Thomas Carlyle : table talk.

  • Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881.
Date:
1890
    TOBACCO. One of the divinest benefits that has ever come to the human race. Nobody comes whose talk is half so good to me as silence. I fly out of the way of everybody, and would much rather smoke a pipe of wholesome tobacco than talk to anyone in London just now. Nay ! their talk is often rather an offence to me, and I murmur to myself,—Why open one’s lips for such a purpose. Tobacco Smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honour, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; at all events to hold his peace and take to his- pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any. The results of which salutary practice, if introduced into Constitutional Parliaments,, might evidently be incalculable. The essence of what little intellect and insight there is in that room : we shall or can get nothing more out of any Parliament; and Sedatives gently-soothing, gently clarifying tobacco smoke (if the room were well ventilated, open atop, and the air kept good), with the obligation to a minimum of speech, surely gives human intellect and insight the best chance they can have. The Tobacco Parliament of Prussia :—Friedrich Wilhelm has not the least shadow of a Constitutional Parliament, nor even a Privy Council, as we understand it; his Ministers being in general mere clerks to register and execute what he had otherwise resolved upon : but he-
    had his Tabako-Collegium, Tobacco-College, Smoking Congress, Tcibagie, which has made so much noise in the world, and which, in a rough natural way, affords him the uses of a Parliament, on most cheap terms, and without the formidable inconveniences attached to that kind of institution. A Parliament reduced to its simplest expression, and, instead of Parliamentary eloquence, provided with Dutch clay pipes and tobacco : so we may define this celebrated Tabagie of Friedrich Wilhelm’s. Tobacco—introduced by the Swedish soldiers in the Thirty-Years War, say some; or even by the English soldiers in the Bohemian or Palatinate beginning of said war, say others;—Tobacco once shown them, was enthusiastically adopted by the German populations, long in want of such an article; it has done important multifarious functions in that country ever since, for truly, in politics, morality and all departments of theii piactical and speculative affairs, we may trace its influences, good and bad, up to this day. Influences generally bad; pacificatory but bad, engaging you in idle cloudy dreams;—still worse promoting composure among . the palpably chaotic and discomposed; soothing all things into lazy peace; that all things may be left to themselves very much, and to the laws of gravity and decomposition. Whereby German affairs are come to be greatly overgrown with funguses in our time ; and give symptoms of dry and wet rot, wherever handled. The Government lay a tax of some hundreds per cent, upon the poor man’s pipe while the rich man s wine pays scarcely one-tenth of this impost; but it is a comloit to think that (as I have been told) the amount of Tobacco smuggled is about as great as that which pays the duty. The Smuggler is the Lord Almighty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying to him, “ Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.” When placing himself under Dr. Franks at Cannes, Carlyle said : “ I’ll do anything, Doctor, ye tell me, but ye maunna stop my pipe.” E
    WORKS QUOTED. Carlyle’s Collected Works. Chapman and Hall. Reminiscences. By Thomas Carlyle. Two vols. Longmans, 1881. 18s. Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of his Life. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. Two vols. Longmans, 1882. 32s. Thomas Carlyle. A History of his Life in London. By Jas. Anthony Froude, M.A. Two vols, Longmans, 1884. 32s. Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle. Mac¬ millan, 1887. 9s. Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle. Two vols. Macmillan, 1886. 16s. The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872. Two vols. Chatto and Windus, 1883. 24s. Early Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Swan, Sonnen- schein & Co., 18*89. I2S* Thomas Carlyle. By Moncure D. Conway. Chatto and Windus, 1881. 6s. Thomas Carlyle. Bv Henry J. Nieoll. Macniven and Wallace, 1881. Thomas Carlyle, the Man and his Books. By William Howie Wylie. T. Fisher Unwin, 1881. 7s. 6d. Carlyle Personally and in his Writings. By David Masson. Macmillan, 1885. 2s. 6d. Carlyle and the Open Secret of his Life. By Henry * v Larkin, Kegan Paul, 1886, 7s, 64,
    Life of Thomas Carlyle. Bv Richard Garnett, LL.D. Walter Scott, 1887. is. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald. Edited by William Aldis Wright. Three vols, Mac¬ millan. 3is. 6d. Anne Gilchrist, her Life and Writings. Edited by Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist. T. Fisher Unwin. Memories of Old Friends, being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co. 18s. The Life of Goethe. By George Henry Lewes. Smith, Elder and Co. 16s. Numei ous Magazines and Newspapers.
    COPE BROTHERS & CO., L™ Tobacco IVorks, 10, LORD NELSON STREET, LIVERPOOL. Branch Tobacco Factory, 89, GT, EASTERN STREET, LONDON, e.c. Terms and Price Lists on Application. All Cope s Proprietary Goods are kept in Stock at 8p, Gt. Eastern Street, e.c.