Up to Snuff

Without a doubt, my favorite movie is Secondhand Lions, a movie that could have only been made in Texas.  I like this movie so much that I have forgiven Michael Caine for imitation Texas/Cockney accent.  According to Caine, the secret to talking like a Texan was “to let the words lean on each other”.

Note.  Yes, I have a Texas accent.  I prefer to believe that after decades of education--not to mention having given over 6000 lectures--my Texas accent only comes out when I tell stories or jokes.  The reality is that I’m probably kidding myself.  A few years ago, I started the semester in one of my history classes by going over the syllabus for five minutes, then launching into the first lecture.  At the end of the lecture, I asked the class if there were any questions.  A young female exchange student from Japan politely asked in an impeccable British accent, “Will you ever be teaching in English?”

There is a scene in the movie, in which Robert Duvall gives a young Haley Joel Osment his first—and probably last—taste of a pinch of Beechnut chewing tobacco.  The rest of the scene shows a bent-over Osment imitating a wing-flapping chicken as he pukes his guts out.  

Been there, done that.

My experience wasn’t with chewing tobacco—it involved a brown glass bottle with a real cork, containing Levi Garret Scotch Snuff.  I don’t remember how old I was, but it was definitely before I started school.  Periodically, my father would take me to his grocery store where I was put to work sweeping the produce department and prying bubble gum off the floor with a single-edged razor blade.  (Yes, I know—children shouldn’t be allowed to use razor blades.  Back then, we must have been smarter than children today.  I also walked to school past a field that held a half dozen buffalo and never once felt an urge to climb the fence and try to pet one.)

One of the men who worked in the produce department used snuff, taking a pinch and deeply inhaling it.  I think I was more impressed with his ability pull the cork out of the bottle with his teeth more than with the actual dipping snuff followed by the inevitable sneeze.  In any case, I just had to try snuff for myself.  As soon as he left the back room where I was sweeping, I located the forbidden brown jar and helped myself to a generous amount that I snorted deeply into my lungs.

Almost immediately, I felt like someone had just inflated a basketball inside my head.   I accomplished a minor medical miracle by simultaneously sneezing and vomiting at the same time.  Each time my head went down, my elbows went up behind my back, and I choked out what was left of my breakfast.  Finally exhausted, I just sat on the concrete floor and let the tears run down my face while, I tried to breathe again.  I’ve never, ever been tempted to try any other form of snuff or chewing tobacco since that day more than six decades ago.  There are some lessons (like peeing on an electric fence or working with a single-edged razor blade) that no boy has ever had to learn twice.

I was reminded of my brief encounter with snuff by studying art.  You would not believe the number of elaborately jeweled or hand-painted snuff boxes displayed in the world’s art museums.  If you go to the online index of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are just under 6000 entries.  It seems that every 18th and 19th century member of royalty collected, gifted, and occasionally stole elaborate snuff boxes.  And as a historian, I wanted to know how all this got started.

The indigenous people of Brazil were the first to produce snuff.  Tobacco leaves were finely ground up with a rosewood mortar and pestle to produce a fine powdered tobacco that could be inhaled.  These same people were also the first to produce a form of snuff box—actually a wood-stoppered tube made from bone—to keep the tobacco from drying out and losing the delicate rosewood aroma.  

The use of this finely ground tobacco spread across Central and South America and on the second voyage of Columbus, a Franciscan friar traded with the Taino and Carib natives for some of the tobacco, which he brought back to Spain.  The Spanish Crown, eager to make money, quickly established a monopoly on the product and established the Real Fábrica de Tabacos (Royal Tobacco Factory) in Seville.  The king’s snuff factory quickly grew in size to become the second largest building in Spain.  Obviously, tobacco quickly became popular.

By 1563, Jean Nicot, whose name was given to nicotine, a French diplomat discovered the joys of snuff while stationed in Lisbon.  The ambassador not only wrote of the great medicinal properties of ground tobacco, but he convinced Catherine de Medici that it was a wonder drug capable of curing her persistent migraines.  She was so impressed that she decreed that  (the Queen’s Herb).

The name didn’t take off, but the use of the tobacco certainly did.  With the influential blessing of Catherine, the use of powdered tobacco became a royal fad across Europe.  Part of the appeal, of course, was that it was both exotic and expensive.  By 1560, it reached Flanders where it acquired the name “snuff.”   It won’t surprise you to learn that the word comes from the Dutch “snuffen,” which means to “sniff.”

