The Pipe Club. A History and Then Some: Difference between revisions

Mrs Daffodil’s ''Aide-memoire'': Smoking suits, jackets, and caps were designed to keep the smell of tobacco, said to be offensive, particularly to the ladies, off the gentleman’s person. No doubt there were some households where smoking was forbidden and visiting smokers had to lie on their backs and smoke up the chimney, but it is also a fact that many ladies also enjoyed cigarettes in the privacy of their own boudoirs (''Birmingham [West Midlands England] Daily Post'', October 25, 1889).  

In the afternoon the gallant might attend what Dekker calls a ‘Tobacco-ordinary,’ by which may possibly have been meant a smoking-club, or more probably, the gathering after dinner at one of the many ordinaries in the neighborhood of St. Paul’s Cathedral of ‘tobacconists,’ as smokers were called, might have gathered “…to discuss the merits of their respective pipes and of the various kinds of tobacco—‘whether your Cane or your Pudding be sweetest.’ …These country smoking-rooms were known as stone-parlours, the floor being flagged for safety’s sake; and the ‘stone-parlour’ in many a squire’s house was the scene of much conviviality, including, no doubt, abundant smoking. …I [Lord Macaulay] have left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs,’ he wrote, ‘and repaired to the smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables covered in green baize and writing materials. On a full night it is generally thronged towards twelve o’clock with smokers.’ …The late King Edward, at that time Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the defeated minority at White’s [a fashionable club], and to have interested himself in the foundation of the Marlborough; where, ‘for the first time in the history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was everywhere allowed.’ By ‘smoking’ is no doubt here meant everything but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick Club at the beginning of the present century.  Apart from social environment, there is a certain affinity between pipes and clothes. It is considered ‘bad form’ for a man in a frock-coat and silk hat to be seen smoking a pipe in the streets (George L. Apperson, ''The Social History of Smoking'', 1914).  

*Pipemuseum.nl has a list of European pipe smoking clubs and guilds.

*George’s Pipe Smoking Pages (lepipe.it).

*The Virtual Pipe Club is on YouTube.

*The International Peterson Pipe Club (petersonpipenotes.org.