The Ultimate Folly of Smoking

           I had definitely seen the act of cigarette smoking as the embodiment of all that was stylish since I had been allowed to occasionally go to early evening showings at The Wardona, Northfleet and sometimes even The Regal in Gravesend with Molly from number 31.   You have to realise that there was a great deal of smoking taking place on the Big Screen back then and not just in those films more suitable for adults although the latter were of course those we were most keen to see by claiming we were both definitely fourteen.   The only time we were challenged was by Priscilla Horsfall who was my form at Wombwell Hall even though she was more than a year older than the rest of us.  On the occasion in question she was importantly doing her first Saturday job and as Molly had in fact reached the magical age she was deemed to be a Responsible Adult and so we both gained entry anyway once a threat of calling the manager was made.  But that is of course all beside the point. 

          It was hard to imagine Humphrey Bogart without a cigarette and though I can’t remember the first time I saw Casablanca and whether or not I was with a bona fide adult, I do clearly recall that when Rick Blaine first appears it is as a hand lifting a half-smoked cigarette after signing a cheque.   Not very long afterwards Paul Henreid lights up as he tells Ingrid Bergman that although he is terrified he must nevertheless attend a dangerous meeting.   What a hero!   And long before The Marlboro Man, in Stagecoach, John Wayne, one of my mother’s favourites bends forward to light a cigarette from an oil lamp impervious to coyotes howling in the background and clearly not so very far away which was a very sexy gesture.  Little wonder that so many young men rushed to emulate him.   And it wasn’t just the lads because once Anne Bancroft blew smoke into Dustin Hoffman’s eyes whilst trying to seduce him in The Graduate most of us avid cinema-goers, male and female alike were well and truly hooked.   

          I personally became nicotine smitten at the age of fifteen when I witnessed James Dean becoming a misery to himself and a burden to his parents in Rebel Without a Cause.   I was with Pearl Banfield from the top of York Road because Molly now worked at Featherstones and was often busier than previously.   Pearl was a less than satisfactory cinema companion who never took up the smoking habit and seemed unmoved by the charms of James Dean.  Although by the time East of Eden came to Gravesend I was completely beguiled by him, and he was still an enthusiastic smoker, I was not actually smoking myself simply because I lacked the necessary finances for funding the habit.   

          In defence of that younger generation of which I was a part, it perhaps hardly needs to be pointed out that everyone around us smoked and it seemed to us, always had done.   Strangely my own parents were not smokers, my mother only taking it up after my father died, astonishingly on the advice of our family doctor who said a cigarette and half a pint of Guinness on a Saturday evening would be beneficial and help to calm her nerves.   She never became as dedicated a smoker as me and remained a ten Woodbines a week woman for years, eventually giving up the habit with ease in her late sixties.  

          I had been working at Francis, Day & Hunter in Charing Cross Road for at least six months before I felt financially stable enough to even begin but it was with enormous pride that I ordered ten Du Maurier at the little kiosk on the concourse at Charing Cross Station.   I was feeling so sophisticated in fact that it was a full five minutes before I realised that I had forgotten the matches and had to rush back and purchase them, almost missing the 6.42 fast train to London Bridge, Woolwich Arsenal, Dartford and Gravesend, and whatever destinations followed which I’ve now forgotten.   I would set about practicing smoking on my way home and by the time Gravesend was reached I would undoubtedly be an expert!

          I chose an empty carriage far forward on the train because I wanted no witnesses to anything that might go amiss and have me categorised as a rank amateur.    It was a good thing I did because it took a full six or seven minutes and half the matches to get the first stylishly tipped Du Maurier lit.   But at last the job was done, it was burning nicely as were several of my fingers. I had been told that in order to get the very best out of nicotine I had to inhale the smoke, alien as that sounded and so by the time it was half burned I managed to do so with some difficulty.   That very first inhalation was unpleasant in the extreme, my initial physical reaction being first light headedness followed by extreme vertigo, followed by nausea.   Why on earth did anyone in their right mind take up smoking?    But of course I knew the answer to that question was because it was to be seen as grown up, sophisticated, a woman of the world.   However, it was a week or two, or even three, before this particular woman of the world became confident enough to display the new and admirable habit more publicly.  Even I knew that turning pale and gripping my handkerchief nervously to my lips rather spoiled the ambiance of sophistication I was working towards and definitely was not going to impress a great many people.   To create the right vibe I just had to get on top of the nausea and dizziness upon inhalation problem.   And of course with time and effort I did and within a few months you would never have known that I hadn’t been born with a cigarette in my right hand. 

