Britain’s New World of Tobacco

British men and women of all classes consumed tobacco in increasing quantities from the late 16th century onwards. Imported from the ‘New World’, by the middle of the 17th century the tobacco plant was being grown commercially in Europe, as well as in slave-worked plantations in the Americas. The addictive product was profitable, its trade was monopolistic and rife with crime and controversy. Debates raged in the press over its effects, while government dependence on the profits it generated had political implications. Attempts to undercut the American trade by establishing plantations in England led to riots and armed suppression, while the taxing of tobacco without parliamentary approval was one of the many crimes visited on Charles I’s unfortunate head. When Paul Hetzner, a German jurist, visited England in 1598, he remarked on the physical and emotional hold that tobacco exerted on the early modern psyche: I cannot refrain from a few words of protest against the astonishing fashion lately introduced from America – a sort of smoke tippling which enslaves its victims more completely than any other form of intoxication, old or new. These madmen will swallow and inhale with incredible eagerness the smoke of a plant they call herba nicotiana or tobacco. In his Counterblaste to Tobacco, published in 1604, James I complained that elite men found life as a non-smoker socially difficult: Divers men very sound both in judgement, and complexion, have bene at last forced to take it [tobacco] also without desire, partly because they were ashamed to seeme singular. By writing his pamphlet, the king sought to discourage smoking, warning, among other things, that it caused cancer. Yet, a decade later, the chronicler Edmund Howes wrote: ‘At this day, [tobacco is] commonly used by most men and many women.’ James did not give up his campaign. In 1619 a proclamation attempted to ban smoking from alehouses, while in the 1620s high taxes were imposed to make the commodity prohibitively expensive. Yet by the 1630s it was too valuable for the government to constrain. Key figures in Parliament were developing interests in overseas plantations, while the customs and excise duties it brought in were substantial. Smoking became de rigeur at every level of society, in inns, alehouses and shops, in private and in the streets (from which, in the 1670s, the Norwich authorities unsuccessfully sought to ban it). In the 1690s, the diarist Celia Fiennes, visiting Cornwall, wrote that: The Custome of the Country … is a universall smoaking, both men women and children have all their pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking wch was not delightfull to me. An illustration from Two Broad-Sides Against Tobacco, 6 June 1672. Folger Shakespeare Library. Public Domain. The essentials of smoking – a clay pipe, a light and tobacco itself – could be obtained in an alehouse, tavern or coffee house. But tobacco ranged hugely in quality – a constant subject for debate in company – and nothing could compare to the comfort of having an ounce or two of one’s own favourite blend to hand. Personal tobacco boxes soon became indispensable to the British smoker. They are noted in printed literature from as early as 1607, in documentary sources from the 1620s and, later, in wills and inventories. By 1649 their ubiquity had increased to such an extent that Charles Hoole thought it necessary to adapt his best-selling Easie entrance to the Latin toungue by offering Latin translations for ‘tobacco pipe’, ‘stopper’ and ‘box’. By 1700 a personalised box for snuff or tobacco had become a vital accessory for any man, whether a labourer or a lord. Smoking and snuffing involved an elaborate, ritual choreography of objects, gestures and discourses that evoked a gamut of emotions ranging from frustration to satisfaction. When performed in company, as they often were, these rituals involved etiquettes of sharing and borrowing. One comedy drama laid out the precise actions of the smoking ritual, as if they were a military operation. It was to be exercised ‘till you stink, defile the room, offend your friends, destroy your liver and Lungs, and bid adieu to the world with a scowling flux’. In 1711 the Spectator perpetuated a running joke about snuffing schools, which prepared young gentlemen to pit their snuff boxes against another fearsome social weapon – the fan – wielded by young women to the destruction of men’s hearts. Socialised smoking in alehouses swiftly became common but, by the late 1600s, ‘lighting a pipe’ with a neighbour or friend at home had also became a ritualised social practice, as in 1698, when Martha Sconce went to ‘light a pipe’ at