88 OLD SMOKERS. 



being that of the first smoker of tobacco in England,* and 

 many amusing anecdotes are told of him and the new cus- 

 tom which he introduced and sanctioned. Dixon has given 

 us the following vivid picture of the great Elizabethan 

 navigator : 



" In a pleasant room of Durham House, in the Strand, a 

 room overhanging a lovely garden, with the river, the old 

 bridge, the towers of Lambeth Palace, and the flags of Paris 

 Garden and the Globe in view, three men may have often 

 met and smoked a pipe in the days of Good Queen Bess, who 

 are dear to all readers of English blood ; because, in the first 

 place, they were the highest types of our race in genius and 

 in daring; in the second place because the work of their 

 hands has shaped the whole after-life of their countrymen in 

 every sphere of enterprise and thought. That splendid Dur- 

 ham House, in which the nine-days queen had been married 

 to Guilford Dudley, and which had afterwards been the 

 town-house of Elizabeth, belonged to Sir Walter Ealeigh, by 

 whom it was held on leave from the queen. Ealeigh, a 

 friend of William Shakespeare and the players, was also a 

 friend of Francis Bacon and the philosophers. Ealeigh is 

 said to have founded the Mermaid Club ; and it is certain 

 that he numbered friends among the poets and players. The 

 proofs of his having known Shakespeare, though indirect, are 

 strong. Of his long intercourse with Bacon every one is 

 aware. Thus it requires no effort of the fancy to picture 

 these three men as lounging in a window of Durham House, 

 puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing 

 the highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on 

 the flower-beds and the river, the darting barges of dames 

 and cavalier, and the distant pavilions of Paris Garden and 

 the Globe." 



Its use by so distinguished a person as Ealeigh was equiv- 

 alent to its general introduction. f Aubrey says: 



" He was the first that brought tobacco into England, and 

 into fashion. In our part Malmsbury Hundred it came 



Dr. Thomas Short, in his work "Discourses on Tea, Tobacco, Punch, &c.," (London 1750,) 

 Bays of the original smoker : " Sir Walter was the first that brought the Custom of smoking 

 it into Britain, upon his return from America ; for he saw the natives of Florida, Brazil and 

 other places of the Indies, smoak it thus, they hung about their Necks little Pipes or Horns' 

 made of the Leaves of the Date Tree, or of Reeds or Rushes ; and at the ends of them they 

 put several dry Tobacco Leaves twisted and broken, and set the ends of them on fire, ana 

 eucked in as much of the smoak as they could." 



tSo common was the indulgence that in 1600, only seventeen years after Sir Francis Drake 

 returned from America, and set the example of using tobacco, the French Embassador 

 writes in his dispatches to Paris, that the peers, while engaged in the tnala of Eeaex and 

 Southampton, deliberated upon their verdicts with pipes in their mouths I 



