The social history of smoking / by G. L. Apperson.

  • Apperson, G. L. (George Latimer), 1857-1937.
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The social history of smoking / by G. L. Apperson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Brushfield quotes Hepworth Dixon, in “ Her Majesty’s Tower,” as drawing “ an imaginary and yet probable picture of him and his companions at a window of this very house, overlooking the ‘ silent highway ’ : “ ‘ It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men [Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.’ ” This is a pure “ effort of the fancy ” so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned. Shakespeare’s absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that he smoked ; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house had, as Aubrey tells us, “a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any in the world ” ; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of that pleasant turret. The only mention made of tobacco by Raleigh him- self occurs in a testamentary note made a little while before his execution in 1618. Referring to the tobacco remaining on his ship after his last voyage, he wrote : “ Sir Lewis Stukely sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself ... I desire that hee may give his account for the tobacco.” As showing how closely Sir Walter’s name was associated with it long after his death. Dr. Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl of