Snuff-Boxes

AT an auction the other day, in Paris, a small Louis XVI snuff-box, without jewels, but enriched with miniature landscapes by Van Blarenbergh, fetched the large sum of ten thousand dollars. No particular association was attached to the box. The price was paid for it as a piece of fine workmanship of the period.

Interest in these trinklets does not depend on a knowledge of their exact history. Fancies and suggestions, pungent as was ever the powder they inclosed, play about them. The fopperies and the coquetries of “snuff-box time ” start into life at the snapping of a corn. It is surprising that in these days when we are inebriated, if not cheered, by the “music of to-morrow,” some genius has not given us a Snuff-box Suite. There are great possibilities in a tone-poem written around this Van Blarenbergh box, for instance. Melodies lurk in its substance. To the ear of the mind it sings.

You can hear the rustle of brocades; the click of red-heeled, diamond-buckled shoes upon marble floors; the tap of canes on stairs and terraces; the sound of lutes, touched softly au clair de lune, in gardens already musical with fountains; ripples of laughter from bowers and yew alleys; snatches of gay chansons caught from boats that float up winding rivers, in a landscape as enchanting as that of fairy tales. There are passages pitched in another key — echoes of tempestuous days; an insistent clamor of women and children for bread; a roar of sullen mobs; a sinister rumble of carts; the sound of many feet mounting wooden steps — some firm and unafraid, some halting and timid; a horrid silence, then laughter more horrid. The last movement of the tonal poem might consist of prolonged chords, indicative of “repose in a museum cabinet,” with perhaps something in the way of sounding brass and tinkling cymbals to hint at that ten thousand dollars.

Sylvain Pons was the first collector of snuff-boxes. So Balzac tells us, — and who should know more about it than Balzac ?

Since the day of Cousin Pons, amiable hobby-rider, the collectors have increased to a multitude; as insatiable a crowd as those relatives of his, though possibly more intelligent.

Considering the number and the greed of all these traffickers far from shy, we wonder that no more of the bits of artistry have come down to us. Innumerable as the flakes of last year’s snow, they have melted away about as completely. With the remnant, of Judah, they lift up their voice, “For we are left but a few of many.” Everybody carried one, be he dandy or grave-digger. Their fashion changed as often as that of coat-buttons and cravats. Nothing short of wireless telegraphy would have served to keep the provincial beaux informed as to the latest productions. Indeed, it required no small agility on the part of London swells to “catch, ere it changed, the snuff-box of the minute.”

The Spectator comments, one morning, on the experience of a lawyer, who, in traveling over his circuit, observed the style of periwig to be becoming more and more antiquated at every stage of his journey, till in the remote districts he might well have supposed himself back in the reign of King Charles. So Beau Brummel might calculate degrees of longitude from the meridian of fashion at St. James, by the style of the snuff-boxes extended to him, in his “progresses.”

One courtier of Queen Anne owned a box for every day in the year. What delectable half-hours he must have spent, as he tarried over his choice of that array! What nicety of taste he must have employed in the selection of a pattern that answered best the demands of his engagements !

We could not enjoy ourselves in that way to-day, —there is not time enough. The days must have been longer then — much longer.

A man could not be too fastidious in the matter. We have it upon the authority of Brummell himself that snuff-boxes must observe their seasons; and we have heard from a higher authority even than he, that “things by season seasoned are to their true perfection.” One would not care to pass among the politicians at the Coffee-house the trifle in pink enamel and brilliants that one played with so prettily in Ardelia’s boudoir. The French nobleman who asked for a moment’s respite on the scaffold, in which to enjoy a pinch of snuff, could hardly choose to look, just then, on his favorite box, beset with the sapphires whose radiant color matched the blue of Clotilde’s eyes. There are occasions and causes, why and wherefore, in all things — even in snuffboxes.

They tell of Beau Nash that, in the heyday of his Bath glory, he received fine boxes enough, as presents, to furnish out a shop. There appears to have been a prodigious number of them required to satisfy the gift-giving mania. Letters and memoirs of the period make it plain that everybody was continually presenting, or being presented with, a snuff-box. No matter what the occasion — christening or coronation — it was a chance to flourish the usual gift; till a man might review the events of his life in the company of his boxes.

In an account of the money expended at the coronation of George IV, we read the entry, “For snuff-boxes to foreign ministers, £8205 15 5.”

Talleyrand said once that snuff-taking was a necessary habit for politicians, because it gave them time for thought in case of awkward questions, and enabled them to hide the expression of their faces at critical moments. Some of those “foreign ministers” must have made pretty constant use of the snuff-box gifts at the court of George IV. We could not expect to find any one of those boxes in existence. They met the fate that Falstaff feared, “scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.”

