but then kept as a
smoking-room." A Mr. Rhodes, a one-time Fellow of Worcester College,
who was elected Esquire Bedel in Medicine and Arts in 1792, had a very
peculiar way of enjoying his tobacco. Mr. Cox says: "On one occasion,
when I had to call upon him, I found him drinking rum and water, and
enjoying (what he called his luxury) the fumes of tobacco, not through
a pipe or in the shape of a cigar, but _burnt in a dish!_"

Smoking had certainly not died out at Cambridge, even at the time when
Denison was at Oxford. According to the "Gradus ad Cantabrigium,"
1824, the Cambridge smart man's habit was to dine in the evening "at
his own rooms, or at those of a friend, and afterwards blows a cloud,
puffs at a segar, and drinks copiously." The spelling of "segar" shows
that cigars were then somewhat of a novelty.

When Tennyson was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 1828-30, he and his
companions all smoked. At the meetings of the "Apostles"--the little
group of friends which included the future Laureate--"much coffee was
drunk, much tobacco smoked." Dons smoked as well as undergraduates. At
Queens', the Combination-room in Tennyson's time had still a sanded
floor, and the "table was set handsomely forth with long
'churchwardens'"--as the poet told Palgrave when the two visited
Cambridge in 1859. George Pryme, in his "Autobiographic
Recollections," 1870, states that in 1800 "smoking was allowed in the
Trinity Combination-room after supper in the twelve days of Christmas,
when a few old men availed themselves of it," which looks as if
tobacco were not very popular just then at Trinity. With the wine,
pipes and the large silver tobacco-box were laid on the table. Porson,
when asked for an inscription for the box, suggested "+To bakcho+."
Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco
had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ...
to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had
the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner."

No doubt smoking had its ups and downs at the Universities apart from
the set of the main current of fashion. We learn from the invaluable
Gunning that at Cambridge about 1786 smoking was going "out of fashion
among the junior members of our combination-rooms, except on the river
in the evening, when every man put a short pipe in his mouth." "I took
great pains," he adds, "to make myself master of this elegant
accomplishment, but I never su