SOME LITTLE KNOWN TRADES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 9

SOME LITTLE KNOWN TRADES

THE SNUFF GRINDERS. Snuff I The word calls up pictures oi brocade and powder, of lace handkerchiefs, and hands laid carelessly on jewelled sword-hilts, of days when courts were magnificent and life was ruled by an elegant and studied code. A powerful word, charged and redolent, like the substance it connotes (writes Alan Bell in Ilia Morning Post). But snuffing must have been a noisy, commotion stirring habit; in these moiv crowded days let us be thankful we prefer briar pipes, havana, and the universal cigarette. Comforts and lozenges, snuff, and now combustible tobacco; have we reached, I wonder, the final form of gratifying man’s ineradicable instinct for a portable, palate-tittilatino- hobby? Rarely now does one meet the slaves of the pungent dust. You may still hear oldfashioned printers sneezing with unwarrantable fury when the first edition has gone to bed, and there remains one Bohemian club where the casket moves ceremoniously round after the weekly dinner. But that is done more from tradition than liking. You may well he surprised, then, to learn that the manufacture and blending of snuff is still a vigorous little industry in Bristol and the Midlands, and that there is at least one place in London where periodic grindings produce a latterday equivalent of Fine and Demigros and Gros.

But the fashionable glory of the habit has departed. Apart from th € chance customer seeking a violent ’near' to disperse catarrh —and Old ’’aris is stiil occasionally tipped by the family doctor—the last loyal lingering addicts are to be found among the classes who mostly work with rolled-up sleeves. Have you ever come on one of those laborious flour mills that hands no longer turn, standing neglected in some decaying village granary? There are two counter-Uevolving stones, you may remember, circling in a trough of stone. A cumbrous apparatus not dissimilar powders a good deal of th e muff sold in London to-day. It may sound a primitive node of manufacture, but is nevertheless an advance on the interminable rubbing of small quantities of tobacco against a rasp. If he citv has on hand one of its hg, spasmodic millings, th e sliding crepitation of the upper and the nether stones may be heard for weeks, continuing until the heaped dust is small enough to pas sa rigorous sieve. Certain essences have next to be infused ; the snuff must be flavoured. Do not expect me to describe how and with what rare distillations. The recipes are more secret than the processes of naval armament; even to inquire their age provoking suspicion. Let us follow the recommendatiqn in the pages of “ A Pinch of Snuff,” by Dean Snift of BVazen Nose—a text-book on the subject which tickled »ur simple ancestors —and turn into this dim, bow-win-dowed shop, where sometimes you may yet discover a few anachronists filling their curio-boxes. What does this pigskin ledger with the tarnished clasps reveal? “ Brot. forwd., 1764.” No double entries then, be it noted; cannot you imagine the dandies, with their three-corner hats and canes, and the ladies in their whispering silks, instructing; “Mind yon scratch it off.' And, sure enough, here are the faded brown crosses over their unpunctually settled accounts. “ H.R.H. Prince of Wales.” Afterwards to be “ the first gentleman in Europe,” our Sovereign Lord George the Fourth. What an eternal, inveterate inhaler! Colonel Taylor’s Mixture was, apparently, his favourite, and the bills were to be sent to Robt. Gray. Esq., Duchy of Cornwall. I hope he paid them with a good grace; they were heavy enough. Poor Princess Charlotte, on the other hand, is content with “ Jib. Princess Elizabeth Bureau, 2s 6d.” Now, what is this entry of 1812? Ah, the Prince Regent demanding a bottle of Oriental Masulipatim, and four pounds of the gallant Colonel’s stinging blend. And, in the name of sneezing, here is Lord Petersham expending £72 12s on 216 assorted pounds. Of what captivating snuffs does our musty ledger tell! Listen : Sweet Bergamotto, Bolongaro, Nut Brown, Spanish Sabilla (use as tooth-powder), High Toast Snuff, and Lambkin’s Brand. What a roll of the great does it blazon forth ! The King of France, the Duke of Bolton, the Marquess of Stafford, the Lord Chief Baron M’Douald, and half a hundred other Poors; the Duchess of Grafton, the Countess of Oxford, Mrs Siddons (consider the gesture with which she undoubtedly snuffed), and a whole gallery of great ladies besides.

They must have made a gallant, whonpii company, who would regard with horror the fumes and nicotine of our latest civilisation. 33 c4J. they have taken then last, gracious pinch; “the rest is sil-nce,”