I cannot say; but smoking and the annual
dinners were long associated. At the anniversary feast in 1743 there
were two tables to provide for, the total number of guests being about
thirty, and two "corses" to each. The cost of the food, as Canon
Pearce tells us in his excellent and entertaining book on the College
and its Library, was L19 15s., or rather more than 13s. a head. The
bill for wines and tobacco amounted to five guineas, or about 3s. 6d.
a head, and for this modest sum the thirty convives enjoyed eleven
gallons of "Red Oporto," one of "White Lisbon," and three of
"Mountain," to the accompaniment of two pounds of tobacco (at 3s. 4d.
the pound) smoked in "half a groce of pipes" (at 1s.).

The examples and illustrations which have been given so far in this
chapter relate to tradesmen and merchants, country gentlemen and the
clergy. Other professional men smoked--we read in Fielding's "Amelia"
of a doctor who in the evening "smoked his pillow-pipe, as the phrase
is"--and among the rest of the people of equal or lower social
standing smoking was as generally practised as in the preceding
century. Handel, I may note, enjoyed his pipe. Dr. Burney, when a
schoolboy at Chester, was "extremely curious to see so extraordinary a
man," so when Handel went through that city in 1741 on his way to
Ireland, young Burney "watched him narrowly as long as he remained in
Chester," and among other things, had the felicity of seeing the great
man "smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange
Coffee-house," which was under the old Town Hall that stood opposite
the present King's School, and in front of the present Town Hall.

Gonzales, in his "Voyage to Great Britain," 1731, says that the use of
tobacco was "very universal, and indeed not improper for so moist a
climate." He tells us that though the taverns were very numerous yet
the ale-houses were much more so. These ale-houses were visited by the
inferior tradesmen, mechanics, journeymen, porters, coachmen, carmen,
servants, and others whose pockets were not equal to the price of a
glass of wine, which, apparently, was the more usual thing to call for
at a tavern, properly so called. In the ale-house men of the various
classes and occupations enumerated, says the traveller, would "sit
promiscuously in common dirty rooms, with large fires, and clouds of
tobacco, where one that is not used to them can scarce breathe or
see."

The antiquary Hearne has left on record an a