By the 18^th Century, the association between women and cigars was firmly established. In America and as well as Europe, men and women smoked cigars in equal numbers. In 1735,

Englishman John Cockburn observed during his travels in Costa Rica that, "These gentlemen gave us some seegars [which] are leaves of tobacco rolled up in such a manner that they serve both for a pipe and for tobacco itself. These the ladies, as well as gentlemen, are very fond of smoking." On the other side of the world, an engraving published in Amsterdam showed women and girls stemming and twisting tobacco into cigars by 1745.

Credit for bringing quality cigars to the American colonies goes to Colonel Israel Putnam, a Connecticut Yankee, who accompanied the British military on an unsuccessful expedition into Cuba in 1762. Colonel Putnam learned a few tricks from this foray that served him well in later years. First of all, he figured out how to fight the British at their own game. He became a general during the American Revolution, leading the rag-tag colonists against his former companions in arms, the British redcoats. Second, and perhaps most importantly, when he returned from Cuba, he brought back as many Havana cigars as he could pack on the backs of three donkeys.

Before long the farmers of Connecticut were attempting to grow Cuban tobacco from seed. Tobacco was not new to Connecticut; the Connecticut colonists, like the Native Americans before them, had been growing it for years. But the quality of the tobacco just couldn’t compare with the cigars from Havana. Cuban tobacco seeds never did take hold in the Nutmeg State, although Connecticut-grown leaf continues to be some of the best wrapper tobacco in the world.

It took a woman, of course, to get the fledgling American cigar-making industry rolling. Back in 1801, the wife of a Connecticut farmer named Prout took exception to her husband’s business practices. Farmer Prout used to ship his tobacco to the West Indies where it was rolled into cigars, repacked onto ships, and hauled back North hundreds of miles for resale in Connecticut. Mistress Prout knew an opportunity when she saw it. To save all that shipping and hauling, she reportedly hired a group of neighborhood women who got together and began rolling the cigars themselves. Her ingenuity paid off, and by 1870, Connecticut had 235 cigar factories.

According to cigar historians, there is little evidence that women thought twice about smoking cigars before the 19^th Century. If they liked it, they smoked; it was as simple as that. Capitalizing on the provocative connection between women and cigars, one Cuban manufacturer placed a voluptuous Latin woman on the cover of its box of Havanas, meanwhile fueling the rumors that its cigars were made by young women who rolled the tobacco on their thighs. By the middle of the Century, however, Victorian sensibilities supplanted common sense and quite a few eyebrows were raised by when a woman lit up.

British author, Charles Dickens, told of this unnerving encounter during a tour of Switzerland in 1846. As Dickens and his daughters settled in for a delightful evening in the lobby of a posh hotel, they were joined by "an American lady" and her 16-year-old daughter. In due time the hotel staff "brought out a cigar-box, and gave me a cigar, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. When I lighted my cigar, [the American] daughter lighted hers at mine; leaned against the mantelpiece, laughed and talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I ever beheld…[the] American lady immediately lighted hers; and in five minutes the room was a cloud of smoke…the daughter played [cards] for the next hour or two with a cigar continually in her mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked six or eight." How dreadfully shocking for the dear man!

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was notorious for her disapproval of smoking. Legend has it that those who dared light up in Windsor Castle were compelled to face the hearth so that they could blow their smoke up the chimney. Smoking around the Queen was banned, even for her son, the Prince of Wales. When the Prince, by now well into his sixties, was finally crowned King Edward VII, years of pent up frustration were vented with one of his first proclamations: "Gentlemen, you may smoke."

The discomfort with women smoking cigars inevitably spread to America. By 1877, an editorial cartoon in the magazine Illustrated Weekly showed a "lady" seated next to her husband in the smoking car of a train. As she demurely puffs on a cigar, she draws the attention of a stern-faced conductor who approaches the husband with a scowl and the admonition to make his wife cease and desist. Once they took hold, 19^th Century gender assumptions about women and tobacco endured for decades.

Only the artistic set seemed inured to public prejudices. In France, author George Sand (a.k.a. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin - pictured to the left), adopted the cigar as part of her mystique. She defied convention for much of her long and varied career by assuming a masculine pen name, wearing men’s clothing, and smoking cigars. Her affairs with composer Frederic Chopin and poet Alfred de Musset were notorious, but her lifestyle only enhanced her popularity. While her novels, written between 1832 and 1876, seem sentimental and dated today, her musings on cigars remain eloquent and timeless: "A cigar numbs sorrows and fills the solitary hours with a million gracious images….For me, cigar smoking is part of the ritual of the fine art of living."

George Sand was but one of many 19^th century female writers with a penchant for good cigars. Her compatriot, French novelist Colette, was rumored to smoke cigars in bed. Biographer and poet, Amy Lowell, reportedly scandalized Harvard when she lit up a cigar during a visit to that Ivy League campus. Both Gertrude Stein (famous for her quote, "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," and her friendship with Ernest Hemmingway, Matisse and Picasso) and Virginia Woolf (author of A Room of One’s Own) loved a good cigar.

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