Chapter 13 Part 2
SMOKING BY WOMEN
Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century
would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country.
Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign
of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St.
Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which
is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their
pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking,
which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my
Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them."
What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk?
Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among
women in the west of England. Dunton, in that Athenian Oracle which
was a kind of early forerunner of Notes and Queries, alluded to
pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the
French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that
"Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take
it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the very Women? What Occasion is there for that very? We wonder that
in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and
why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall
wonder that the Women of Middlesex do not take Tabacco: And why
should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant
Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his
catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize
about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!
Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of
travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of
England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed
at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself
quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that
according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with
strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are
of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits
where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our
visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company,
the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half
the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health
you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the
table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which
is a general custom as well among women as men, who think that
without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it
dissipates the evil humours of the brain."
Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall
might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is
certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few
female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a
sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the
seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her
pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at
Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an
elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same
writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that
smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for
the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for
smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion"
because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant
persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to
meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that
recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more
write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in
their hands."
From the evidence so far adduced it may fairly be concluded, I think,
that during the seventeenth century smoking was not fashionable, or
indeed anything but rare, among the women of the more well-to-do
classes, while among women of humbler rank it was an occasional, and
in a few districts a fairly general habit.
The same conclusion holds good for the eighteenth century. Among women
of the lowest class smoking was probably common enough. In Fielding's
"Amelia," a woman of the lowest character is spoken of as "smoking
tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenely and swearing and
cursing"—which accomplishments are all carefully noted, because none
of them would be applicable to the ordinary respectable female.
The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of Tobacco," in
Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been
made, wrote:
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
* * * * * * *
Citronia vows it has an odious stink;
She will not smoke (ye gods!)—but she will drink;
and the same writer describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by
the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the
sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have
disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be
found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a
smoke. In an early Spectator, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny
Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and
good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was
frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall
fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or
smokes."
In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of
Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth
century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a
Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the
alarming question—Did Irish ladies chew?
It has sometimes been supposed that the companion of Swift's Stella,
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, was addicted to smoking. In the letters which
make up the famous "Journal to Stella," there are several references
by Swift to the presents of tobacco which he was in the habit of
sending to Mrs. Dingley. On September 21, 1710, he wrote: "I have the
finest piece of Brazil tobacco for Dingley that ever was born." In the
following month he again had a great piece of Brazil tobacco for the
same lady, and again in November: "I have made Delaval promise to send
me some Brazil tobacco from Portugal for you, Madam Dingley." In
December, Swift was expressing his hope that Dingley's tobacco had not
spoiled the chocolate which he had sent for Stella in the same parcel;
and three months later he wrote: "No news of your box? I hope you have
it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of
the Brazil tobacco has not affected it." The explanation of all this
tobacco for Mistress Dingley is to be found in Swift's letter to
Stella of October 23, 1711. "Then there's the miscellany," he writes,
"an apron for Stella, a pound of chocolate, without sugar, for Stella,
a fine snuff-rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and
a large roll of tobacco which she must hide or cut shorter out of
modesty, and four pair of spectacles for the Lord knows who." The
tobacco was clearly not for smoking, but for Dingley to operate upon
with the snuff-rasp, and so supply herself with snuff—a luxury, which
in those days, was as much enjoyed and as universally used by women as
by men.
Even Quakeresses sometimes smoked. A list of the sea-stores put on
board the ship in which certain friends—Samuel Fothergill, Mary
Peisly, Katherine Payton and others—sailed from Philadelphia for
England in June 1756, is still extant. In those days Atlantic passages
were long, and might last for an indefinite period, and passengers
provisioned themselves accordingly. On this occasion the passage
though stormy was very quick, for it lasted only thirty-four days. The
list of provisions taken is truly formidable. It includes all sorts of
eatables and drinkables in astonishing quantities. The "Women's
Chest," we are told, contained, among a host of other good and useful
things, "Balm, sage, summer Savoury, horehound, Tobacco, and Oranges;
two bottles of Brandy, two bottles of Jamaica Spirrit, A Canister of
green tea, a Jar of Almond paste, Ginger bread." Samuel Fothergill's
"new chest" contained tobacco among many other things; and a box of
pipes was among the miscellaneous stores.
The history of smoking by women through Victorian days need not detain
us long. There have always been pipe-smokers among the women of the
poorer classes. Up to the middle of the last century smoking was very
common among the hard-working women of Northumberland and the Scottish
border. Nor has the practice by any means yet died out. In May 1913, a
woman, who was charged with drunkenness at the West Ham police court,
laid the blame for her condition on her pipe. She said she had smoked
it for twenty years, and "it always makes me giddy!" The writer, in
August 1913, saw a woman seated by the roadside in County Down,
Ireland, calmly smoking a large briar pipe.
It is not so very long ago that an English traveller heard a
working-man courteously ask a Scottish fish-wife, who had entered a
smoking-compartment of the train, whether she objected to smoking. The
good woman slowly produced a well-seasoned "cutty" pipe, and as she
began to cut up a "fill" from a rank-smelling tobacco, replied: "Na,
na, laddie, I've come in here for a smoke ma'sel."
The Darlington and Skton Times in 1856 recorded the death on
December 10, at Wallbury, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in the
110th year of her age, of Jane Garbutt, widow. Mrs. Garbutt had been
twice married, her husbands having been sailors during the Napoleonic
wars. The old woman, said the journal, "had dwindled into a small
compass, but she was free from pain, retaining all her faculties to
the last, and enjoying her pipe. About a year ago the writer of this
notice paid her a visit, and took her, as a 'brother-piper,' a present
of tobacco, which ingredient of bliss was always acceptable from her
visitors. Asking of her the question how long she had smoked, her
reply was 'Vary nigh a hundred years'!" In 1845 there died at Buxton,
at the age of ninety-six, a woman named Pheasy Molly, who had been for
many years an inveterate smoker. Her death was caused by the
accidental ignition of her clothes as she was lighting her pipe at the
fire. She had burned herself more than once before in performing the
same operation; but her pipe she was bound to have, and so met her
end.
The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London
street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street
corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still
are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country. An old Seven Dials
ballad has the following choice stanza—
When first I saw Miss Bailey,
'Twas on a Saturday,
At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,
And smoking a yard of clay.
Up to about the middle of Queen Victoria's reign female smoking in the
nineteenth century in England may be said to have been pretty well
confined to women of the classes and type already mentioned.
Respectable folk in the middle and upper classes would have been
horrified at the idea of a pipe or a cigar between feminine lips; and
cigarettes had been used by men for a long time before it began to be
whispered that here and there a lady—who was usually considered
dreadfully "fast" for her pains—was accustomed to venture upon a
cigarette. |
