Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 5:

The French traveller, Sorbière, who visited London in 1663, declared that the English were naturally lazy and spent half their time in taking tobacco. They smoked after meals, he observed, and conversed for a long time. "There is scarce a day passes," he wrote, "but a Tradesman goes to the Ale-house or Tavern to smoke with some of his Friends, and therefore Public Houses are numerous here, and Business goes on but slowly in the Shops"; but, curiously enough, he makes no mention of coffee-houses. A little later they were too common and too much frequented to be overlooked. An English writer on thrift in 1676 said that it was customary for a "mechanic tradesman" to go to the coffee-house or ale-house in the morning to drink his morning's draught, and there he would spend twopence and consume an hour in smoking and talking, spending several hours of the evening in similar fashion.

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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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