ter describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by
the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the
sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have
disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be
found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a
smoke. In an early _Spectator_, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny
Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and
good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was
frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall
fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member
brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or
smokes."

In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of
Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth
century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a
Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the
alarming question--Did Irish ladies chew?

It has sometimes been supposed that the companion of Swift's Stella,
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, was addicted to smoking. In the letters which
make up the famous "Journal to Stella," there are several references
by Swift to the presents of tobacco which he was in the habit of
sending to Mrs. Dingley. On September 21, 1710, he wrote: "I have the
finest piece of Brazil tobacco for Dingley that ever was born." In the
following month he again had a great piece of Brazil tobacco for the
same lady, and again in November: "I have made Delaval promise to send
me some Brazil tobacco from Portugal for you, Madam Dingley." In
December, Swift was expressing his hope that Dingley's tobacco had not
spoiled the chocolate which he had sent for Stella in the same parcel;
and three months later he wrote: "No news of your box? I hope you have
it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of
the Brazil tobacco has not affected it." The explanation of all this
tobacco for Mistress Dingley is to be found in Swift's letter to
Stella of October 23, 1711. "Then there's the miscellany," he writes,
"an apron for Stella, a pound of chocolate, without sugar, for Stella,
a fine snuff-rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for Dingley, and
a large roll of tobacco which she must hide or cut shorter out of
modesty, and four pair of spectacles for the Lord knows who." The
tobacco was clearly not for smok