Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social. Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling those used for tobacco-smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them, and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for them.

In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in mediæval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside the scope of this book.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

and taking the best and blackest bowl, and putting on Persian slippers, sitting on the softest couch, I will light my pipe, with my feet on the hearth, and I will cast aside all mortal care!
Nor must the delightful verses by "J.K.S." be forgotten, in which the author of "Lapsus Calami" sings of the "Grand Old Pipe"-

And I'm smoking a pipe which is fashioned
Like the face of the Grand Old Man;

and the quaint similarity or comparison between the pipe and Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man" when "Lapsus Calami" appeared in 1888, is maintained throughout-

Grows he black in his face with his labours?
Well, so does my Grand Old Pipe.
For the sake of its excellent savour,
For the many sweet smokes of the past
My pipe keeps its hold on my favour,
Tho' now it is blackening fast.


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