In this country old customs linger long, and although the age of snuffing has passed away, in some quarters the piquant pinch still finds favour. Our ancient municipal corporations have been reformed, but old usages are still maintained and revived. In 1896 we saw an account in the newspapers of an amusing episode which occurred during a meeting of the Pontefract Town Council. One of the aldermen, noticing that the councillors had “to go borrowing” snuff, suggested the re-introduction of the old Corporation snuff-box. The official box, in the shape of an antler, was unearthed from underneath the aldermanic bench amidst much amusement, and the Mayor promised ere another sitting the article in question should be duly cleaned and replenished with the stimulating powder. Sir Albert K. Rollit, the learned and genial member of Parliament for South Islington, when Mayor of his native town of Hull a few years ago, presented to his brother members of the Corporation a massive and valuable snuff-box. The gift was much appreciated. In a compilation recently published under the title of “The Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office, &c., of the Cities and Towns of England and Wales,” will be found particulars of snuff-boxes belonging to some of the older municipal bodies. In bygone times taking snuff was extremely popular, its palmy days in England being during the eighteenth century. Snuff was praised in poetry and prose. Peer and peasant, rich and poor, the lady in her drawing-room and the humble housewife alike enjoyed the pungent pinch. The snuff-box was to be seen everywhere.

The earliest allusion we have to snuffing occurs in the narrative of the second voyage of Columbus in 1494. It is there related by Roman Pane, the friar, who accompanied the expedition, that the aborigines of America reduced tobacco to a powder, and drew it through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they placed in the nose and the other upon the powder. He also stated that it purged them very much.

Snuff and other forms of tobacco on their introduction had many bitter opponents. After the Great Plague the popularity of tobacco and snuff increased, for during the time of the terrible visitation both had been largely used as disinfectants. There is a curious entry in Thomas Hearne’s Diary, 1720-21, bearing on this theme. He writes as follows under date of January 21:—“I have been told that in the last great plague in London none that kept tobacconists’ shops had the plague. It is certain that smoaking was looked upon as a most excellent preservative. In so much that even children were obliged to smoak. And I remember that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was yeoman beadle, say that when he was that year when the plague raged a schoolboy at Eton, all the boys in the school were obliged to smoak in the school every morning, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking.” Pepys says in his Diary on June 7, 1665:—“The hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that to my remembrance I ever saw. It put me into ill-conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell and chew, which took apprehension.” Another impetus to the habit of snuff-taking was given in 1702. Our Fleet was under the command of Sir George Rooke, and it is recorded that at Port Saint Mary, near Cadiz, several thousand barrels of choice Spanish snuff were captured. At Vigo on the homeward voyage more native snuff was obtained, and found its way to England, instead of the Spanish market, as it was originally intended. The snuff was sold at the chief English ports for the benefit of the officers and men. In not a few instances waggon-loads were disposed of at fourpence per pound. It was named Vigo snuff, and the popularity of the ware, its cheapness, and novelty were the means of its coming into general use. In no part of the world did it become and remain more popular than in North Britain. A volume published in London in 1702, entitled “A Short Account of Scotland,” without the author’s name, but apparently by a military officer, contains some interesting information on the social life of the people. We gather from this work that the chief stimulant of the Scotch at this period was snuff. “They are fond of tobacco,” it is stated, “but more from the sneesh-box [snuff-box] than the pipe. And they made it so necessary that I have heard some of them say that, should their bread come in competition with it, they would rather fast than their sneesh should be taken away. Yet mostly it consists of the coarsest tobacco, dried by the fire, and pounded in a little engine after the form of a tap, which they carry in their pockets, and is both a mill to grind and a box to keep it in.” At social gatherings the snuff-mull was constantly passed round, and we are told that each guest left traces of its use on the table, on his knees, the folds of his dress, and on the floor. The preacher’s voice was impaired with excessive indulgence in snuff.

Long before the English visitor had written his book on Scotland, attempts had been made to prohibit snuff-taking in church. At the Kirk Session of St. Cuthbert’s, held on June 18, 1640, it was decided that every snuff-taker in church be amerced in “twenty shillings for everie falt.” Under date of April 11, 1641, it is stated in the Kirk Session records of Soulton as follows:—“Statute with consent of the ministers and elders, that every one that takes snuff in tyme of Divine Service shall pay 6s. 8d., and give one public confession of his fault.” At Dunfermline, the Kirk Session had this matter under consideration, and the bellman was directed “to tak notice of those who tak the sneising tobacco in tyme of Divine Service, and to inform concerning them.” A writer in a popular periodical, in a chapter on “The Divine Weed,” makes a mistake, we think, presuming people smoked in church in bygone days. “At one period in the history of tobacco,” says the contributor, “smoking was so common that it was actually practised in church.” Previous to the visit of James the First to the University of Cambridge, in 1615, the Vice-Chancellor issued a notice to the students, which enjoined that “Noe graduate, scholler, or student of this Universitie presume to take tobacco in Saint Marie’s Church, uppon payne of finall expellinge the Universitie.” The taking of tobacco doubtless means using it in the form of snuff and not smoking it in a pipe.

