Of course, what one might do in the country and what one might do in town were two quite different things.  The following story was told nearly twenty years ago of the late Duke of Devonshire.  An American tourist began talking one day to a quiet-looking man who was smoking outside an inn on the Chatsworth estate, and, taking the man for the inn-keeper, expressed his admiration of the Duke of Devonshire’s domain.  “Quite a place, isn’t it?” said the American.  “Yes, a pleasant place enough,” returned the Englishman.  “The fellow who owns it must be worth a mint of money,” said the American, through his cigar-smoke.  “Yes, he’s comfortably off,” agreed the other.  “I wonder if I could get a look at the old chap,” said the stranger, after a short silence; “I should like to see what sort of a bird he is.”  Puff, puff, went the English cigar, and then said the English voice, trying hard to control itself:  “If you”—­puff—­“look hard”—­puff, puff—­“in this direction, you”—­puff, puff—­“can tell in a minute.”  “You, you!” faltered the American, getting up, “why, I thought you were the landlord!” “Well, so I am,” said the Duke, “though I don’t perform the duties.”  “I stay here,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye, “to be looked at.”

Among the chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some of the clubs.  At the Athenaeum the only smoking-room used to be a combined billiard-and smoking-room in the basement.  It was but a few years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when the alterations were made in 1900.  This new smoking-room is a very handsome, largely book-lined apartment.  At the end of the room is a beautiful marble mantelpiece of late eighteenth century Italian work.  At White’s even cigars had not been allowed at all until 1845; and when, in 1866, some of the younger members wished to be allowed to smoke in the drawing-room, there was much perturbation, the older members bitterly opposing the proposal.  “A general meeting was held to decide the question,” says Mr. Ralph Nevill, in his “London Clubs,” “when a number of old gentlemen who had not been seen in the club for years made their appearance, stoutly determined to resist the proposed desecration.  ‘Where do all these old fossils come from?’ inquired a member.  ‘From Kensal Green,’ was Mr. Alfred Montgomery’s reply.  ’Their hearses, I understand, are waiting to take them back there.’” The motion for the extension of the facilities for smoking was defeated by a majority of twenty-three votes, and as an indirect result the Marlborough Club was founded.  The late King Edward, at that time Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the defeated minority at White’s, and to have interested himself in the foundation of the Marlborough; where, “for the first time in the history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was everywhere allowed.”  By “smoking” is no doubt here meant everything but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick Club at the beginning of the present century.  The late Duc d’Aumale was a social pioneer in pipe-smoking.  His caricature in “Vanity Fair” represents him with a pipe in his mouth, although he is wearing an opera-hat, black frock-coat buttoned up, and a cloak.