greatest of clerical "tobacconists" of late eighteenth century and
early nineteenth century date was the once famous Dr. Parr. It was
from him that Dr. Sumner learned to smoke. When he and Parr got
together Sumner was in the habit of refilling his pipe again and again
in such a way as to be unobserved, at the same time begging Parr not
to depart till he had finished his pipe, in order that he might detain
him, we are told, in the evening as long as possible.

Parr was not a model smoker. He was brutally overbearing towards other
folk, and would accept no invitation except on the understanding that
he might smoke when and where he liked. It was his invariable
practice, wherever he might be visiting, to smoke a pipe as soon as he
had got out of bed. His biographer says--"The ladies were obliged to
bear his tobacco, or to give up his company; and at Hatton (1786-1825)
now and then he was the tyrant of the fireside." Parr was capable of
smoking twenty pipes in an evening, and described himself as "rolling
volcanic fumes of tobacco to the ceiling" while he worked at his desk.
At a dinner which was given at Trinity College, Cambridge, to the Duke
of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University, when the cloth was
removed, Parr at once started his pipe and began, says one who was
present, "blowing a cloud into the faces of his neighbours, much to
their annoyance, and causing royalty to sneeze by the stimulating
stench of mundungus." It is surprising that people were willing to put
up with such bad manners as Parr was accustomed to exhibit; but his
reputation was then great, and he traded upon it.

Parr is said on one occasion to have called for a pipe after taking a
meal at a coaching-inn called the "Bush" at Bristol, when the waiter
told him that smoking was not allowed at the Bush. Parr persisted, but
the authorities at the inn were firm in their refusal to allow
anything so vulgar as smoking on their premises, whereupon Parr is
said to have exclaimed: "Why, man, I've smoked in the dining-room of
every nobleman in England. The Duchess of Devonshire said I could
smoke in every room in her house but her dressing-room, and here, in
this dirty public-house of Bristol you forbid smoking! Amazing! Bring
me my bill." The learned doctor exaggerated no doubt as regards the
facilities given him for smoking; for it was his overbearing way not
to ask for leave to smoke, but to smoke wherever he went, whether
invited to do so or not; bu