History of Vice
Ione Tobacco. By Compton Mackenzie. 43 (Chau° and Windus, 21s.) 14 „N Page 100 of this book is the earliest-known Oraving of an English tobacco shop; the .shop – occupied by three men who are the spitting 4).ages of Sir Compton Mackenzie, pointed beard, ., angular face, quizzical eye, pipe and all. They Ile smoking like bonfires and emitting aphorisms ;!e Fistula dulce eanit (a wettish smoker, I think). j7,orn it ; —Ls you may guess the natufe of the book; 'Is a smoky paean. The first part consists of Mackenzie's memories i..°1 his youthful smokings, from the days when he t41k1 his brother broke flints for tramps in order : be paid in shag and twist, which they could 1„(3t get at home. It is impossible even for one who, i 0 "1/4e myself, gave up the dirty habit twenty years ago not to be charmed by it. Yes, it was quite true John Cotton needed to be kept damp with a sliver of potato or apple. Yes, I remember the decree of fashion which said that Manila cheroots should be smoked wrong end on, with the broad base in the mouth; and yes, it was frivolous and baseless. Latakia did seem essential in one's pipe mixture in youth; Italian cigars, long, thin and black, were so tight you could only smoke them by cutting them in half—it is all most nostalgic. Oft sont les futnees d'antan? Why, here; clouding our minds still, as Mackenzie's 'Epilogue' shows.
What is the sense of rejecting, as he does, the figures of lung cancer because in 1857 some doctors made silly statements about tobacco? What is the point of the pages of mild rhetoric that follow? They cannot conceal three facts— that smoking is suicidally unhealthy for most of us, that it is filthy and that it is usually ill- mannered. In my own house I have seen and smelt a near and dear relative stub out her cigarette on the greasy skin of a half-eaten pheasant wing. I have watched a young friend blow his cigarette smoke in our faces over a sequence of five clarets chosen to show the variations in the vintages of one famous chateau.
The middle of the book is a discursive history of this minor vice, and it is a piece of work very much to be welcomed. Histories of vices should be written; we need documented studies of drunkenness, sodomy, flagellation and so on.
RAYMOND POSTGATE
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