Smoking Unfashionable: Early Georgian Days


Lord Fopling smokes not--for his teeth afraid;

Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade.



ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE, _circa_ 1740.





With the reign of Queen Anne tobacco had entered on a period, destined

to be of long duration, when smoking was to a very large extent under

a social ban. Pipe-smoking was unfashionable--that is to say, was not

practised by men of fashion
and was for the most part regarded as

low or provincial--from the time named until well into the reign of

Queen Victoria. The social taboo was by no means universal--some of

the exceptions will be noted in these pages--but speaking broadly, the

general, almost universal smoking of tobacco which had been

characteristic of the earlier decades of the seventeenth century did

not again prevail until within living memory.



Throughout the eighteenth century the use of tobacco for smoking was

largely confined to the middle and humbler classes of society. To

smoke was characteristic of the cit, of the country squire, of the

clergy (especially of the country parsons), and of those of lower

social status. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that

then, as since, the dictates of fashion and the conventions of

society were little regarded by many artists and men of letters.



In the preceding chapter I quoted from Addison's diary of a retired

tradesman in the _Spectator_ of 1712. The periodical publications of a

generation or so later paid the great essayist the flattery of

imitation in this respect as in others. In the _Connoisseur_ of George

Colman and Bonnell Thornton, for instance, there is, in 1754, the

description of a citizen's Sunday. The good man, having sent his

family to church in the morning, goes off himself to Mother Redcap's,

a favourite tavern--suburban in those days--or house of call for City

tradesmen. There he smokes half a pipe and drinks a pint of ale. In

the evening at another tavern he smokes a pipe and drinks two pints of

cider, winding up the inane day at his club, where he smokes three

pipes before coming home at twelve to go to bed and sleep soundly.



The week-end habit was strong among London tradesmen in those days.

Another _Connoisseur_ paper of 1754 refers to the citizens'

country-boxes as dusty retreats, because they were always built in

close contiguity to the highway so that the inhabitants could watch

the traffic, in the absence of anything more sensible to do, where

the want of London smoke is supplied by the smoke of Virginia

tobacco, and where our chief citizens are accustomed to pass the end

and the beginning of every week. In the following year there is a

description of a visit to Vauxhall by a worthy citizen with his wife

and two daughters. After supper the poor man sadly laments that he

cannot have his pipe, because his wife, with social ambitions, deems

that it is ungenteel to smoke, where any ladies are in company.



Again, in the _Connoisseur's_ rival, the _World_, founded and

conducted by Edward Moore, there is a letter, in the number dated

February 19, 1756, from a citizen who says: I have the honour to be a

member of a certain club in this city, where it is a standing order,

That the paper called the _World_ be constantly brought upon the

table, with clean glasses, pipes and tobacco, every Thursday after

dinner.



The country gentlemen of the time followed the hounds and enjoyed

rural sports of all kinds, drank ale, and smoked tobacco. They had

their smoking-rooms too. Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield,

Sussex, noted in his Journal under date March 26, 1751: I went to Mr.

Baker's for the list of scholars, and found him alone in the

smoaking-room; he ordered a pint of mild beer for me, an extraordinary

thing. Gale himself was a regular smoker, and too fond of pints of

ale.



Fielding has immortalized the squire of the mid-eighteenth century in

his picture of that sporting, roaring, swearing, drinking, smoking,

affectionate, irascible, blundering, altogether extraordinary owner of

broad acres, Squire Western. We may shrewdly suspect that the portrait

of Western is somewhat over-coloured, and cannot fairly be taken as

typical; but there is sufficient evidence to show that in some

respects at least--in his enthusiasm for sport and love of ale and

tobacco--Western is representative of the country squires of his day.



In a _World_ of 1755 there is a description of a noisy, hearty,

drinking, devil-may-care country gentleman, in which it is said, he

makes no scruple to take his pipe and pot at an alehouse with the very

dregs of the people. In a _Connoisseur_ of 1754 a fine gentleman

from London, making a visit in a country-house, is taking his

breakfast with the ladies in the afternoon, when they had their tea,

for, says he, I should infallibly have perished, had I staied in the

hall, amidst the jargon of toasts and the fumes of tobacco. When

Horace Walpole was staying with his father at his Norfolk

country-seat, Houghton, in September 1737, Gray wrote to him from

Cambridge: You are in a confusion of wine, and roaring, and hunting,

and tobacco, and, heaven be praised, you too can pretty well bear it.

