From Chapter 3: Tobacco's a musician,
And in a pipe delighteth,
It descends in a close
Through the organ of the nose
With a relish that inviteth.
These are merely a few examples of both the praise and the abuse which were lavished upon tobacco at this early stage in the history of
smoking. It would be easy to fill many pages with the like testimonials and denunciations, especially the latter, from writers of the early decades of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the most curious thing in connexion with the immense number of allusions to
smoking in the literature of the period is that there is no mention whatever
of tobacco or
smoking in the plays of William Shakespeare. As Edmund Spenser, in the "Faerie Queene," speaks of
From Chapter 5: Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen. In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring "to be remembered by the witty smoakers of Hawsted." A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a "History and Antiquities of Hawsted," and in describing Hawsted Place, which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment called the
smoking-room—"a name," he says, "it acquired probably soon after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as it stood." I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum could have made the assertion that the room was called the
smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century. No mention in print of a
smoking-room has been found for the purposes of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689. In Shadwell's "Bury Fair" of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary heroes of a bygone day, "While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred, witless drunkards with you in your
smoking-room." As Mr. Oldwit himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends, "We'll into my
smoking-room and sport about a brimmer," there was probably some excuse for his wife's remark. These country
smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor being flagged for safety's sake; and the "stone-parlour" in many a squire's house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no doubt, abundant
smoking.
