My Lady Nicotine | Page 4

almost
certain that when he stays with us he smokes in his bedroom--a
detestable practice that I cannot permit.
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Two cigars a day at ninepence apiece come to £27 7s. 6d. yearly, and
four ounces of tobacco a week at nine shillings a pound come to £5 17s.
yearly. That makes £33 4s. 6d. When we calculate the yearly expense
of tobacco in this way, we are naturally taken aback, and our
extravagance shocks us more after we have considered how much more
satisfactorily the money might have been spent. With £33 4s. 6d. you
can buy new Oriental rugs for the drawing-room, as well as a spring
bonnet and a nice dress. These are things that give permanent pleasure,
whereas you have no interest in a cigar after flinging away the stump.
Judging by myself, I should say that it was want of thought rather than
selfishness that makes heavy smokers of so many bachelors. Once a
man marries, his eyes are opened to many things that he was quite
unaware of previously, among them being the delight of adding an
article of furniture to the drawing-room every month, and having a
bedroom in pink and gold, the door of which is always kept locked. If

men would only consider that every cigar they smoke would buy part
of a new piano-stool in terra-cotta plush, and that for every pound tin of
tobacco purchased away goes a vase for growing dead geraniums in,
they would surely hesitate. They do not consider, however, until they
marry, and then they are forced to it. For my own part, I fail to see why
bachelors should be allowed to smoke as much as they like, when we
are debarred from it.
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The very smell of tobacco is abominable, for one cannot get it out of
the curtains, and there is little pleasure in existence unless the curtains
are all right. As for a cigar after dinner, it only makes you dull and
sleepy and disinclined for ladies' society. A far more delightful way of
spending the evening is to go straight from dinner to the drawing-room
and have a little music. It calms the mind to listen to your wife's niece
singing, "Oh, that we two were Maying!" Even if you are not musical,
as is the case with me, there is a great deal in the drawing-room to
refresh you. There are the Japanese fans on the wall, which are things
of beauty, though your artistic taste may not be sufficiently educated to
let you know it except by hearsay; and it is pleasant to feel that they
were bought with money which, in the foolish old days, would have
been squandered on a box of cigars. In like manner every pretty trifle in
the room reminds you how much wiser you are now than you used to
be. It is even gratifying to stand in summer at the drawing-room
window and watch the very cabbies passing with cigars in their mouths.
At the same time, if I had the making of the laws I would prohibit
people's smoking in the street. If they are married men, they are
smoking drawing-room fire-screens and mantelpiece borders for the
pink-and-gold room. If they are bachelors, it is a scandal that bachelors
should get the best of everything.
Nothing is more pitiable than the way some men of my acquaintance
enslave themselves to tobacco.
Nay, worse, they make an idol of some one particular tobacco. I know a
man who considers a certain mixture so superior to all others that he
will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is

lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it
occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes
it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the
adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result
would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever;
but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet
full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. If you try it once you
smoke it ever afterward. It clears the brain and soothes the temper.
When I went away for a holiday anywhere I took as much of that
exquisite health-giving mixture as I thought would last me the whole
time, but I always ran out of it. Then I telegraphed to London for more,
and was miserable until it arrived. How I tore the lid off the canister!
That is a tobacco to live for. But I am better without it.
Occasionally I feel a little depressed after dinner still, without being
able to say why, and