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Matthew Hilton
as “less manly,” foreign and passive, as well as suffering under the label of “false”
“consumer” instead of “real” “smoker.” With such knowledge and skill, smokers
were then ready to serve their nation. Smoking always had a purpose, whether to
support the economy through taxation, to aid the artist in his creativity, to support
the soldier in his hunger and fatigue, or to comfort the sailor on his lonely voyage.
Smokers became public collectors, of literary anecdotes, of pipes, tobacco boxes,
cigars, ornamental snuff boxes, and later cigarette cards. Better still were the
smokers who then wrote about their habit or who, as with William Bragge of
Sheffield, Alderman William Ormerod of Todmorden, and George Arents of the
United States, donated their huge collections of tobacco books to municipal
libraries. 28 The usual trivializing accusations against consumption which had
existed since the luxury debates of the eighteenth century, if not before, could not
then be brought against informed smokers, who showed that they consumed for
the benefit of all.
From this position of purposeful and independent confidence, smokers were
then free to explore their individuality through what might at first appear the more
irrational elements of their habit. Tobacco was raised to a level far higher than that
of a mere object. It was frequently anthropomorphized into a trusty companion,
feminized into a wife or a lover, and even deified into a god itself. J.M. Barrie
opened his account of My Lady Nicotine by comparing smoking and matrimony,
while an anonymous poet declared to “his lady,” that a cigar, “’Tis but a type of
thee.” 29 Others spoke of a legend of the gift of tobacco from the gods, while some
strode off in pursuit of the “Goddess in the clouds,” singing praise to the “Diva
Nicotina.” 30 Tobacco was held to offer escape from the problems of the world as
readers were encouraged to imagine their ideal smoking environment which, for
many, was the smoking room of the gentleman’s club. 31 As Ouida put it in 1867:
“that chamber of liberty, that sanctuary of the persecuted, that temple of refuge,
thrice blessed in all its forms throughout the land, that consecrated Mecca of every
true believer in the divinity of the meerschaum, and the paradise of the narghilé –
the smoking-room.” 32 For those less financially fortunate smokers, the cigar and
the pipe still offered temporal escape, aided by the “whiffs” of tobacco presented
in the periodicals which, just as the smoke meandered across the room, so the mind
was encouraged to wander, to reminisce, and to dream of perfect bliss, or a
smoker’s Arcadia, as Barrie put it. Ultimately, smokers had to satisfy themselves
with more earthly pleasures, but they explored their individuality through their
“paraphernalia of smokiana,” from the tools of their habit (clay pipes, briar pipes,
meerschaums, churchwardens, pipe cleaners, matches, cigar holders, cigar cases,
ash trays, pipe-lights, spills, spittoons, tobacco pouches, storage jars, snuff boxes,
pipe racks, and so on) to the more general objects that completed the smoking
experience (favorite smoking armchairs, tables, slippers, jackets, hats, and
smoking companions).
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