From Chapter 8:
Parr is said on one occasion to have called for a pipe after taking a meal at a coaching-inn called the "Bush" at Bristol, when the waiter told him that smoking was not allowed at the Bush. Parr persisted, but the authorities at the inn were firm in their refusal to allow anything so vulgar as smoking on their premises, whereupon Parr is said to have exclaimed: "Why, man, I've smoked in the dining-room of every nobleman in England. The Duchess of Devonshire said I could smoke in every room in her house but her dressing-room, and here, in this dirty public-house of Bristol you forbid smoking! Amazing! Bring me my bill." The learned doctor exaggerated no doubt as regards the facilities given him for smoking; for it was his overbearing way not to ask for leave to smoke, but to smoke wherever he went, whether invited to do so or not; but the story shows the prejudice against smoking which was found in many places as a result of the attitude of the fashionable world towards tobacco.

From Chapter 7:
It seems to have been taken for granted that country parsons smoked. smoking was universal among their male parishioners from the squire to the labourer (when he could afford it), so that it was only natural that the parson, with little to do, and in those days not too much inclination to do it, should be as fond of his pipe as the rest of the world around him. In a World of 1756 there is an account of a country gentleman entertaining one evening the vicar of the parish, and the host as a matter of course proceeds to order a bottle of wine with pipes and tobacco to be placed on the table. The vicar forthwith "filled his pipe, and drank very cordially to my friend," his host. One cannot doubt that Laurence Sterne, that most remarkable of country parsons, smoked. His "My Uncle Toby" is among the immortals, and Toby without his pipe is unimaginable.

From Chapter 11:
Tobacco-smoking was advancing victoriously all along the line. Absurd old conventions and ridiculous restrictions had to give way or were broken through in every direction. The compartments for smokers on railway trains, at first provided sparsely and grudgingly, became more and more numerous. The practice of smoking out of doors, which the early Victorians held in particular abhorrence, became common—at least so far as cigars and cigarettes were concerned. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose memory covered so large a part of the nineteenth century, said, in the "Leaves" from her note-book which was published in 1907, that to smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable; while smoking anywhere with a lady would, in the earlier days, have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime. The first gentleman of whom Lady Dorothy heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told her spoke of it as if she had been present at an earthquake! Pipes were (and are) still looked at askance in many places where the smoking of cigars and cigarettes is freely allowed, and fashion frowned on the pipe in street or Park.

From Chapter 11:
Of the other great Victorian poets Morris was a pipe-smoker, and so was Rossetti. Browning also smoked, but not, I think, a pipe. Swinburne, on the other hand, detested tobacco, and expressed himself on the subject with characteristic extravagance and vehemence—"James I was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward. But I love him, I worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh who invented this filthy smoking!" Professor Blackie, in a letter to his wife, remarked: "The first thing I said on entering the public room was—'What a delightful thing the smell of tobacco is, in a warm room on a wet night!' ... I gave my opinion with great decision that tobacco, whisky and all such stimulants or sedatives, had their foundation in nature, could not be abolished, or rather should not, and must be content with the check of a wise regulation. Even pious ladies were fond of tea, which, taken in excess, was worse for the nerves than a glass of sherry."