The Social History of Smoking | Page 5

themselves.
Wherever Raleigh is known to have lived or lodged we are sure to find the tradition flourishing that there he smoked his first pipe. The assertion has been made of his birthplace, Hayes Barton, although it is very doubtful if he ever visited the place after his parents left it, some years before their son had become acquainted with tobacco; and also with more plausibility of his home at Youghal, in the south of Ireland. Froude, in one of his "Short Studies," quotes a legend to the effect that Raleigh smoked on a rock below the Manor House of Greenaway, on the River Dart, which was the home of the first husband of Katherine Champernowne, afterwards Raleigh's wife; and Devonshire guide-books have adopted the story.
Perhaps the most likely scene of Raleigh's first experiments in the art of smoking was Durham House, which stood where the Adelphi Terrace and the streets between it and the Strand now stand. This was in the occupation of Sir Walter for twenty years (1583-1603), and he was probably resident there when Hariot returned from Virginia to make his report and instruct his employer in the management of a pipe. Walter Thornbury, in his "Haunted London," referring to the story of the servant throwing the ale over his smoking master, says: "There is a doubtful old legend about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may be not unfairly laid at Durham House, where Raleigh lived." The ale story is mythical, but it is highly probable that Sir Walter's first pipes were smoked in Durham House. Dr. Brushfield quotes Hepworth Dixon, in "Her Majesty's Tower," as drawing "an imaginary and yet probable picture of him and his companions at a window of this very house, overlooking the 'silent highway':
"'It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men [Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.'" This is a pure "effort of the fancy" so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned. Shakespeare's absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that he smoked; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house had, as Aubrey tells us, "a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any in the world"; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of that pleasant turret.
The only mention made of tobacco by Raleigh himself occurs in a testamentary note made a little while before his execution in 1618. Referring to the tobacco remaining on his ship after his last voyage, he wrote: "Sir Lewis Stukely sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself ... I desire that hee may give his account for the tobacco." As showing how closely Sir Walter's name was associated with it long after his death, Dr. Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl of Cork: "Sept. 1, 1641. Sent by Travers to my infirme cozen Roger Vaghan, a pott of Sir Walter Raleighes tobackoe."
In the Wallace Collection at Hertford House is a pouch or case labelled as having belonged to and been used by Sir Walter Raleigh. This pouch contains several clay pipes. It was perhaps this same pouch or case which once upon a time figured in Ralph Thoresby's museum at Leeds, and is described by Thoresby himself in his "Ducatus Leodiensis," 1715. Curiously enough, a few years ago when excavations were being made around the foundations of Raleigh's house at Youghal a clay pipe-bowl was dug up which in size, shape, &c., was exactly like the pipes in the Wallace exhibit. Raleigh lived and no doubt smoked in the Youghal house, so it is quite possible that the bowl found belonged to one of the pipes actually smoked by him. In the garden of the Youghal house, by the way, they used to show the tree--perhaps still do so--under which Raleigh was sitting, smoking his pipe, when his servant drenched him. Thus the tradition, which, as we have seen, dates from 1708 only, has obtained two local habitations--Youghal and Durham House on the Adelphi site.
In November 1911 a curiously shaped pipe was put up for sale in Mr. J.C. Stevens's Auction Room, Covent Garden, which was described as that which Raleigh smoked "on the scaffold."