"'It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men
[Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham
House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the
highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds
and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the
distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.'" This is a pure
"effort of the fancy" so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned.
Shakespeare's absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that
he smoked; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house
had, as Aubrey tells us, "a little turret that looked into and over
the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any
in the world"; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the
noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of
that pleasant turret.

The only mention made of tobacco by Raleigh himself occurs in a
testamentary note made a little while before his execution in 1618.
Referring to the tobacco remaining on his ship after his last voyage,
he wrote: "Sir Lewis Stukely sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of
which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also
a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself ... I desire that
hee may give his account for the tobacco." As showing how closely Sir
Walter's name was associated with it long after his death, Dr.
Brushfield quotes the following entry from the diary of the great Earl
of Cork: "Sept. 1, 1641. Sent by Travers to my infirme cozen Roger
Vaghan, a pott of Sir Walter Raleighes tobackoe."

In the Wallace Collection at Hertford House is a pouch or case
labelled as having belonged to and been used by Sir Walter Raleigh.
This pouch contains several clay pipes. It was perhaps this same pouch