Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 7:

The satirist wrote truly that after all the fashionable abstainers had been deducted, crowds remained, who smoked as heartily as their predecessors of a century earlier. The populace was still on the side of tobacco. This was well shown in 1732 when Sir Robert Walpole proposed special excise duties on tobacco, and brought a Bill into Parliament which would have given his excisemen powers of inquisition which were much resented by the people generally. The controversy produced a host of squibs and caricatures, most of which were directed against the measure. The Bill was defeated in 1733, and great and general were the rejoicings. When the news reached Derby on April 19 in that year, the dealers in tobacco caused all the bells in the Derby churches to be rung, and we may be sure that this rather unusual performance was highly popular. The withdrawal of the odious duty was further celebrated by caricatures and "poetical" chants of triumph. One of the leading opponents of the Bill had been a well-known puffing tobacconist named Bradley, who was accustomed to describe his wares as "the best in Christendom"; and when the Bill was defeated Bradley's portrait was published for popular circulation, above these lines:

Behold the man, who, when a gloomy band
Of vile excisemen threatened all the land,
Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe
The cheerful bottle and the social pipe.
O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl,
Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul!
May still the best in Christendom for this
Cleave to thy stopper, and compleat thy bliss!

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

Thackeray pictures Dryden as sitting in his great chair at Will's Coffee-house, Russell Street, Covent Garden, tobacco-pipe in hand; but there is no evidence that Dryden smoked. The snuff-box was his symbol of authority. Budding wits thought themselves highly distinguished if they could obtain the honour of being allowed to take a pinch from it. Of Dr. Aldrich, who was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and who wrote a curious "Catch not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear, to be sung by four men smoaking their pipes," an anecdote has often been related, which illustrates his devotion to the weed. A bet was made by one undergraduate and taken by another, that at whatever time, however early, the Dean might be visited in his own den, he would be found smoking. As soon as the bet had been made the Dean was visited. The pair explained the reason for their call, when Aldrich, who must have been a good-tempered man, said, "Your friend has lost: I am not smoking, only filling my pipe."

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