VIIIThe Sovran Herb
“YOU are come most opportunely,” said Professor Maturin, as I was shown into his study. “Just in time for coffee and a cigar and some good talk with my friend the Vicar of All Souls.” And he presented me to a gentleman whose clerical dress graced a more than ordinarily handsome figure. His chair and Professor Maturin’s being on opposite sides of the fireplace, I drew mine between them, and noted, during the pouring of the coffee, the fine seriousness and serenity of the clergyman’s face. He made no remark, however, until he said, “None, I thank you,” slightly raising his hand when I proffered the cigars that Professor Maturin had passed. But, after I had made my selection and had returned the box to Professor Maturin, the Vicar reconsidered and joined us.
“Smoking rests me greatly when I am tired,” he continued, after we had lighted, “but I am thinking of giving it up. I am moved to do so by such statements as this from my afternoon paper”—and extracting a clipping from his pocket and adjusting his eye-glasses, he read: “Medicalopinion and statistics unite to prove that smoking irritates the respiratory system, decreases lung capacity, prevents the purification of the blood, depresses the nerve centres, checks heart action, impairs digestion, retards growth, reduces weight, strength, and endurance; restricts the therapeutic effects of medicines, delays the healing of wounds, and impairs, if it does not destroy, mental life—all of which effects, inevitable although perhaps hidden for years, would make tobacco one of the gravest dangers of the century even if it did not harm the eyes, excite thirst, and induce intemperance.”
“If we believed that,” said Professor Maturin, getting out of his chair, “we should not only abandon tobacco instantly, but organize a crusade for its total prohibition. But my medical friends inform me that the statistics are still quite too scanty to generalize from, and that there have been no scientific experiments, except a few which have apparently proved that smoking aids digestion.
“As for personal opinion, it has long been equally violent on both sides of the question. Here,” he continued, opening a volume of pamphlets which he had drawn from one of his bookcases, “is a three-century-old illustration,” and he read: “There cannot be a more base, andyet hurtful corruption in a country than this barbarous and beastly habit borrowed from wild Indians, a habit unnatural, urgent, expensive, unclean—loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs—and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
“That,” resumed Professor Maturin, “is the personal opinion of James the First of England in the ‘Counterblaste to Tobacco,’ which he followed up by imposing a duty of six shillings eightpence a pound in addition to the modest tuppence previously demanded.
“But here also is a counterblast to King James’s, by one of the most learned physicians of his time, William Barclay. He proclaims tobacco to be a heavenly panacea of wondrous curative power, the fuel of life divinely sent to a cold, phlegmatic land. He characterizes all other opinions as ‘raving lies, forged by scurvy, lewd, unlearned leeches.’” As Professor Maturin put the book up and returned to his chair he concluded: “I cannot feel that personal opinion on the subject to-day has any sounder basis.”
“Possibly not,” replied the Vicar, after a short pause,—“possibly not. But can we not concludesomething from the standing of the witnesses? Is there not some significance in the cordial affiliation between the weed and alcohol? How shall we answer Horace Greeley’s offer to give two white blackbirds for one blackguard who did not use tobacco?”
“The collocation of Bacchus and tobacco is, of course, historic,” responded Professor Maturin, “but, on the other hand, as a substitute for alcohol, tobacco is certainly on the side of temperance. If, moreover, it is to be judged by the company it has kept, we must reckon with the practical advocacy of many good men and true from Milton to Emerson, as well as of all the smoking roysterers from Ben Jonson to Burns.”
“I must admit that I can recall only Sir Isaac Newton and Horace Walpole, Dr. Holmes and Mr. Swinburne, in specific opposition,” said the Vicar, “although I venture to think that the Greeks would have opposed it.”
“And the Romans have approved it,” rejoined Professor Maturin. “There is an immense mass of literature on both sides. I agree neither with King James nor with his counterblasters. But I do believe with Cowper that smoking quickens thought, with Lowell that it mellows conversation, with Dr. Johnson that it induces tranquillity,and with Molière that it prompts benevolence.”
“But Dr. Holmes held that it muddled thought,” retorted the Vicar, “and it certainly silenced two eloquent talkers on that occasion when Carlyle and Emerson smoked together a whole evening with never a word. I fear that only too often it relaxes divine discontent into ill-timed resignation, turns thought to reverie, and lulls the stir of action into dreams.”
“That, surely, is the defect of its quality,” admitted Professor Maturin; “yet it did not cloud Kant’s thought, dim Milton’s poetic vision, or relax the will of Frederick the Great or of Bismarck. It may, perhaps, have somewhat clouded Lowell, dimmed Thackeray, and relaxed Lamb. But who can tell? We cannot determine the ideal combination of the strenuous and the contemplative life until we solve the personal equation.”
