The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (3.1894)

Tobacco Clouds

By Lionel Johnson

LOUD upon cloud : and, if I were to think that an image of
life can he in wreathing, blue tobacco smoke, pleasant
were the life so fancied. Its fair changes in air, its gentle
motions, its quiet dying out and away at last, should symbolise
something more than perfect idleness. Cloud upon cloud : and I
will think, as I have said : it is amusing to think so.
It is that death, out and away upon the air, which charms me :
charms more than the manner of the blown red rose, full of dew
at morning, upon the grass at sunset. The clouds' end, their
death in air, fills me with a very beauty of desire; it has no
violence in it, and it is almost invisible. Think of it ! While
the cloud lived, it was seemly and various ; and with a graceful
change it passed away : the image of a reasonable life is there,
hanging among tobacco clouds. An image and a test : an image,
because elaborated by fancy : a true and appealing image, and so,
to my present way of life, a test.
That way is, to walk about the old city, with "a spirit in my
feet," as Shelley and Catullus have it, of joyous aims and energies ;
and to speed home to my solitary room over the steep High
Street; in an arm-chair, to read Milton and Lucretius, with
others. There is nothing unworthy in all this : there is open air,