Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

No doubt smoking had its ups and downs at the Universities apart from the set of the main current of fashion. We learn from the invaluable Gunning that at Cambridge about 1786 smoking was going "out of fashion among the junior members of our combination-rooms, except on the river in the evening, when every man put a short pipe in his mouth." "I took great pains," he adds, "to make myself master of this elegant accomplishment, but I never succeeded, though I used to renew the attempt with a perseverance worthy of a better cause." About the same time Dr. Farmer was Master of Emmanuel and the Master was an inveterate smoker. Gunning says that Emmanuel parlour under Farmer's presidency was always open to those who loved pipes and tobacco and cheerful conversation—a very natural collocation of tastes. Farmer's silver tobacco-pipe is still preserved in his old college, while Porson's japanned snuff-box is at Trinity.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

After King William III was settled on the throne the sum of £600,000 was paid to the Dutch from the English exchequer for money advanced in connexion with his Majesty's expedition, and this amount was paid off by tobacco duties. Granger long ago remarked that most of the eminent divines and bishops of the day contributed very practically to the payment of this revolutionary debt by their large consumption of tobacco. He mentions Isaac Barrow, Dr. Barlow of Lincoln, who was as regular in smoking tobacco as at his meals, and had a high opinion of its virtues, Dr. Aldrich, "and other celebrated persons who flourished about this time, and gave much into that practice." One of the best known of these celebrated persons was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury from 1689, and historian of his own times. He had the reputation of being an inveterate smoker, and was caricatured with a long clay stuck through the brim of the shovel hat, on the breadth of which King William once made remark. The bishop replied that the hat was of a shape suited to his dignity, whereupon the King caustically said, "I hope that the hat won't turn your head."

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