Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Venner goes on to give a terrible catalogue of the ills that will befall the smoker who uses tobacco "contrary to the order and way I have set down." It is a dreadful list which may possibly have frightened a few nervous smokers; but probably it had no greater effect than the terrible curse in the "Jackdaw of Rheims."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

Other men of letters of the time were zealous adherents of the pipe. One of these was the poet Campbell. From 1820 to 1830 he was editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and is reputed to have been so very unbusinesslike in his methods that there was always difficulty in getting proofs corrected and returned in good time. On one occasion, as reported by a member of the firm that printed the magazine, a proof had been lost, and the poet was informed that the article must go to press next day uncorrected. Campbell sent word that he would look in in the morning and correct it. Preparations were duly made to receive him; he was shown into the best room, and left with the proof on his table. After a while he rang the bell, and said, "I could do this much better if I had a pipe." Thereupon pipe and tobacco were procured and taken in to him. Campbell tore open the paper containing the tobacco, and, with a slightly contemptuous expression, exclaimed, "Ugh! C'naster! I'd rather it had been shag!"

Charles Lamb was a heavy pipe-smoker. He smoked too much—regretted it—but continued to smoke, not wisely but too well. "He came home very smoky and drinky last night," says his sister of him.

When sending some books to Coleridge at Keswick in November 1802, Lamb wrote—"If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure, a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter." To Lamb, a book read best over a pipe.

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