Ironically, powdered tobacco was never used by Native Americans in North America.  It was introduced to North America by John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas.  While never very popular among the ordinary colonists, like in Europe, it became popular with the wealthy and aristocrats.  It was not until the Great Plague of London (1665-6) that the use of snuff became popular with ordinary people.  The widespread belief that using snuff would provide medical relief from a host of medical ailments soon spread fromEngland across Europe.

With the popularity of snuff in both of the two great trading nations of the day, the English and the Dutch, the use of snuff quickly spread to Africa, China, and Japan.  And everywhere that snuff went, so did snuff boxes.  Once snuff has dried out, it becomes harsh and loses whatever aroma has been added to it.  By the 17th century, you could purchase snuff scented with everything from whiskey to chocolate.  

To keep the snuff from drying out, it was stored in large containers called “mulls”.  Traditionally, the best mulls were ram’s horns decorated with silver, but frequently, snuff was stored in boxes much like a cigar humidors.  An apple slice or a damp cloth kept in the container ensured the tobacco would not dry out.  Every morning a quantity of snuff sufficient for the day was transferred from the mull to a small airtight snuff box.

It did not take long for those individual snuff boxes to become highly decorated gold or silver works of art that were decorated with jewels.  The presentation of these ornate snuff boxes became a prominent display of wealth and prestige by nobility.  Denied the option of  compensating for sexual inadequacy by purchasing either an expensive sports car or a massive pickup truck, the rich could pay a small fortune for a jewel-encrusted box of snuff.

Frederic the Great, for example, became a enthusiastic snuff taker.  When a snuff box deflected a bullet during battle, he became an ardent collector of snuff boxes.  After his death, one of those fabulously expensive boxes became the property of, first the Romanovs, then of the Communist government.  When the Russians were desperate for cash, the box was sold at auction and then passed through several hands until it was purchased by Queen Mary of England, the wife of King George V.  (Yes, there were a lot of Kings named George, so let me make it easy for you, these were the grandmother and grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, the mother of the current King Charles III.)

By the beginning of the 19th century, it seemed like everyone of note was using snuff.  Pope Urban VIII was so angry at parishioners using snuff during services that he banned the use of snuff on church grounds and threatened to excommunicate users.  A century later, Pope Benedict repealed the ban and encouraged the use for medical purposes.  Queen Charlotte was such an enthusiastic user that she converted a room at Windsor Castle into her personal tobacco storeroom.  The people of England privately referred to her as “Snuffy Charlotte”.  Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were all snuff users.  And at the battle of Waterloo, both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington dipped snuff while they observed the battle.  

By the 20th century, the use of snuff was…well…being snuffed out.  The rise in cigarette smoking all but eliminated the use of snuff.  While my father’s grocery store sold the brown bottle of snuff that I had sampled, today snuff is available only from specialty tobacco stores.  

While I was researching the history of snuff boxes, I found dozens of fascinating stories about who used them, who gifted whom a box, or how much they spent for a tiny airtight box.  I can’t end this without one more story.

After smoking became common in England, the clouds of dense smoke in the House of Commons became so annoying that smoking within the chamber was banned in 1693.  The ministers, however continued to use tobacco in the form of snuff.  A special floral-scented snuff, English Rose, was kept by the door in a communal snuff box.  During World War II, the Palace of Westminster was the target of a German bombing raid.  While Westminster Hall suffered little damage due to a strong medieval timber roof, the House of Commons was destroyed by fire.  When it was rebuilt, Winston Churchill gifted the chamber with a new communal snuff box, made from the salvaged timber of the old hall.  It is still kept full of snuff, at the personal expense of the doorkeeper, but has not been used by a member in several decades.  When a member of the Green Party recently tried to have the box removed, noting that since 2006 it has been illegal to publicly offer free tobacco, his request was denied since Westminster is still technically a royal palace, thus exempt from acts of Parliament.  

The U.S. House of Representatives, with no appreciation of tradition much less a sense of humor, got rid of both its communal snuff box and its spittoons back in 1914.  The Senate, composed of more somber members, still maintains itsp spittoons and the two snuff boxes installed by Vice-President Millard Fillmore 175 years ago, one for Democrats and one for Republicans.