But Gray had no objection to tobacco. He lived at Cambridge, and the

dons and residents there (as at Oxford), not to speak of the

undergraduates, were as partial to their pipes as the men who went out

from among them to become country parsons, and to share the country

squire's liking for tobacco. Gray wrote to Warton from Cambridge in

April 1749 saying: Time will settle my conscience, time will

reconcile me to this languid companion (ennui); we shall smoke, we

shall tipple, we shall doze together--a striking picture of

University life in the sleepy days of the eighteenth century. Gray's

testimony by no means stands alone. In November 1730 Roger North wrote

to his son Montague, then an undergraduate at Cambridge, saying: I

would be loath you should confirm the scandal charged upon the

universities of learning chiefly to smoke and to drink.



At Oxford in early Georgian days a profound calm--so far as study was

concerned--appears to have prevailed. Little work was done, but much

tobacco was smoked. In 1733 a satire was published, violently

attacking the Fellows of various colleges. According to this satirist

the occupation of the Magdalen Fellow was to



_drink, look big,

Smoke much, think little, curse the freeborn Whig--_



from which it may not unreasonably be surmised that the author was a

Tory; and however little enthusiasm there may have been at Oxford in

those days for learning and study, there was plenty of life in

political animosities.



Another witness to the dons' love of tobacco is Thomas Warton. In his

Progress of Discontent, written in 1746, he plaintively sang:



_Return, ye days when endless pleasure

I found in reading or in leisure!

When calm around the Common Room

I puff'd my daily pipe's perfume!

Rode for a stomach, and inspected,

At annual bottlings, corks selected:

And dined untax'd, untroubled, under

The portrait of our pious Founder!_



Warton and another Oxford smoker of some distinction--the Rev. William

Crowe, who was Public Orator from 1784 to 1829--are both said to have

been, like Prior, rather fond of frequenting the company of persons of

humble rank and little education, with whom they would drink their ale

and smoke their pipes.



Mr. A.D. Godley, in his Oxford in the Eighteenth Century, gives an

excellent English version of the Latin original of one of the Christ

Church Carmina Quadragesmalia, which affords much the same picture

of the daily life of an Oxford Fellow in the days when George I was

king. This good man lives strictly by rule, and each returning day--



_Ne'er swerves a hairbreadth from the same old way.

Always within the memory of men

He's risen at eight and gone to bed at ten:

The same old cat his College room partakes,

The same old scout his bed each morning makes:

On mutton roast he daily dines in state

(Whole flocks have perished to supply his plate),

Takes just one turn to catch the westering sun,

Then reads the paper, as he's always done;

Soon cracks in Common-room the same old jokes,

Drinking three glasses ere three pipes he smokes:--

And what he did while Charles our throne did fill

'Neath George's heir you'll find him doing still._



It seems to have been taken for granted that country parsons smoked.

Smoking was universal among their male parishioners from the squire to

the labourer (when he could afford it), so that it was only natural

that the parson, with little to do, and in those days not too much

inclination to do it, should be as fond of his pipe as the rest of the

world around him. In a _World_ of 1756 there is an account of a

country gentleman entertaining one evening the vicar of the parish,

and the host as a matter of course proceeds to order a bottle of wine

with pipes and tobacco to be placed on the table. The vicar forthwith

filled his pipe, and drank very cordially to my friend, his host.

One cannot doubt that Laurence Sterne, that most remarkable of country

parsons, smoked. His My Uncle Toby is among the immortals, and Toby

without his pipe is unimaginable.



The most famous of country clergymen of the early Georgian period is,

of course, Fielding's lovable and immortal Parson Adams. Throughout

Joseph Andrews the parson smokes at every opportunity. At his first

appearance on the scene, in the inn kitchen, he calls for a pipe of

tobacco before taking his place at the fireside. The next morning,

when he fails to obtain a desired loan from the landlord, Adams,

extremely dejected at his disappointment, immediately applies to his

pipe, his constant friend and comfort in his affliction, and leans

over the rails of the gallery overlooking the inn-yard, devoting

himself to meditation, assisted by the inspiring fumes of tobacco.