Jane Lock’s house in Norwich (but found her friend having sex with Thomas Turner). When not distracted by other activities, such companionable smoking would help friends to build up a close mutual familiarity, fundamental to which was each other’s smoking habits. Tobacco boxes differed widely in terms of cost and materials and were accessible to all. ‘Wainscot’ boxes, made of fine quality foreign oak, were valued at 12d each; ‘latten’ boxes, made of a brass compound, ranged in value from 1¼d to 3d each. Even silver boxes were found among the modestly prosperous, such as the Norwich petty chapman whose wife and servant hid his silver snuff box so that he could not use it as a stake in his gambling. The ‘stopper’ (also known as a ‘rammer’, ‘stuffer’ or ‘tamper’) was another essential piece of equipment, coming in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. Some that survive are miniature works of art, others were more crudely shaped, but they frequently took a figurative form of relevance to their original owner. A Dutch tobacco box showing a courting couple and inscribed ‘My Love/My Heart’, late 16th century. Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Public Domain. Court records and other anecdotal sources tell us that many women used tobacco, which implies that they probably had their own boxes, or tobacco purses, though firm evidence is hard to come by, in England at least. In 1623 Endymion Porter was in Spain with Prince Charles’ marriage embassy alongside the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers. He wrote to his wife that he ‘sent my Ladie Villiers a tobackco box, I hope shee will esteeme it as a token of my love’. In 1677, a widow, Susan Cotton, left a silver tobacco box to her kinsman. In neither case can we be certain that these women used the boxes themselves – the former may have been a curiosity for a collection, the latter a family heirloom – but both were clearly used as receptacles for affection. Though elite women are often described as having their own snuff-boxes, no tobacco box has come to light that specifically names an English woman as owner. However, the use of heart decorations and affectionate inscriptions on tobacco boxes in which initials, rather than names, appear suggests that they were particularly popular gifts for young ladies to give to young men and, perhaps, the other way round. The increasing demand for such gifts led to the development of ‘populuxe’ items, made in a variety of materials, bought off the shelf complete with appropriate messages, then personalised with initials and inscriptions. One range, thought to come from a workshop operating between 1670 and 1710, was made of cedar and horn. Each one was inlaid with interchangeable, inscribed kidney-shaped bone sections, which could be used to create ‘posies’, or rhymes. Other models were made from brass or horn and bone. Off-the-peg boxes customised only with initials and a date were a means of expressing affection between men and women while, at the same time, avoiding the risks of contractual obligation, by avoiding names and by limiting the monetary value of the gift. On the other hand, in songs, plays and jests, boxes were invested with such great sentimental value that men gave or bequeathed their beloved tobacco box to the women of their dreams as a sure pledge of fidelity: Here Kate, take my ’bacco box – a poor soldier’s all,If by Frenchman’s blows your Tom is doomed to fall,When my life is ended, thou may’st boast and prove,Thou’st my first, my last, my only pledge of love. Whatever their material value, it was common for the decorative scheme of even the most ordinary tobacco box to link directly to an owner’s identity. They were frequently inscribed with a name, a place, a trade and a date related to a key personal moment. In some cases, boxes also incorporated posies, which drew attention to the social obligation to be a convivial ‘good fellow’ and share their tobacco in company. For example, the inscription on a steel and brass box, which once belonged to James Edwards of Silkstead in Hampshire, invited any man ‘to smoak with me/who of his own han’t any’. Since many boxes were given as gifts, we cannot know if this motto was of Edward’s choosing, but since the box was well used, we might read the inscription as a compliment rather than a barbed joke. In contrast, some inscriptions expressed deep anxiety surrounding their potential loss, such as the motto incribed on one copper box: ‘My in meat your velcom for to taist [taste] but return me back to my maister in heast [haste].’ Mason smoking with companions in a tavern, David Teniers, c. 1675. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.