Smoking

The domain of Princess Nicotine.

The leader of the fashion.

The etiquette in this, as in many other matters, has quite altered during the last few years. At one time it was considered a sign of infamously bad taste to smoke in the presence of women in any circumstances. But it is now no longer so. So many women smoke themselves, that in some houses even the drawing- room is thrown open to Princess Nicotine. The example of the Prince of Wales has been largely instrumental in sweeping away the old restrictions. He smokes almost incessantly. On one occasion, at the Ranelagh Club, I noticed that he consumed four cigars in rapid succession, almost without five minutes’ interval between them. The only time that he left off smoking, during the three hours that he remained in the Pavilion with the Princess and other ladies, was for ten minutes when tea was handed round.

The lengths to which a smoker may now go.

It is now no uncommon thing to see a man in evening dress smoking in a brougham with a lady on their way to opera, theatre, or dinner engagement. This is going rather far, for a woman’s evening dress implies shut windows, except in the height of summer, and her garments become as much impregnated with the odour of tobacco as if she had herself been smoking.

On getting rid of the smell.

Try the clothes-brush.

Some men have a knack of ridding their clothes and themselves of the fumes of smoke in a wonderful way. Perhaps one reason of this is that the tobacco they use is of a mild sort. Perhaps the diligent use of the clothes-brush is another. But there are also men round whom cling the odours of stale tobacco with a very disagreeable constancy. Why it should be so I cannot pretend to say. It must be due to carelessness of some kind, and carelessness in such matters amounts to bad manners. Even to men who smoke—and much more to those who do not—the smell of stale tobacco is revolting. Fancy, then, how it must offend the olfactory nerves of women. Such men suggest the stableyard while they are yet several yards away!

Personal cleanliness a hall-mark of the English gentleman.

A very delicate, even exquisite, personal cleanliness is characteristic of the true gentleman, and more particularly the English gentleman, who is noted all the world over for his devotion to his “tub” and his immaculate propriety in all matters of the toilette. This is not claiming too much for my countrymen. It is acknowledged by other nations that ours is superior in this respect. Once, indeed, I heard a curious inversion of this. At a foreign hotel one waiter said to the other in their mutual language: “What dirty fellows these English must be to want such a lot of washing! I’ve carried up four cans of water to No. 47 this morning!”

“They must be English.”

Sauntering up the street of a small German town one day, two English ladies saw, a couple of hundred yards away, a party of men standing admiring an ancient gateway. “They must be English,” said one of the ladies; and before she could finish her sentence the other finished it for her in the very words she had been about to utter: “They are so beautifully clean!”

The close-cropped head.

The “long-haired fellow.”

This characteristic is carried to an extreme in the close clipping of the hair; but as fashion ordains that it must be worn very short, its behests must be obeyed by all who wish to be in society and of it. “Who