Snuff and Nonsense: Tobacco in the 1890s

Jack.  Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell.  I am glad to hear it.  A man should always have an occupation of some kind.  There are far too many idle men in London as it is.

This blog debuted with a post about cigarettes. Cigarettes themselves were an invention of the nineteenth century. Though the Mayans were using tobacco in the ninth century, tobacco wasn't rolled in fine paper until it went to Spain in the seventeenth century. The Spanish called this a 'papelate.' A papelate went to France in 1830, where they called it a cigarette. French people and cigarettes were two of Oscar Wilde's favourite things. In a letter to his brother, he once said: "Charming people should smoke gold-tipped cigarettes or die."

Gold-tipped cigarettes (circa 1890)

While Oscar's father may have enjoyed the ocassional cigarette, he probably preferred snuff. Long before Oscar Wilde and the cigarette, the ritualistic habits of tobacco users appealed to Europeans all over the world.

Snuff's associations with fashion made it irresistible to British society, whose fondness for rules and tendency to develop tobacco rituals led them to develop a complex etiquette for snuffing, against which they could measure the relative social rank, or intellectual potential, of a stranger. An example is provided by that venerable chronicle of idiocy, the Tatler: 'I cannot see either his person or his habit in his letter, but I shall call at Charles [Charles Lillie, a French perfumer and snuff seller] and know the shape of his snuff box, by which I can settle his character.' -- Iain Gately, "Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization" (2001).

Smoking cigarettes, gold-tipped or otherwise, didn't really catch on until the 1880s, after an American made pre-rolled cigarettes cheaper. James Bonsack lived in Virginia, where his father operated a woolen mill. By tinkering with one of the carding machines from his father's factory, Bonsack created a cigarette rolling machine, capable of producing ten thousand cigarettes per hour.  To put that number in perspective, in an 1897 cigarette rolling contest, the "Queen of the hand-rollers," Lily Lavender rolled 162 cigarettes in thirty minutes. All cigarettes were rolled by hand, until Bonsack got the patent on his machine in 1881.

Diagram from James Albert Bonsack's patent application
(U.S. patent 238,640, granted March 8, 1881). 

"Duke of Durham"
(circa 1890s).

James Duke of W. Duke Sons and Company in Durham had 125 hand rollers producing 250,000 cigarettes a day, when his company tried the Bonsack cigarette machine in 1883. One machine could do the work of 48 people, but other companies were reluctant to try it because they thought people preferred hand-rolled cigarettes; this allowed Duke's company a chance to be the first. By 1888, Duke replaced all of his company's hand-rollers with machines.

By the 1890s, French and British cigarette companies were using various types of cigarette rolling machines, which lowered the cost of cigarettes everywhere. Their popularity increased at this new lower price, so that in the 1890s younger men smoked, whereas older men might have still been attached to the habit of snuff.

Many women, especially feminists who were fighting against social convention, smoked. Though it was typically frowned upon for them to do so in public, its reported that many celebrity women were smoking at the opening of the Dorothy Restaurant on Oxford Street in June 1889.

In Robert Proctor's "Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition" (2011), Bosnack's smoking machine is partially responsible for setting off the smoking epidemic. Perhaps, as Lady Bracknell says in "The Importance of Being Ernest" (1895) there were far too many idle people in London; idle hands are, as they say, the devil's workshop.

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Parenty's Smoking Machine

After finding a list of bizarre Victorian inventions, I couldn't get the first one out of my head. It was a smoking machine. The list's author claimed that Victorians loved the smell of smoke so much that they used this machine or proposed it for use in bars and clubs, where there weren't enough smokers already.

This put the image in my head of smokers waving around sticks of incense instead of cigarettes, while people nearby react as if they are engaged in some form of aromatherapy. If this sounds ridiculous, its because it is. The smoking machine pictured in the amusing list of bizarre Victorian inventions was called Parenty's Smoking Machine and I found evidence of its intended use for cigarette and cigar manufacturers.

We produce herewith, from La Nature, an illustration of a novel apparatus, called by its inventor, Mr. Parenty, a "smoking machine." Tobacco manufacturers make their cigars out of quite a large number of different leaves, whose physical and chemical qualities have to be combined as to yield an articile that gives out an agreeable odor and burns well. Combustibility, then, is a physical quality that must be estimated for each variety of leaf. Such estimate is made by measuring the time during which a certain style of cigar, made solely from the tobacco to be tested, holds its fire without drawing on it a second time. In this comparative determination the intensity of the lighting is the element that has to be determined and regulated. To accomplish this is the object of the machine under consideration, which is so constructed as to imitate the motions of a smoker, who, at regular intervals, would inhale a definite volume of air with a definite and constant force of suction.

I am omitting the middle of the article because it focuses on the mechanics of Parenty's Smoking Machine, but if you are interested you can find it in issue 54 of Scientific American (23 January 1886).

This ingenious apparatus, which does its inventor great credit, was presented to the Administration of Tobaccos in 1884, and excited great interest at the Anvers Exhibition. 

