The Book of Perfumes

CHAPTER I.

PHYSIOLOGY OF PERFUMES.

Ah, what can language do? ah, where find words

Ting’d with so many colours; and whose powers,

To life approaching, may perfume my lays

With that fine oil, those aromatic gales.

That inexhaustible flow continual round?—THOMSON.

AMONG the many enjoyments provided for us by bountiful Nature, there are few more delicate and, at the same time, more keen than those derived from the sense of small. When the olfactory nerves, wherein that sense resides, are struck with odoriferous exauntions the agreeable impression they receive is rapidly and vividly transmitted to the brain, and thus acquires somewhat of a mental character. Who has not felt revived and cheered by the balmy fragrance of the luxuriant garden or the flowery meadow? Who has not experienced the delightful sensations caused by inhaling a fresh breeze loaded with the spoils of the flowery tribe?—that sweet south, so beautifully described by Shakspeare as

"Breathing o’er a bock of violets,

Stealing and giving odour."

An indescribable emotion then invades the whole being; the soul becomes melted in sweet rapture, and silently offers up the homage of its gratitude to the Creator for the blessings showered upon us; whilst the tongue slowly murmurs with Thomson—

"Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,

In mingled clouds to Him whose san exacts,

Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints!"

It is when nature awakes from her long slumbers, and shakes off the trammels of hoary Winter, at that delightful season which the Italian poet so charmingly hails as the youth of the year,

Primavera, gioventú dell’ anno!

that the richest perfumes fill the atmosphere. The fair and fragile children of Spring begin to open one by one their bright corols, and to shed around their aromatic treasures:—

"Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace;

Throws ont the snowdrop and the crocus first;

The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,

And polyanthus of unnumber’d dyes;

The yellow wallflower, stained with iron-brown,

And lavish stock that scents the garden round."

But soon—too soon, alas!—those joys are doomed to pass; like the maiden ripening into the matron, the flower becomes a seed, and its fragrance would for ever be lost, had it not been treasured up in its prime by some mysterious art which gives it fresh and lasting life.

"The roses soon withered that hung o’er the wave,

But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone,

And a dew was distilled from their flowers that gave

All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone."

Thus the sweet but evanescent aroma, which would otherwise be scattered to the winds of heaven, assumes a durable and tangible shape, and consoles us for the loss of flowers when Nature dons her mourning garb, and the icy blast howls round us. To minister to these wants of a refined mind—to revive the joys of ethereal spring by carefully saving its balmy treasures—constitutes the art of the perfumer.

When I say the art of the perfumer, let me explain this phrase, which might otherwise appear ambitious. The first musician who tried to echo with a pierced reed the songs of the birds of the forest, the first painter who attempted to delineate on a polished surface the gorgeous scenes which he beheld around him, were both artists endeavouring to copy nature; and so the perfumer, with a limited number of materials at his command, combines them like colours on a palette, and strives to imitate the fragrance of all flowers which are rebellious to his skill, and refuse to yield up their essence. Is he not, then, entitled to claim also the name of an artist, if he approaches even faintly the perfections of his charming models?

The origin of perfumery, like that of all ancient arts, is shrouded in obscurity. Some assert that it was first discovered in Mesopotamia, the seat of earthly paradise, where, as Milton says,

"Gentle gales,

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole

Those balmy spoils;"

others that it originated in Arabia, which has long enjoyed, and still retains, the name of the land of perfumes. Whatever may be the true version, it is evident that when man first discovered

What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,

his first idea was to offer up these fragrant treasures as a holocaust to the Deity. The word perfume (per, through, fumum, smoke) indicates clearly that it was first obtained by burning aromatic gums and woods; and it seems as if a mystio idea was connected with this mode of sacrifice, and as if men fondly believed that their prayers would sooner reach the realms of their gods by being wafted on the blue wreaths which slowly ascended to heaven and disappeared in the atmosphere, whilst their intoxicating fumes threw them into religious ecstasies. Thus we find perfumes form a part of all primitive forms of worship. The altars of Zoroaster and of Confucius, the temples of Memphis and those of Jerusalem, all smoked alike with incense and sweet scented woods.

A Primitive Perfumer Altar.

Among the Greeks, perfumes were not only considered as a homage due to their deities, but as a sign of their presence. Homer and other poets of that period never mention the apparition of a goddess without speaking of the ambrosial clouds which surround her. Thus is Cupid’s fair mother described in the Iliad when she visits Achilles:—

"Celestial Venus hovered o’er his head,

And roseate unguents heavenly fragrance ahed!"

And in one of Euripides’ tragedies, Hippolites, dying, exclaims, O Diana, sweet goddess, I know that thou art near me, for I have recognised thy balmy odour.

