okers. A few days later he wrote again to his sisters, but
this time from the library, where, he says, "we are in a far better
atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week."
One wonders why Macaulay, who apparently did not smoke himself, and
who, though somewhat more tolerant of tobacco than his father, Zachary
Macaulay, evidently did not like the atmosphere of the smoking-room,
chose to write there, when the library--where he must surely have felt
more at home--was available.

Among other well-known men of standing and fashion who were smokers
about this period may be named Lord Eldon, Lord Stowell, Brougham,
Lord Calthorp and H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex. In Thackeray's "Book of
Snobs," Miss Wirt, the governess at Major Ponto's, refers in shocked
tones to "H.R.H. the poor dear Duke of Sussex (such a man my dears,
but alas! addicted to smoking!)."

Sad to say, the Royal Duke was not content with the cigar that was
becoming fashionable, but actually smoked a pipe. Mrs. Stirling, in
"The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope," 1913, notes that
Lord Althorp was a frequent visitor about 1822 at Holkham, the
well-known seat of Mr. Coke of Norfolk, later Lord Leicester, and that
on such occasions he enjoyed "the distinction of being the only guest
besides the Duke of Sussex who ever indulged in the rare habit of
smoking. But while the Royal Duke was wont to puff away at a long
meerschaum in his bedroom till he actually blinded himself, and all
who came near him, Fidele Jack [Lord Althorp's nickname] behaved in
more considerate fashion, only smoking out of doors as he passed
restlessly up and down the grass terrace."

With the revival of smoking, things changed at Holkham. On Christmas
Day, 1847, Lady Elizabeth, writing to her husband from Holkham, the
home of her childhood, remarked: "The Billiard table is always lighted
up for the gentlemen when they come from shooting, and there they sit
smoking."

The growing popularity of the cigar made smoking less unfashionable
than it had been among the upper classes of society; but among humbler
folk pipe-smoking had never "gone out." Every public-house did its
regular trade in clays, known as churchwardens and Broseleys, and by
other names either of familiarity or descriptive of the place of
manufacture; and on the mantelpiece or table of inn or ale-house stood
the tobacco-box. Miss Jekyll, in her delightful book on "Old West
Surrey," figures an exa