Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

Angelo gives some lively pictures of scenes of this kind in the London of about 1780. The Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, was the meeting-place for "a knot of worthies, principally 'Sons of St. Luke,' or the children of Thespis, and mostly votaries of Bacchus," as the old fencing-master, who loved a little "fine writing," describes them; and here they sat, he says, "taking their punch and smoking, the prevailing custom of the time." About the same time (circa 1790) an evening resort for purposes mostly vicious was the famous Dog and Duck, in St. George's Fields. "The long room," says Angelo, "if I may depend on my memory, was on the ground floor, and all the benches were filled with motley groups, eating, drinking, and smoking." Angelo also mentions the "Picnic Society," a celebrated resort of fashion at the beginning of the nineteenth century, where the odour of tobacco never penetrated. It afforded, he says in his fine way, "a sort of antipodeal contrast to these smoking tavern clubs of the old city of Trinobantes." The same writer speaks of a certain Monsieur Liviez whom he met in Paris in 1772, who had been one of the first dancers at the Italian Opera House, and maître de ballet at Drury Lane Theatre. This gentleman was addicted to self-indulgence, loved good eating, and good and ample drinking, and moreover kept "late hours, Ã l'Anglaise, smoked his pipe, and drank oceans of punch."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

Many royal ladies of Europe, contemporaries of Queen Victoria and her son, have had the reputation of being confirmed smokers. Among them may be named Carmen Sylva, the poetess-Queen of Roumania, the Dowager Tsaritsa of Russia, the late Empress of Austria, King Alfonso's mother, formerly Queen-Regent of Spain, the Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy and ex-Queen Amélie of Portugal. It is, of course, well known that Austrian and Russian ladies generally are fond of cigarette-smoking. On Russian railways it is not unusual to find a compartment labelled "For ladies who do not smoke."

The newspapers reported not long ago from the other side of the Atlantic that the "smart" women of Chicago had substituted cigars for cigarettes. According to an interview with a Chicago hotel proprietor, the fair smokers "select their cigars as men do, either black and strong, or light, according to taste." How in the world else could they select them? It is not likely, however, that cigar-smoking will become popular among women. For one thing, it leaves too strong and too clinging an odour on the clothes.

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