SHALL WE SMOKE ON RAILWAYS?
Menaced, Mr. Punch is Boreas; entreated, he is Zephyr. When he reads in railway stations and carriages insolent affiches, commanding him not to Smoke (he delights in the weed), threatening him with fines and imprisonments, and holding up to him instances in which the Company has been down upon a smoker, he naturally lights up the largest cigar in his possession, blows a cloud into the face of the ticket clerk, sends the guard to buy him fusées, stalks up and down the platform in a cloud of fume, and on entering the carriage, hands round his cigar-case to every fellow-passenger. And in this course he intends to persevere wherever the Directors of a Railway presume to be impertinent. But when he found, on a recent journey on the Brighton and South Coast Line, such an appeal as this, he, like the pious Æneas,-
“Rolled his eyes, and every moment felt
His manly soul with more compassion melt.”
Thus gently plead the Brighton Directors-
“In consequence of the numerous and increasing Complaints of Smoking in the Carriages on the line, the Directors have resolved to appeal to their Passengers on the subject.”
Very right, indeed. The passengers, and not any whimsical of arbitrary officials, are the proper tribunal of appeal in such a matter. This is truly constitutional, and in the spirit of Magna Charta, and Lord John Russell himself would approve the course, Such an introduction prepossesses the reader in favour of the appeal. Let us proceed-
“The Directors feel assured that if those who thus disregard the Regulations of this and every other Railway, framed in this respect to secure the general convenience, were aware of the discomfort and annoyance they inflict on the great majority of Passengers, not only while Tobacco is smoked, but from the Carriages being rendered offensive to those who travel in them at other times, they would refrain from doing so during the short period occupied by the journeys on the line.”
Mr. Punch begs to assure the courteous Directors that he is quite aware of the discomfort and annoyance the anti-smoking Regulations of that and every other railway inflict on the great majority of passengers; as truly stated by the grammatical construction of the above lines. He is also aware that this is not what the Directors mean, but the reverse thereof. They mean to say that most people do not like smoking, and that the carriages in which smoking has taken place smell disagreeably. Now, he takes leave to contest the first proposition, and will do so on statistical grounds. Referring to an abstract of a Blue Book before him, and turning to the Customs accounts for one year (Mr. Charles Knight is responsible for the figures, and he is never wrong), he finds that the very largest item of all that go to make up the Twenty odd millions of income is the duty of imported Tobacco. Even miserable Tea – that contemptible mess which duchesses take before dinner, and other women whenever they can get it with chatter – produces less that the noble Tobacco – nay, here are the figures:-
Tobacco, stemmed … £2,246,465
Unstemmed … 2,888,490
Manufactured, and Snuff … 119,838
£5,254,293
Upwards of Five Millions of Pounds paid upon the article which “most persons” do not like. Five Millions of Pounds, and this for duty only, mind, to which we must add the rest of the price of the article, if we would know what the Smoker pays. But let us leave it at Five Millions of Sovereigns. Now, how many people travel on Railroads in England? Mr. Punch refers to another Parliamentary abstract. Taking the first and second classes for the year – he omits the third, because, notoriously, the unfortunate third class would all smoke if they might, to comfort themselves in their pens – the numbers are:-
First … 6,771,060
Second … 16,935,303
£23,706,363
Twenty-three millions of passengers, or rather of journeys, for every journey is counted, and a commercial traveller may be 100 in the above number, while Mr. Tennyson’s clerk that went out of town, and dreamed, may be 2. Well, knock off about half for women, whose opinion is not wanted on a tobacco question, or any other. There are twelve millions of passengers. Knock off a million of the Five sovereigns for people who take tobacco but don’t travel, and you have four millions of sovereigns paid for tobacco by railway travellers. Now, Mr. Punch requests the Directors’ attention. They assume that most passengers don’t like baccy? Do they mean to say that a lesser number that Six millions of passengers contribute the enormous sum of four millions for their weeds? Bosh, bother, bah, bo, bee! Are we mad – is the world mad? If figures mean anything, they prove, in an extra-Gladstonian and irrefragable manner, that at least 8 out of every 10 railway travellers hunger and thirst for the Weed. As for the smell that is left in carriages where people have smoked, he does not deny that it is disagreeable for the moment, but if the Directors had the carriages properly aired, and a few pastiles or some of Piesse and Lubin’s fumigating ribbon burned in the every morning, the inconvenience would be scarcely perceptible. So we go on again:-
“The Directors invite the co-operation of Passengers, in discountenancing Smoking in the Carriages, and they trust that any who have without due consideration for others, evaded the Regulations of the Company, will abstain from a practice which interferes with the general comfort, and thus relieve the Directors from the necessity of protecting the travelling Public from inconvenience, by resorting to any other course than this appeal to the good feeling and sense of propriety of those to whom it is addressed.”
As regards the Short Time plea in the penultimate paragraph, the Brighton line has certainly more right to make it that any other Company, for the time is short, and the travelling is exceedingly rapid and creditably regular. But even the flying express makes an hour of it, and who can go without a cigar for a whole hour? If the Directors of one of the very best lines in the world find it impossible to prevent passengers from resorting to the Nicotian Consoler, is not the case very strong against the prohibitory movement? If one cannot do without a weed while the Brighton engine is tearing away with one like a fiery dragon mad with terror at being threatened with having Proverbial Philosophy read to him, how can one exist without the baccy, while the Eastern Counties is drawling away into the fens, or the Great Western is taking about three hours, on Sundays, to do about thirty miles. Therefore the courteous Directors need not hint at “any other course” then courtesy. They might as well attempt to put down sneezing, by a bye-law, as smoking. Especially will not English people be dictated to in a matter which should be one of free will, and the more it is sought to prevent smoking, the more will the carriages be found unpleasantly odorous.
Therefore, recognising the extreme politeness and good taste of the Brighton Directors’ Appeal, and admitting that it does credit to a Board of Gentlemen, who look on the public as their friends to be conveyed, not as their victims to be fleeced, Mr. Punch is compelled to say that even this meritorious attempt to please low-church parsons, old fogies, and women, will not do. The real remedy is
A SMOKING SALOON.
When this is established, Mr. Punch himself will be the first to spy out, inform on, and if need, collar and kick anybody who even mentions tobacco in an ordinary carriage. Till then, Fumus, Gloria Mundi, wherever a fellow-passenger raises no objection.
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