Later on, in the parlour of the country Justice of the Peace, who

condemned his prisoners before he had taken the depositions of the

witnesses against them, and who, by the way, also lit his pipe while

his clerk performed this necessary duty, Adams, when his character has

been cleared, sits down with the company and takes a cheerful glass

and applies himself vigorously to smoking. A few hours later, when the

parson, Fanny, and their guide are driven by a storm of rain to take

shelter in a wayside ale-house, Adams immediately procured himself a

good fire, a toast and ale, and a pipe, and began to smoke with great

content, utterly forgetting everything that had happened. In the same

inn, after Mrs. Slipslop has appeared and disappeared, Adams smokes

three pipes and takes a comfortable nap in a great chair, so leaving

the lovers, Joseph and Fanny, to enjoy a delightful time together.



At another inn a country squire is discovered smoking his pipe by the

door and the parson promptly joins him. Again, he smokes before he

goes to bed, and before he breakfasts the next morning; and when he

goes into the inn garden with the host who is willing to trust him,

both host and parson light their pipes before beginning to gossip.

Farther on, when the hospitable Mr. Wilson takes the weary wayfarers

in, Parson Adams loses no time in filling himself with ale, as

Fielding puts it, and lighting his pipe. The menfolk--Wilson, Adams

and Joseph--have to spend the night seated round the fire, but

apparently Adams is the only one who seeks the solace of tobacco. It

is significant that Wilson, in telling the story of his dissipated

early life, classes smoking with singing, holloaing, wrangling,

drinking, toasting, and other diversions of jolly companions.



There is no mention of Parson Trulliber's pipe, but that pig-breeder

and lover can hardly have been a non-smoker. Both the other clerical

characters who appear in the book, the Roman Catholic priest who makes

an equivocal appearance in the eighth chapter of the third book, and

Parson Barnabas, who thinks that his own sermons are at least equal to

Tillotson's, smoke their pipes. The other smokers in Joseph Andrews

are the surgeon and the exciseman who, early in the story, are found

sitting in the inn kitchen with Parson Barnabas, smoking their pipes

over some syderand--the mysterious cup being a mixture of cider and

something spirituous--and Joseph's father, old Gaffer Andrews, who

appears at the end of the story, and complains bitterly that he wants

his pipe, not having had a whiff that morning.



Fielding himself smoked his pipe. When his play The Wedding Day was

produced by Garrick in 1743, various suggestions were made to the

author as to the excision of certain passages, and the modification of

one of the scenes. Garrick pressed for certain omissions, but--No,

damn them, said Fielding, if the scene is not a good one, let them

find that out; and then, according to Murphy, he retired to the

green-room, where, during the progress of the play, he smoked his pipe

and drank champagne. Presently he heard the sound of hissing, and when

Garrick came in and explained that the audience had hissed the scene

he had wished to have modified, all Fielding said was: Oh, damn them,

they _have_ found it out, have they!



Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the crafty old Jacobite who took part in the

rising of 1745 and who was executed on Tower Hill in 1747, was a

smoker. The pipe which he was reported to have smoked on the evening

before his execution, together with his snuff-box and a canvas

tobacco-bag, were for many years in the possession of the Society of

Cogers, the famous debating society of Fleet Street.



It has sometimes been said that Swift smoked; but this is a mistake.

He had a fancy for taking tobacco in a slightly different way from the

fashionable mode of taking snuff. He told Stella that he had left off

snuff altogether, and then in the very next sentence remarked that he

had a noble roll of tobacco for grating, very good. And in a later

letter to Stella, May 24, 1711, he asked if she still snuffed, and

went on to say, in sentences that seem to contradict one another: I

have left it off, and when anybody offers me their box, I take about a

tenth part of what I used to do, then just smell to it, and privately

fling the rest away. I keep to my tobacco still, as you say; but even

much less of that than formerly, only mornings and evenings, and very

seldom in the day. One might infer from this that he smoked, but this

Swift never did. His practice was to snuff up cut and dried tobacco,

which was sometimes just coloured with Spanish snuff. This he did all

his life, but as the mixture he took was not technically snuff, he

never owned that he took snuff.



