Good evening!
What are some of the oddest (but good), or, most memorable snuffs? And why?
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Well, not odd but memorable was Smith’s Garden Mint. It was absolutely lovely and the only mint snuff that left green stains on my hanky!
I’m a bit of a stuck record when it comes to this snuff. If there were one snuff I could bring back from oblivion it would be this one.
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Garden Mint: A blend of North American and Oriental tobaccos. It is perfumed with a mixture of the finest mint oils blended with other background oils and essences (Vivian Rose).
Offhand, I don’t recall Garden Mint although I purchased at one time or other all the snuffs in Smith’s range.
Although I would probably not care for it so much today, Golden Cardinal was a great favourite in my early snuffing career and I’d love to sample it again simply to refresh olfactory memory. It really was golden in colour, fin in texture and very distinctive in taste. Royal Cardinal, scented with tonquin was a pleasant snuff and I’d like to sample that one again.
With the closure of the High Street tobacconists Mr. Rose supplied shop customers with a snuff by post leaflet where you would mark the required snuffs, tot up the cost and send it off with a cheque to save yourself frequent visits to Charring Cross Road. A blank order form was included for your next purchase. Before internet sales became available (thank goodness) Wilsons of Sharrow also employed the same method. I have a copy of the latter but am unable to find Smith’s order form. The final snuffs I ordered from Mr. Rose were Consort and Café Royale. In his later years he also supplied Kendal Brown which, as I recall, was probably from Kendal but sold at London prices.
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Concerning unusual snuffs: Here is evidence of a certain Timothy Syllable regarding the Tobacco Bill and reported in The Times 18th May 1790. (The spelling has not been altered and The Times editor made a sarcastic comment on his use of the past tense, always ending with -ed.)
‘I always revered Liberty, Freedom, Property – a pipe of Tobacco and a pinch of Snuff, and I ever and always think-ed, my Lords, that when the smuggler was destroyed, the illicit dealers would be ruined - not that I was ever an illicit dealer, or ever adulterated my Snuff – that is I never putt-ed any other ingredient to the tobacco when I made-ed it into Snuff, than Lamp-Black, Oaker, dry-ed Orange, Peels, ground Glass-sand and Brick-dust, to make it sharp, give it a flavor, and to make the Colour beautiful.’
Looking up Lamp-Black one reads: a finely powdered black soot deposited in incomplete combustion of carbonaceous materials and used chiefly as a pigment (as in paints, enamels, and printing inks)
Oaker (Ochre): a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand.
The other ingredients in Mr. Syllable’s snuff are self-explanatory. Mixing in ground glass would certainly have made it sharp.
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FUBAR Bohica. Holy moly that thing packs a punch. It’s good, in a way.
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I take with more than a pinch of discretion! It’s great when I’m in the mood for it, but the rest of the time it sits quietly in a snuffbox.
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Something called Sea Breeze, I think it was a Samuel Gawith snuff, bought it many years ago, from what I can remember it was reminiscent of a breath of salty sea on an old leaky boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, I wish I had bought more of it when I had the chance, ah memories…
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Gawith Hoggarth definitely had one of those seashore ones . I was trying to think of the name of it the other day .
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