Chapter 13 Part 1
SMOKING BY WOMEN
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
Isaac Hawkins Browne, circa 1740.
A story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh by John Aubrey which seems to
imply that at first women not only did not smoke, but that they
disliked smoking by men. Aubrey says that Raleigh "standing in a stand
at Sir R. Poyntz's parke at Acton, tooke a pipe of tobacco, which made
the ladies quitt it till he had done." But this objection, whether
general or not, soon vanished, for, as we have seen in a previous
chapter, the gallant of Elizabethan and Jacobean days made a practice
of smoking in his lady's presence. It seems certain, moreover, that
some women, at least, smoked very soon after the introduction of
tobacco; but it is not easy to find direct evidence, though there are
sundry traditions and allusions which suggest that the practice was
not unknown.
There is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth herself once smoked—with
unpleasant results. Campbell, in his "History of Virginia," says that
Raleigh having offered her Majesty "some tobacco to smoke, after two
or three whiffs she was seized with a nausea, upon observing which
some of the Earl of Leicester's faction whispered that Sir Walter had
certainly poisoned her. But her Majesty in a short while recovering
made the countess of Nottingham and all her maids smoke a whole pipe
out among them." The Queen had no selfish desire to monopolize the
novel sensations caused by smoking. An eighteenth-century writer,
Oldys, in his "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," declares that tobacco
"soon became of such vogue in Queen Elizabeth's court, that some of
the great ladies, as well as noblemen therein, would not scruple to
take a pipe sometimes very sociably." But these stories rest on vague
tradition, and probably have no foundation in fact.
King James I in his famous "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," hinted that
the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his
delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie,
that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or
else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's
style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two
references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before
King James blew his royal "Counter-blaste," Cob, the water-bearer,
says that he would have any "man or woman that should but deal with a
tobacco-pipe," immediately whipped. Prynne, in his attack on the
stage, declared that women smoked pipes in theatres; but the truth of
this statement may well be doubted. The habit was probably far from
general among women, although Joshua Sylvester, a doughty opponent of
the weed, was pleased to declare that "Fooles of all Sexes haunt it," i.e. tobacco.
The ballads of the period abound in rough woodcuts in which tavern
scenes are often figured, wherein pewter pots and tobacco-pipes are
shown lying on the table or in the hands or at the mouths of the male
carousers. Men and women are figured together, but it would be very
hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her
hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies
before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad
characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good
Fellows," and beginning:
Come hither, mine host, come hither!
Come hither, mine host, come hither!
I pray thee, mine host,
Give us a pot and a tost,
And let us drinke all together.
The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a
woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One
man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other
pipes—one for each man—and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is
plainly a convivial soul; but there is no pipe for her, and such
provision was no doubt unusual.
There is direct evidence, too, besides the story in the first
paragraph of this chapter, that women disliked the prevalence of
smoking. In Marston's "Antonio and Mellinda," 1602, Rosaline, when
asked by her uncle when she will marry, makes the spirited
reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking
of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have
a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the
ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis
more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to
smoking could be quoted from other plays.
On the other hand, it is certain that from comparatively early in the
seventeenth century there were to be found here and there women who
smoked.
On the title-page of Middleton's comedy, "The Roaring Girle," 1611, is
a picture of the heroine, Moll Cutpurse, in man's apparel, smoking a
pipe, from which a great cloud of smoke is issuing.
In the record of an early libel action brought in the court of the
Archdeacon of Essex, some domestic scenes of 1621 are vividly
represented. We need not trouble about the libel action, but two of
the dramatis personæ were a certain George Thresher, who sold beer
and tobacco at his "shopp in Romford," and a good friend and customer
of his named Elizabeth Savage, who, sad to say, was described as much
given to "stronge drincke and tobacco." In the course of the trial, on
June 8, 1621, Mistress Savage had to tell her tale, part of which is
reported as follows:
"George Thresher kept a shoppe in Romford and sold tobacco there. She
came divers tymes to his shoppe to buy tobacco there; and sometimes,
with company of her acquaintance, did take tobacco and drincke beere
in the hall of George Thresher's house, sometimes with the said
George, and sometimes with his father and his brothers. And sometimes
shee hath had a joint of meat and a cople of chickens dressed there;
and shee, and they, and some other of her freinds, have dined there
together, and paid their share for their dinner, shee being many times
more willing to dine there than at an inne or taverne."
Elizabeth was evidently of a sociable turn, and though she turned her
nose up at a tavern, there seems to have been little difference
between these festive dinners at Mr. Thresher's "shopp," where
Mistress Savage indulged her taste for ale and tobacco, and similar
pleasures at an inn or tavern.
Some of the references to women smokers occur in curious connexions.
When one George Glapthorne, of Whittlesey, J.P., was returned to
Parliament for the Isle of Ely in 1654, his return was petitioned
against, and among other charges it was said that just before the
election, in a certain Martin's ale-house, he had promised to give
Mrs. Martin a roll of tobacco, and had also undertaken to grant her
husband a licence to brew, thus unduly influencing and corrupting the
electors.
Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev.
Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his
journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from
other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost
him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with
her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the
journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but
needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence
to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal
virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."
In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the
originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated,
but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane,
who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman Vall, Norfolk.
Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn,
as his "Afextinat wife," the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous,
tells her "Sweet Hart"—"I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I
pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret
sed." How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with
cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did
not care to be long without a supply. In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited
Stow's "Chronicles," and continued them "onto the end of this present
yeare 1631," wrote that tobacco was "at this day commonly used by most
men and many women." |
