Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

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.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

The attractions and the atmosphere of provincial coffee-houses were much the same as those of the London resorts. A German gentleman who visited Cambridge in July and August 1710 remarked that in the Greeks' coffee-house in that town, in the morning and after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you could meet the chief professors and doctors, who read the papers over a cup of coffee and a pipe of tobacco. One of the learned doctors took the German visitor to the weekly meeting of a Music Club in one of the colleges. Here were assembled bachelors, masters and doctors of music of the University—no professionals were employed—who performed vocal and instrumental music to their mutual gratification, though, apparently, not to the satisfaction of the visitor, who records his opinion that the music was "very poor." "It lasted," he says, "till 11 P.M., there was besides smoking and drinking of wine, though we did not do much of either. At 11 the reckoning was called for, and each person paid 2s."

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