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 Raleigh, by 
whom it was held on leave from the queen. Raleigh, a 
friend of William Shakespeare and the players, was also a 
friend of Francis Bacon and the philosophers. Raleigh 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 Raleigh was equiv- 
alent to its general introduction.t 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, é&c.,”” (London 1750, 
pays of the original smoker: “ Sir Walter was the first that brought the Cagtom of nat 
it into Britain, upon his return from America; for he saw the natives of Florida, Brazil an 
other places of the Indies, smoak it thus, they hung about their Necks little Pipes or Horns‘ 
eer, fates notes the Date res or or pends or Rushes 3, and at the ends of them they 
ves twisted an ‘ok 
sucked ins tauch of the moa LW they and bre en,and set the ends of them on fire, ani 
m was the ulgence that in 1600, only seventeen years after Sir F is Drake 
returned pron. America, and Bet the example of using tobaceo, the French "Embassador 
ris, tha! @ peers, while engaged th 
Southampton, deliberated upon their verdicts with pipes inetvelr mouths ae acc 
