No. 641: The winners

Charles Seaton reports: In 'A Farewell to Tobacco' Charles Lamb wrote :

For thy sake, Tobacco, I Would do any thing but die.

Competitors were invited to offer in verse advice on, a lament for, or a defence of, cigarette smoking. The medical evils of smoking were recognised, it seems, in Lamb's day also, for he says later in the poem: 'I, by sour physician, Am debarred the full fruition Of thy favours.' And he knew the same love-hate relationship (Tor I hate, yet love, thee so . . . ') with his 'Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe' as SPECTATOR competitors evidently do with their sometimes lethal mistress.

W. F. Owtram strikes a sombre note with the very first line of his 'Heraclitus' imitation: They told me, Latakia dear, they told me

you were death,

but Peter Peterson goes much further back for his intimidation by mortality: Sall I, by babeish luste unmanned,

Be ever at the teate sowkand [sucking)? Nay, nay! Of force will I break free:— Timor tnortis conturbat inc.

We all agree—of course—with Mrs V. R. Ormerod's simple cautionary verses: Tobacco is a dreadful weed;

It's very bad for you indeed.

It wrecks your health and some maintain It brings a coffin in its train.

It stains your teeth with nicotine And you can never get them clean.

Instead of being in your prime

It makes you old before your time.

It isn't worth the shocking cost, The money spent's as good as lost. Resolve tobacco to eschew.

That's what one day I mean to do.

but show as much reluctance as W. F. N. Watson in The Addict's Farewell to his Weed' (which wins two pounds) in breaking our bonds: And must I leave thee thus, my Cigarette, Now that by bucking bronchi I'm beset? My Charmer that so soothes the jangl'd nerves With veils of wreathing smoke in sensuous curves: Sometimes Virginian odours in thee lurk; Or Eastern scents—Egyptian, say, or Turk, That bring to mind voluptuous hammams And fair Circassians' Odaliscious charms.

. . . Then shall I leave thee, at a quack's behest? He swears the Reaper's hacking at my chest; These pickled lungs, alas, no air can get, So, one last kiss; then adieu, Cigarette.

Another addict (though, I imagine, of full- strength cigarettes) is Lance A. Haward, who draws on Keats and has been thinking of those TV commercials:

0, for a puff of foliage that doth seem Both cool and clean—as some deep-smeared gouache!

Tasting of menthol and the mountain-stream, Sex, and Ferrari speed—and singed moustache!

0, for a paper full of the hot tips, Full of the blue, the ashful nicotine, With cancered cinders clinking in the gut And yellow-stained lips . . .

To those of us guilty of all the vices in the book, giving up just this one may not be too big a wrench, but what about those whose solitary indulgence it is? Lilla Funnel! laments: My vices really are so few It's hard to know what to eschew To get that goodly inner glow That only saints and martyrs know.

Tobacco has many friends, but few outright defenders, if these entries are any guide. The best press it gets among the prizewinners is Martin Fagg's renunciation of My Lady Nico-

tine, which wins three pounds. H. A. C. Evans earns two ppunds for his piece of vituperation.

Alban Girral's acrostic, which wins five pounds, must surely be almost as merciless as tobacco itself, I recommend it to the anti- smokers for their campaign.

To the Lady Nicotine Tell me not, sweet, I am remiss, That from the sanctuary Of thy most aromatic charms, To abstinence I flee.

The soothing balsams of thy breath I oft, erstwhile, have sung;.

And, in thy thrall, have sacrificed A heart, a throat, a lung.

This sad renouncement is not one That thou wilt all deplore: I could not love thee half as much Loved I not living more. ManinFagg Impure and insalubrious weed That must implant a lethal seed!

Weed noxious, weed abominable, Weed foul in bed and worse at table; Weed deleterious, weed morbific, Weed of the choking cough prolific; Weed anti-social, weed offensive, Weed vile and filthy, weed expensive; Weed reeking, weed fuliginous, Weed stinkingly ubiquitous; Weed toxic, weed that causes colic, Weed venomous, weed diabolic; Weed odious, weed putrefactive, Weed of our arteries contractive; May all abjure your evil breed, Impure and insalubrious weed!

H. A. C. Evans

Cancer, cancer,-burning bright In the cigarettes we light, Gnawing at our hearts and lungs As we scorch our mouths and tongues.

Rotting tubes and reeking breath Engineer a painful death; Tarry, putrid nicotine Tastes, and smells, and is obscene.

Each of us from day to day Sinokes his little life away,

Kissing death with every drag—

I'll renounce the horrid fag!

Later, though; not now, not yet; Let's have one more cigarette . . .

Alban Girral