MARGINAL COMM ENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
0 N May 4th, 1951, I wrote upon this page an article in which I boasted of my intention to smoke no more than five cigarettes a day. It being now nearly ten months since I abandoned the disgusting vice of over-indulgence in tobacco, it is fitting that I should, at the risk of some vaunt- ing, record my experiences. The states of spiritual ecstacy through which I have passed, while sundered in my almost smokeless Thebaid from my kind, have been distinctly unpleasant. The ideal that I proclaimed, and-have since main- tained, was to smoke no more than five cigarettes a day. As I stated in my initial manifesto, I had heard some old wives' tale to the effect that it was possible to give up smoking altogether, but that it required a basalt will to cut down one's cigarettes from fifty a day to five. Inspired as I was by the elevated sentiments of the Desert Fathers, I decided that I should inflict upon myself this added mortification of the flesh. A Greek friend of mine, to his eternal credit, reading that I had decided during this spiritual Aeneid to aid the stricken tobacco trade of the Vardar Valley by smoking only Greek cigarettes, provided me with a hundred boxes of the best that Athens can produce. This increased my sense of elevation. As I savoured the aroma of the Vardar Valley, I saw in the delicate smoke that five times a day I emitted from my nostrils the glories of Macedon, the distant outlines of Olympus, the mosaics of Salonika, and the soft liparic light on Thasos. The whole Platonic idea that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder danced before my eyes. I sought, entirely without success, to still my spiritual pride. I confess that I was inclined, during the earlier months of my ordeal, to display my cigarette case and to emphasise the fact that, although it was then seven- thirty in the evening, three of my five cigarettes remained unsmoked. My family and friends were not pleased by this ostentation.
* * * * My decision to smoke five cigarettes a day, instead of abandoning tobacco entirely, was not due solely to the desire to make the business more painful and difficult. I remembered that when I had last given up smoking completely, on the day that Paris fell, the results had been none too good. It was perhaps a bad moment to have chosen for the rejection of all narcotics; the battle of Britain raged around me and I was overworked. Some sedative was needed to still my jangled nerves and to mitigate the anxiety that I quite rightly felt. I found that I became impatient of the air-raids and that my attitude towards my colleagues in the Ministry in which I was then working became fretful and fault-finding. After four months, when I realised that the Germans were not after all going to invade Great Britain and that our finest hour had triumphantly been accomplished, I resumed my chain smoking. It afforded me much pleasure. But as the years passed I realised that it is true what men say, that excessive smoking has an adverse effect upon the bronchial tubes. Nobody really minds very much a cough or two in the morning; but when that cough develops a carrying-through movement, when it leads to purple foreheads and sounds of ululation such as are emitted by little boys with whooping-cough, then one must face the fact that one is becoming a nuisance and an object of ugliness to all around. It was for this reason that in May of last year I once again decided to crush the practice, and to reduce myself to five cigarettes a day. Almost immediately the whoops ceased; the most discreet of coughs, a slight guttural move- ment no deeper or more lasting than that used by clergymen or orators to mark a comma in their discourse, delicately assumed the vacant place.
* * . * * I observed, as I had observed in 1940, that the reduction of smoking has one most disadvantageous effect. From the very moment that one enters upon this course of self-laceration, the body begins to swell and swell. I must have added a stone and a half to my weight since the happy month of May; the moment will soon come when the amount of tonnage that I carry along with me will have to be estimated, not by weighing machines, not by stones and pounds, but by displacement. I regard this process of nature as horribly unfair. It is not right, it is wrong, that one should be penalised for what certainly is an act of self-denial by becoming a zany to the view. It is not only that suddenly increased stoutness makes men lose all memory of the lovely April of our prime; it is that vast calibre has additional physical disadvantages. I have noticed, since I took to five cigarettes a day, that I no longer spring from a taxi or motor-car with the agility that was my wont: I cling on to handles and things to pull myself puffing out. I have noticed that very deep, very soft, arm chairs or sofas, which used to be so welcoming, are best avoided unless one is alone; the efforts one has to make when rising from these receptacles are ugly efforts, entailing backward movements of the arms, and clumsy spasms of the legs. And, worse than all, one finds that the suits of only yesteryear no longer suffice to encircle one's newly acquired shape and that even shirts become tight around the neck. Why should nature act so scurvily to a man who is but curbing indulgence ? I have asked many doctors that question and they do not know.
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The pious type of doctor, the type that believes in penalties rather than in rewards, says that "it just shows " that heavy smokers all suffer from the toxic effects of nicotine, and that, the moment they abandon the drug, health flows back to their veins and arteries and they become plump. Now that is nonsense. To weigh 13 stone is not a sign of restored health; it is a sign of some terrible wastage of the thyroid gland. The gayer doctors whom I have consulted do not agree with me for one instant when I advance the theory that nicotine pro- duces thyroid and stimulates the gland. " That," they say, " is not what happens." But when I ask them what it is that happens they say that they to not know. I have been unable to persuade any of them to give me subcutaneous injections of nicotine in order to see what results occur. " You might certainly lose weight," they say, " but you might also die." So my suits, poor battered things, have to be sent round to the tailor and " let out." What is so annoying about the harsh discipline to which I have exposed myself is that my virtue has had, so far as I can observe, no effect upon my health at all. I was feeling very well when I started the process and 1 am still feeling very well today. Apart from the effect upon the bronchial tubes, which I admit is beneficial, the denial of this great luxury produces no improvement at all. I do not sleep better, or eat better, or see better, or hear better: I am exactly the same. Does the departure of whooping-cough really com- pensate for the arrival of two stone ? That is not my impression. Therefore I beg my gentle readers not to give up a practice which, although disgusting, is one that brings solace and delight. The only benefit that such abandonment brings with it is financial.
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One other point in my spiritual experiences. I had always imagined that of all the fifty cigarettes I used to smoke during the day, the most delicious was the one that I smoked after my morning tea. That is not a true assumption. I do not find it difficult to apply my iron will to lighting no cigarette before 7.0 p.m. It is after that hour that the craving begins to creep like a jaguar and that my allowance of five cigarettes seems frail indeed. One comes to realise that smoking is a social habit and that, whereas it is easy not to smoke when seated at one's typewriter, it is very difficult to be abstinent when indulg- ing in the pleasures of after-dinner conversation with others. But nature tempers the wind to the shorn lamb : one can usually, after dinner, obtain all the cigarettes required from the cases of one's friends.
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