The greatest gentleman in Europe, himself, cuts a sorry figure in one snuffbox episode: when Beau Brummell, fallen at last into abject misery, sent a box filled with his favorite snuff to the King, hoping for some manner of kind recognition, “and the King took the snuff, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, favorite, rival, enemy, superior.”

In their prime, they caught the light bravely from the candles of palace halls, fashionable assembly rooms, and great ladies’ saloons, these beaux and boxes; but what with battering years and man’s inconstancy, old age was apt to find them, box and beau alike, somewhat hardly circumstanced —

The “ nice conduct ” of his snuff-box was as much a matter of solicitude to Sir Fopling Flutter as the fetching manœuvres of her fan to Lady Modish. To rap the box with hauteur, to open the cover with nonchalance, to lift the pinch of powder daintily, to inhale it discreetly, to flick a fallen grain from a lace ruffle debonairly, — all this was not to be acquired in a day. It required infinite pains to master the exercise, but the satisfaction in performing it well was ineffable.

There were subtle nuances to be observed in the offering of one’s box to others, which called for the cunning of a diplomatist. A degree of affability to be used with the Duke of Highairs would be absurd with Sir Plume, and simply scandalous with plain Jack Knowall. And there were party manœeuvres as well. If Lady Froth must studiously patch her face on the Tory side, you may be sure my Lord Smart was careful that his snuff-box was of the precise Whig size and fashion.

The Tatler, receiving a curious letter, one day, from some fop with whom he has no acquaintance, decides, “ I’ll call at Bubbleboy’s shop, and find out the shape of the fellow’s snuff-box, by which I can settle his character.”

One of the most interesting boxes we have seen is an old English song-book, bound in leather, with a divided brass clasp; one half the clasp serving to secure the leaves of the book, the other half fastening a metal receptacle for snuff. Here, surely, was an ingenious weapon for the killing of time.

Imagine the satisfaction of a snufftaking scholar who could possess a library of such volumes!

A person of discrimination would adjust the quality of the snuff in each box to the matter of the book, so that the contents of the one should corroborate the contents of the other. A borrower from his shelves would never be disconcerted by a pinch of biting rappee from the volume of Sir John Suckling’s Poems, or violetscented grains from Hobbes’s Leviathan. And then the pleasing capacity of some of those boxes, —such, for instance, as could be fitted to the huge folios on the lower shelf, Clarendon or Thomas Aquinas!

A snuff-box for Polyphemus himself!

One could dip into it at the close of every sentence, yet rest assured that there was enough of the heartening stimulant to accompany one to the end of the chapter; and at the same time be agreeably reminded that the chapters did not “go all the way.” It would be no small thing, after groping through such a region of inky darkness, to emerge into the clear shining of that brass box.

As for my Lord Fripperling, he mightily preferred the box which rejoiced in a mirror set in the lid. A looking-glass supplied him with “ the best company in the world,” and with the only reflections in which he ever indulged. Moreover, he found these toys vastly becoming. A sparkling boîte d’or in a white hand shadowed by ruffles of point d’ Alençon, added the last touch of elegance.

Naturally, the style of his snuff-box became a matter of tremendous moment to his lordship. He might be in a fog as to what Blenheim’s “ famous victory ” was “ all about,” but he knew that this “Campaign,” about which a Mr. Addison writ a poem, “ monstrous good, egad! ” had caused a rise in the price of snuff-boxes.

That was not a small matter, to be sure. No material was too costly to use in their making. Jade, amber, lapis-lazuli, were, in turn, the fashion. Jewels were lavished on them. Eminent goldsmiths and miniature painters of renown put their handiwork into them. Petitot himself produced some of his marvelous enamels for this very purpose. Horace Walpole esteemed the snuff-box bearing the portrait of Madame de Sévigné as one of his choice treasures, along with Wolsey’s hat and a Crusader’s lance. Museums rejoice in them; and there is even a church in England that numbers in its inventory of plate, among chalices and candlesticks, “ one gold snuff-box.” That is what may be called making a good end. But perhaps this particular box had always enjoyed a cloistered existence, twinkling gravely in dim aisle and dimmer chapel, from the hands of some devout old canon, who, in dying, bequeathed to the church his most valued earthly possession.

Some collections include specimens of Chinese snuff-bottles, — they took their snuff with a difference, —beautiful pieces of work in chalcedony or agate, with carven jade stoppers. A tiny spoon for scooping out the “titillating dust” accompanied the bottle. Snuff-spoons were used in England, too, at one time, as appears from an old comedy in which mention is made of “Tunbridge wooden box with wooden spoon; ” but the dandy did not take kindly to the idea. Tunbridge was one of many centres of fashion that contributed to the snuff-box host, — a terrestrial galaxy whose stars were held to differ, one from another, in glory, as did the comparatively unconsidered stars in the heavens above.

