Two handkerchiefs

What is immediately curious about these handkerchiefs is their brownness. These are not bright pocket-square-revival decoration, nor are they the aged, soft white rags Proust blew his nose on.

Though I have no memory of them being used as such, their muddy patterns identify them as the belongings of a particular sort of man: the snuff-taker.  

When I was young, my father kept snuff in the top drawer of his dressing chest. It came in small, narrow aluminium pots, with screw tops that caught slightly when you put them back on; from these he would decant the powdery tobacco into a tiny palm-smoothed wooden box. He showed me how to take snuff, and would give me a pinch from the back of his hand; I must have been eight or nine. 

One day I crept into his room while he was at work, and pocketed one of the pots. Returning to my bedroom, I crouched under the desk at the foot of my bed. The next thing I remember is choking on a good teaspoonful of the grown-up brown powder, coughing and drooling stained spit all over the carpet, tears dropping from my chin.  I don’t recall how it ended up in my mouth, but I never went near the stuff again.