From Chapter 7: The country gentlemen of the time followed the hounds and enjoyed rural sports of all kinds, drank ale, and smoked tobacco. They had their
smoking-rooms too. Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield, Sussex, noted in his Journal under date March 26, 1751: "I went to Mr. Baker's for the list of scholars, and found him alone in the smoaking-room; he ordered a pint of mild beer for me, an extraordinary thing." Gale himself was a regular
smoker, and too fond of pints of ale.
Fielding has immortalized the squire of the mid-eighteenth century in his picture of that sporting, roaring, swearing, drinking,
smoking, affectionate, irascible, blundering, altogether extraordinary owner of broad acres, Squire Western. We may shrewdly suspect that the portrait of Western is somewhat over-coloured, and cannot fairly be taken as typical; but there is sufficient evidence to show that in some respects at least—in his enthusiasm for sport and love of ale and tobacco—Western is representative of the country squires of his day.