No less a person than the Emperor Joseph II summed up a comparison of the musicians of his day with the remark that Mozart was like the Parisian snuffbox, Haydn like the box made in England. Happily the compositions of Haydn and Mozart survived that period, so that if we are curious as to the relative value of English snuff-boxes and the articles de Paris, we need only comprehend and compare the music of the “ Creation,” the “ Requiem,” and the “ Magic Flute.”

Louis le Grand, who stooped to most of the follies of his time, did not adopt the snuff-taking habit, but his indifference in no wise affected the fashion. In that society which made the ancien régime what it stands for to us, the quintessence of brilliancy, elegance, and esprit, the snuff-box played its part. It was, oddly enough, the subject of one of Voltaire’s earliest attempts at versemaking : —

a flippant impromptu dashed off when he was but a schoolboy, on a day when his box had been confiscated by the master. The lines were considered so clever — the story goes — that the box was restored to him as a special favor; exactly the result aimed at by the writer. But these trinkets, paraded as a piece of finery by boy and dandy, became nothing less than a consolation of age.

Voltaire grown old, had he been called upon to absent himself a while from the felicity of his snuff-box, might have written “ Stanzas of Adieu ” abounding in wit, but the verses would have breathed a real, not a sentimental, sigh for the touch of a vanished box.

That grande dame, proud old duchesse or marquise, who lives for us in the memoirs of the splendid time, considered

the snuff-box an essential part of her toilet. Seated in state, with knittingwork and box at hand, she was ready to relish, with equal zest, the exchange of snuff and epigrams with a gallant from court, and the moralizing with an abbé out of the country, on the vanity of human affairs, — how

If it were given us to choose, as a “ remembrancer,” a single one from among the many associated with great names, perhaps it would be the sociable box that used always to stand on a corner of the card-table, when Lamb’s friends gathered to enjoy one of his Wednesday evenings “ at home.” A fondness for the Scotch rappee in that box, Hazlitt intimates, recommended a person to the notice of its owner. Lamb desired a man to “ like something, heartily, even snuff; ” and his practice was at one with his theory in the matter of the snuff. His sister agreed with him in this taste, as well as in those more engaging. It is remembered of the kindly little lady that, in old age, she used to go a-visiting her friends with three or four empty snuffboxes in her pocket, which always became miraculously full before she left.

Stout defenders of the faith, in the matter of tobacco, have been numerous in the ranks of the fair sex, from the voluble Mrs. Glass “ that sells snuff at the sign o’ the Thistle, in the Strand,” to Ladies of Quality, like Mary Wortley Montagu herself.

Early in our literary excursions we come upon the latter, “ dishevelled, hideous, covered with snuff,” and, thereafter, that is our Lady Mary. Pages of description concerning her youthful beauty and all-conquering charm move us not a jot. We know the Lady of the Snuff-box. Others there are, not a few, who have been so linked with their snuffboxes by some chance expression in prose or verse, that in our minds they are as inseparable as Ephraim and his idols. Johnson’s friend, Bennet Langton, has been described somewhere as a tall, slender man, who usually sat with his legs twisted around each other, fingering his gold snuff-box, with a sweet smile on his face. So he sits — and eternally will sit — in our imagination !

There is Reynolds, who, because of a haunting line by Goldsmith, seems to us forever shifting his trumpet, and forever taking snuff. Unfortunately, some of his great portraits, “ embrowned by time,” persist in looking “ snuffy ” to us. There is Gibbon; so everlastingly opening and shutting his tabatière, that the drums and trumpets of declining Rome seem to be accompanied by a running fusillade of small arms in the shape of snuff-boxes; while the grandiose rapping of his boxcover is so insistently referred to, that it has come to assume the importance of the knocking at the gate in Macbeth.

There is something about this preliminary ceremony of tapping, that savors, of an invocation, a summoning of the genie of the box. We recall the awful effect it had upon Peter Bell’s much-enduring beast; the “ appalling process ” vet to be explained to a curious world. The creature had conducted himself with the utmost propriety, but no sooner did Peter knock on the lid of his tobacco-box, than

Who can doubt that Peter had " started a spirit ” ? If, to make an ass speak, there must needs be an angel in the path, we may be sure that some kind of visitation is necessary to make him grin.