“Very true, very true,” acknowledged the Vicar; “therefore, let us begin again. Is not smoking an essentially selfish, or at least an anti-social, habit?”
“It does, I believe,” responded Professor Maturin, “incline one to prefer the company of other smokers, and to reduce the number even of those that one desires at a time. However, if that bethe case, we must commend it for inciting such conversation as the present, such intimate games as chess, and such profitable solitude as that with books. It was no accidental combination that made Buckle say he never regretted the money spent for books or tobacco. King Alfred and his ancient candle are succeeded by the modern scholar, measuring time by the rings on the ash of his cigar, or by the succession of his pipes. Is not tobacco, therefore, an encourager of domesticity? What makes one more content to stay at home?”
“Or away from home?” smiled the clergyman, consulting his watch. “As for domesticity, you know the saying that ‘tobacco is woman’s only successful rival;’ and you recall those shocking lines of Kipling’s. I think I never knew a woman who was not, secretly, at least, distressed by the odor of tobacco—no matter what the younger ones may say to the contrary. Remember poor Mrs. Carlyle!”
“There were two Mrs. Carlyles,” chuckled Professor Maturin, “and you must restrict your sympathies to Jane, for the dowager and son Thomas used to smoke their pipes together. Of the feminine reaction to tobacco, however, I am no judge, although I do recall George Sand’spipe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s snuff, and the cigarettes of contemporary empresses and suffragettes. Have I not heard that women physicians prescribe the latter—cigarettes, I mean—for feminine nervousness?”
“I have no doubt whatever about cigarettes,” replied the Vicar. “I would unhesitatingly banish them as the bane of the young and the foolish. Snuff, also, we are done with, and happily, for it was the most slovenly form of an indulgence which is unclean at its best.” Here the Vicar flicked some imaginary ashes from his waistcoat. “We can never be too grateful that our contemporary Sir Joshua Reynoldses are not snuffy. But I must confess that a good Havana now and then”—and the Vicar spoke slower and slower, until his sentence became an eloquent silence as he drew upon his cigar, expelled the smoke, and watched it fade away.
No one spoke for some moments, and as neither the Vicar nor Professor Maturin seemed inclined to do so, I ventured a brief panegyric upon pipes, preferably briars—their intimate, companionable, cumulative qualities; the preference for them on the part of Spenser and Tennyson, Locke and Fielding, Lamb and Lowell; and the varied range of their offering as illustrated by Cowper’sVirginia, Thackeray’s Canaster, and Aldrich’s Latakia.
“Nor may we forget Southey’s ‘Elegy on a Quid,’” added Professor Maturin. “Seriously, however,” he continued, “smoke is beautiful to the eye, pleasing in flavor and odor, smooth to the tactile and comforting to the temperature sense, the occasion of a tranquil muscular rhythm—the last not the least important. Thus it gratifies six senses at once—no wonder its use has become universal, intimately incorporated into national life east and west, south and north.”
“Alas, too intimately,” sighed the Vicar. “It costs half a billion a year. It is another artificial habit that the world finds it difficult if not impossible to do without. So few have Newton’s fear of adding to the number of their necessities. Think how Thackeray missed his cigar and how Prescott, when but one a day was allowed to him, ranged Paris over for the very largest procurable! Did not Stevenson write, ‘Most men eat occasionally, but what they really live on is tobacco’? Did not Charles Lamb say he toiled after tobacco as other men toiled after virtue? Was not his struggle to stop smoking as severe as De Quincey’s with Opium?”
“I suspect,” replied Professor Maturin, “thatboth Lamb and De Quincey made the literary most of their sufferings, and as for force of habit, who can tell? I am sure that I never smoke merely from habit, but always because of a conscious desire for the kind of satisfaction that smoking gives.”
“Yes, yes,” sighed the Vicar, finishing his cigar, “but I am truly distressed about the matter. I wish that your scientists would make a comprehensive and conclusive investigation into the effects of tobacco, as they have recently done into those of alcohol. Is it a stimulant or a sedative? What is its effect on perception, comprehension, association, combination, on general efficiency, on general health? Is it a poison or a panacea?”
“It is certainly time that we knew surely,” replied Professor Maturin gravely, “and it is our obligation to urge our scientific friends to inform us. Until then, however, I must confess that my own experience chiefly corroborates Carlyle’s judgment that ‘sedative, gently clarifying tobacco smoke, with the obligation to a minimum of speech, surely gives human intellect and insight the best chance they can have.’ The general situation is well summed up by old Burton, when he says: ‘Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all thepanaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, ... but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco.’ Have another cigar, dominie.”
“Until we really know about tobacco,” concluded the Vicar, firmly closing the box, “we, at least, will practice moderation.”