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 1: "Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco, did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco whiffes made them leave him to pay all."
From Chapter 5: If the restored king did not himself smoke, tobacco was far from unknown at the Palace of Whitehall. We get a curious glimpse of one aspect of life there in the picture which Lilly, the notorious astrologer, paints in his story of his arrest in January 1661. He was taken to Whitehall at night, and kept in a large room with some sixty other prisoners till daylight, when he was transferred to the guardroom, which, he says, "I thought to be hell; some therein were sleeping, others swearing, others smoaking tobacco. In the chimney of the room I believe there was two bushels of broken Tobacco Pipes, almost half one load of ashes." What would the king's grandfather, the author of the "Counterblaste," have said, could he have imagined such a spectacle within the palace walls?
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