tobacco. The London Society of
Apothecaries on August 15, 1655, held a meeting for the election of a
Master and an Upper Warden; and from the minutes of this meeting we
learn that by general consent it was forbidden henceforward to smoke
in the Court Room while dining or sitting, under penalty of half a
crown.

The more fashionable folk of the Restoration Era and later began to
leave off if not to disdain the smoking-habit. Up to about 1700
smoking had been permitted in the public rooms at Bath, but when Nash
then took charge, tobacco was banished. Public or at least fashionable
taste had begun to change, and Nash correctly interpreted and led it.
Sorbiere, who has been quoted in the previous chapter, remarked in
1663 that "People of Quality" did not use tobacco so much as others;
and towards the end of the century and in Queen Anne's time the
tendency was for tobacco to go out of fashion. This did not much
affect its general use; but the tendency--with exceptions, no
doubt--was to restrict the use of tobacco to the clergy, to country
squires, to merchants and tradesmen and to the humbler ranks of
society--to limit it, in short, to the middle and lower classes of the
social commonwealth as then organized. In the extraordinary record of
inanity which Addison printed as the diary of a citizen in the
_Spectator_ of March 4, 1712, the devotion of the worthy retired
tradesman to tobacco is emphasized. This is the kind of thing: "Monday
... Hours 10, 11 and 12 Smoaked three Pipes of Virginia ... one
o'clock in the afternoon, chid Ralph for mislaying my Tobacco-Box....
Wednesday ... From One to Two Smoaked a Pipe and a half.... Friday ...
From Four to Six. Went to the Coffee-house. Met Mr. Nisby there.
Smoaked several Pipes."

There was indeed no diminution of tobacco-smoke in the coffee-houses.
A visitor from abroad, Mr. Muralt, a Swiss gentleman, writing about
1696, said that character could be well studied at the coffee-houses.
He was probably not a smoker himself, for he goes on to say that in
other respects the coffee-houses are "loathsome, full of smoke like a
guardroom, and as much crowded." He further observed that it was
common to see the clergy of London in coffee-houses and even in
taverns, with pipes in their mouths. A native witness of about the
same date, Ned Ward, writes sneeringly in his "London Spy," 1699, of
the interior of the coffee-house. He saw "some going, some coming,
some scribbling, some talking, s