One of the latest announcements, however, in the fashion pages of the newspapers is the advent of “Smoking Jackets” for ladies!  We are informed in the usual style of such pages, that “the well-dressed woman has begun to consider the little smoking-jacket indispensable.”  This jacket, we are told “is a very different matter to the braided velvet coats which were donned by our masculine forbears in the days of long drooping cavalry moustaches, tightly buttoned frock-coats, and flexible canes.  The feminine smoking-jacket of to-day is worn with entrancing little evening or semi-evening frocks, and represents a compromise between a cloak and a coat, being exquisitely draped and fashioned of the softest and most attractive of the season’s beautiful fabrics.”

There are still many good people nowadays who are shocked at the idea of women smoking; and to them may be commended the common-sense words of Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, formerly of Ripon, who arrived in New York early in 1913 to deliver a series of lectures at Harvard University.  The American newspapers reported him as saying, with reference to this subject:  “Many women in England who are well thought of, smoke.  I do not attempt to enter into the ethical part of this matter, but this much I say:  if men find it such a pleasure to smoke, why shouldn’t women?  There are many colours in the rainbow; so there are many tastes in people.  What may be a pleasure to men may be given to women.  When we find women smoking, as they do in some branches of society to-day, the mere pleasure of that habit must be accepted as belonging to both sexes.”

XIV

SMOKING IN CHURCH

    For thy sake, TOBACCO, I
    Would do anything but die.

          CHARLES LAMB, A Farewell to Tobacco.

The use of tobacco in churches forms a curious if short chapter in the social history of smoking.  The earliest reference to such a practice occurs in 1590, when Pope Innocent XII excommunicated all such persons as were found taking snuff or using tobacco in any form in the church of St. Peter, at Rome; and again in 1624, Pope Urban VIII issued a bull against the use of tobacco in churches.

In England it would seem as if some of the early smokers, in the fulness of their enthusiasm for the new indulgence, went so far as to smoke in church.  When King James I was about to visit Cambridge, the Vice-Chancellor of the University put forth sundry regulations in connexion with the royal visit, in which may be found the following passage:  “That noe Graduate, Scholler, or Student of this Universitie presume to resort to any Inn, Taverne, Alehowse, or Tobacco-Shop at any tyme dureing the aboade of his Majestie here; nor doe presume to take tobacco in St. Marie’s Church, or in Trinity Colledge Hall, uppon payne of finall expellinge the Universitie.”

Evidently the intention was to make things pleasant for the royal foe of tobacco during his visit.  It would appear to be a fair inference from the wording of this prohibition that when the King was not at Cambridge, graduates and scholars and students could resume their liberty to resort to inns, taverns, ale-houses and tobacco-shops, and presumably to take tobacco in St. Mary’s Church, without question.