"
represents him with a pipe in his mouth, although he is wearing an
opera-hat, black frock-coat buttoned up, and a cloak.

By the end of the nineteenth century the snuff-box which once upon a
time stood upon the mantelpiece of every club, had disappeared. The
habit of snuffing had long been falling into desuetude. The cigar
dealt the snuff-box its death-blow and the cigarette was chief mourner
at its funeral.

As in other periods, men of letters and artists ignored the social
prejudices and conventions about tobacco, and laughed at the
artificial distinctions drawn between cigars and pipes. It is said
that the late Sir John Millais smoked a clay pipe in his carriage when
he was part of the first Jubilee procession of Queen Victoria--a
performance, if it took place, which would certainly have horrified
her tobacco-hating Majesty. Tennyson and his friends smoked their
pipes as they had always done--and old-fashioned clay pipes too. Sir
Norman Lockyer, referring to a period about 1867, mentions Monday
evenings in his house which were given up to friends "who came in,
_sans ceremonie_, to talk and smoke. Clays from Broseley, including
'churchwardens' and some of larger size (Frank Buckland's held an
ounce of tobacco) were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson,
an occasional visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which
the name was written, in a rack for future symposia."

Of the other great Victorian poets Morris was a pipe-smoker, and so
was Rossetti. Browning also smoked, but not, I think, a pipe.
Swinburne, on the other hand, detested tobacco, and expressed himself
on the subject with characteristic extravagance and vehemence--"James
I was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward. But I love him, I
worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh who
invented this filthy smoking!" Professor Blackie, in a letter to his
wife, remarked: "The first thing I said on entering the public room
was--'What a delightful thing the smell of tobacco is, in a warm room
on a wet night!' ... I gave my opinion with great decision that
tobacco, whisky and all such stimulants or sedatives, had their
foundation in nature, could not be abolished, or rather should not,
and must be content with the check of a wise regulation. Even pious
ladies were fond of tea, which, taken in excess, was worse for the
nerves than a glass of sherry."

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John
Ru