Later, and perhaps at the period under notice, a strong feeling prevailed against smoking in the public streets. In the records of the Methwold Manor, Norfolk, is an entry in the court books dated October 4, 1659, as follows:—“Wee agree that any person that is taken smookeing tobacco in the street, forfeit one shilling for every time so taken, and it shall be put to the uses aforesaid (that is to the use of the towne). We present Nicholas Barber for smoking in the street, and do amerce him one shilling.” At a parish meeting held at Winteringham, on January 6, 1685, it was resolved:—“None shall smoke tobacco in the streets upon paine of two shillings for every default.” Schoolmasters were forbidden to smoke. In the rules of Chigwell School, founded in 1629, only fourteen years after the visit of James to Cambridge, it is stated:—“The master must be a man of sound religion, neither Papist nor Puritan, of a grave behaviour, and sober and honest conversation, no tippler, or haunter of alehouses, and no puffer of tobacco.”

We may come to the conclusion from the facts we have furnished, that if persons were not permitted to smoke in the street, it is quite certain they would not be allowed to do so in the house of prayer.

Preachers of all sections of the religious world delighted in a pinch of snuff. Sneezing was heard in the highest and humblest churches, and it even made St. Peter’s at Rome echo. The practice so excited the ire of Pope Innocent the Twelfth that he made an effort in 1690 to stop it in his churches, and “solemnly excommunicated all who should dare to take snuff.” Tyerman, in his “Life of Wesley,” tells us the great trouble the famous preacher had with his early converts. “Many of them were absolutely enslaved to snuff; some drank drams, &c., to remedy such evils, the preachers were enjoined on no account to take snuff, or to drink drams themselves; and were to speak to any one they saw snuffing in sermon time, and to answer the pretence that drams cured the colic and helped digestion.” Mr. Wesley cautioned a preacher going to Ireland against snuff, unless by order of a physician, declaring that no people were in such blind bondage to the silly, nasty, dirty custom as were the Irish. It is stated so far did Irishmen carry their love of snuffing, that it was customary, when a wake was on, to put a plate full of snuff upon the dead man’s, or woman’s stomach, from which each guest was expected to take a pinch upon being introduced to the corpse.

In the earlier days of snuff-taking, people generally ground their own snuff by rubbing roll tobacco across a small grater, usually fixed inside the snuff-box. We find in old-time writings many allusions to making snuff from roll tobacco. In course of time snuff was flavoured with rich essences, and scented snuffs found favour with the ladies. The man of refinement prided himself on his taste for perfumed powder. We find it stated in Fairholt’s book on “Tobacco,” that in the reign of William III. the beaux carried canes with hollow heads, that they might the more conveniently inhale a few grains through the perforations, as they sauntered in the fashionable promenades. Women quickly followed the lead of men in snuffing, in spite of satire in the Spectator and other papers of the period. The list of famous snuff-takers of the olden time is a long one, and only a few can be noticed here. Queen Charlotte heads the roll. She was persistent in the practice, and her unfilial and rude sons called her “Old Snuff.” Captain Gronow, when a boy at Eton, saw the Queen in company with the King taking an airing on the Terrace at Windsor, and relates “that her royal nose was covered with snuff both within and without.” Mrs. Siddons, “the queen of tragedy,” largely indulged in the use of snuff, both on and off the stage, even while taking her more important characters. Mrs. Jordan, another “stage star,” a representative of the comic muse, obtained animation from frequent use of snuff. Mrs. Unwin, the friend of Cowper, was extremely fond of it, and so was the poet, yet he was not a smoker. On snuff he wrote as follows:—

“The pungent, nose-refreshing weed,
Which whether pulverised it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether touched with fire it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine.”

Pope, in “The Rape of the Lock,” refers to ladies with their snuff-boxes always handy, and the fair Belinda found hers particularly useful in the battle she waged:—

“See, fierce Belinda on the baron flies
With more than usual lightning in her eyes;
And this bred lord, with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued.
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The gnomes direct, to every atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust.
Sudden with startling tears each eye o’erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.”

Napoleon’s legacy to the famous Lady Holland was a snuff-box, and Moore celebrated the gift in a verse written while he was in Paris in 1821:—

“Gift of the Hero, on his dying day,
To her who pitying watch’d, for ever nigh;
Oh, could he see the proud, the happy ray,
This relic lights up in her generous eye,
Sighing, he’d feel how easy ’tis to pay
A friendship all his kingdoms could not buy.”

Amongst ladies we have to include the charming Clarinda, a friend of Robert Burns, on whom he wrote when obliged to leave her:—

“She, the fair sun of all her sex,
Has blest my glorious day,
And shall, a glimmering planet, fix
My worship to its ray.”

PARTAKING OF THE PUNGENT PINCH.