SHOULD WOMEN SMOKE?

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 68, 31 December 1881, Page 244

SHOULD WOMEN SMOKE?

The anxious mother (says a recent issue of the World) regards smoking as a dangerous indulgence for her young son. A cigarette iv the lips of a woman is, to this same righteous matron, a thing to shudder at. Tobacco, combined -with a cigarette-paper and a pretty woman, has become, not vicious, but improper. Tins is so unaccountable a conclusion that it makes an unprejudiced observer ask — in a whisper, of course— what is impropriety ? The chaperons of good girls do not say '.':, is nasty, or bad for the teeth, or any thin" 1 i'n.olligible of that kind ; they say it is improper. It would be easier to understand them if they used the objection which they apply to their youthful son's taste for the fragrant weed, that it is dangerous. Every one knows why they call it dangerous for the boy with the down on his lip. By an, association of ideas essentially maternal, cigars, drinking, and gambling go together. Asiatic nations consider the use of tobacco as a substitute for the use of intoxicants. It fills the hours of idleness, when people who have nothing better to do would drink if they could not smoke. It is a quiet and pleasant mode of sootliing the brain. Women who have travelled in Egypt generally come home confirmed smokers, and find to their discomfort that they must keep their new taste very dark indeed, or else bo looked at askance by the virtuous of their set. If they dare to smoke friendly cigarettes with their friends, especially if those friends be male, they will find themselves ranked among the rapid womon who are dangerous. Now the question is, by what process do Englishwomen arrive at a conclusion so strange ? The Chinese lady smokes from childhood, and one of the elegancies of her attire is a silken tobacco pouch. Yet the English lady who learns to smoke when away from our prejudiced little island would be daring indeed if she had a tobacco pouch slung round her waist, with her fan, in London.

Women have made tlieii 1 own difficulties ever since Eve ate the apple ; and it is tlie women who hunger after impropriety that have made the cigarette a symbol of wickedness. These women smoke out of bravado ; not because they want to smoke, not because they like it, biit because they have heard that actresses do it, that women who have got free from the shackles of society do it. Ladies who desire to be fast regard smoking as part of the business, and will do it whether they like it or not. To see a woman of this style smoke is enough to disgust the least Philistinisb. of onlookers. She does it with an impudent conscious smile on he face ; she makes the iitmost of what she is doing ; she evidently regards it as a sort of flinging the handkerchief. No wonder the mother of a virtuous flock regards her with horror. But the cigarette is innocent enough : the woman who smokes it would look no nicer if she were slicking a stick of bai'lej -sugar, like her sister in the nursery. The truth is, she is not a smoker ; she only puffs at a cigarette, too often filling her lungs with the smoke, because she fancies it is naughty to do so. Fast women make many blunders, probably because they are not over-gifted with brains. This practice of smoking is one of the blunders. The men they want to attract do not like it. The Englishwomen who are gemiine smokers are not very frequently to be met with ; they are almost invariably travelled, intelligent, and accusto use their brains. To them the cigarette has no meaning apart from its use. Actresses and singers are often smokers ; partly because they are travellers, and so cannot keep their insular ideas intact; partly because the exercise of their arduous professions wearies the nerves and exhausts the brain. Xo stimulant or narcotic does them so little harm as good tobacco in the dainty form of a cigarette. In a life which not only demands the exercise of the brain, but it is necessarily full of nervous excitement, something which stimulates and soothes is a positive need. Women who write much acquire the habit from the same nece ssity The same law acts, in fact, as that which is to be observed among men. Generally speaking, al. men smoke more or less ; but the hard smokers are the hard workers — the men who write hard, who ride hard, or in some way weary the brain, and body with violent exercise. Many individual instances might be given. A hard-working and brilliant novelist of the present day smokes cigarettes all the time he is writing ; one of the greatest of our living artists would hardly be recognised by his friends without a cigarette in his mouth. Then, again, men who arc not great habitual smokers burst out into the use of innumerable cigars when they are being tried by any iinusual or exhausting enterprise. All this leads one to suppose that men as a rule smoke, and women as a rule do not, not because the men are wickeder, but because they work harder. But this argument would carry small conviction to the mind of the British matron. Her boys, out of sheer imitativeness, take to smoking before they have learned to work or to think. They smoke much as the would-be fast ladies smoke, because they think it is one of the signs of independence. Oddly enough, when we consider how improper a cigarette is supposed to be when a woman smokes it, the men who like fast women are not the ones who like lady smokers. Those who do are the artists, the authors, the men of mind, who are not fascinated by almond-shaped eyes, a small waist, and an absence of virtue, but who like a woman who can understand them, and who has conversational powers of her own. They obtain from an intelligent woman a delicate and charming appreciation ; they often discover in her a wonder ful suggestiveness. Society does not give men and women much opportunity for any real interchange of ideas ; and the men who like a clever woman are often delighted when they find out that she smokes. It is remarkable how a little tobacco-puffing will break down the mental barrier between the sexes. It is an excuse for the physical repose which is the best condition for talking ; it brightens the mind and quickens the ideas.; itfills up all the pauses when no one has anything to say ; you nave your smoke rings to watch instead of gazing at youv neighbour's face.* Indeed, there are so many charms about it that there is small wonder clever men and women are fond of * This is all very well from the writer's point of view } but, to my old-fashioned Belf, a woman with a tobacco tainted breath is on abomination, — Atlas.

this little magic symbol of good comradeship, the cigax-ette. In all probability the " higher education of women" will bring about one result which its advocates have never thought of. Girl graduates, overworked and crammed, will take to the solace of smoking. The women who are pushing their way into the professions will discover the need of it. When women begin to work they will smoke also. Gradually the cigarette will be entirely associated with the blue stocking instead of the Anonyma and her imitators. It will be useless to protest against it. The use of tobacco was prohibited in Russia— the knout threatened for the first offence— death for the second— yet Russian ladies arc the greatest of smokers. Pope "Urban VIII. issued a bull against it, our King James fought vigorously against its introduction here. In the East the priests and sultans declared smoking to be a sin against their holy religion, and yet the Turk is seldom seen without a pipe. Even the edict of society will not alarm the new generation of clever women. The actress smokes in her dressing-room because she is exhausted ; the authors, the artists (and we have one or two women now who can paint) will smoke in their studies for the same reason. When sensible men go to sec them, they will light up together and have a sociable talk. Let us console ourselves with the fact that a pretty woman who smokes because she likes it looks well. Doubtless there will come a day when Worth will always add to his dresses a dainty little tobacco pouch or cigarette pocket. And we may be sure, when fashion has once got a- word to say in its favour, smoking will no longer be improper.