Colonial New England Silver Snuff, Tobacco, and Patch Boxes: Indices of Gentility

Patches

Made from a wide range of materials—black silk, velvet, paper, or red leather—and cut into a variety of shapes and sizes, patches were applied to the face or bosom with mastic.10 As understood in their time, they helped to create an impression of formal distinction and enhanced one’s beauty and desirability. Some people who decorated themselves with patches believed the spots made them appear younger and more fashionable, while others used patches to hide blemishes.

In England patches became hugely popular among both men and women in stylish circles by the mid-seventeenth century and continued in vogue through the late 1700s. Advertisements for both patch boxes and patches scattered through colonial newspapers indicate that Americans, well aware of prevailing London fashions, soon followed the British lead. English government officials in colonial America contributed to the spread of such courtly fashions, helping to set the standards of tasteful dress and decorum. Members of the Perm family, for example, were noted for their stylishness; in 1655 Samuel Pepys of London wrote in his famed diary that he had seen Sir William Penn’s daughter Pegg, then only thirteen years old, wearing patches for the first time.11 One may suppose that the Penn family brought their refined taste in dress with them to the colonies. Indeed, American colonists admired leaders who lent a sense of polish and dignity to their offices. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the pamphlet Further Quaeries Upon the Present State of New-English Affairs (ca. 1690) advised voters to elect officials “of good Fashion and Quality, and such as maintain the due Grandure of a Government.”12

Nonetheless, the practice of patching still met with mockery and criticism in both England and America. Critics condemned patches for contributing to myriad vices, including lust, vanity, and extravagance. Men who used patches were ridiculed as effeminate fops, young women who wore spots were accused of denigrating God’s handiwork, and older women were mocked for foolishly borrowing the trappings of youth. “Morning,” an engraving published by the English artist William Hogarth in 1738, shows a gaunt old maid making her way through Covent Garden (fig. 2). When seen beside the fresh, young beauty to her right, she seems even older, and the patch high on her cheek becomes sadly out of place. During the Interregnum, Parliament took steps to forbid patching all together. When official disapproval proved ineffectual, it fell to clergymen, moralists, and satirists to contain the fashion.

Ministers charged women who wore patches with deliberately kindling lust in men. In his fiery treatise The Loathsomnesse of Long Haire (1654), Englishman Thomas Hall railed against such wickedness, adding that those who patch bear responsibility not only for their own damnation but for that of the men aroused by their immodest costume as well. He dismissed patches as the badges of harlots and denounced the spots for the irreverence they show for God’s creation.13 In 1647 Nathaniel Ward, the minister of Ipswich, Massachusetts, reprimanded colonial women for following the vagaries of courtly fashion and for dressing above their station. As members of a church-state intended to be a model for all Christian communities, Massachusetts women should not fritter away their colony’s material and spiritual resources by indulging in luxurious fashions.14

Visiting Boston in 1740, preacher George Whitefield measured the residents’ purity of faith by their costume. He sadly noted in his journal that

Patches figured specifically in Whitefield’s assessment of colonial failings. Like other moralists, he condemned extravagant dress overall, but found it particularly offensive when worn by the lower classes. It was conceited and disrespectful to dress above one’s own station.16

Tobacco

A vignette of three figures, engraved on the lid of an English brass tobacco box dated 1772 (fig. 3), suggests the social stereotypes associated with the three prevalent means of tobacco consumption. A richly dressed gentleman wearing a sword offers a snuffbox to his companions and asks, “Voule Vous de Rapper” (Would you like some snuff?), while the more plainly clad figure in the center holds a pipe and replies in accented tones, “No dis been better.” A coarse, rural character at his side offers his own choice of tobacco and asks, “Will you have a quid?” Beneath runs the motto “This three unite in the Same Cause / This Snuffs that Smoaks the other Chaws.” The box illustrates the broad social appeal of tobacco at the same time that it describes a hierarchy of use.

