Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 4: It seems likely that Richard Cromwell was a smoker. In 1689, long after he had retired into private life and had ample leisure for blowing clouds, he sent to a friend a "Boxe of tobacco," which was described as "A.J. Bod (den's) ... best Virginnea." In a letter to his daughter Elizabeth, dated 21 January 1705, there is a reference to this same dealer, whom he describes as "Adam Bodden, Bacconist in George Yard, Lumber [Lombard] Street." The allusion is worth noting as a very early instance of the colloquial trick of abbreviation familiar in later days in such forms as "baccy" and "bacca" and their compounds.
From Chapter 8: When Tennyson was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 1828-30, he and his companions all smoked. At the meetings of the "Apostles"—the little group of friends which included the future Laureate—"much coffee was drunk, much tobacco smoked." Dons smoked as well as undergraduates. At Queens', the Combination-room in Tennyson's time had still a sanded floor, and the "table was set handsomely forth with long 'churchwardens'"—as the poet told Palgrave when the two visited Cambridge in 1859. George Pryme, in his "Autobiographic Recollections," 1870, states that in 1800 " smoking was allowed in the Trinity Combination-room after supper in the twelve days of Christmas, when a few old men availed themselves of it," which looks as if tobacco were not very popular just then at Trinity. With the wine, pipes and the large silver tobacco-box were laid on the table. Porson, when asked for an inscription for the box, suggested Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ... to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner."
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