There is ample evidence, apart from Johnson’s dictum, that in the latter part of the eighteenth century smoking had “gone out.”  In Mrs. Climenson’s “Passages from the Diaries of Mrs. Lybbe Powys,” we hear of a bundle of papers at Hardwick House, near Whitchurch, Oxon, which bears the unvarnished title “Dick’s Debts.”  This Dick was a Captain Richard Powys who had a commission in the Guards, and died at the early age of twenty-six in the year 1768.  This list of debts, it appears, gives “the most complete catalogue of the expenses of a dandy of the Court of George II, consisting chiefly of swords, buckles, lace, Valenciennes and point d’Espagne, gold and amber-headed canes, tavern bills and chair hire.”  But in all the ample detail of Captain Powys’s list of extravagances there is nothing directly or indirectly relating to smoking.  The beaux of the time did not smoke.

In the whole sixteen volumes of Walpole’s correspondence, as so admirably edited by Mrs. Toynbee, there is scarcely a mention of tobacco; and the same may be said of other collections of letters of the same period—­the Selwyn letters, the Delany correspondence, and so on.  Neither Walpole nor any member of the world in which he lived would appear to have smoked.  In Miss Burney’s “Evelina,” 1778, from the beginning to the end of the book there is no mention whatever of tobacco or of smoking.  Apparently the vulgar Branghtons were not vulgar enough to smoke.  Such use of tobacco was considered low, and was confined to the classes of society indicated in the preceding chapter.  One of the characters in Macklin’s “Love a la Mode,” 1760, is described as “dull, dull as an alderman, after six pounds of turtle, four bottles of port, and twelve pipes of tobacco.”

A satirical print by Rowlandson contains A Man of Fashion’s Journal, dated May 1, 1802.  The “man of fashion” rides and drinks, goes to the play, gambles and bets, but his journal contains no reference to smoking.  Rowlandson himself smoked, and so did his brother caricaturist, Gillray.  Angelo says that they would sometimes meet at such resorts of the “low” as the Bell, the Coal Hole, or the Coach and Horses, and would enter into the common chat of the room, smoke and drink together, and then “sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands at the door—­look up at the stars, say it is a pretty night, and depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James’s Street, each to his bachelor’s bed.”

But outside the fashionable world pipes were still in full blast, and in many places of resort the atmosphere was as beclouded with tobacco-smoke as in earlier days.  Grosley, in his “Tour to London,” 1765, says that there were regular clubs, which were held in coffee-houses and taverns at fixed days and hours, when wine, beer, tea, pipes and tobacco helped to amuse the company.