Paul Hentzner,
who travelled in England in 1598, and Monsieur Misson, who wrote
precisely a century later, note almost in the same words "a perpetual
use of tobacco"; and the latter suspects that this is what makes "the
generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so melancholy."
In Queen Elizabeth's time, the ladies of the court "would not scruple
to blow a pipe together very socially." In 1614 it was asserted that
tobacco was sold openly in more than seven thousand places in London,
some of these being already attended by that patient Indian who still
stands seductive at tobacconists' doors. It was also estimated that the
annual receipts of these establishments amounted to more than three
hundred thousand pounds. Elegant ladies had their pictures painted, at
least one in 1650 did, with pipe and box in hand. Rochefort, a rather
apocryphal French traveller in 1672, reported it to be the general
custom in English homes to set pipes on the table in the evening for
the females as well as males of the family, and to provide children's
luncheon-baskets with a well-filled pipe, to be smoked at school, under
the directing eye of the master.
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