Leisurely

This illustration was taken from the series “La vie de jeune homme” (Bachelor’s life), which describes various situations that a single young man with a penchant for bohemianism could meet in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Here we have a young gentleman reclining and smoking a long, chibouk-like pipe, while his fiancée is reading in the background: women, of course, played a prominent part in that lifestyle and money came in a close second, or more accurately, the relentless pursuit of how much of it was necessary to spend the evening out. And tobacco was an essential prop.

The caption reads in the original French: Un roman nouveau, un jeune amour, une vieille pipe.