From "Kaleidascope" to "Kynd Culture"

From Chapter 4:
One inference at least may be fairly drawn, I think, from this document, and that is that smoking was very popular north as well as south of the Tweed.

Tobacco was certainly cheap in Scotland. The following entries are from a MS. account of household expenses kept by the minister of the parish of Eastwood, near Glasgow, the Rev. William Hamilton. They cover two months only and show that the minister was a furious smoker. The prices given are in Scots currency, the pound Scots being worth about twenty pence sterling:

It may perhaps be interesting to compare with these prices, from which, apparently, it may be inferred that near Glasgow tobacco could be bought for some 5d. a pound, which seems incredibly cheap, the occasional expenditure upon tobacco of a worthy citizen of Exeter some few years earlier. Extracts from the "Financial Diary" of this good man, whose name was John Hayne, and who was an extensive dealer in serges and woollen goods generally, as well as in a smaller degree of cotton goods also, were printed some years ago, with copious annotations, by the late Dr. Brushfield.

From Chapter 7:
Throughout the eighteenth century the use of tobacco for smoking was largely confined to the middle and humbler classes of society. To smoke was characteristic of the "cit," of the country squire, of the clergy (especially of the country parsons), and of those of lower social status. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that then, as since, the dictates of fashion and the conventions of society were little regarded by many artists and men of letters.

In the preceding chapter I quoted from Addison's diary of a retired tradesman in the Spectator of 1712. The periodical publications of a generation or so later paid the great essayist the flattery of imitation in this respect as in others. In the Connoisseur of George Colman and Bonnell Thornton, for instance, there is, in 1754, the description of a citizen's Sunday. The good man, having sent his family to church in the morning, goes off himself to Mother Redcap's, a favourite tavern—suburban in those days—or house of call for City tradesmen. There he smokes half a pipe and drinks a pint of ale. In the evening at another tavern he smokes a pipe and drinks two pints of cider, winding up the inane day at his club, where he smokes three pipes before coming home at twelve to go to bed and sleep soundly.