Smoking was frowned upon, even in places where hitherto it had been allowed.  In 1812 the authorities of Sion College ordered “that Coffee and Tea be provided in the Parlour for the Visitors and Incumbents, and in the Court Room for the Curates and Lecturers; and that Pipes and Tobacco be not allowed; and that no Wine be at any time carried into the Court Room, nor any into the Hall after Coffee and Tea shall have been ordered on that day.”

The use of tobacco for smoking, as I have said, had reached its nadir—­in the fashionable world, that is to say—­but the dawn follows the darkest hour, and the revival of smoking was at hand, thanks to the cigar.

IX

SIGNS OF REVIVAL

    Some sigh for this and that
    My wishes don’t go far;
    The world may wag at will,
    So I have my cigar.

          THOMAS HOOD.

The revival of smoking among those who were most amenable to the dictates of fashion, and among whom consequently tobacco had long been in bad odour, came by way of the cigar.

In the preceding chapters all the references to and illustrations of smoking have been concerned with pipes.  Until the early years of the nineteenth century the use of cigars was practically unknown in this country.  The earliest notices of cigars in English books occur in accounts of travel in Spain and Portugal, and in the Spanish Colonies, and in such notices the phonetic spelling of “segar” often occurs.  A few folk still cling to this spelling—­there was a “segar-shop” in the Strand till quite recently, and I saw the notice “segars” the other day over a small tobacco-shop in York—­which has no authority, and on etymological grounds is indefensible.  The derivation of “cigar” is not altogether clear; but the probabilities are strongly in favour of its connexion with “cigarra,” the Spanish name for the cicada, the shrilly-chirping insect familiar in the southern countries of Europe, and the subject of frequent allusions by the ancient writers of Greece and Rome, as well as by modern scribes.  A Spanish lexicographer of authority says that the cigar has the form of a “cicada” of paper, and, on the whole, it is highly probable that the likeness of the roll of tobacco-leaf to the cylindrical body of the insect (cigarra) was the reason that the “cigarro” was so called.  There is no warrant of any kind for “segar.”

The earliest mention of cigars in English occurs in a book dated 1735.  A traveller in Spanish America, named Cockburn, whose narrative was published in that year, describes how he met three friars at Nicaragua, who, he says, “gave us some Seegars to smoke ... these are Leaves of Tobacco rolled up in such Manner that they serve both for a Pipe and Tobacco itself ... they know no other way here, for there is no such Thing as a Tobacco-Pipe throughout New Spain.”