Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

But the story was a stock jest long before it was associated with Raleigh. The earliest example of it occurs in the "Jests" attributed to Richard Tarleton, the famous comic performer of the Elizabethan stage, who died in 1588—the year of the Armada. "Tarlton's Jests" appeared in 1611, and the story in question, which is headed "How Tarlton tooke tobacco at the first comming up of it," runs as follows:

"Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco, did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco whiffes made them leave him to pay all."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

One of the earliest known examples of these highlanders as tobacconists' signs is that which was placed at the door of a shop in Coventry Street which was opened in 1720 under the sign of "The Highlander, Thistle and Crown." This is said to have been a favourite place of resort of the Jacobites. In his "Nicotine and its Rariora," Mr. A.M. Broadley gives the card, dated 1765, of "William Kebb, at ye Highlander ye corner of Pall Mall, facing St. James's, Haymarket," and says that the highlander was a favourite tobacconist's sign for 200 years. I have been unable, however, to find evidence of such a prolonged period of favour. I know of no certain seventeenth-century reference to the highlander as a tobacconist's sign.

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