By the eighteenth century, fashionable Englishmen took their tobacco as snuff. Smoking was associated with soldiers, seamen, country squires, and foreigners; the Dutch were known to be great smokers, which might account for the accent of the brass box’s figure with the pipe. None but rude yokels indulged in the messy habit of chewing tobacco. In America, class distinctions regarding the different uses of tobacco were far less rigid, and colonists were not restricted by their station to choosing one method over another; for example, President John Adams is known to have enjoyed using tobacco in all three forms at various stages in his life.17 Nonetheless, snuffing was largely the urban habit of English and Dutch government officials and merchants, and other colonial leaders, and only slowly spread through society and into the countryside. Throughout the colonial period, smoking remained the most popular means of enjoying tobacco. Tobacco consumption had also played an important role in American life from the very first years of settlement. In his Wonder-Working Providence, Edward Johnson described the homesickness suffered by many of the first settlers to Massachusetts and recounted how they lived through their first bleak winter in the New World, enjoying what familiar comforts that they could: “[making] shift to rub out the Winters cold by the Fireside, having fuell enough growing at their very doores, turning down many a drop of the Bottell, and burning Tobacco with all the Ease they could.”18

Pleasure and support in times of trial, tobacco also was lauded as a medicinal wonder and source of inspiration. English essayist Sir Richard Steele expressed his fierce devotion to tobacco in a tribute to the tobacco box:

For Steele, tobacco was a gift from the gods themselves and deserved to be honored as such; silver containers lent tremendous dignity to the tobacco within. Many shared Steele’s belief in the medicinal powers of tobacco. The plant was extolled as a panacea and credited with curing such diverse ills as indigestion, paralysis, apoplexy, and toothache.20 Nor was Steele alone in his appreciation of tobacco’s stimulating effect on conversation. Avid users of both tobacco and snuff declared that regular consumption cleared their minds and lifted their thoughts. In “Snuff: A Poem,” first published in Edinburgh in 1719, James Arbuckle lauded snuff as a muse and praised snuffboxes as well. He described how holding and using the box skillfully could enhance a man’s talents in conversation: he could command an audience’s attention by pausing, making his listeners wait while he opened his box and took a pinch of snuff. His speech following the pinch then took on greater emphasis. Arbuckle also argued that snuffboxes were necessary tools for ladies intent on showing themselves to best advantage and winning new suitors:

A lady who could manipulate a snuffbox with elegance drew attention to her beauty and grace.

An aid in courtship and conversation, tobacco became an important feature of social gatherings. In particular, the offer of tobacco functioned as a gesture of friendship. In a 1710 article for the English journal The Tatler, the editor related one visit to his club at which an acquaintance “show[ed] his good-will” by giving him a pipe of tobacco. Feeling indebted by such a friendly gesture, the writer then was obliged to prove his own amiability by listening to his companion’s tedious stories.22

The role of tobacco in colonial taverns mirrored its social functions in genteel London clubs: taverns provided a place to meet with friends and they served liquor—drinking and smoking went hand in hand. Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, a painting by John Greenwood, illustrates this link (fig. 4) with its view of a group of merchants from Newport, Rhode Island, enjoying a riotous evening in a tavern; the men are drinking punch by the bowl-full, knocking chairs to the floor, and playing tricks on one another. One man staggers about drunkenly, as another vomits, and pipes and tobacco are everywhere.

The part smoking played in the debauched revelry of the eighteenth century was not lost on the critics of tobacco. Even John Adams, himself a smoker, was alarmed at the idle dissipation of the young men of Worcester, Massachusetts, who did not study but embraced sensual pleasures, spending every evening “playing Cards, drinking Punch and Wine, Smoaking Tobacco, swearing &c. while one hundred of the best Books lie on the shelves, Desks, and Chairs, in the same room.”23 If one was smoking, one was not working; colonial moralists sought to prevent their neighbors from falling into lives of idleness and excess.

