> DRY DRUNK

QUESTIONS OF GENDER

As tobacco "drinking" gained popularity, it began to appear with increasing frequency in literature and the visual arts, presented sometimes as new and fashionably sophisticated, but more often as a dubious activity, linked to the lower, libidinous classes, be they sailors, peasants, or workmen. If it gradually became de rigueur for a respectable man to smoke, women remained steadfastly on the margins of recreational tobacco use. The early explorers unanimously reported that even in native American cultures women used little or no tobacco, and in the rare 17th- and 18th-century images that depict a European woman with a pipe, she tends to be of unsavory character. The activity of smoking or even just holding a pipe was suggestive of a variety of character traits, supplying machismo to the sailor or hunter, and sophistication to the gentleman. On the other hand, the woman who smoked was consistently labeled as sexually promiscuous or otherwise disreputable. The verb "to pipe" continues to have lewd connotations in languages such as French and Dutch, adding further support to this perception of the masculine, carnal implications of smoking.

The earliest examples in this section clearly reinforce this stereotype, but here, as in other genres, the situation modified in the 18th century. A more even-handed sense of humor took over, so that a rustic husband and wife smoking together look equally ridiculous and, moreover, singularly out of sync with their libidinous sides. When George Woodward dreamed up his ironic women's club in 1792, responding, no doubt, to the proliferation of gentlemen's clubs in his day, and giving, in his book at least, separate but equal rights to the grandes dames of the age, he included among the official rules of the club the decree that all fines be expended in snuff, perhaps a slightly more ladylike means of consumption, but still within a preeminently gentlemanly sanctuary.

29
George M. Woodward (British, 1760–1809)
The Rights of Women (Portrait of Judith Tyler, President of the Society)
Etching and aquatint in his: Elements of Bacchus; or, Toasts and Sentiments, Given by Distinguished Characters. London: William Holland, 1792
Print Collection, Cadwalader Fund

According to Woodward, "this Book is solely intended to promote Mirth and Good-Humour," accomplished with a series of pseudo-portraits of "the Bon[s] Vivants of this Kingdom." Although women's and mixed-sex clubs did exist in England, they were purportedly not quite like men's clubs, with stricter rules, and all-powerful patronesses –witness the intimidating Mrs. Tyler. Besides dictating that "all fines . . . be expended in snuff," the rules of this women's club also forbid anything "of the Male kind to be admitted, on any account whatever"; each lady was allowed one bottle after dinner, "before the general discourse concerning Politics takes place."

30
Crispijn II de Passe (Dutch, 1597–ca. 1670)
A London merchant and his wife
Engraving in his: Les Abus du Mariage [The abuses of marriage]. N.p., 1641
Spencer Collection

While in late 18th-century England there was room to joke about female tobacco consumption, if a middle-class married woman of the 1640s was seen with a tobacco pipe, the implication was that she was cuckolding her husband. The pipe provided yet another way of setting a household upside down, and giving an aggressive woman the upper hand. The trilingual text informs the viewer that, while her merchant husband works hard to earn their keep, Mistris D meets with her lover on the Thames.

31
Unidentified (French, 2nd half 17th century?)
A woman smoking a pipe in an inn
mounted inside:
Michiel Mousyn (Dutch, b. ca. 1630, active in Paris)
after Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout (Dutch, 1621–1674)
Oval ornamental frame
Two engravings in a collection of ornament prints, n.d.
Print Collection, Kennedy Fund

The heat of passion is implicated in the act of the prostitute lighting her pipe in the pot of coals being proffered by her client. The collage effect –the tavern scene was trimmed to size and pasted into the ornamental frame –acts as a reminder that prints were used in a variety of ways in the past. Although the prints in this album principally show the variety of ornament available to the artist, craftsman, or collector, in this case, the elaborate frame has a more immediate practical application.

32
Cornelis Bega (Dutch, 1620–1664)
Woman smoking a pipe
Etching, n.d.
Print Collection

33
Cornelis Bega (Dutch, 1620–1664)
Amorous couple
Etching, n.d.
Print Collection, Samuel Isham Collection

Seventeenth-century Dutch artists were masters at representing themes of love in seemingly everyday settings. The relaxed couple, with their supply of gin and tobacco, is a good example of the low end of this specialty. The image of the leering lone woman smoker, with her bottle of gin and supply of tobacco in its paper beside her, is packed with suggestive details placing her outside the realm of respectability, as a rather too independent –i.e., masculine –woman.

34
Francesco Bartolozzi (Italian, active in Britain, 1727–1815)
after Barker (British, last quarter 18th century)
The woodman
Color stipple engraving with additional hand-coloring, n.d.
Print Collection, Cadwalader Fund

The woodsman-hunter, accompanied by his attentive if somewhat wild-looking dog, presents the other end of the gender spectrum: masculinity, enhanced by the pipe, in an earthy woodsman, who epitomizes the term.

35
James Gillray (British, 1757–1815)
Matins at D-wn-ng College, Cambridge
Hand-colored etching, published by Hannah Humphrey, March 28, 1810
Arents Tobacco Collection

Sir Busick Harwood, professor of anatomy at Cambridge, a "bon-vivant, very witty, and very licentious in conversation," lies in bed with his corpulent wife, both of them puffing away, framed as if on stage by the bed curtains. The note on the edge of the bed near the professor suggests that he is not well –is this his healthy morning pipe, or the cause of his illness? The wife's corpulence, coupled with her furious smoking of the pipe and the intense, frightened look cast upon her by her husband, combine to give her a rather fierce look. The print was, incidentally, published by Gillray's customary –female –publisher.

36
Abraham Allard (Dutch, ca. 1676–1725)
Zo luchtig als de rook licht Guurtje 't voetjen op [Light as smoke Guurtje raises her tiny foot]
Etching, ca. 1700
Print Collection, David McN. Stauffer Collection

According to the verse, sprightly old Guurtje dances lightly with her pipe in her hand, while her fiddle-playing partner, Klaas, prefers a more substantial mug of beer.