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Matthew Hilton
debut in To Have and Have Not by standing in the doorway of Humphrey Bogart’s
hotel room asking, “Anybody got a light?” For the reality of everyday smoking
behavior, though, the massive popularity among women of cheap brands such as
Player’s Weights and Will’s Woodbines (“gaspers” as they were popularly known)
suggests that smoking performed another role from that of social emulation. 18 This
was no more apparent than during the stresses and strains of World War II when
Mass-Observation noted that many women massively increased their cigarette
consumption, especially during air raids, as a psychological prop to deal with the
breaks from normality. Women respondents testified to smoking’s ability to help
them through emotional and intellectual difficulties, to help when tired, to alleviate
boredom, to reduce nervousness and increase sociability. 19 Furthermore, the
persistence of smoking among women after the links with lung cancer and other
diseases were widely publicized has caused many investigators to conclude that
the cigarette provides momentary escape when “life’s a drag” and, as such, remains
“a feminist issue.” 20
For working-class men, the great regional diversity in pipe smoking patterns in
the nineteenth century is testament to the range of meanings attached to popular
leisure. In a period when the larger part of tobacco consumed was sold loose in
amounts of one ounce for 3d., tobacco preferences differed enormously across the
British Isles. For instance, Welsh miners were known to prefer strong shag
tobaccos (coarsely cut leaf) and rolls (tied tightly into a type of rope), dock laborers
were associated with thick twists, cabmen for Irish roll, while the better paid and
London workers preferred the lighter and more finely cut Virginian flake tobaccos,
which were ready to smoke. Cavendish, which came in the form of a cake, required
much manipulation before being ready for smoking and it gave way in popularity
– especially in Ireland and the North of England – to more manageable rolls such
as nailrod and twist, which had the dual advantage of being ready for chewing. 21
Briar pipe smokers of the later nineteenth century preferred mixtures where the
lighter Virginian leaves were blended with the stronger flavors of Latakia, Perique,
or Turkish, though the vast majority of smokers still used clay pipes, which
included the short “cutty” of Scotland, the “dudeen” of Ireland, the “alderman” of
rural England, and the much longer “churchwarden.” 22 What united these many
differences in smoking patterns was an older pre-industrial and communal form
of smoking which meant that clays were usually given away free of charge in
public houses and where tobacco could be passed around the group. 23 The offering
of a clay pipe was a mark of hospitality, as Gabriel Betteridge found in Wilkie
Collins’ The Moonstone: “good Mrs Yolland performed a social ceremony strictly
reserved for strangers of distinction. She put a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple
of clean pipes on the table, and opened the conversation by saying, ‘What news
from London, Sir?’” 24 It is arguable that such collective forms of consumption
continued into the twentieth century, as the proffering of cigarettes in the public
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