Tobacco: A Recurrent Theme in Eighteenth-Century Literature

TOBACCO: A RECURRENT THEME IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE J. T. McCiiLLEN, Jr. J. T. McCullen (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of North Carolina) has done teaching, research, and readings under the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation. He is a member of the American, Texas, North Carolina, and Kentucky Folklore Societies. Professor McCullen was a Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute in 1954. He has published articles on a variety of subjects, including "Tobacco and Longevity." Professor McCullen is presently professor of English at Texas Technological College. Thomas Brown's "An Exhortatory Letter to an Old Lady That Smoked" (1700) happily introduces readers to a recurrent though neglected theme in eighteenth-century literature: tobacco. Instead of recommending tobacco as the panacea, the letter advises the lady to remember that the herb in her pipe "is a sovereign Remedy for the Toothache, the usual Persecutor of old Ladies." Equally comforting is knowledge that, even though her habit may be called addiction to a heathen weed, tobacco has long since been honored as "a great help to Christian Meditations," that the generality of parsons "can no more write a Sermon without a Pipe in their Mouths, than a Concordance in their Hands." Should any moral scruple yet trouble her, the letter continues , she has but to observe the ease with which a clay pipe is broken and thus to "see upon what slender Accidents Man's Life depends." In contemplation of her habit she can discover temporal consolation no less desirable. Upon an old lady a good pipe has effects not unlike those of attentions the gallant showers upon a young one: both pipe and gallant make the mouth water. The letter concludes with a reminder which ladies neither young nor old can deny. To take tobacco is to be "fashionable , at least 'tis a fair way to becoming so.'" Although only occasional references to snuff may come to the memory of many readers, tobacco with all its accouterments achieved prominence in life and literature of the eighteenth century. To fops and beaux, fancy snuff-boxes were no less essential than were brocade, wigs, and ivory or tortoise-shell combs. Among the fashionable, snuffing was no less a ritual than was taking tea or dexterously manipulating a fan. Though disparaged, the pipe was as much a part of coffee-house and tavern life as was coffee or ale. Addison was not alone in his praise of the coffee-house candle shared to light pipes "as an Overture to Conversation 'Svlvestre C. Watkins. The Pleasures of Smoking (New York. 1!MR). p. 145. Tobacco: ? Recurrent Thf.vk31 and Friendship."2 Writers, painters, and caricaturists used pipes to relax, to observe, and to depict the parade they recorded for posterity: the would-be dandy, the scheming politician, the university scholar, the scientist , the rural parson, the country squire. A result was that tobacco as a theme became an integral part of humor, incongruity, burlesque, satire, and sensibility characteristic of eighteenth-century literature. Even during the 1690's, snuff began to challenge pipes, which for more than a century had symbolized leadership of the English among "tobacconists" of Europe, for primacy. Ned Ward recounted the elation of "a parcel of raw young, second-rate beaux and wits" who "had but once the honour to dip a finger and a thumb into Mr. Dryden's snuff-box." Public houses were already plagued by "creatures compounded of a periwig and a coat laden with powder as white as a miller's, a face besmeared with snuff, and affected airs."3 Pope's Sir Plume is a later version of these wits surrounded by gentility addicted to snuff. His vanity sustained by trappings of the beau, Sir Plume raps his snuff-box in unison to sentences cultivated by his peers. Even so, the weapon with which Belinda gains advantage over him is the snuff he prizes. "Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,/And the high dome re-echoes to his nose." Even after the lock has "mounted to the lunar sphere," snuff adds flavor to the fate of Sir Plume: "There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases,/And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer...