Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

The flight of fancy in the last sentence has hardly yet been fulfilled; but I saw, many years ago, a distinguished man of letters, the late Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, of "Golden Treasury" fame, who was an inveterate smoker, sitting on one of the cane benches by the door of the Athenæum Club, smoking a short clay pipe.

Thackeray does not appear to have realized that tobacco was not invading England for the first, but for the second time, nor did he foresee that the ladies, to whom he addressed his impassioned defence of smoking, would not only submit to the conqueror but would themselves be found among his joyous devotees.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Where Mr. Lucas's second survivor may be is unknown to me. Not so many years ago a wooden highlander, as a tobacconist's sign, was a conspicuous figure in Knightsbridge, and there was another in the Westminster Bridge Road; but tempus edax rerum has consumed them with all their brethren. In a few provincial towns a wooden highlander may still be found at the door of tobacco shops, but they are probably destined to early disappearance. In 1907 one still stood guard-a tall figure in full costume-outside a tobacconist's shop in Cheltenham, and may still be there. There is a highlander of oak in the costume of the Black Watch still standing, I believe, in the doorway of a tobacco shop at St. Heliers, Jersey. It is traditionally said to have been originally the figure-head of a war vessel which was wrecked on the Alderney coast. Another survivor may be seen at the door of a shop belonging to Messrs. Churchman, tobacco manufacturers, in Westgate Street, Ipswich. A correspondent of "Notes and Queries" describes it as a very fine specimen in excellent condition, and adds: "Mr. W. Churchman informs me that it belonged to his grandfather, who established the business in Ipswich in 1790, and he believed it was quite 'a hundred' year old at that time."

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