Critics also recognized the possibility of addiction to tobacco. In a pamphlet addressed to prospective ministers, Cotton Mather expressed his wish that there were more controls on the purchase of tobacco and warned of the hold tobacco could gain on intemperate smokers, reducing them to “Slave[s] to the Pipe.”24 He only reluctantly accepted the careful, medicinal use of smoking tobacco, and he vehemently opposed any use of snuff at all, which he believed to lead to ill-health and dissolute craving for sensual pleasure. He thundered

For Mather, snuff serviced man’s basest desires and endangered his soul. Unlike smoking tobacco, it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

It should be noted, however, that Mather’s criticism of tobacco was not echoed by all church leaders. Indeed, a number of preachers enjoyed tobacco; the Yale collections include silver tobacco and snuffboxes owned by such prominent clergymen as Isaac Stiles, Joseph Burbeen, and William Welsteed. These New England clergymen and their families enjoyed considerable status in their communities and displayed that status through their fine dress, silver, and household furnishings. Another box, also in the Yale collections, belonged to Sarah Pierpont Edwards, wife of Jonathan Edwards and daughter of a celebrated New Haven minister (fig. 5). The box was found at the site of the Stockbridge farm occupied by the Edwardses following their dismissal by the Northampton church. In the wilds of western Massachusetts, surrounded only by the few settlers and Indians to whom her husband ministered, Sarah Edwards continued to use and display silver that made manifest her family’s stature in its community and that set her family apart from its neighbors.

The decoration, as well as the material, of silver snuff, tobacco, and patch boxes bespoke their owners’ genteel aspirations. The possession of a silver box and the knowledge to interpret correctly its decoration were gauges for measuring social standing. Despite living in a society that was not armigerous, socially ambitious New Englanders sometimes borrowed English coats of arms to aggrandize their silver. On the box engraved by John Coney for the Jeffries family (fig. 6), the decoration draws attention to the prestige and power of its owner, his social self-assurance, and his desire to link himself with noble fashion.

Other boxes reflect their owners’ genteel erudition, since the engravings often invoked a knowledge of ancient literature that was the hallmark of the liberal education then reserved for the elite. Box lids frequently bore stylized flowers and foliage, many representing plants that carried symbolic meanings. For example, the sunflower engraved on a box marked by the Boston silver-smith William Rouse refers, via classical mythology, to abiding love (fig. 7). In Metamorphosis Ovid tells the story of the lovers Apollo and Clytie, in which the ignored, jealous Clytie sits so long on the ground, watching the sun god pass above her, that she takes root and turns into a flower; nonetheless, she continues turning her head toward the sun she loves.26 Most likely the sunflower decoration marked the Rouse box as a love token, but it would have failed in that purpose if its recipient were unable to interpret the engraving. Therefore, the box may well speak both of the affection of the colonial couple who exchanged it and of their refined taste and education.

The possession of a silver box, the knowledge to correctly interpret its decoration, and the ability to skillfully manipulate it in public all commanded considerable cachet. In this, the box became a sign-vehicle in a much larger discourse of the importance of bearing and manners. Gentlemen and social aspirants alike placed great value in knowing the proper, fashionable way to go about small, daily ceremonies, such as using a snuffbox. Dancing classes that taught modish posture and walking, as well as dancing itself, flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and Americans intent on gentility had a wealth of instructive books to consult in order to polish their bearing. F. Nivelon’s The Rudiments of Genteel Behavior, published in Britain in 1734, gives step-by-step instructions for walking, standing, dancing, and going through other daily motions in a refined fashion, “thereby distinguish[ing] the polite Gentleman from the rude Rustick.”27 One of the engravings in Nivelon’s manual illustrates the proper stance a gentleman should take when giving or receiving an object (fig. 8). The accompanying text describes in daunting detail just how each part of the body should move:

Status could be defined by the elegance with which one moved as well as the objects that one owned.