Another cleric of the period, well known to fame, who took snuff but

also loved his pipe, was Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth,

Lincolnshire, from 1697 to 1735. He not only smoked his pipe, but sang

its praises:



_In these raw mornings, when I'm freezing ripe,

What can compare with a tobacco-pipe?

Primed, cocked and toucht, 'twould better heat a man

Than ten Bath Faggots or Scotch warming-pan._



Samuel's greater son, John Wesley, did not share the parental love of

a pipe. He spoke of the use of tobacco as an uncleanly and

unwholesome self-indulgence, and described snuffing as a silly,

nasty, dirty custom.



The London clergy seem to have smoked at one time as a matter of

course at their gatherings at Sion College, their headquarters. An

entry in the records under date February 14, 1682, relating to a Court

Meeting, runs: Paid Maddocks [the Messenger] for Attendinge and Pipes

6d. How long pipes continued to be concomitants of the meetings of

the College's General Court I cannot say; but smoking and the annual

dinners were long associated. At the anniversary feast in 1743 there

were two tables to provide for, the total number of guests being about

thirty, and two corses to each. The cost of the food, as Canon

Pearce tells us in his excellent and entertaining book on the College

and its Library, was L19 15s., or rather more than 13s. a head. The

bill for wines and tobacco amounted to five guineas, or about 3s. 6d.

a head, and for this modest sum the thirty convives enjoyed eleven

gallons of Red Oporto, one of White Lisbon, and three of

Mountain, to the accompaniment of two pounds of tobacco (at 3s. 4d.

the pound) smoked in half a groce of pipes (at 1s.).



The examples and illustrations which have been given so far in this

chapter relate to tradesmen and merchants, country gentlemen and the

clergy. Other professional men smoked--we read in Fielding's Amelia

of a doctor who in the evening smoked his pillow-pipe, as the phrase

is--and among the rest of the people of equal or lower social

standing smoking was as generally practised as in the preceding

century. Handel, I may note, enjoyed his pipe. Dr. Burney, when a

schoolboy at Chester, was extremely curious to see so extraordinary a

man, so when Handel went through that city in 1741 on his way to

Ireland, young Burney watched him narrowly as long as he remained in

Chester, and among other things, had the felicity of seeing the great

man smoke a pipe, over a dish of coffee, at the Exchange

Coffee-house, which was under the old Town Hall that stood opposite

the present King's School, and in front of the present Town Hall.



Gonzales, in his Voyage to Great Britain, 1731, says that the use of

tobacco was very universal, and indeed not improper for so moist a

climate. He tells us that though the taverns were very numerous yet

the ale-houses were much more so. These ale-houses were visited by the

inferior tradesmen, mechanics, journeymen, porters, coachmen, carmen,

servants, and others whose pockets were not equal to the price of a

glass of wine, which, apparently, was the more usual thing to call for

at a tavern, properly so called. In the ale-house men of the various

classes and occupations enumerated, says the traveller, would sit

promiscuously in common dirty rooms, with large fires, and clouds of

tobacco, where one that is not used to them can scarce breathe or

see.



The antiquary Hearne has left on record an account of a curious

smoking match held at Oxford in 1723. It began at two o'clock in the

afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the

purpose over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore's, an

alehouse. The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could

smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off

the stage, should have 12s. Many tryed, continues Hearne, and 'twas

thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter's in the East would

have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before,

the rest: but at last he was so sick, that 'twas thought he would have

dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently,

came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told

one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the

same evening. The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.



Another foreign visitor to England, the Abbe Le Blanc, who was over

here about 1730, found English customs rather trying. Even at table,

he says, where they serve desserts, they do but show them, and

presently take away everything, even to the tablecloth. By this the

English, whom politeness does not permit to tell the ladies their

company is troublesome, give them notice to retire.... The table is

immediately covered with mugs, bottles and glasses; and often with

pipes of tobacco. All things thus disposed, the ceremony of toasts

begins.



