Chapter 9 Part 3
SIGNS OF REVIVAL
A curious and popular variety of tobacco-box often to be found in
rural inns and ale-houses was made somewhat on the principle of the
now everywhere familiar automatic machines. The late Mr. Frederick
Gale, in a column of "Tobacco Reminiscences," which he contributed to
the Globe newspaper in 1899, said, that at village outdoor festivals
of the 'thirties and early 'forties, respectable elderly farmers and
tradesmen would sit "round a table, on which was an automatic, square,
brass tobacco-box of large dimensions, into which the smokers dropped
a halfpenny and the lid flew back, and the publican trusted to the
smoker's honour to fill his pipe and close the box." When the pipes
were filled they were lighted by means of tinder-box and flint, and a
stable lanthorn supplied by the ostler. A penny would appear to have
been a more usual charge, for a frequent inscription on the lid was:
The custom is, before you fill,
To put a penny in the till;
When you have filled, without delay
Close the lid, or sixpence pay.
One of these old brass penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes was included in
the exhibition of Welsh Antiquities held at Cardiff in the summer of
1913.
In the Colchester Museum is an automatic tobacco-box and till of
japanned iron. On the lid of the box is painted a keg of tobacco and
two clay pipes; and on that of the till the following doggerel lines:
A halfpeny dropt into the till,
Upsprings the lid and you may fill;
When you have filled, without delay,
Shut down the lid, or sixpence pay.
A correspondent of Notes and Queries, in 1908, mentioned that he
possessed two of these old penny-in-the-slot tobacco-boxes, and had
come across another in a dealer's shop of a somewhat peculiar make,
about which he wished to get information. "It is of the ordinary
shape," he wrote, "but differs from any I have previously seen in this
respect, that it works with a sixpence, and not with a penny or halfpenny. It is engraved with the usual lines, except that the user
is asked to put sixpence in the till, and then to shut down the lid
under penalty of a fine of a shilling. What could it have been used
for that was worth sixpence a time? Other uncommon features are that
the money portion is shallow, and that the part for the tobacco
extends the whole length of the box. I should say that the box is much
smaller than any others I have ever seen." No information as to the
use of this curious box was forthcoming from any of the learned and
ingenious correspondents of Notes and Queries; and a problem which
they cannot solve may not unreasonably be regarded as insoluble.
Readers of Dickens are familiar with the drawing by Cruikshank which
illustrates the chapter on "Scotland Yard" in Dickens's "Sketches by
Boz," which was written before 1836. It shows the coal-heavers sitting
round the fire shouting out "some sturdy chorus," and smoking long
clays. "Here," wrote Dickens, "in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient
appearance, cheered by the glow of a mighty fire ... sat the lusty
coal-heavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing
forth volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and
involved the room in a thick dark cloud." These good folk and others
of their kin had never been affected by any change of fashion in
respect of smoking. In another of the "Sketches," the amusing "Tuggs's
at Ramsgate," when poor Cymon Tuggs is hid behind the curtain, half
dead with fear, he hears Captain Waters call for brandy and
cigars —"The cigars were introduced; the captain was a professed
smoker; so was the lieutenant; so was Joseph Tuggs." Poor Cymon, on
the other hand, was one of those who could never smoke "without
feeling it indispensably necessary to retire, immediately, and never
could smell smoke without a strong disposition to cough."
Consequently, as the apartment was small, the door closed and the
smoke powerful, poor Cymon was soon compelled to cough, which
precipitated the catastrophe. It is noticeable that Dickens speaks of
the three worthies as professed smokers, a remark which suggests
that such dare-devils, men who would take cigars as a matter of course
and for enjoyment, and not merely out of a complimentary acquiescence
in some one else's wish, were comparatively rare.
Other illustrations of folk who smoked, not cigars , but pipes, may be
drawn from "Pickwick," which was published in 1836. At the very
beginning, when Mr. Pickwick calls a cab at Saint Martin's-le-Grand,
the first cab is "fetched from the public-house, where he had been
smoking his first pipe." At Rochester, Mr. Pickwick makes notes on the
four towns of Strood, Rochester, Chatham and Brompton, where the
military were present in strength, and hence the observant gentleman
noted—"The consumption of tobacco in these towns must be very great:
and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious
to those who are extremely fond of smoking." On the evening of the
election at Eatanswill, Tupman and Snodgrass resort to the commercial
room of the Peacock Inn, where "the atmosphere was redolent of
tobacco-smoke , the fumes of which had communicated a rather dingy hue
to the whole room, and more especially to the dusty red curtains which
shaded the windows." Here, among others, were the dirty-faced man with
a clay pipe, the very red-faced man behind a cigar, and the man with a
black eye, who slowly filled a large Dutch pipe with most capacious
bowl. Tupman and Snodgrass were of the company and smoked cigars . Sam
Weller's father smoked his pipe philosophically. If Sam's
"mother-in-law" "flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe, he steps out
and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics;
and he smokes wery comfortably 'till she comes to agin." What better
example could there be of pipe-engendered philosophy? When Mr.