Relying on such complex advice, a gentleman sought to exhibit his gracefulness when offering or receiving snuff, and he would look for similar refinement in those with whom he shared the tobacco. A genteel snuffer strove to handle his box with easy grace, usually holding it in his left hand, while taking a dainty pinch of snuff with the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, as illustrated by the portrait of Ralph Bell (see fig. 1). So powerful a tool was the snuffbox in displaying and defining gentility that in the English comedy The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672), by William Wycherley, a character is dismissed with the observation “for being well-bred you shall judge . . . to say no more, he ne’er carries a snuff box about with him.”29 In 1711, the satiric London journal The Spectator announced that

Albeit tongue-in-cheek, this advertisement reinforced the idea that there were stylish ways to use snuffboxes. Gentility could be acquired through the study of elegant movement and the rules of social hierarchy. Gentlemen strove for the ideal of graceful, unaffected ease.

In all classes, the sharing of tobacco created a sense of communion and reaffirmed feelings of affiliation, much as sharing food and drink would. A print after Thomas Rowlandson’s watercolor “The French Coffee-House” shows one gentleman offering his snuffbox to another (fig. 9). The posture of the recipient echoes that of the donor, strengthening the link between the two as they engage in a common activity. Through the exchange of boxes and their contents Anglo-Americans helped to define their social circles.

Boxes themselves frequently acted as gifts. For example, in his will of 1777, Boston silversmith Nathaniel Hurd bequeathed his tobacco box bearing his name to his brother-in-law John Furness.31 Even after death, Hurd and Furness would be linked by the box, and their familial bonds would be acknowledged. Similarly, the diarist John Smith wrote in 1747 of presenting a Philadelphia lady with a tobacco box in the explicit hope of being remembered whenever she smoked a pipe.32 Thus, a box could transcend its use for storage and act as an “icon of continuity,” inducing memories of events or feelings.33

Some boxes, like the one engraved with the sunflower by William Rouse, reflect in their design or decoration that they were intended as love tokens. For example, a box attributed to Benjamin Brenton of Newport shows a phoenix, symbol of the undying, perching over a putto’s head (fig. 10). The two images together speak of eternal love. A heart-shaped box by the Portsmouth silversmith William Whittemore carries the inscription “A K, This is Thine and Thou art Mine 1734” (fig. 11); its motto is reinforced by its form.

Contemporary literature further substantiates the role silver boxes played in the courtship rituals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the poem “Mundus Muliebris,” subtitled “A Voyage to Marryland,” the Englishwoman Mary Evelyn listed patch boxes in her catalogue of the gifts a young man must give to his love; she suggested that a relationship cannot succeed without such presents.34 Furthermore, a suitor might receive a box as proof of a lady’s affection. Popular beaus could accumulate considerable collections of such trophies. Alexander Hamilton noted that Dr. Keith of Newport, a great favorite with the ladies, kept a “cabinet of curiosities” in which he displayed all the objects given him by admiring women, including fans, torn gloves, and snuffboxes.35

Thus, colonial silver tobacco, snuff, and patch boxes transcended their manifest function as containers to embrace latent functions as indices of gentility and tools for social interaction. They were used both to create social distance and to create and affirm social bonds. Their graceful use demonstrated their owners’ knowledge of courtly behavior. Their very material transformed the boxes, lending them increased importance; they represented tangible wealth. Furthermore, the polished, reflective silver was inherently beautiful and pleasurable to hold. That pleasure was echoed by the sensual nature of the tobacco and luxurious finery that the boxes held. As manifestations of gentility, and as gifts exchanged within select circles, colonial silver tobacco, snuff, and patch boxes are powerful documents of seventeenth and eighteenth century social hierarchy and patterns of interaction. The boxes’ layers of meaning were potent during the colonial era, and these continue to be powerful for modern students of early American material culture and social history.

Notes