The frowns and remonstrances of Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of

Friends had not succeeded in putting the Quakers' pipes out. In a list

of sea stores put on board a vessel called by the un-Quaker-like name

of _The Charming Polly_, which brought a party of Friends across the

Atlantic from Philadelphia in 1756, we find In Samuel Fothergill's

new chest ... Tobacco ... a Hamper ... a Barrel ... a box of pipes.

The provident Samuel was well found for a long voyage.



The non-smokers were the men of fashion and those who followed them in

preferring the snuff-box to the pipe. Sometimes, apparently, they

chewed. A _World_ of 1754 pokes fun at the pretty young men who

take pains to appear manly. But alas! the methods they pursue, like

most mistaken applications, rather aggravate the calamity. Their

drinking and raking only makes them look like old maids. Their

swearing is almost as shocking as it would be in the other sex. Their

chewing tobacco not only offends, but makes us apprehensive at the

same time that the poor things will be sick, as they certainly well

deserved to be. To chew might be manly, but it will be observed that

smoking is not mentioned. No reputation for manliness could be

achieved by even the affectation of a pipe. Similarly, in Bramston's

Man of Taste, various fashionable tastes are described, but there is

no mention of tobacco.



In Townley's well-known two-act farce High Life Below Stairs, 1759,

the servants take their masters' and mistresses' titles and ape their

ways. The menservants--the Dukes and Sir Harrys--offer one another

snuff. Taste this snuff, Sir Harry, says the Duke. 'Tis good

rappee, replies Sir Harry. Right Strasburgh, I assure you, and of

my own importing, says the knowing ducal valet. The city people

adulterate it so confoundedly, he continues, that I always import my

own snuff; and in similar vein he goes on in imitation of his master,

the genuine Duke. These servants copy the talk and style (with a

difference) of their employers; but smoking is never mentioned. The

real Dukes and Sir Harrys took snuff with a grace, but they did not do

anything so low as to smoke, and their menservants faithfully aped

their preferences and their aversions.



Negative evidence of this kind is abundant; and positive statements of

the aversion of the beaux from smoking are not lacking. Dodsley's

Collection contains a satirical poem called A Pipe of Tobacco,

which was written in imitation of six different poets. The author was

Isaac Hawkins Browne, and the poets imitated were the Laureate Cibber,

Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift. The first imitation is

called A New Year's Ode, and contains three recitatives, three airs

and a chorus. One of the airs will suffice as a sample:



_Happy mortal! he who knows

Pleasure which a Pipe bestows;

Curling eddies climb the room

Wafting round a mild perfume._



Number two, which was intended as a burlesque of Philips's Splendid

Shilling, is really pretty and must be given entire. It reveals

unsuspected beauties in the simple churchwarden, or yard of clay:



_Little tube of mighty pow'r,

Charmer of an idle hour,

Object of my warm desire,

Lip of wax, and eye of fire:

And thy snowy taper waist,

With my finger gently brac'd;

And thy pretty swelling crest,

With my little stopper prest,

And the sweetest bliss of blisses,

Breathing from thy balmy kisses.

Happy thrice, and thrice agen,

Happiest he of happy men;

Who when agen the night returns,

When agen the taper burns;

When agen the cricket's gay,

(Little cricket, full of play)

Can afford his tube to feed

With the fragrant Indian weed:

Pleasure for a nose divine,

Incense of the god of wine.

Happy thrice, and thrice agen,

Happiest he of happy men._



Imitations three and five praise the leaf in less happy strains,

though number five has a line worth noting for our purpose, in which

tobacco is spoken of as



_By ladies hated, hated by the beaux._



The sixth sinks to ribaldry. Number four contains evidence of the

distaste for smoking among the beaux in the lines:



_Coxcombs prefer the tickling sting of snuff;

Yet all their claim to wisdom is--a puff;

Lord Foplin smokes not--for his teeth afraid:

Sir Tawdry smokes not--for he wears brocade.

Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;

They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town;

But courtiers hate the puffing tube--no matter,

Strange if they love the breath that cannot flatter!_

* * * * * * * * *

_Yet crowds remain, who still its worth proclaim,

While some for pleasure smoke, and some for Fame._



The satirist wrote truly that after all the fashionable abstainers had

been deducted, crowds remained, who smoked as heartily as their

predecessors of a century earlier. The populace was still on the side

of tobacco. This was well shown in 1732 when Sir Robert Walpole

proposed special excise duties on tobacco, and brought a Bill into

Parliament which would have given his excisemen powers of inquisition

which were much resented by the people generally. The controversy

produced a host of squibs and caricatures, most of which were directed

against the measure. The Bill was defeated in 1733, and great and

general were the rejoicings. When the news reached Derby on April 19

in that year, the dealers in tobacco caused all the bells in the Derby

churches to be rung, and we may be sure that this rather unusual

performance was highly popular. The withdrawal of the odious duty was

further celebrated by caricatures and poetical chants of triumph.

One of the leading opponents of the Bill had been a well-known puffing

tobacconist named Bradley, who was accustomed to describe his wares as

the best in Christendom; and when the Bill was defeated Bradley's

portrait was published for popular circulation, above these lines:



_Behold the man, who, when a gloomy band

Of vile excisemen threatened all the land,

Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe

The cheerful bottle and the social pipe.

O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl,

Still_ unexcised, _rejoice thy honest soul!

May still_ the best in Christendom _for this

Cleave to thy stopper, and compleat thy bliss!_



This print is now chiefly of interest because the plate was adorned

with a tiny etching by Hogarth, in which appear the figures of the

British Lion and Britannia, both with pipes in their mouths, Britannia

being seated on a cask of tobacco.



Hogarth was fond of introducing the pipe into his plates. In the

tail-piece to his works, which he prepared a few months before his

death, and which he called _The Bathos, or Manner of Sinking in

Sublime Paintings_, the end of everything is represented. Time

himself, supported against a broken column, is expiring, his scythe

falling from his grasp and a long clay pipe breaking in two as it

falls from his lips. This was issued in 1764--Hogarth's last published

work. In the plate which shows the execution of Thomas Idle, in the

Industry and Idleness series, Hogarth depicts the little hangman

smoking a short pipe as he sits on the top of the gallows, waiting for

his victim. The familiar plate of _A Modern Midnight Conversation_

shows a parson in surplice and wig smoking like a furnace while he

ladles punch from a bowl--probably meant for a portrait of the

notorious Orator Henley. Most of the other guests are also shown

smoking long clay pipes.



Hogarth's subscription ticket for the print of _Sigismunda_ was _Time

Smoking a Picture_ (1761). It represents an old man sitting on a

fragment of statuary and smoking a long pipe against a picture of a

landscape which stands upon an easel before him. Below, on his left,

is a large jar labelled Varnish. The figure of Time is nude and has

large wings. Volumes of smoke are pouring against the surface of the

picture from both his mouth and the bowl of his long clay pipe. In

_The Stage-Coach, or Country Inn-yard_, is shown an old woman smoking

a pipe in the basket of the coach. The plate of _The Distrest Poet_

(1736) shows four books and three tobacco-pipes on a shelf. In the

second of the Election series--the _Canvassing for Votes_ (1755)--a

barber and a cobbler, seated at the table in the right-hand corner,

are both smoking long pipes. Apparently they are discussing the taking

of Portobello by Admiral Vernon in 1739 with only six ships; for the

barber is illustrating his talk by pointing with his twisted pipe-stem

to six fragments which he has broken from the stem and arranged on the

table in the shape of a crescent. In the frontispiece which Hogarth

drew in 1762 for Garrick's farce of The Farmer's Return from London,

the worthy farmer, seated in his great chair, holds out a large mug in

one hand to be filled with ale, while the other supports his long

pipe, which he is smoking with evident enjoyment.



Hogarth himself was a confirmed pipe-lover. When he and Thornhill and

their three companions set out from Gravesend for the final stage, up

the river, of their famous Five Days Peregrination, we are told that

they hired a boat with clean straw, and laid in a bottle of wine,

pipes, tobacco, and light, and so came merrily up the river. The

arm-chair in which Hogarth was wont to sit and smoke is still

preserved in his house at Chiswick, which has been bought and

preserved as a memorial of the moralist-painter; and in the garden of

the house may still be seen the remains of the mulberry tree under

which Mr. Austin Dobson suggests that Hogarth and Fielding may have

sat and smoked their pipes together in the days when George was

King.



More

;