One last cigarette before the firing squad?
Certainly not!
Isuppose in 100 years' time, perhaps much sooner, no one will smoke. So we will be back where we were before the 16th century, when adventurers like Raleigh brought the Red Indian habit of smoking tobacco to Europe. It was one of the points on which he intrigued Queen Elizabeth. 'I can weigh tobacco smoke, Your Grace.' Oh no, you can't, Sir Walter.' Then he would produce a small pair of scales, weigh a bit of tobacco, smoke it, then weigh the ashes. The difference between the two is the weight of the smoke.' Well I never, Sir Walter.' Her successor, James I, hated smoking, wrote a book denouncing it, and would have banned it. But that would have meant losing the duties on imported tobacco, so he dropped his plan. It's odd that Americans have led the campaign to end smoking, now being followed all over the West. When the first American colonies were founded from England, tobacco was virtually the only crop they learnt how to grow which Europeans wanted to buy. Without it, they could not have survived, and the United States would never have come into existence. Its origins were built on the weed.
I suspect smoking is one of those indulgencies which, bad in themselves, prevent human beings from doing worse. My friend Vicky, the cartoonist, used to get through 80 fags a day. He knew it was wrong and, with a great effort of willpower, stopped. But the deprivation increased sharply his already powerful melancholia, and his insomnia, and in due course he took too many sleeping tablets. I gave up smoking 40 years ago, and don't miss it — apparently. But I know many cases where not smoking led to more drinking or eating. Charles Lamb used to make this point, for when he left off smoking', as he put it, his consumption of gin increased. It is significant that the Jesuits, those clever fellows, never forbade smoking in their order. I believe the licence went back to old Ignatius Gonzaga, their founder, a former soldier who had learned to smoke in sieges. Anyway, when I was at school all the Jesuits smoked, usually pipes, being cheaper. If you went into a Jesuit's room, it stank of tobacco. So did they. One told me, 'Tobacco is essential to a celibate priesthood.' That may be why Catholic priests smoke more, often much more, than Anglican clergymen — nonconformist ministers too. Father Ronald Knox told me his consumption of tobacco rose after his conversion, 'which was to be expected'. He was a fanatical smoker who would have objected strongly to the current persecution, and written against it, even more so than the late George Melly, as well as Simon Grey and David Hockney. Ronnie Knox, on coming into a strange room, would sniff and say, 'This room smells suspiciously of never having been smoked in.' He thought a smokeless room might carry a curse, 'The Devil lives in Hell but he never smokes.'
When men are smoking pipes peacefully they are not likely to engage in violence or fornication. Or to be angry, envious or revengeful. J.B. Priestley, a tremendous pipe-smoker, used to say, 'Tobacco is incompatible with serious sin.' There is a splendid photo of Carlyle and Tennyson sitting side by side in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, placidly smoking long white clay pipes. Carlyle said, 'I learnt smoking as a schoolboy. It is the only creature comfort which gives me any satisfaction. After working for a long spell, I always have an interlude of tobacco. I get my pipes from Paisley, buying them by the box. I prefer a new pipe. I smoke a new pipe every day, and put the old one out at night on the doorstep, so that some poor man may have it if he wishes.'
Tennyson had a quite different approach. He disliked a new pipe — thought an old one tasted much better. He had a wooden frame for his pipes hanging on the wall, with room for 14. He smoked a different one each day, in order, coming back to the beginning each fortnight. Carlyle thought this very odd, even 'fanatical', adding, 'Tennyson smokes too much anyway.' They differed on other points. Carlyle thought that dry tobacco was stronger and harmful. Tennyson carefully dried his tobacco before smoking, saying, 'It lessens the strength and so does you less harm. The trouble with Carlyle is that he doesn't dry his. But then he smokes too much anyway.'
Odd to think of how much trouble our forebears once went to, creating the right atmosphere for smoking. They wore frogged velvet smoking-jackets, in dark blue, bottle green or wine, crowned it with square, heavily embroidered caps, often with a gold tassel. Until recently you could buy one in that fine hatters in Jermyn Street. They had special rooms for smoking. There were places in the West End known as Cigar Divans. Mr Sponge, at the end of his Sporting Tour, set one up with his beautiful rider-to-hounds wife, Lucy. I suppose clients lay on their velour-covered divan, and puffed luxuriously. When the rich Marquess of Bute had Cardiff Castle completely rebuilt to his taste, he had both a winter and a summer smoking-room.
No doubt smoking is a killer, members of our royal family being notable among its victims. Smoking (of cigars) killed old Edward VII, though eating must have had something to do with it too. Smoking (of cigarettes as well as cigars) killed George V. And smoking (of cigarettes, Craven 'A Extra Strength) killed George VI. His daughter Princess Margaret was a notorious cigarette smoker too, especially during meals. I once saw her extinguish a fag by plunging it into the middle of a delicious toumedos, at a dinner party given by the then Papal Nuncio, a famous gourmand and amateur chef. How the archbishop winced! I have heard it said that Queen Victoria, while normally disapproving of tobacco, especially for women, used to smoke a pipe secretly with her friend John Brown when 'on the hill'.
When I first went to the United States half a century ago, one of the things that struck me was seeing ordinary working men, on building sites or driving street-cars, chomping away on big, fat cigars. It was visible proof of how prosperous America was. It shocked me, however, to see Catholic priests smoking them Walking down Fifth Avenue I spotted a portly fellow, in long clerical skirts and with a biretta perched on his head, with a Churchill-sized Havana in his mouth. Noting my interest, he paused, took out his cigar, and said, 'Don't try to kid me, Mac, I know you're Irish,' and then strode on, laughing.
The politicians' war on smoking makes little sense. Smoking does physical harm, undoubtedly, but alcohol does more. It is also responsible for crime, which tobacco is not. Yet while parliament has been pouring out legislation against smoking, the government over the past decade has made drinking, at all hours and everywhere, much easier, and the consequences are overwhelmingly evident and serious. No doubt the alcohol industry bribes the politicians, both individually and collectively, through the party system. Did not the tobacco industry in its day? Not sufficiently, it seems. Of the motives that drive people to go into politics, the most important is vanity. But following close behind it is the itch for power, especially the power to stop ordinary people from doing what they like, for their own good. So they are sure to turn on drink in the end. After that it will be eating meat. What then? Sex? But before that, I suspect, people will turn on the professional politicians. Oh that I could live to see the day!
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