Chapter 11 Part 3
LATER VICTORIAN DAYS
One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John
Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent
Carlyle—an inveterate smoker—a box of cigars in February 1865. In
his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote—"Dear Ruskin, you have
sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in
answer? It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi
In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin's guests
found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.
Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker. He is
said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales
dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out
of courtesy to his illustrious guest.
It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William
Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in
the day—an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished
smokers would subscribe—when Sir William laughingly replied, "The
earliest pipe of half-awakened bards."
The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened birdseye" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the
head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, in
"Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.
Sidgwick's praise of tobacco, classically draped in Greek verse,
occasionally of the macaronic order, is delightful. He hails the pipe
as the work of Pan, and the divine smoke as the best and most fragrant
of gifts—healer of sorrow, companion in joy, rest for the toilers,
drink for the thirsty, warmth for the cold, coolness in the heat, and
a cheap feast for those who waste away through hunger. How is it, he
says, that through so many ages men, who have need of thee, have not
seen thy nature? Often, he continues—the verses may be roughly
translated—often, when I am in Alpine solitudes, tied in a chain to a
few companions, clinging to the rope, while barbarians lead the way,
carrying in my hands an ice-axe,
and breathless crawling up the snow-covered plain—then, when groaning
I reach the summit (either pulled up or on foot), how have I rested,
on my back on the rocks, charming my soul with thy divine clouds! He
goes on in burlesque strain to speak of the joys of tobacco when he
lies in idleness by the streams in breathless summer, comforted by a
bath just taken, or when in the middle of the night he is worn out by
revising endless exercises, underlining the mistakes in red and
allotting marks, or weighed down by the wise men of old—Thucydides,
Sophocles, Euripides, the ideas of Plato, wiles of Pindar, fearfully
corrupt strophe of chorus, wondrous guesses of Teutons and fancies of
philologists, when men swoon in the inexplicable wanderings of the
endless examination of Homer, when the brain reels among such
toil—then he hails the pipe, help of mortals, and hastens to kindle
sacrifices at its altars and rejoices as he tastes its smoke. Let some
one, he exclaims, bring Bryant and May's fire, which strikes a light
only if rubbed on the box and taking the best and blackest bowl, and putting on Persian
slippers, sitting on the softest couch, I will light my pipe, with my
feet on the hearth, and I will cast aside all mortal care!
Nor must the delightful verses by "J.K.S." be forgotten, in which the
author of "Lapsus Calami" sings of the "Grand Old Pipe"—
And I'm smoking a pipe which is fashioned
Like the face of the Grand Old Man;
For the sake of its excellent savour,
For the many sweet smokes of the past
My pipe keeps its hold on my favour,
Tho' now it is blackening fast.
and the quaint similarity or comparison between the pipe and
Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man" when "Lapsus Calami" appeared in 1888,
is maintained throughout—
Grows he black in his face with his labours?
Well, so does my Grand Old Pipe. But although many pipes were smoked at the Universities, there were
occasionally to be found odd survivals of old prejudices. Dr. Shipley,
in his recent memoir of John Willis Clark, the Cambridge Registrary,
says that even in the 'seventies of the last century there was an
elderly Don at Cambridge who once rebuked a Junior Fellow, who was
smoking a pipe in the Wilderness, with the remark, "No Christian
gentleman smokes a pipe, or if he does he smokes a cigar." The
perpetrator of this bull was the same parson who married late in life,
and returning to his church after a honeymoon of six weeks, publicly
thanked God "for three weeks of unalloyed connubial bliss." |
