Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce Part 7

The term "drinking tobacco" was not confined to England, but was used in Holland, France, Spain and Portugal, as the same method of blowing the smoke through the nostrils, seemed to be everywhere in vogue.

The use of tobacco increased very rapidly soon after its importation from Virginia. The Spaniards and Portuguese had hitherto monopolized the trade, so that it brought enormous prices, some kinds selling for its weight in silver. As soon as its culture commenced in Virginia the demand for West India tobacco lessened and Virginia leaf soon came into favor, owing not more to the lowering of price than to the quality of the leaf.[38] This was about 1620, which some writers have called the golden age of tobacco. It had now become a prime favorite and was used by nearly all cla.s.ses. Poets and dramatists sung its praises, while others wrote of its wonderful medicinal qualities.[39]

Fops and knaves alike indulged in its use.

[Footnote 38: Neander, in his work on "Tobacologia"

(London, 1622), mentions eighteen varieties of tobacco, or at least localities from where it was s.h.i.+pped to London, among which are the following: Varinas (considered the best), Brazil, Maracay, Orinoco, Margarita, Caracas, c.u.mana, Amazon, Virginia, Philippines, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and St. Domingo.]

[Footnote 39: "The first author (says an English writer) who wrote of this Plant was Charles Stepha.n.u.s, in 1564.

This was a mean, short, inaccurate Draught, till Dr.

John Liebault wrote a whole Discourse of it next year, and put it into his second Book of Husbandry, which was every year reprinted with additions and alterations, for twenty years after. He had a large Correspondence, a good Intelligence, and wrote the best of the age, and gathered the greatest stock of experience about this new Plant."]

"About the latter end of the sixteenth century, tobacco was in great vogue in London, with wits and 'gallants,' as the dandies of that age were called. To wear a pair of velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; to play at cards or dice in the chambers of the groom-porter, and smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard or at the play-house, were then the grand characteristics of a man of fas.h.i.+on. Tobacconists' shops were then common; and as the article, which appears to have been sold at a high price, was indispensable to the gay 'man about town,' he generally endeavored to keep his credit good with his tobacco-merchant. Poets and pamphleteers laughed at the custom, though generally they seem to have no particular aversion to an occasional treat to a sober pipe and a poute of sack. Your men of war, who had served in the Low Countries, and who taught young gallants the n.o.ble art of fencing, were particularly fond of tobacco; and your gentlemen adventurers, who had served in a buccaneering expedition against the Spaniards, were no less partial to it. Sailors--from the captain to the s.h.i.+p-boy--all affected to smoke, as if the practice was necessary to their character; and to 'take tobacco' and wear a silver whistle, like a modern boatswain's mate, was the pride of a man-of-war's man.

"Ben Jonson, of all our early dramatic writers, most frequently alludes to the practice of smoking. In his play of 'Every Man in his Humour,' first acted in 1598, Captain Bobadil thus extols in his own peculiar vein the virtues of tobacco; while Cob, the water carrier, with about equal truth, relates some startling instances of its pernicious effects.

"'_Bobadil._ Body o' me, here's the remainder of seven pound since yesterday was seven-night! 'Tis your right Trinadado!

Did you never take any, Master Stephen?

"'_Stephen._ No, truly, Sir; but I'll learn to take it since you commend it so.

"'_Bobadil._ Sir, believe me upon my relation,--for what I tell you the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies where this herb grows, where neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge, have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the s.p.a.ce of one and twenty weeks, but the fume of this simple only.

Therefore, it cannot be but 'tis most divine. Further, take it, in the true kind, so, it makes an antidote, that had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy, it should expel it and clarify you with as much ease as I speak. And for your greenwound, your balsamum, and your St.

John's-wort, are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado: your Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of it for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind, but I profess myself no quack-salver: only thus much, by Hercules; I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.'

_Cob._ "'By gad's me, I mar'l what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco! It's good for nothing but to choke a man and fill him full of smoke and embers.

There were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them, they say, will ne'er 'scape it: he voided a bushel of soot yesterday, upward and downward. By the stocks! an'

there were no wiser men than I, I'd have it present whipping, man or woman that should but deal with a tobacco-pipe; why, it will stifle them all in the end, as many as use it; it's little better than rats-bane or rosaker.'"[40]

[Footnote 40: A preparation of a.r.s.enic.]

From the first announcement that English navigators had discovered tobacco in Virginia, until the London and Plymouth companies sailed for the New World, the deepest interest was taken in the voyagers.

