Spurgeon's Love of Fine Cigars

Two Anecdotes about Spurgeon's Cigars
From William Williams, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Personal Reminiscences (London: The Religious Tract Society, n.d.), 30-32.

All the world knows that Mr. Spurgeon now and again enjoyed a cigar. Not a few caricatures represented him smoking a pipe, but he never used a pipe all the years I knew him. His shrewd reply to the gentleman who "had heard he smoked, but could not believe it to be true," and asked Mr. Spurgeon to satisfy him, is choice: "I cultivate my flowers and burn my weeds."

"Enjoying your 'bacca again, sir!" said old George, Mr. Spurgeon's tried and trusted servant, one day when his master was lighting a cigar.

"I can do without my 'bacca' a good deal easier than you can, George," said the master.

"I don't believe you can, sir."

"Very well, George, don't smoke again until I do."

"Agreed, sir."

A week passed—a fortnight. Poor old George was dying for his pipe. One was asked to intercede with the master that George might be allowed to have it.

"No, no!" said Mr. Spurgeon. "He made a bargain; let him stick to it."
Eventually George was allowed to smoke, but Mr. Spurgeon did not have a cigar for months after that. . . .

While Mr. Spurgeon was living at Nightingale Lane, Clapham, an excursion was one day organised by one of the young men's classes at the Tabernacle. The brake with the excursionists was to call for the President on their way to mid-Surrey.

It was a beautiful early morning, and the men arrived in high spirits, pipes and cigars alight, and looking forward to a day of unrestrained enjoyment. Mr. Spurgeon was ready waiting at the gate. He jumped up to the box-seat reserved for him, and looking round with an expression of astonishment, exclaimed:

"What, gentlemen! Are you not ashamed to be smoking so early?"

Here was a damper! Dismay was on every face. Pipes and cigars one by one failed and dropped out of sight.

When all had disappeared, out came the President's cigar-case. He lit up and smoked away serenely. The men looked at him astonished. "I thought you said you objected to smoking, Mr. Spurgeon?" one ventured.

"Oh no, I did not say I objected. I asked if they were not ashamed, and it appears they were, for they have all put their pipes away."

Amid laughter the pipes reappeared, and with puffs of smoke the party went on merrily.

The Daily Telegraph Scandal
Adapted from G. Holden Pike, The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 5 vols. (London: Cassel, n.d.), 5:138-40. Mr. Pike's full account of the incident is included here. We have embellished it by adding the complete text of Mr. Spurgeon's letter to the Daily Telegraph, the article from the Christian World, and W. M. Hutchings's reply to Spurgeon.

[In the autumn of 1874] a passage-at-arms on the subject of smoking occurred between Spurgeon and Dr. Pentecost. . . . The latter had been received as a brother preacher at the chapel and as a guest at Clapham. After visiting the Continent, the Tabernacle was revisited. "On this occasion Mr. Spurgeon invited him to divide the sermon, proposing that one should lay down the doctrine, and that the other should close by enforcing and illustrating the subject. With no thought beyond the illustration of the subject, Dr. Pentecost related his own struggle with the cigar. Mr. Spurgeon, as a smoker, made the application personal, and, when the brother sat down, immediately arose and combated what had been said."1 Perhaps the most graphic description of what took place within the Tabernacle, however, was given by a morning newspaper:—

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