Smoking As A
Symbol . . .
Of leisure, urban interaction, status-
“All
the city dweller had to go on, to know anything at all about these other
people, was the information he could glean by looking at them . . .. City life was made possible by an ‘ordering’
of the urban populace in terms of appearance and spatial location such that
those within the city could know a great deal about one another by simply
looking.”
–Lyn H. Loftland
As one can see, symbolic
values were, and still are today, attached to material culture. Different types of people chose to use
different objects in different locations simply because of the messages they
were trying to convey.
The trends associated with
clay tobacco pipe use can be easily related to gender, ethnicity, and class. However, one must keep in mind that these
too changed with time and from region to region. Also, as smoking became a “less respectable” habit, many people
continued with the act in secret.
This is
an 1837 lithograph by Henry R. Robinson.
From Arents Tobacco Collection, New York Public Library
The
comments that the people make are “stereotypical” of the time. The ladies gasp in disgust. The two African men talk about their cigars
and the “gentleman” seated in the front remarks, “ ‘I follow
in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor,’ the greatest and the best,
-and smoke a pipe.”
-Researched
by: Amy Cunningham