Drayton, the poet, wrote of "The Virginian Voyage," while Chapman and other dramatists wrote plays in which allusions were made to Virginia.

In the "Mask of Flowers," performed at White Hall upon Twelfth Night, 1613-14, one of the characters challenges another, and a.s.serts that wine is more worthy than tobacco. The costumes were exceedingly grotesque and suggestive of the New rather than of the Old World.

Kawosha one of the princ.i.p.al characters rode in, wearing on his head a cap of red-cloth of gold, from his ears were pendants, a gla.s.s chain was about his neck, his body and legs were covered with olive-colored stuff, in his hands were a bow and arrows, and the bases of tobacco--colored stuff cut like tobacco leaves. The play abounds with allusions to the "Indian weed."

"_Silenus._--Kawosha comes in majestie, Was never such a G.o.d as he; He's come from a far countrie To make our nose a chimney.

_Kawosha._--The wine takes the contrary way To get into the hood; But good tobacco makes no stay But seizeth where it should.

More incense hath burned at Great Kawoshae's foote Than to Silen and Bacchus, both, And take in Jove to boote.

_Silenus._--The worthies they were nine tis true, And lately Arthur's knights I knew; But now are come up Worthies new, The roaring boys Kawoshae's crew.

_Kawosha._--Silenus toppes the barrel, but Tobacco toppes the braine And makes the vapors fire and soote, That mon revise againe.

Nothing but fumigation Doth charm away ill sprites, Kawosha and his nation Found out these holy rites."

The writers of this period abound in allusions to tobacco and its use.

The poets and dramatists found in it a fertile field for the display of their satire, and from 1600 to 1650 stage plays introduced many characters as either tobacco drinkers or sellers. It had now become so great a custom and had increased so fast after the importation of Virginia tobacco that it afforded them no insignificant theme for the display of their genius.[41] The plays of Jonson, Decker, Rowland, Heywood, Middleton, Fields, Fletcher, Hutton, Lodge, Sharpham, Marston, Lilly (court poet to Elizabeth), the Duke of Newcastle and others are full of allusions to the plant and those who indulged in its use. Shakespeare,[42] however, does not once allude to its use, and his silence on this then curious custom has provoked much conjecture and inquiry. Some affirm that he wrote to please royalty, but if so why did he not condemn the custom to appease the wrath of a sapient king. Others say he kept silence because he was the friend of Raleigh, and though he would have gladly held up the great smoker and his favorite indulgence, feared to add to the popularity of the custom by displeasing his royal master. Another cla.s.s affirm that as the stories of his plays are all antecedent to his own time, therefore he never mentions either the drinking of tobacco, or the tumultuous scenes of the ordinary which belonged to it, and which are so constantly met with in his contemporary dramatists. Says one:

[Footnote 41: "Never did nature produce a Plant that in a short Time became so universally used, for it was but a short while known in Europe, till it was taken almost everywhere, either chewed; smoked, or snuffed. A pipe of tobacco is now the general and most frequent companion of, Mug, Bottle, or Punch-bowl."--_T. Short._]

[Footnote 42: Gifford has also remarked that Shakspeare is the only one of the dramatic writers of the age of James who does not condescend to notice tobacco; all the others abound in allusions to it. In Jonson we find tobacco in every place--in Cob the waterman's house, and in the Apollo Club-room, on the stage, and at the ordinary. The world of London was then divided into two cla.s.ses--the tobacco-lovers and the tobacco-haters.]

"How is it that our great dramatist never once makes even the slightest allusion to smoking? Who can suggest a reason?

Our great poet knew the human heart too well, and kept too steadily in view, the universal nature of man to be afraid of painting the external trapping and ephemeral customs of his own time. Does he not delight to moralize on false hair, masks, rapiers, pomandens, perfumes, dice, bowls, fardingales, etc? Did he not sketch for us, with enjoyment and with satire, too, the fantastic fops, the pompous stewards, the mischievous pages, the quarrelsome revellers, the testy gaolers, the rhapsodizing lovers, the sly cheats, and the ruffling courtiers that filled the streets of Elizabethan London, persons who could have been found nowhere else nor in any other age? No one can dispute that he drew the life that he saw moving around him. He sketched these creatures because they were before his eyes and were his enemies or his a.s.sociates; they live still because their creator's genius was Promethean, and endowed them with immortality. Bardolph, Moth, Slender, Abhorson, Don Armado, Mercutio, etc., are portraits, as everyone knows and feels who is conversant with the manners of the Elizabethan times as handed down in old plays.

