The examples and illustrations which have been given so far in this chapter relate to tradesmen and merchants, country gentlemen and the clergy.  Other professional men smoked—­we read in Fielding’s “Amelia” of a doctor who in the evening “smoked his pillow-pipe, as the phrase is”—­and among the rest of the people of equal or lower social standing smoking was as generally practised as in the preceding century.  Handel, I may note, enjoyed his pipe.  Dr. Burney, when a schoolboy at Chester, was “extremely curious to see so extraordinary a man,” so when Handel went through that city in 1741 on his way to Ireland, young Burney “watched him narrowly as long as he remained in Chester,” and among other things, had the felicity of seeing the great man “smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange Coffee-house,” which was under the old Town Hall that stood opposite the present King’s School, and in front of the present Town Hall.

Gonzales, in his “Voyage to Great Britain,” 1731, says that the use of tobacco was “very universal, and indeed not improper for so moist a climate.”  He tells us that though the taverns were very numerous yet the ale-houses were much more so.  These ale-houses were visited by the inferior tradesmen, mechanics, journeymen, porters, coachmen, carmen, servants, and others whose pockets were not equal to the price of a glass of wine, which, apparently, was the more usual thing to call for at a tavern, properly so called.  In the ale-house men of the various classes and occupations enumerated, says the traveller, would “sit promiscuously in common dirty rooms, with large fires, and clouds of tobacco, where one that is not used to them can scarce breathe or see.”

The antiquary Hearne has left on record an account of a curious smoking match held at Oxford in 1723.  It began at two o’clock in the afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the purpose “over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore’s, an alehouse.”  The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off the stage, should have 12s.  “Many tryed,” continues Hearne, “and ’twas thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter’s in the East would have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before, the rest:  but at last he was so sick, that ’twas thought he would have dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently, came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the same evening.”  The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.

Another foreign visitor to England, the Abbe Le Blanc, who was over here about 1730, found English customs rather trying.  “Even at table,” he says, “where they serve desserts, they do but show them, and presently take away everything, even to the tablecloth.  By this the English, whom politeness does not permit to tell the ladies their company is troublesome, give them notice to retire....  The table is immediately covered with mugs, bottles and glasses; and often with pipes of tobacco.  All things thus disposed, the ceremony of toasts begins.”