          For economic reasons I had to give up du Maurier quite early in my smoking career and move on to Bachelor Cork Tipped which I was assured by magazine advertising was a great deal healthier let alone cheaper.   By the time I was seventeen I was smoking ten a day which had not initially been my intention at all.   For my mother, strangely, smoking remained a one a day, two at weekends habit.   Perhaps she had experienced the same inhalation problem as me and wisely chose not to overcome it.    All of my aunts with the exception of Rose whose husband did not allow it, smoked profusely and Old Nan, their mother had always rolled her own and continued to do so her whole life.  All newly born first and second cousins were liberally smoked over from the day of their birth and as they grew older were accustomed to running to the corner shop with instructions to buy ten Weights or ten Woodbines for any adult who was running low.

Such purchases made by eight and nine year olds were never rejected by shocked shopkeepers and as the younger members of the family grew old enough to embark upon their own smoking habit it was never suggested by those older and hopefully wiser that it might be more sensible to give it a miss.   Little Violet, being raised by Old Nan because of the death of her mother, got her first job in retail at the age of eleven, as a Saturday shop assistant for Big Elsie in the small store at the bottom of Iron Mill Lane that primarily sold sweets, tobacco and ice cream.   She proudly began to buy her own Woodbines by the age of twelve and not even her employer discouraged her.   Old Nan’s only comment revolved around her own disappointment that even having a grandchild working in the trade did not seem to afford her cheaper prices and she would have expected at least the courtesy of a substantial drop in price for her own Hearts of Oak and Rizla papers.  It only confirmed her opinion that Big Elsie was a Tight Arsed Mare if ever there was one.

Much as I deplored the money that smoking of any kind seemed to be able to scoop up I did not at this stage seriously consider giving up which was a pity because it might have then been considerably easier than it proved to be later.    It certainly had not brought the glamour into my life that it seemed to promise and I was still not getting the invitations to glitzy events that I had once hoped for.  Neither had it brought handsome young men in sheepskin coats with names like Damon or Nico into my orbit.   I longed for men knee deep in invitations to film premieres who regularly dined at The Ivy and spent summers in the South of France.  They failed to cross my path, however, and there were times when I wished I had not launched into smoking with quite as much enthusiasm.

I was clearly destined to spend more time by myself so when the most alluring advertising campaign for Strand cigarettes hit the small screens of the Home Counties I certainly found it reassuring.  The ads showed a Frank Sinatra look-alike in trilby hat and trench coat wandering rain swept streets and despite his good looks and sex appeal remarkably alone.   I made serious attempts to read the novels of Camus and Sartre – not altogether successfully, and began to save for a proper trench coat.   And naturally enough I changed immediately to Strand, the cigarette that displayed for all the world to witness that existential angst was bearable; just as long as you chose Strand for your smoking pleasure.  Meanwhile Cliff Adams’ evocative Lonely Man theme reached the charts and the man in the trench coat became an immediate icon of Really Cool and the sale of similar rainy weather wear increased.  

But what should have been an all-round successful advertising campaign turned out to have a twist in its tail.   At that time smoking was most definitely considered a very sociable activity and being alone enough to have to be consoled, propped up even by a particular cigarette brand was suddenly seen as socially disastrous.   No matter what impressionable young women like me might have thought, sales somewhat astonishingly all at once evaporated and the cigarette itself was withdrawn without comment.   But somewhere along the line of progress towards commercial disaster, the ad campaign had hijacked enough aspects of existentialism to turn that corner of philosophy into a joke which festered largely unrecognised by people like me who were beginning to find coffee houses intellectually exciting if they attracted bearded young men in black polo necks clutching copies of paperbacks with titles like Sartre’s Concept of Freedom.

  The Strand advertising image had been extraordinarily powerful and had touched a raw nerve in the public psyche.    I ditched the trench coat idea and looked around for a duffel coat.  I also began to knit a black sweater and decided to take an interest in modern art.    I had already changed to menthol cigarettes because all the advertising assured me they were unbelievably healthy.