"If Shakespeare's contemporaries were silent about the then new fas.h.i.+on of smoking, we should not so much wonder at Shakespeare's taciturnity. But Decker's and Ben Jonson's works abound in allusions to tobacco, its uses and abuses.

The humorist and satirist lost no opportunity of deriding the new fas.h.i.+on and its followers. The tobacco merchant was an important person in London of James the First's time--with his Winchester pipes, his maple cutting-blocks, his juniper-wood charcoal fires, and his silver tongs with which to hand the hot charcoal to his customers, although he was shrewdly suspected of adulterating the precious weed with sack lees and oil. It was his custom to wash the tobacco in muscadel and grains, and to keep it moist by wrapping it in greased leather, and oiled rags, or by burying it in gravel. The Elizabethan pipes were so small that now when they are dug up in Ireland the poor call them 'fairy pipes' from their tininess. These pipes became known by the nickname of 'the woodc.o.c.k's heads.' The apothecaries, who sold the best tobacco, became masters of the art, and received pupils, whom they taught to exhale the smoke in little globes, rings, or the 'Euripus.' 'The slights' these tricks were called. Ben Jonson facetiously makes these professors boast of being able to take three whiffs, then to take horse, and evolve the smoke--one whiff on Hounslow, a second at Staines, and a third at Bagshot.

"The ordinary gallant, like Mercutio, would smoke while the dinner was serving up. Those who were rich and foolish carried with them smoking apparatus of gold or silver--tobacco-box, snuff-ladle, tongs to take up charcoal, and priming irons. There seems, from Decker's "Gull's Horn-Book," to have been smoking clubs, or tobacco ordinaries as they were called, where the entire talk was of the best shops for buying Trinidado, the Nicotine, the Cane, and the Pudding, whose pipe had the best bore, which would turn blackest, and which would break in the browning. At the theatres, the rakes and spendthrifts who, crowded the stage of Shakespeare's time sat on low stools smoking; they sat with their three sorts of tobacco beside them, and handed each other lights on the points of their swords, sending out their pages for more Trinidado if they required it. Many gallants 'took' their tobacco in the lords room over the stage, and went out to (Saint) Paul's to spit there privately. Shabby sponges and lying adventurers, like Bobadil, bragged of the number of packets of 'the most divine tobacco' they had smoked in a week, and told enormous lies of living for weeks in the Indies on the fumes alone.

They affirmed it was an antidote to all poison; that it expelled rheums, sour humours, and obstructions of all kinds. Some doctors were of opinion that it would heal gout[43] and the ague, neutralise the effects of drunkenness, and remove weariness and hunger. The poor on the other hand, not disinclined to be envious and detracting when judging rich men's actions, laughed at men who made chimneys of their throats, or who sealed up their noses with snuff.

[Footnote 43: "Some hold it for a singular remedie against the gowte (gout), to chaw every morning the leaves of Petum (tobacco), because it voideth great quant.i.tie of flegme out at the mouth, hindering the same from falling upon the joints, which is the very cause of the gowte." _Dr. Richard Surflet_ (1606).]

"Ben Jonson makes that dry, shrewd, water carrier of his, Cob, rail at the 'roguish tobacco:' he would leave the stocks for worse men, and make it present whipping for either man or woman who dealt with a tobacco-pipe. But King James, in his inane 'Counterblast,' is more violent than even Cob. He argues that to use this unsavory smoke is to be guilty of a worse sin than that of drunkenness, and asks how men, who cannot go a day's journey without sending for hot coals to kindle their tobacco, can be expected to endure the privations of war. Smoking, the angry and fuming king protests, had made our manners as rude as those of the fish-wives of Dieppe. Smokers, tossing pipes and puffing smoke over the dinner-table, forgot all cleanliness and modesty. Men now, he says, cannot welcome a friend but straight they must be in hand with tobacco. He that refused a pipe in company was accounted peevish and unsociable.

'Yea,' says the royal c.o.xcomb and pedant, 'the mistress cannot in a more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair hand a pipe of tobacco.' The royal reformer (not the most virtuous or cleanly of men) closes his denunciation with this tremendous broadside of invective:

'Have you not reason, then' he says, 'to be shamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? To your abuse thereof sinning against G.o.d, harming yourself both in persons and goods, and taking also thereby the notes and marks of vanity upon you by the custom thereof, making yourselves to be wondered at by all, foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you, and be scorned, and contemned; a custom both fulsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smelle of the pit that is bottomless."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Exhaling through the nose.]

