By 1830 smoking had so far “come in” again that a considerable proportion of the members of the House of Commons were smokers.  Macaulay has drawn for us the not very attractive picture of the smoking-room of the old House of Commons—­before the fire of 1834—­in a letter to his sister dated in the summer of 1831.  “I have left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs,” he wrote, “and repaired to the smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables covered with green baize and writing materials.  On a full night it is generally thronged towards twelve o’clock with smokers.  It is then a perfect cloud of fume.  There have I seen (tell it not to the West Indians), Buxton blowing fire out of his mouth.  My father will not believe it.  At present, however, all the doors and windows are open, and the room is pure enough from tobacco to suit my father himself.”  In July 1832 he again dated a letter to his sisters from the House of Commons smoking-room.  “I am writing here,” he says, “at eleven at night, in this filthiest of all filthy atmospheres ... with the smell of tobacco in my nostrils....  Reject not my letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for this is the room—­

The room,—­but I think I’ll describe it in rhyme, That smells of tobacco and chloride of lime.  The smell of tobacco was always the same:  But the chloride was bought since the cholera came."

The mention of pigtail shows that the House contained pipe- as well as cigar-smokers.  A few days later he wrote again to his sisters, but this time from the library, where, he says, “we are in a far better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week.”  One wonders why Macaulay, who apparently did not smoke himself, and who, though somewhat more tolerant of tobacco than his father, Zachary Macaulay, evidently did not like the atmosphere of the smoking-room, chose to write there, when the library—­where he must surely have felt more at home—­was available.

Among other well-known men of standing and fashion who were smokers about this period may be named Lord Eldon, Lord Stowell, Brougham, Lord Calthorp and H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex.  In Thackeray’s “Book of Snobs,” Miss Wirt, the governess at Major Ponto’s, refers in shocked tones to “H.R.H. the poor dear Duke of Sussex (such a man my dears, but alas! addicted to smoking!).”

Sad to say, the Royal Duke was not content with the cigar that was becoming fashionable, but actually smoked a pipe.  Mrs. Stirling, in “The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope,” 1913, notes that Lord Althorp was a frequent visitor about 1822 at Holkham, the well-known seat of Mr. Coke of Norfolk, later Lord Leicester, and that on such occasions he enjoyed “the distinction of being the only guest besides the Duke of Sussex who ever indulged in the rare habit of smoking.  But while the Royal Duke was wont to puff away at a long meerschaum in his bedroom till he actually blinded himself, and all who came near him, Fidele Jack [Lord Althorp’s nickname] behaved in more considerate fashion, only smoking out of doors as he passed restlessly up and down the grass terrace.”