Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

The earliest example of the use of a wooden pipe I have met with is dated 1765—but this was not in England. Many years ago the late Mr. A.J. Munby pointed out that Smollett, in one of his letters dated March 18, 1765, giving an account of his journey from Nice to Turin, describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the singularity of his attire.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

Sidgwick's praise of tobacco, classically draped in Greek verse, occasionally of the macaronic order, is delightful. He hails the pipe as the work of Pan, and the divine smoke as the best and most fragrant of gifts-healer of sorrow, companion in joy, rest for the toilers, drink for the thirsty, warmth for the cold, coolness in the heat, and a cheap feast for those who waste away through hunger. How is it, he says, that through so many ages men, who have need of thee, have not seen thy nature? Often, he continues-the verses may be roughly translated-often, when I am in Alpine solitudes, tied in a chain to a few companions, clinging to the rope, while barbarians lead the way, carrying in my hands an ice-axe and breathless crawling up the snow-covered plain-then, when groaning I reach the summit (either pulled up or on foot), how have I rested, on my back on the rocks, charming my soul with thy divine clouds! He goes on in burlesque strain to speak of the joys of tobacco when he lies in idleness by the streams in breathless summer, comforted by a bath just taken, or when in the middle of the night he is worn out by revising endless exercises, underlining the mistakes in red and allotting marks, or weighed down by the wise men of old-Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, the ideas of Plato, wiles of Pindar, fearfully corrupt strophe of chorus, wondrous guesses of Teutons and fancies of philologists, when men swoon in the inexplicable wanderings of the endless examination of Homer, when the brain reels among such toil-then he hails the pipe, help of mortals, and hastens to kindle sacrifices at its altars and rejoices as he tastes its smoke. Let some one, he exclaims, bring Bryant and May's fire, which strikes a light only if rubbed on the box-

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