Taking snuff , which means snuffing a
tiny quantity of powdered tobacco has inspired ,under Louis XV,
elaborated treatises teaching the way of taking tobacco, such as "les
règles de la bienséance et de la
chrétienneté " (rules of propriety and christianity)
but also treatises related to their execution.
Taking snuff required specific tools such
as a tobacco grinder and a snuff box but taking snuff , the right
movement to do so or the proper way to offer tobacco, was a matter
for a codified art by people of noble birth who passed on this
elementary knowledge to anyone in polite society.
The movement was even more elegant when
it was affected and the preciosity of the ritual, reflecting the
preciosity of the object and the owner "ranked" him/her , that is to
say showed his/her rank at the top of the ladder of social values and
goods.
Therefore, in his "accessoires et
coutumes du mobilier" (accessories and customs of personal property),
the historian Henri d'Allemagne relates the "exercice de la
tabatière" (exercise of the snuff box):
To take snuff, people of noble birth were
meant to tap on the lid, take a few grains with the tip of their
slender fingers, to make a slight gesture and to inhale the powder
with ecstasy.
On the contrary, the countryman digged
his thumb and forefinger inside the snuff box in order to take out a
large pinch of tobacco, putting it on the back of his left hand and
snorted it in a noisy way while rubbing his nose.
Anyway, it was polite to offer a pinch of
snuff to the person you were drinking with, to a neighbour or a
friend you had come accross...The person offering presented his open
snuff box from which a pinch of snuff was taken between the thumb and
forefinger before sniffing some of it in one nostril and the rest in
the other nostril.
"Sniffing" referred to the gesture made
by the thumb on each side of the nose in order to enable the right
quantity of snuff to penetrate and to get rid of the surplus.
When using the "secouette" (shaker snuff
box), the snuff taker used his anatomical snuff box by bending his
right forearm facing his chest and then raised his thumb, which
created a kind of hollow between the two tendons linked to the wrist,
a hollow in which, using his left hand, he poured some snuff from the
spout of his snuff box. Then he had to tap on the spout and the whole
art consisted in avoiding sprinking tobacco over his clothes... Once
he had done so, he only had to sniff the tobacco with each of his
nostrils.
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Here after is shown the right way to take
snuff as described in the magazine "la gazette de Venise" dated
1760:
-Take
the snuff box within right hand
-Put it in your left hand
-Tap on the snuff box
-Open the snuff box
-Present the snuff box to the
company
-Gather the tobacco in the snuff box by
taping on its side
-Take a pinch of tobacco with your right
hand
-Keep it between your fingers before
taking it to the nose
-Present the tobacco to the
nose
-Sniff with accuracy with your two
nostrils
-Do not show an ugly face
-Clutch the snuff box, close the
lid
-Sneeze, spit, blow your nose.
