having been sailors during the Napoleonic
wars. The old woman, said the journal, "had dwindled into a small
compass, but she was free from pain, retaining all her faculties to
the last, and enjoying her pipe. About a year ago the writer of this
notice paid her a visit, and took her, as a 'brother-piper,' a present
of tobacco, which ingredient of bliss was always acceptable from her
visitors. Asking of her the question how long she had smoked, her
reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton,
at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for
many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the
accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the
fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the
same operation; <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></SPAN></span>but her pipe she was bound to have, and so met her
end.</p>
<p>The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London
street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street
corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still
are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country. An old Seven Dials
ballad has the following choice stanza—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">When first I saw Miss Bailey,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">'Twas on a Saturday,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">And smoking a yard of clay.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Up to about the middle of Queen Victoria's reign female smoking in the
nineteenth century in England may be said to have been pretty well
confined to women of the classes and type already mentioned.
Respectable folk in the middle and upper classes would have been
horrified at the idea of a pipe or a cigar between feminine lips; and
cigarettes had been used by men for a long time before it began to be
whispered that here and there a lady—who was usually considered
dreadfully "fast" for her pains—was accustomed to venture upon a
cigarette.</p>
<p>In "Puck," 1870, Ouida represented one of her beautiful young men, Vy
Bruce, as "murmuring idlest nonsense to Lilian Lee, as he lighted one
of his cigarettes for her use"—but Lilian Lee was a <i>cocotte</i>.</p>
<p>An amusing incident is related in Forster's "Life of Dickens," which
shows how entirely unknown was smoking among women of the middle and
upper classes in England some ten years after Queen Victoria came to
the throne. Dickens was at <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></SPAN></span>Lausanne and Geneva in the autumn of 1846.
At his hotel in Geneva he met a remarkable mother and daughter, both
English, who admired him greatly, and whom he had previously known at
Genoa. The younger lady's conversation would have shocked the prim
maids and matrons of that day. She asked Dickens if he had ever "read
such infernal trash" as Mrs. Gore's; and exclaimed "Oh God! what a
sermon we had here, last Sunday." Dickens and his two daughters—"who
were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards"—dined by
invitation with the mother and daughter. The daughter asked him if he
smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner
when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good
'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the
novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course
we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady
residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady
married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for
sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that was over, the younger of our
entertainers brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, made of
negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The
box was full of cigarettes—good large ones, made of pretty strong
tobacco; I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa,
and I knew them well. When I lighted my cigar, daughter lighted hers,
at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put
out her stomach, folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up
sideways and her cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill,
laughed, and talked, and smoked, in the <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></SPAN></span>most gentlemanly manner I
ever beheld. Mother immediately lighted her cigar; American lady
immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of
smoke, with us four in the centre pulling away bravely, while American
lady related stories of her 'Hookah' upstairs, and described different
kinds of pipes. But even this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen
came in, with whom, and the American lady, daughter sat down to whist.
The Frenchmen smoked of course (they were really modest gentlemen and
seemed dismayed), and daughter played for the next hour or two with a
cigar continually in her mouth—never out of it. She certainly smoked
six or eight. Mother gave in soon—I think she only did it out of
vanity. American lady had been smoking all the morning. I took no
more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves.
Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but
half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of
surprise, but I never <i>was</i> so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback,
in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman—not a basket woman or a gipsy—smoke
before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that
Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was
enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described." The
words "cigar" and "cigarette" are used indifferently by the novelist,
but it seems clear from the description and from the number smoked by
the lady in an hour or two, that it was a cigarette and not a cigar,
properly so called, which was never out of her mouth.</p>
<p>The ladies who so surprised Dickens were English <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></SPAN></span>and American, but at
the period in question—the early 'forties of the last century—one of
the freaks of fashion at Paris was the giving of luncheon parties for
ladies only, at which cigars were handed round.</p>
<p>The first hints of feminine smoking in England may be traced, like so
many other changes in fashion, in the pages of <i>Punch</i>. In 1851,
steady-going folk were alarmed and shocked at a sudden and short-lived
outburst of "bloomerism," imported from the United States. Of course
it was at once suggested that women who would go so far as to imitate
masculine attire and to emancipate themselves from the usual
conventions of feminine dress, would naturally seek to imitate men in
other ways also. Leech had a picture of "A Quiet Smoke" in <i>Punch</i>,
which depicted five ladies in short wide skirts and "bloomers" in a
tobacconist's shop, two smoking cigars and one a pipe, while "one of
the inferior animals" behind the counter was selling tobacco. But this
was satire and hardly had much relation to fact.</p>
<p>It was not until the 'sixties of the last century that
cigarette-smoking by women began to creep in. Mortimer Collins,
writing in 1869, in a curious outburst against the use of tobacco by
young men, said, "When one hears of sly cigarettes between feminine
lips at croquet parties, there is no more to be said." Since that date
cigarette-smoking has become increasingly popular among women, and the
term "sly" has long ceased to be applicable. "Punch's Pocket-Book" for
1878 had an amusing skit on a ladies' reading-party, to which Mr.
Punch acted as "coach." After breakfast the reading ladies lounged on
the lawn with cigarettes.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></SPAN></span>What Queen Victoria, who hated tobacco and banished it from her
presence and from her abodes as far as she could, would have thought
and said of the extent to which cigarette-smoking is indulged in now
by women, is a question quite unanswerable. Yet Queen Victoria once
received a present of pipes and tobacco. By the hands of Sir Richard
Burton the Queen had sent a damask tent, a silver pipe, and two silver
trays to the King of Dahomey. That potentate told Sir Richard that the
tent was very handsome, but too small; that the silver pipe did not
smoke so well as his old red clay with a wooden stem; and that though
he liked the trays very much, he thought them hardly large enough to
serve as shields. He hoped that the next gifts would include a
carriage and pair, and a white woman, both of which he would
appreciate very much. However, he sent gifts in return to her
Britannic Majesty, and among them were a West African state umbrella,
a selection of highly coloured clothing materials, and some native
pipes and tobacco for the Queen to smoke.</p>
<p>Many royal ladies of Europe, contemporaries of Queen Victoria and her
son, have had the reputation of being confirmed smokers. Among them may
be named Carmen Sylva, the poetess—Queen of Roumania, the Dowager
Tsaritsa of Russia, the late Empress of Austria, King Alfonso's mother,
formerly Queen-Regent of Spain, the Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy
and ex-Queen Amélie of Portugal. It is, of course, well known that
Austrian and Russian ladies generally are fond of cigarette-smoking. On
Russian railways it is not unusual to find a compartment labelled "For
ladies who do not smoke."</p>
<p>The newspapers reported not long ago from the <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></SPAN></span>other side of the
Atlantic that the "smart" women of Chicago had substituted cigars for
cigarettes. According to an interview with a Chicago hotel proprietor,
the fair smokers "select their cigars as men do, either black and
strong, or light, according to taste." How in the world else could
they select them? It is not likely, however, that cigar-smoking will
become popular among women. For one thing, it leaves too strong and
too clinging an odour on the clothes.</p>
<p>One of the latest announcements, however, in the fashion pages of the
newspapers is the advent of "Smoking Jackets" for ladies! We are
informed in the usual style of such pages, that "the well-dressed
woman has begun to consider the little smoking-jacket indispensable."
This jacket, we are told "is a very different matter to the braided
velvet coats which were donned by our masculine forbears in the days
of long drooping cavalry moustaches, tightly buttoned frock-coats, and
flexible canes. The feminine smoking-jacket of to-day is worn with
entrancing little evening or semi-evening frocks, and represents a
compromise between a cloak and a coat, being exquisitely draped and
fashioned of the softest and most attractive of the season's beautiful
fabrics."</p>
<p>There are still many good people nowadays who are shocked at the idea
of women smoking; and to them may be commended the common-sense words
of Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, formerly of Ripon, who arrived in New York
early in 1913 to deliver a series of lectures at Harvard University.
The American newspapers reported him as saying, with reference to this
subject: "Many women in England who are well thought of, smoke. I do
not attempt to enter into the ethical part of this matter, but this
much I say: <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></SPAN></span>if men find it such a pleasure to smoke, why shouldn't
women? There are many colours in the rainbow; so there are many tastes
in people. What may be a pleasure to men may be given to women. When
we find women smoking, as they do in some branches of society to-day,
the mere pleasure of that habit must be accepted as belonging to both
sexes."</p>
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