Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

Yet another sign of the times was the permission given not so very long ago to the drivers of taxi-cabs to smoke while driving fares—a development regarding which there may well be two opinions.

The number of cigarette-smokers nowadays is legion; but to a very large number of "tobacconists" (in the old sense of the word) a pipe remains the most satisfactory of "smokes." A cigar or a cigarette is—and it is not; the pipe renders its service again and again and yet remains—a steadfast companion. "Over a pipe" is a phrase of more meaning than "over a cigarette." Discussions are best conducted over a pipe. No one can get too excited or over-heated in argument, no one can neglect the observance of the amenities of conversation, who talks thoughtfully between the pulls at his pipe, who has to pause now and again to refill, to strike a light, to knock out the ashes, or to perform one of those numberless little acts of devotion at the shrine of St. Nicotine, which fill up the pauses and conduce to reflection. The Indians were wise in their generation when they made the circulation of the pipe an essential part of their pow-wows. A conference founded on the mutual consumption of tobacco was likely, not, as the frivolous would say, to end in smoke, but to lead to solid and lasting results. "The fact is, squire," said Sam Slick, "the moment a man takes a pipe he becomes a philosopher." The pipe, says Thackeray, "draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent and unaffected.... May I die if I abuse that kindly weed which has given me so much pleasure."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

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 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."

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