 Producing a smoking machine for use by the manufacturers of tobacco products makes a lot more sense than using a machine that smokes individual cigarettes to fill a bar with smoke. Sadly, the inventor is only identified as "Mr. Parenty," but a more curious mind might check into the documentation from what was presented to the Administration of Tobaccos in 1884. I suspect, because this was published in 1886, the Mr. Parenty did quite well for himself with this invention.

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The Cigarette Case

The following is one of my many favorite scenes from the Importance of Being Earnest.

Algernon. Bring me that cigarette case Mr. Worthing left in the smoking-room the last time he dined here.

Lane. Yes, sir. [Lane goes out.]

Jack. Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time? I wish to goodness you had let me know. I have been writing frantic letters to Scotland Yard about it. I was very nearly offering a large reward.

Algernon. Well, I wish you would offer one. I happen to be more than usually hard up.

Jack. There is no good offering a large reward now that the thing is found.

[Enter Lane with the cigarette case on a salver. Algernon takes it at once. Lane goes out.]

Algernon. I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say. [Opens case and examines it.] However, it makes no matter, for, now that I look at the inscription inside, I find that the thing isn’t yours after all.

Jack. Of course it’s mine. [Moving to him.] You have seen me with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case.

Algernon. Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

Jack. I am quite aware of the fact, and I don’t propose to discuss modern culture. It isn’t the sort of thing one should talk of in private. I simply want my cigarette case back.

Algernon. Yes; but this isn’t your cigarette case. This cigarette case is a present from some one of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn’t know any one of that name.

Jack. Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.

Algernon. Your aunt!

Jack. Yes. Charming old lady she is, too. Lives at Tunbridge Wells. Just give it back to me, Algy.

Algernon. [Retreating to back of sofa.] But why does she call herself little Cecily if she is your aunt and lives at Tunbridge Wells? [Reading.] ‘From little Cecily with her fondest love.’

Jack. [Moving to sofa and kneeling upon it.] My dear fellow, what on earth is there in that? Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not tall. That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself. You seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your aunt! That is absurd! For Heaven’s sake give me back my cigarette case. [Follows Algernon round the room.]

Algernon. Yes. But why does your aunt call you her uncle? ‘From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.’ There is no objection, I admit, to an aunt being a small aunt, but why an aunt, no matter what her size may be, should call her own nephew her uncle, I can’t quite make out. Besides, your name isn’t Jack at all; it is Ernest.

Jack. It isn’t Ernest; it’s Jack.

It's even a more interesting read, now that I know that Oscar Wilde really was writing about himself and his brother in this play. In writing it, Oscar saw himself as Jack and his brother, Willie, as Algernon. It's interesting, to me, that Oscar paints himself on the receiving end of a cigarette case as a present, when he was known to give them as gifts, especially to his male lovers. Interesting too that the cigarette case that he was given exposes his secret.

Before Importance of Being Earnest went on stage, Oscar had to testify about cigarette cases before the courts, during his infamous trials. 

Mr. C. F. Gill--You made handsome presents to all these young fellows?

Oscar Wilde--Pardon me, I differ. I gave two or three of them a cigarette case: Boys of that class smoke a good deal of cigarettes. I have a weakness for presenting my acquaintances with cigarette cases.

Mr. C. F. Gill--Rather an expensive habit if indulged in indiscriminately, isn't it?

Oscar Wilde--Less extravagant than giving jewelled garters to ladies. (Laughter.)

Oscar's weakness for presenting people with cigarette cases was performed as a sign of affection. It's a quiet aim of mine to keep all of this month's posts on the romantic side and I do like this idea that Oscar had a sort of trademark gift for his friends.

It's also nice to know that some people gave him cigarette cases in return. Two years ago, the cigarette case Oscar got from Bosie was displayed at the BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair and is pictured (below).

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American Cigarettes

The second and final paragraph of this letter from Oscar Wilde to his brother in 1893 might be my favorite Wildism ever. Oscar Wilde's reputation as a chain smoker sticks with him to this day. Apparently, his aesthetic tastes extended to cigarettes as well. Though his brother, Willie Wilde, was not an aesthete, he was as much of a chain smoker as Oscar. This letter emphasizes the difference in their tastes or standards regarding cigarettes. 

He writes:

I am greatly distressed to hear you and the fascinating Dan are smoking American cigarettes. You really must not do anything so horrid. Charming people should smoke gold-tipped cigarettes or die, so I enclose you a small piece of paper, for which reckless bankers may give you gold, as I don't want you to die.

By July 1893, Oscar's brother was in a state of increasing financial need, so this may have just been a pleasant way for Oscar to help him out. Ironically, a Google search for gold-tipped cigarettes brings up an American brand and I haven't been able to find a brand that Oscar would have recommended to his brother. The records don't have Oscar smoking gold-tipped cigarettes exclusively, references have been made to him smoking Egyptian cigarettes, though I suppose Egyptian cigarettes could be gold-tipped as well.

* While looking at photos for my entry on Hairy Men, I found a picture that named a brand Oscar may have recommended: Ogden's Guinea Gold Cigarettes, but I can't find any reference as to when these were first produced.

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