Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

The truth probably is that whoever actually smoked the first pipe, it was Raleigh who brought the practice into common use. It is highly probable, also, that Raleigh was initiated in the art of smoking by Thomas Hariot. This was made clear, I think, by the late Dr. Brushfield in the second of the valuable papers on matters connected with the life and achievements of Sir Walter, which he contributed under the title of "Raleghana" to the "Transactions" of the Devonshire Association. Hariot was sent out by Raleigh for the specific purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the natural productions of Virginia. He returned in 1586, and in 1588 published the results of his researches in a thin quarto with an extremely long-winded title beginning "A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia" and continuing for a further 138 words.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

There would appear to have been some smokers who disliked the new-fangled cigars. Angelo seems, from various passages in his "Reminiscences," to have been a smoker, and to have been very frequently in the company of smokers, yet he could write: "There are few things which, after a foreign tour, more forcibly remind us that we are again in England, than the superiority of our stage-coaches. There is something very exhilarating in being carried through the air with rapidity ... considering the rate at which stage-coaches now travel [i.e. in and just before 1830] ... a place on the box or front of a prime set-out is, indeed, a considerable treat. But alas! no human enjoyment is free from alloy. A Jew pedlar or mendicant foreigner with his cigar in his mouth, has it in his power to turn the draft of sweet air into a cup of bitterness." Perhaps Angelo's objection was more to the quality of the cigar that would be smoked by a "Jew pedlar or mendicant foreigner," than to the cigar itself. Yet, going on to describe a journey to Hastings, sitting "on the roof in front" beside an acquaintance, he says, notwithstanding the enjoyment of dashing along, anecdote and jest going merrily on, "we had the annoyance of a coxcomb perched on the box, infecting the fresh air which Heaven had sent us, with the smoke of his abominable cigar," which looks as if his real objection was to cigars, as such.

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