Bob Sawyer, make their first appearance on the scene, they
are discovered in the morning seated by Mr. Wardle's kitchen fire,
smoking cigars; and it is significant of how smoking out of doors was
then regarded that Dickens, going on to describe Sawyer in detail,
refers to "that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which
is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout
and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian
names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious
description." Apparently in 1836 the only person who would allow
himself to be seen smoking in the street was of the kind naturally
inclined to do the other objectionable things mentioned. The same idea
runs through the allusions to tobacco in "Pickwick." Smoking was
undeniably vulgar. Mr. John Smauker, who introduces Sam Weller at the
"friendly swarry" of the Bath footmen, smokes a cigar "through an
amber tube"--cigar-holders were a novelty. When Mr. Pickwick is taken
to the house of Namby, the sheriffs' officer, the "principal features"
of the front parlour are "fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke." One of
the occupants of the room is a "mere boy of nineteen or twenty, who,
though it was yet barely ten o'clock, was drinking gin and water, and
smoking a cigar, amusements to which, judging from his inflamed
countenance, he had devoted himself pretty constantly for the last
year or two of his life." Tobacco-smoke pervades the Fleet prison. In
fact, to trace tobacco through the pages of "Pickwick" is to realize
vividly how vulgar if not vicious an accomplishment smoking was
considered by the fashionable world and how popular it was among the
nobodies of the unfashionable world.

Similar morals may be drawn from other works of fiction. The action
of the first chapters of Thackeray's "Pendennis" passes early in the
nineteenth century. In the third chapter Foker has a cigar in his
mouth as he strolls with Pen down the High Street of Chatteris. Old
Doctor Portman meets them and regards "with wonder Pen's friend, from
whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round
the doctor's honest face and shovel hat. 'An old school-fellow of
mine, Mr. Foker,' said Pen. The doctor said 'H'm!' and scowled at the
cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an
abomination to the worthy gentleman." The reverend gentleman in liking
his pipe was faithful to the traditional fondness