The most highly-dressed and splendid hookah was prepared for me. I tried it, but did not like it. As after several trials I still found it disagreeable, I with much gravity requested to know whether it was indispensably necessary that I should become a smoker, which was answered with equal gravity, ‘Undoubtedly it is, for you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Here everybody uses a hookah, and it is impossible to get on without’…..[I] have frequently heard men declare they would much rather be deprived of their dinner than their hookah.

(1918) Memoirs of William Hickey, Vol. II, London: Hurst & Blackett, p. 136.