Okay,
I'm going back to re-evaluate this stuff, after sitting in the cellar a couple of months, it may smoke different from when it was super fresh. I actually want to
love this stuff, and find it to be a major temptress in that it has a backbone yet smells of the wild prairie --- for sure, it evokes a
mood and I much appreciate that aspect...
...my dumb-ass rantings in regards to the snuff influence, are just that, dumb-ass rantings. I could hardly know. But it is peculiar how the Lakelands scented harken back to ye olden timey...
...back in the 1700's it seems most baccy was smoked straight, with an exception being "sweet scented", there was Negrohead and Cavendish, but what was actually available still eludes my fixing glass, so, I readily admit to conjecture and nothing should come of it...
...just now I've been reading Compton Mackenzie's masterpiece "Sublime Tobacco', inwhich he states that "...snuff and perfumery were kindred trades. the earliest reference to snuff in the O.E.D. is taken from London Gazette of 1683..."
But really, the sweet scenting could apply to all tobacco in general for all I know, I wasn't there and can only hobble together what tatters remain, and for what purpose I know not, but...
...in this F&T book, a mixture doesn't show up until 1859, given, before then were available the Negrohead, Cavendish, or Sweet Scented...
http://archive.org/stream/oldsnuffhouseoff00evaniala#page/n91/mode/2up
"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered· the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls· bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory"
-Marcel Proust
"The Remembrance of Things Past"
I could possibly refer here to a wonderfully titled tome of
The Toilet of Flora, which includes the odd snuff recipes, but instead I'll point to a very cool little presentation...
...which here in slideshow plus audio commentary gives a fulsome view of Kendal and its role in tobacco manufacture,
very well done!
http://www.stricklandgate-house.org.uk/historic-kendal/the-kendal-snuff-story
One of the oldest Gawith tins I've come across is this:
...and now to another instance of the Kendal houses using the term Lakeland themselves:
More snuff:
And finally, for what it's worth, words from the immortal Cope's...
"The essential oils referred to form a very expensive item to the manufacture of snuff. The ladies would be much surprised to see a dusty snuff-maker drain off five pounds’ worth of pure unadulterated otto-of-roses into a tin can, and as they (the ladies) would suppose, throw it away on a heap of what would appear to them rubbishy dust in one corner of the snuff-room. Of course the ladies would consider the proper place for it to be on the cambric handkerchief, but this idea would be about the last to occur to your matter-of-fact snuff-maker.
In addition to otto-of-roses, the scent-room contains great jars of essence of lemon, French geranium, verbena, oil of pimento, bergamotte, etc., all of which are used in the various flavoring combinations. There would most likely also be a few hundred-weight of fine Tonquin beans, and one of these beans is generally presented to any visitor who drops in, as souvenir to carry away in his waistcoat pocket."
