Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

In this same book Thackeray says ironically—"Think of that den of abomination, which, I am told, has been established in some clubs, called the smoking-Room." The satirist was very familiar with the smoking-room at the club he loved well—the "Little G."—the Garrick. The original Garrick club-house was at 35 King Street, Covent Garden, where the club was founded in 1831. It had formerly been a quiet, old-fashioned family hotel, but apparently was not furnished with a smoking-room, for one of the first acts of the club, when they obtained possession of the house, was to build out over the "leads" a large and comfortable smoking-room. Shirley Brooks said that this room, which was reached by a long passage from the Strangers' Dining-room, "was not a cheerful apartment by daylight, and when empty, but which, at night and full, was thought the most cheerful apartment in Town." At other clubs of more fashion, perhaps, but certainly of less good-fellowship, smoking-rooms made their way more slowly. At White's, smoking was not allowed at all till 1845. The Alfred Club, founded in 1808, which Lord Byron described as pleasant—"a little too sober and literary, perhaps, but, on the whole, a decent resource on a rainy day," and which Sir William Fraser called "a sort of minor Athenæum," owed its death in 1855, if report be true, to a dispute about smoking. One section of the members wished for an improved smoking-room—they called the existing room, which was at the top of the house—an "infamous hole"—while the more old-fashioned and more influential members objected to any improvement. The latter carried the day, but the consequent loss of members ruined the club, which soon after ceased to exist. This secession must have been subsequent to that of the bishops, of whom at one time many were members, but who left, it is said, because of the introduction of a billiard-table!

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

Whether the use of tobacco prevailed as generally among the Cavalier forces is less certain; but as King Charles hated the weed, courtiers may have frowned upon its use. One distinguished cavalier, however, either smoked his pipe, or proposed to do so, on a historic occasion. In Markham's "Life of the Great Lord Fairfax" there is a lively account of how the Duke, then Marquis, of Newcastle, with his brother Charles Cavendish, drove in a coach and six to the field of Marston Moor on the afternoon before the battle. His Grace was in a very bad humour. "He applied to Rupert," says Markham, "for orders as to the disposal of his own most noble person, and was told that there would be no battle that night, and that he had better get into his coach and go to sleep, which he accordingly did." But the decision as to battle or no battle did not rest with Prince Rupert. Cromwell attacked the royal army with the most disastrous results to the King's cause. His Grace of Newcastle woke up, left his coach, and fought bravely, being, according to his Duchess, the last to ride off the fatal field, leaving his coach and six behind him.

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