Country gentlemen smoked just as much as town mechanics and tradesmen.  In 1688 Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, wrote to Mr. Thomas Cullum, of Hawsted Place, desiring “to be remembered by the witty smoakers of Hawsted.”  A later Cullum, Sir John, published in 1784 a “History and Antiquities of Hawsted,” and in describing Hawsted Place, which was rebuilt about 1570, says that there was a small apartment called the smoking-room—­“a name,” he says, “it acquired probably soon after it was built; and which it retained with good reason, as long as it stood.”  I should like to know on what authority Sir John Cullum could have made the assertion that the room was called the smoking-room from so early a date as the end of the sixteenth century.  No mention in print of a smoking-room has been found for the purposes of the Oxford Dictionary earlier than 1689.  In Shadwell’s “Bury Fair” of that date Lady Fantast says to her husband, Mr. Oldwit, who loves to tell of his early meetings with Ben Jonson and other literary heroes of a bygone day, “While all the Beau Monde, as my daughter says, are with us in the drawing-room, you have none but ill-bred, witless drunkards with you in your smoking-room.”  As Mr. Oldwit himself, in another scene of the same play, says to his friends, “We’ll into my smoking-room and sport about a brimmer,” there was probably some excuse for his wife’s remark.  These country smoking-rooms were known in later days as stone-parlours, the floor being flagged for safety’s sake; and the “stone-parlour” in many a squire’s house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no doubt, abundant smoking.

The arrival of coffee and the establishment of coffee-houses opened a new field for the victories of tobacco.  The first house was opened in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, in 1652.  Others soon followed, and in a short time the new beverage had captured the town, and coffee-houses had been opened in every direction.  They sold many things besides coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were temples of talk and good-fellowship.  The buzz of conversation and the smoke of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of the club-houses of a much later day.

VI

SMOKING UNDER KING WILLIAM III AND QUEEN ANNE

    Hail! social pipe—­thou foe of care,
    Companion of my elbow-chair;
    As forth thy curling fumes arise,
    They seem an evening sacrifice—­
    An offering to my Maker’s praise,
    For all His benefits and grace.

          SIR SAMUEL GARTH (1660-1718).