Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 2: Peers and squires and parsons and peasants alike smoked. The parson of Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, was so devoted to tobacco that when his supply of the weed ran short, he is said to have cut up the bell-ropes and smoked them! This is dated about 1630. In the well-known description of the famous country squire, Mr. Hastings, who was remarkable for keeping up old customs in the early years of the seventeenth century, we read of how his hall tables were littered with hawks' hoods, bells, old hats with their crowns thrust in, full of pheasants' eggs; tables, dice, cards, and store of tobacco-pipes.
From Chapter 7: At another inn a country squire is discovered smoking his pipe by the door and the parson promptly joins him. Again, he smokes before he goes to bed, and before he breakfasts the next morning; and when he goes into the inn garden with the host who is willing to trust him, both host and parson light their pipes before beginning to gossip. Farther on, when the hospitable Mr. Wilson takes the weary wayfarers in, Parson Adams loses no time in filling himself with ale, as Fielding puts it, and lighting his pipe. The menfolk—Wilson, Adams and Joseph—have to spend the night seated round the fire, but apparently Adams is the only one who seeks the solace of tobacco. It is significant that Wilson, in telling the story of his dissipated early life, classes smoking with "singing, holloaing, wrangling, drinking, toasting," and other diversions of "jolly companions."
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