The supposed curative virtues of the tobacco plant had much to do with its use in Europe while the singular mode of exhaling through the nostrils added to its charms, and doubtless led to far greater indulgence. Spenser in his Fairy Queen makes one of the characters include it with other herbs celebrated for medicinal qualities.

"Into the woods thence-forth in haste she went, To seek for herbes that mote him remedy; For she of herbes had great intendiment, Taught of the Nymph which from her infancy, Had nursed her in true n.o.bility: There whether it divine Tobacco were, Or Panachae, or Polygony, She found and brought it to her patient deare, Who all this while lay bleeding out his heart-blood neare."

Lilly also a little later, in his play of The Woman in the Moone (1597), speaks of it (through one of the characters) as being a medicinal herb--

"Gather me balme and cooling violets And of our holy herbe nicotian, And bring withall pure honey from the hive To heale the wound of my unhappy hand."

Barclay, in his tract on "The Vertues of Tobacco," recommends its use as a medicine. The following is one of the modes of use:

"Take of leafe Tobacco as much as, being folded together, may make a round ball of such bignesse that it may fill the patient's mouth, and inclyne his face downwards toward the ground, keeping the mouth open, not mouthing any whit with his tongue, except now and then to waken the medicament, there shall flow such a flood of water from his brain and his stomacke, and from all the parts of his body that it shall be a wonder. This must he do fasting in the morning, and if it be for preservation, and the body be very cacochyme, or full of evil humors, he must take it once a week, otherwise once a month. He gives the plant the name of 'Nepenthes,' and says of it, that 'it is worthy of a more loftie name.'" He writes the following verse addressed to:

"THE ABUSERS OF TOBACCO."

"Why do you thus abuse this heavenly plant, The hope of health, the fuel of our life?

Why do you waste it without fear of want, Since fine and true tobacco is not ryfe?

Old Enclio won't foul water for to spair, And stop the bellows not to waste the air."

He also alludes to the quality of tobacco and says: "The finest Tobacco is that which pearceth quickly the odorat with a sharp aromaticke smell, and tickleth the tongue with acrimonie, not unpleasant to the taste, from whence that which draweth most water is most veituous, whether the substance of it be chewed in the mouth, or the smoke of it received."

He speaks of the countries in which the plant grows, and prefers the tobacco grown in the New World as being superior to that grown in the Old. In his opinion, "only that which is fostered in the Indies, and brought home by Mariners and Traffiquers, is to be used." But not alone were Poets and Dramatists inspired to sing in praise or dispraise of tobacco, Physicians and others helped to swell in broadsides, pamphlets and chap-books, the loudest praises or the most bitter denunciation of the weed. Taylor, the water poet, who lost his occupation as bargeman when the coach came into use, thought that the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach. One of the first tracts wholly devoted to tobacco is ent.i.tled Nash's "Lenten Stuffe." The work is dedicated to Humphrey King, a tobacconist, and is full of curious sayings in regard to the plant. Another work, ent.i.tled "Metamorphosis of Tobacco," and supposed to have been written by Beaumont, made its appearance about this time. Samuel Rowlands, the dramatist, wrote two works on tobacco; the first is ent.i.tled "Look to it, for I'll Stabbe Ye," written in 1604; the other volume is a small quarto, bearing this singular t.i.tle: "A whole crew of Kind Gossips, all met to be Merry."

This is a satire on the time and manners of the period, and is written in a coa.r.s.e style worthy of the author. In 1605 there appeared a little volume bearing for its t.i.tle, "Laugh and Lie Down, or the World's Folly." This work describes the fops and men of fas.h.i.+on of its time, and shows how popular the custom of tobacco taking had become.

In 1609, in "The Gull's Horne Book," a gallant is described as follows:

"Before the meate comes smoaking to the board our Gallant must draw out his tobacco box, the ladle for the cold snuff into his nostrils, the tongs and the priming iron. All this artillery may be of gold or silver, if he can reach to the price of it; it will be a reasonable, useful p.a.w.n at all times when the current of his money falles out to rune low.

And here you must observe to know in what state tobacco is in town, better than the merchants, and to discourse of the potecaries where it is to be sold as readily as the potecary himself."

One of the severest tirades against tobacco appeared in 1612, "The Curtain Drawer of the World." In speaking of the users of the weed, and especially n.o.blemen, he says: