Book Info: Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar-Smokers

William Clarke’s 1833 Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar-Smokers was intended to teach the younger generations how to smoke and enjoy cigars. He relates that they “don’t know a good cigar from a bad one; they paw the beauties in a box as though they hadn’t the use of their eyes…Some of them light the wrong end; many of them impiously bite off the twist; and most of them smoke two-thirds of the right side of a cigar before a spark of fire has touched the left.”¹

Some of what he says in this book holds up for a modern reader, but most of it comes across as simply bizarre to today’s cigar smokers. His rules, paraphrased, are the following:

1. Choose good cigars. He recommends smokers “try their flavour on the palate of your nasal feature.”² Avoid cigars that are too hard or too soft – they should yield a bit when squeezed.
2. Smaller cigars smoke more pleasantly than bigger cigars
3. A finer texture on the leaf means a milder cigar. He cautions against thinking color determines quality or strength. And also this: “The alleged superiority of speckled cigars is all fiddle-de-dee!”³
4. Don’t buy wet cigars.
5. Before lighting the cigar, “moisten the cigar lightly and delicately with your tongue: pass your finger gently round it”⁴
6. Light your cigar evenly. Using an open flame will not light it evenly, so use “camel’s-dung, tobacco-tinder, charcoal, or any of the usual flameless steady-burning materials”⁵
7. Don’t use a tube or mouthpiece to smoke your cigar.
8. Keep the twist on the cap of your cigar when smoking.
9. When you start smoking your cigar and are getting the draw right, “put full one half or two thirds of it into your mouth.”⁶ Once the draw has opened up, put just enough into your mouth that it creates a seal.
10. He doesn’t remove a cigar from his mouth while he smokes it, but if you must remove it, remove it with your fingers rather than some sort of instrument.
11. Don’t light a cigar twice. But should “the lady-love of your lips, accidentally breathe her last unnoticed, meddle not with her corpse – don’t be a Vampire!”⁷
12. Never drink anything while smoking.

Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar-Smokers is in the public domain and can be read for free on Google Books.

1. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. vi [↩]
2. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. 7 [↩]
3. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. 11 [↩]
4. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. 13 [↩]
5. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pgs. 15 & 16 [↩]
6. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. 24 [↩]
7. William Clarke, Twelve Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers, 1833, pg. 28 [↩]