Kingsley’s devotion to smoke seems to have surprised Tennyson, who was no light smoker himself.  The most curious story illustrating Kingsley’s love of tobacco is that told in the life of Archbishop Benson by his son, Mr. A.C.  Benson.  One day about the year 1860, the future archbishop was walking with the Rector of Eversley in a remote part of the parish, on a common, when Kingsley suddenly said—­“I must smoke a pipe,” and forthwith went to a furze-bush and felt about in it for a time.  Presently he produced a clay churchwarden pipe, “which he lighted, and solemnly smoked as he walked, putting it when he had done into a hole among some tree roots, and telling my father that he had a cache of pipes in several places in the parish to meet the exigencies of a sudden desire for tobacco.”  If this story did not appear in the life of an archbishop, some scepticism on the part of the reader might be excused.

Carlyle, as every one knows, was a great smoker.  The story is familiar—­it may be true—­that one evening he and Tennyson sat in solemn silence smoking for hours, one on each side of the fireplace, and that when the visitor rose to go, Carlyle, as he bade him good-night, said—­“Man, Alfred, we hae had a graund nicht; come again soon.”

Tennyson’s own devotion to tobacco led, on at least one occasion, to a peculiar and somewhat questionable proceeding.  Mr. W.M.  Rossetti had a temporary acquaintance with the poet, and in the “Reminiscences” which he published in 1906, he told a curious anecdote concerning him which was new to print.  Rossetti told, on the authority of Woolner, how, in the course of a trip with friends to Italy, tobacco such as Tennyson could smoke gave out at some particular city, whereupon the poet packed up his portmanteau and returned home, breaking up the party!  The late Joseph Knight, who reviewed Rossetti’s volumes in the Athenaeum, vouched for the truth of this relation, which he had heard, not only from Woolner, but also from Tennyson’s brother Septimus.

In more fashionable circles the mere possession of a pipe might be looked at askance.  Robertson’s comedy “Society” was produced in 1865, and in it, Tom Stylus, a somewhat Bohemian journalist, has the misfortune, in a fashionable ball-room, when pulling out his handkerchief to bring out his pipe with it from his pocket.  The vulgar thing falls upon the floor, and Tom is ashamed to claim his property and so acknowledge his ownership of a pipe.  He presently calls a footman, who comes with a tray and sugar-tongs, picks up the offending briar with the tongs, and carries it off “with an air of ineffable disgust.”