We must not forget here that virago, Mme. Sehwellenberg, who was the torment of Fanny Burney’s life at the court; whenever she rapped on her snuff-box, those two pet frogs of hers croaked in answer, and Fanny thought it only ludicrous. It seems to us to lean too much in the direction of ways that are dark. We are inclined to believe that Schwellenberg was as much of a witch as she looked to be, and that those repulsive creatures over which she gloated were victims of her malign spells. That knocking on her snuff-box was a communication with the magician who was the slave of the box, at whose threatened coming the unhappy animals naturally croaked in alarm. Could Fanny but have become possessed of the magic spell, she might have seen those frogs rise up Prince Charming and the lovely Eldorinda.

Be that as it may, it is true that some innocent-looking snuff-boxes have been opened with as direful results as were ever related of the horror-hiding vessels in Arabian tales.

It was by no happy chance that tobacco, when introduced into France, was given the name herbe de la reine, in honor of Catherine de Medici. The results of that painstaking lady’s experiments were long in evidence. Even into the eighteenth century the practice continued of “removing,” gently but expeditiously, such individuals as became distasteful yet persisted in the habit of living. Is my lord the Comte de B — interfering in your little intrigue? Send him a present of a jeweled box containing tabac de mille fleurs. He will not offend you tomorrow.

Saint-Simon tells the story of a Condé who thought it no more than a fine joke to empty the contents of his snuff-box into the glass of champagne which he handed to a companion, his good friend, at a banquet. The friend drank, sickened, and died in terrible agony. That is what it meant to be " a Condé ” in snuffbox time!

One marvels that the ghost of his grandfather—the Great Condé—did not knock an awful summons on that supperroom door, and then enter when the candles burned blue, and the guests sat trembling, to strike with his sword the empty snuff-box from the hand of his worthless descendant.

A pleasant custom of exchanging boxes was fashionable for a while, yet was never regarded with much favor by prudent folk. It might answer if one revolved in the circle of Esterhazy and all his quality, whose hands dropped jewels as a vine drops fatness; otherwise, there was risk of falling in with individuals who considered an unfair exchange no robbery, — whose attitude suggested, “ Stand and deliver.”

As for the “ little horn snuff-box ” belonging to the old monk of Calais, we have ceased to be very much impressed with that. Our fathers, we know, regarded its story with fond emotion; and when they read how the Reverend Mr. Sterne guarded the box as tenderly as he guarded his religion “ in the justlings of the world,” their tears “ gushed out,” quite like the reverend gentleman’s own. Boxes of horn engraved with the names “Yorick” and “Lorenzo” were manufactured in enormous quantities at Hamburg, and were eagerly bought by the sentimentalists of the day, — a day when everybody was a sentimentalist.

We are no longer with “poor Yorick.” We hold with Dr. Johnson, who, when his fair friend confesses that she is “ very much affected ” by the pathos in Sterne’s books, says, smiling, “ Because, dearest, you are a dunce.”

The good doctor was an inveterate snuff-taker, but his box was never in evidence, because his pocket was his box. That unhappy habit, we read, was a source of some uneasiness to his friends, as, indeed, it might well be. It was not in “ Goldie’s ” nature to endure placidly a deluge from that pocket, on the days when he was wearing the peach-blossom velvet coat.

Frederick the Great was another mighty man of valor, — taking sometimes cities, but always snuff. For him, also, boxes were far too trifling. He required great jars of the stuff to be set on the mantelpieces of his rooms; the manner of his dealing wherewith must have been that of Lamb’s “ Old Bencher,” who took his refreshment not by pinches, but by a palmful at once.

Queen Charlotte — Burney’s Queen Charlotte — was almost a match for him. Poor Fanny wore herself out in the endeavor to keep her patroness’s boxes filled. The handiwork at which the royal lady toiled so steadfastly was called, by courtesy, embroidery, but the silken stitches were buried under avalanches of rappee. Fielding, too, was a lusty snuffboxer, by what we read; howbeit he attained not unto the first three.

We must confess to a depressing conviction that many writers of that age socalled of “sensibility,”were anything but men of feeling. When Clarissa is a long time dying, when the sighs of the “Captive” load the air, and, stretched on the ground, Alexis mourns Pastora dead, — in these long-drawn agonies, it is not a rain of tears that stains the authors’ manuscripts, but a patter of snuff. It is fatiguing, this constant drizzle of dingy powder!

We fancy it falling softly, endlessly, like the ashes of a volcanic mountain; filling crevices, leveling inequalities, building mounds, burying the landscape. If the deluge had not been checked in time, there would have been Herculaneums to uncover, Pompeiis to disinter.

Among the treasures discovered in that unearthing, we should have welcomed, with peculiar pleasure, these playthings of Brummell and the rest, — the snuffboxes whose loss we now lament, together with the fans, and the buckles, the canes and the bonbonnières, those