Pickwick and Sam look in at old Weller's house of call off Cheapside,
they find the boxes full of stage coachmen, drinking and smoking, and
among them is the old gentleman himself, "smoking with great
vehemence." After having given his son valuable parental advice, "Mr.
Weller, senior, refilled his pipe from a tin box he carried in his
pocket, and, lighting his fresh pipe from the ashes of the old one,
commenced smoking at a great rate."
A little later when Mr. Pickwick hunts up Perker's clerk Lowten, and
joins the jovial circle at the Magpie and Stump, he finds on his right
hand "a gentleman in a checked shirt and Mosaic studs, with a cigar in
his mouth," who expresses the hope that the newcomer does not "find
this sort of thing disagreeable." "Not in the least," replied Mr.
Pickwick, "I like it very much, although I am no smoker myself." "I
should be very sorry to say I wasn't," interposes another gentleman on
the opposite side of the table. "It's board and lodging to me, is
smoke." Mr. Pickwick glances at the speaker, and thinks that if it
were washing too, it would be all the better!
Later again when the "couple o' Sawbones," the medical students, Ben
Allen and Bob Sawyer, make their first appearance on the scene, they
are discovered in the morning seated by Mr. Wardle's kitchen fire,
smoking cigars ; and it is significant of how smoking out of doors was
then regarded that Dickens, going on to describe Sawyer in detail,
refers to "that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which
is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout
and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian
names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious
description." Apparently in 1836 the only person who would allow
himself to be seen smoking in the street was of the kind naturally
inclined to do the other objectionable things mentioned. The same idea
runs through the allusions to tobacco in "Pickwick." Smoking was
undeniably vulgar. Mr. John Smauker, who introduces Sam Weller at the
"friendly swarry" of the Bath footmen, smokes a cigar "through an
amber tube"—cigar-holders were a novelty. When Mr. Pickwick is taken
to the house of Namby, the sheriffs' officer, the "principal features"
of the front parlour are "fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke." One of
the occupants of the room is a "mere boy of nineteen or twenty, who,
though it was yet barely ten o'clock, was drinking gin and water, and
smoking a cigar, amusements to which, judging from his inflamed
countenance, he had devoted himself pretty constantly for the last
year or two of his life." tobacco-smoke pervades the Fleet prison. In
fact, to trace tobacco through the pages of "Pickwick" is to realize
vividly how vulgar if not vicious an accomplishment smoking was
considered by the fashionable world and how popular it was among the
nobodies of the unfashionable world.
Similar morals may be drawn from other works of fiction. The action
of the first chapters of Thackeray's "Pendennis" passes early in the
nineteenth century. In the third chapter Foker has a cigar in his
mouth as he strolls with Pen down the High Street of Chatteris. Old
Doctor Portman meets them and regards "with wonder Pen's friend, from
whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round
the doctor's honest face and shovel hat. 'An old school-fellow of
mine, Mr. Foker,' said Pen. The doctor said 'H'm!' and scowled at the
cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an
abomination to the worthy gentleman." The reverend gentleman in liking
his pipe was faithful to the traditional fondness for smoking of
parsons; but smoking must be in the study. To smoke in the street was
vulgar; and to smoke the newfangled cigar was worse. Pendennis, when he comes home the first time from Oxbridge, brings
with him a large box of cigars of strange brand, which he smokes "not
only about the stables and greenhouses, where they were good" for his
mother's plants, and which were obviously places to which a man who
wished to smoke should betake himself, but in his own study, which
rather shocks his mother. Pen goes from bad to worse during his
University days, and, sad to say, one Sunday in the last long
vacation, the "wretched boy," instead of going to church, "was seen at
the gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the
congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful
sensation in the village society. Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after
that, and groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal." Later
the smoke from Warrington's short pipe and Pen's cigars floats through
many pages of the novel. |
