Smoking Petersdon's Irish Cask inside this wonderfully politically incorrect tin. To complement my look as a late 19thC farm bailiff, I needed a Victorian tin that looks new, and so I did some surfing, found and purchased a) a new blank 2oz. tin, and b) a reproduction label from a specialist provider to very thorough re-enactors. Zoom in, and take a closer look at the label: it's so Jingo, so supremacist, bumptious and Kitsch, I couldn't resist... observe how, with that characteristic British Pluck (TM) inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race, a red-coated, pith-helmeted Tommy is single-handedly holding off a swarm of nondescript brown heathen types with his wounded platoon commander's .450 Adams revolver, as the savages advance with their spears - doubtless the Gatling (off-picture) has jammed.
At first, I was suspicious: didn't it seem to be trying a little too hard? I did some further research on British Pluck Flaked Tobacco labels, and was pleasantly surprised to see that here I had The Real Thing (or at least, a copy of same): a slightly later version shows a pack of what are unmistakably Boers throwing away their Mausers in panicked flight from a British cavalryman who has just stuck one of them with his sabre, and an infantryman advancing in close support, bayonet fixed to his Lee-Metford (They don't like it up 'em, Mister Mainwaring).
If Messrs. W.D. & H.O. Wills had produced a ready-rubbed pipe shag called White Man's Burden, I couldn't have been more astonished.
I'm left wondering what kind of weed British Pluck (TM) was. Contemporary advertisements inform the beholder that it is "Flaked Virginia". That covers a multitude, of course. I imagine it was cheap, though.
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