My Lady Nicotine by J. M. Barrie is a novel about a man's first love. The love as can be told by the title is not for a woman but for tobacco more particularly a specific blend of it. The story is mostly about his days of youth when he meets with a group of friends to smoke their Arcadia blend of tobacco which they consider the greatest thing in the universe. In many ways the story is less about tobacco and more about the ideas of victorian England and the way that a group of guys could get together to discuss things and enjoy life. While the Arcadia blend is what ties the friends together most of the story is what they do or see when they are together. There are of course many simularities in the style between this book and the Little White Bird by the same author. Both deal with single bachelors who spend much of their time in idleness with close friends who share the same vices while being watched over by lesser people who are only fit to be servants. The elements of his nephews visit also bears an earie simularity to his own games with his stepchildren. I found after reading the book a desire to have a deep friendship with others like the books characters have with each other. Though it is a fictional work I have seen the same thing happen in friends that I know who smoke who seem to have an attachment to others who they smoke with. Although I would never smoke as I know enough of the damaging aspects of the hobby I can easily see the attraction in having groups around who I can experience life with. Overall it was a pleasant book which is very much British and very much victorian.
About the Author: Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 - 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland but moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a "fairy play" about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. Although he continued to write successfully, Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, and is credited with popularising the name Wendy. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June 1913, and a member of the Order of Merit in the 1922 New Year Honours. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.