A GOOD CIGAR

Evening Star, Issue 20422, 1 March 1930, Page 19

A GOOD CIGAR

INTERESTING CENTENARY OF USE IN ENGLAND Wilting in the ‘Observer,’ a contributor says:—, ■ For those who delight to celebrate centenaries this is an ant occasion. It wa* round .about ,1830 that the cigar really established itself in England. When Byron sang its praise it was still a scarcity. Two Elizabethan captains. Price and Koet, are said to save smoked “eegars’l in London, but the pipe was easily supreme until the late eighteenth centurVj when Cumberland wrote of “segaras.’ I But importation was forbidden until tin Spanish contacts of the Penisnlar Wail taught us. better. The war gave coffcs to Europe, an Austrian spy bringing the; sweet secret from the Turkish lines, which seems to be one of the very few occasions on which a spy has been of any us« to his side. Cigar smoke drifted into Eng* land on the winds from Spain, and took £t little time to prevail! But the Fourth Georgian buck*; became 1 wisely rapt by luxury. In 1823 only 261 bof cigars went imported; By 1830 more than a-quarter of a million pounds came in. J So we can at this time salute the hundredth birthday of the cigar in favour. It was smoked in its own temple, nobly entitled the cigar-divan, where the gentry partook of coffee, gossip, newspapers, and the nobler tobaccos. Disraeli.’s ‘ Endymion ’ describes “ a capacious saloon in the Strand, well-lit and fitted up with low, broad sofas.” There the wise reclined in feliety, and the inscription still lingers, I think, upon some doors. Thera' was, until last year but one, a brass plata announcing “ cigar divan ” under the now departed Tavistock Hotel in the Piazza of Covent Garden. When Dickens’s Mr Tools was setting up to Live the Life he turned his rooms into a Sporting Bower with a divan, to which he must have brought inferior goods, for it “made him poorly.” Thackeray’s Lin don is aromatic with cigar smoke, and the poor were not to be left behind. The penny whiff was the Cockney’s bliss, and when a brisk young fellow bought himself a one-and-ninepenny hat or “ cady ” in the flashier shops of the mean streets, he expected to find a cigar tucked into the brim. The cigar had, of course, to endure the scolding that all the lyest of ■ pleasures must ever endure upon occasion, and was denounced by Ruskin as the chief sign of decadence in contemporary youth. It cannot be that naughtiness now. Even such of the young as might afford cigars -are too often content with the petty pleasures of the “ gasper.” The cigarette has conquered both sexes and all ages. But there should be more room found for the major and masculine smoke. The cheap cigar ; of the Continent c'an bs bad or good according to the country and tho maker. The Dane, for one, understands all about it, and can produce a superb smoke for sixpence. In Denmark 1 have seen a “cigar park” outisdo a museum, where the ■ thrifty left their half-smoked weeds in numbered niches. A queer habit, but strong token of esteem ! If the cigar were reasonably taxed it could be a common pleasure .in this country, and there* would be a deal less of coughing and choking and the serfdom of chain-smoking. “Tho Counsellers cunning and silent ” of Kipling’s ode have an added virtue for most of us. There is finality of satisfaction about a cigar. You do not want to go on for ever. Its aromatic ecstacy is definite as well as delicious. Even'in death it is beautiful, tho firm grey ash beirg a fit symbol of the staunch thing which it has been and ,of the rip< serenity that it bestows. ' An unknowa poet has written of a man seen in a Com t'incntal'cafe: — He had no hat, no hope, but a cigar. Unknown, but be knew!