My late father-in-law favoured High Dry Toast. Norman Murphy, an authority on P G Wodehouse and much else besides, likes Kendal Brown. I have just ordered some Seville. From 1720 until 1981 they could all be purchased at Fribourg and Treyer’s shop in the Haymarket.
The shop is still there, it’s number 34, but now it sells souvenirs to tourists; a sad decline from the days it supplied snuff to dandies and flâneurs as they strolled to visit their clubs and mistresses.
Norman tells me that Prince Albert’s death caused a downturn in the consumption of snuff. It was only permissable to wear black in mourning with a white handkerchief. Snuff takers know that it is advisable to have a coloured handkerchief to disguise the brown stains.
You should sometimes take this blog with a pinch of snuff. An egregious error crept into an old post, Three Artists, on 24th October. I told you that Alan Ellison had won his art prize on the children’s TV programme Animal Magic, presented by Johnny Morris. He has pointed out that it was the more intellectual Zoo Time, presented by Desmond Morris, of Naked Ape fame. You may remember that this connected him with Ronnie Wood whose teenage art appeared on Sketch Club. However, his connection with The Rolling Stones runs deeper than that. At school he was in the form above Mick Taylor, Stones guitarist and song writer 1969-1974, when he was replaced by Ronnie Wood. Thank you, Alan, for correcting me and you see, you can get Satisfaction here.