[see quot. 1844.]
1. Tobacco softened and pressed into solid cakes.
1839. (in a file of prices of Messrs. Grant, Chambers, & Co., London, of this date. It is not in their circular of 1824).
1843. Hints to Freshmen (Oxford), 8. He has smoked Cavendish tobacco under the steadfast impression that it was ‘the mildest Turkey.’
1844. Anstie, in Rep. Comm. (Ho. of Commons) Tobacco Trade Q., 33. ‘Cavendish’ is a species of tobacco reckoned by the Excise under the general denomination of Roll…. I suppose the name is taken from the name of the maker in America. I know of no other reason for the name.
1879. F. Harrison, Choice Bks. (1886), 70. Men … read it … daily, just as they smoke cavendish.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 June, 6/1. The cakes are then submitted to hydraulic pressure, and in the end a substance is obtained of great solidity, and which cuts like black marble. This is the cavendish which army men, artists, and others affect.
2. Assumed name of the author (H. Jones) of a treatise on Whist (1862); often used allusively.
1878. H. H. Gibbs, in B. Price, Pract. Pol. Econ., App. 510. Your are like a man having his ‘Cavendish’ at his fingers’ ends, who sits down to play a rubber without seeing his cards.
