Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

"A Tobacco-Seller," says Earle, "is the onely man that findes good in it which others brag of, but do not; for it is meate, drinke, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousnesse, or challenges your judgement more in the approbation. His shop is the Randevous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their communication is smoake. It is the place onely where Spaine is commended, and prefer'd before England itselfe. He should be well experienc'd in the world: for he ha's daily tryall of mens nostrils, and none is better acquainted with humors. Hee is the piecing commonly of some other trade which is bawde to his Tobacco, and that to his wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

The more fashionable folk of the Restoration Era and later began to leave off if not to disdain the smoking-habit. Up to about 1700 smoking had been permitted in the public rooms at Bath, but when Nash then took charge, tobacco was banished. Public or at least fashionable taste had begun to change, and Nash correctly interpreted and led it. Sorbière, who has been quoted in the previous chapter, remarked in 1663 that "People of Quality" did not use tobacco so much as others; and towards the end of the century and in Queen Anne's time the tendency was for tobacco to go out of fashion. This did not much affect its general use; but the tendency—with exceptions, no doubt—was to restrict the use of tobacco to the clergy, to country squires, to merchants and tradesmen and to the humbler ranks of society—to limit it, in short, to the middle and lower classes of the social commonwealth as then organized. In the extraordinary record of inanity which Addison printed as the diary of a citizen in the Spectator of March 4, 1712, the devotion of the worthy retired tradesman to tobacco is emphasized. This is the kind of thing: "Monday ... Hours 10, 11 and 12 Smoaked three Pipes of Virginia ... one o'clock in the afternoon, chid Ralph for mislaying my Tobacco-Box.... Wednesday ... From One to Two Smoaked a Pipe and a half.... Friday ... From Four to Six. Went to the Coffee-house. Met Mr. Nisby there. Smoaked several Pipes."

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