fashion in their devotion to the scented powder. Young
Charles Stanhope wrote to his brother on November 5, 1812--"I have
learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom
which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in
countenance." But no dandies or young men of fashion smoked. Tobacco,
save in the disguise of snuff, was tabooed.

Smoking was frowned upon, even in places where hitherto it had been
allowed. In 1812 the authorities of Sion College ordered "that Coffee
and Tea be provided in the Parlour for the Visitors and Incumbents,
and in the Court Room for the Curates and Lecturers; and that Pipes
and Tobacco be not allowed; and that no Wine be at any time carried
into the Court Room, nor any into the Hall after Coffee and Tea shall
have been ordered on that day."

The use of tobacco for smoking, as I have said, had reached its
nadir--in the fashionable world, that is to say--but the dawn follows
the darkest hour, and the revival of smoking was at hand, thanks to
the cigar.

IX

SIGNS OF REVIVAL

Some sigh for this and that
My wishes don't go far;
The world may wag at will,
So I have my cigar.

THOMAS HOOD.

The revival of smoking among those who were most amenable to the
dictates of fashion, and among whom consequently tobacco had long been
in bad odour, came by way of the cigar.

In the preceding chapters all the references to and illustrations of
smoking have been concerned with pipes. Until the early years of the
nineteenth century the use of cigars was practically unknown in this
country. The earliest notices of cigars in English books occur in
accounts of travel in Spain and Portugal, and in the Spanish Colonies,
and in such notices the phonetic spelling of "segar" often occurs. A
few folk still cling to this spelling--there was a "segar-shop" in the
Strand till quite recently, and I saw the notice "segars" the other
day over a small tobacco-shop in York--which has no authority, and on
etymological grounds is indefensible. The derivation of "cigar" is not
altogether clear; but the probabilities are strongly in favour of its
connexion with "cigarra," the Spanish name for the cicada, the
shrilly-chirping insect familiar in the southern countries of Europe,
and the subject of frequent allusions by the ancient writers of Greece
and Rome, as well as by modern scribes. A Spanish lexicographer of
authority says that the cigar has the f