From Chapter 2: It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about
smoking in the presence of ladies. Gostanzo, in Chapman's "All Fools," 1605, says:
And for discourse in my fair mistress's presence
I did not, as you barren gallants do,
Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco.
And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date, gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing
of tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.
When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.
From Chapter 8: In the first two or three decades of the nineteenth century
smoking reached its nadir. No dandy smoked. If some witnesses may be believed
smoking had almost died out even at Oxford. Archdeacon Denison wrote in his "Memories"—"When I went up to Oxford, 1823-24, there were two things unknown in Christ Church, and I believe very generally in Oxford—
smoking and slang"; but one cannot help fancying that the archdeacon's memory was not quite trustworthy. It is difficult to imagine that there was ever a time when the slang of the day was not current on the lips of young Oxford, or that so long as tobacco was procurable it did not find its way into college rooms.