Spring 98 Volume I Issue 4

Tucked away on the third floor of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue are two Georgian-style, pine-paneled rooms, resembling those of a country manor house - which indeed they once were - that contain the finest array of tobacco-related material in the world: The George Arents, Jr. Collection.

Once you've made your way through the long, cabinet-walled reading room, you can sink into a cozy sofa near a fireplace which bears an engraved motto by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: "The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan." Over this Georgian mantle hangs a painting by the poet e.e. Cummings, of a pipesmoker. Thus comfortably seated, one has an urge to light up a pipe oneself (not allowed), take a sip of an ice-cold martini (not offered), and ask the curator of the Arents collection, Virginia Bartow, who was this major collector, and why did he choose tobacco for his subject?

"George Arents came from a multigenerational Virginia tobacco-growing family, whose firm was one of the founding members of the American Tobacco Company," explains Bartow. Arents initially worked with the family firm, eventually patenting cigarette- and cigar-rolling machines, which he went on to manufacture and which eventually produced two thirds of the cigars smoked in this country. He moved from Virginia to New York, where his company had its headquarters and, in time, built an estate, 'Hillbrook,' in suburban Westchester County.

In 1893, as a young man of 17, while browsing in an antique bookshop, Arents purchased a pamphlet entitled "A Pinch of Snuff," for $2.25. This first purchase lit up - if you will - what was to become a burning passion for tobacciana, which continued throughout his life. Fascinated by all aspects of tobacco, Arents went on to collect not only books, but any item related to tobacco that appealed to his imagination and fancy. Shortly after his initial purchase, he bought a very rare and expensive volume published in 1507, Cosmographiae Introductio, which was written by Martin Waldesmuller, a young teacher in eastern France, who cites an account of explorer Amerigo Vespucci's having observed Native Americans chewing a certain green plant. "This book remains the earliest printed reference to tobacco, and the year 1507 became for Arents the starting point of his collection," explains Bartow.

From the 16th century onward, the use of tobacco, unknown to the world outside the Americas, spread eastward. Tobacco's history, culture, use, and economy have become worldwide in the nearly 500 years since the plant's discovery, and it was the written, painted, printed, etched, and manufactured tangible history of the subject of tobacco that fascinated and inspired George Arents to comb the world for his collection.

By the time Arents began his collecting, the number of books and objects relating to tobacco was already immense. It was necessary, therefore, for Arents to limit his collecting to what was both rare and - true for all collectors - what was interesting to him. Before Arents, there had been no systematic collecting of tobacco-related material, but with his passion and his fortune, Arents was able to accomplish this in 50 years. By 1952, five great illustrated volumes were published on the collection, and are themselves a monument of tobacco history: "Tobacco, its History Illustrated by Books, Manuscripts, and Engravings in the Library of George Arents, Jr."

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