The use of perfumes by the ancients was not long confined to sacred rites. From the earliest times of the Egyptian empire we find that they were adapted to private uses, and gradually became an actual necessary to those who laid any claim to refined taste and habits. We may say that perfumery was studied and cherished by all the various nations which held in turn the sceptre of civilization. It was transmitted by the Egyptians to the Jews, then to the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and at last to the modern European nations, when they emerged from their long chaos of barbarous turmoil, and again welcomed the arts of peace. It will be our study to trace its course through these different phases; to dive into the mysteries of the toilet of the Greek beauty and the Roman matron; to describe the various ways in which ladies have endeavoured, at all times and in all countries, to increase and preserve the charms lavished upon them by nature; and, lastly, to record the progress of perfumery to the present period, when, having shaken off the trammels of ignorance and quackery, it aspires to become useful no less than ornamental. To render the history of the Toilet more complete, we shall bestow a passing glance on the sundry styles of dressing the hair at different periods, from the Egyptian princess under the Cheops dynasty to the powdered belle of the last century. Nor shall civilised people monopolise our whole attention: in our roamings all round the world, we shall find even among barbarous tribes some curious fashions to register, and African beauties as well as Tartar damsels will have to reveal to us the secrets of their so-called embellishments. We shall then conclude with a brief description of the principal modes used in extracting perfumes from flowers and aromatic plants, of the chief materials to which we are indebted for our aromatic treasures, and of the various substances which might also be rendered available for that purpose.

Egyptian Princess.

Powdered Belle of the last century.

African Headdress.

Lepcha Headdress.

Before commencing, however, this chronological narration, I may be allowed to say a few words on odours in general.

All plants and all flowers exhale an odour more or less perceptible—more or less agreeable. Some flowers, like that of the orange-tree and the rose, possess such a powerful aroma that it scents the air for miles around. Those who have the good fortune to travel in the genial land of Provence, when the flowers are in full bloom,

"And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad

And the musk of the roses blown,"

are saluted (as I have frequently been myself), with the balmy breezes emanating from the floral plantations of Grasse or Nice long before they reach them. Some flowers have a stronger smell at sunrise, some at midday, others at night. This depends in a great measure on the time they are wont to open, which varies so much among the fragrant tribe, that it has allowed a patient botanist to form a floral clock, each hour being indicated by the opening of a particular flower.

Floral Clock.

The accompanying illustration will give some idea of this floral clock. I have taken it from an old work on botany, but for its accuracy I cannot vouch. It consists of the following flowers, the hour stated for some being in the morning and for others in the evening:—

1 Rose.

2 Heliotropo.

3 Water-lily.

4 Hyacinth.

5 Convolvulus.

6 Geranium.

7 Mignonette.

8 Carnation.

9 Cactus.

10 Lilac.

11 Magnolia.

12 Violet and Panay.

All odours are not alike in intensity. Some flowers lose their fragrance as soon as they are culled; others, on the contrary, preserve it even when dried. None, however, can equal in strength and durability the odours derived from the animal kingdom. A single grain of musk will retain its aroma for years, and impart it to everything with which it comes in contact.

Linnæus, The Botanist.

Odours have been classified in various ways by learned men. Linnæus, the father of modern botanical science, divided them into seven classes, three of which only were pleasant odours, viz., the aromatic, the fragrant, and the ambrosial: but, however good his general divisions may have been, this classification was far from correct, for he placed carnation with laurel leaves, and saffron with jasmine, than which nothing can be more dissimilar. Fourcroy divided them into five series, and De Haller into three. All these were, however, more theoretical than practical, and none classified odours by their resemblance to each other. I have attempted to make a new classification, comprising only pleasant odours, by adopting the principle that, as there are primary colours from which all secondary shades are composed, there are also primary odours with perfect types, and that all other aromas are connected more or less with them.

The types I have adopted will be found in the following table:—

CLASSIFICATION OF ODOURS.

This is the smallest number of types to which I could reduce my classification, and even then there are some particular odours, such as that of winter-green, which it would be difficult to introduce into either class; nor does this list comprise the scents which are produced by blending several classes together.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, Zimmermann, and other authors, say that the sense of smell is the sense of imagination. There is no doubt that, as I have observed before, pleasant perfumes exercise a cheering influence on the mind, and easily become associated with our remembrances. Sounds and scents share alike the property of refreshing the memory, and recalling vividly before us scenes of our past life—an effect which Thomas Moore beautifully illustrates in his Lalla Rookh:—

"The young Arab, haunted by the smell

Of her own mountain flowers as by a spell,

The sweet Elcaye, and that courteous tree,

Which bows to all who seek its canopy,

Sees call’d up round her by those magic scents

The well, the camels, and her father’s tenta;

Sighs for the home she left with little pain,

And wishes e’en its sorrows back again."

Tennyson expresses the same feeling in his Dream of fair women.

"The smell of violets, hidden in the green,

Pour’d back into my empty soul and frame

The times when I remember to have been

Joyful and free from blame."

Criton, Hippocrates, and other ancient doctors, classed perfumes among medicines, and prescribed them for many diseases, especially those of a nervous kind. Pliny also attributes therapeutic properties to various aromatic substances,¹ and some perfumes are still used in modern medicine.

Discarding, however, all curative pretensions for perfumes, I think it right, at the same time, to combat the doctrines of certain medical men who hold that they are injurious to health. It can be proved, on the contrary, that their use in moderation is more beneficial than otherwise; and in cases of epidemics they have been known to render important service, were it only to the four thieves who, by means of thei famous aromatic vinegar,¹ were enabled to rob half the population of Marseilles at the time of the great plague.

It is true that flowers, if left in a sleeping-apartment all night, will sometimes cause headache and sickness but this proceeds not from the diffusion of their aroma, but from the carbonic acid they evolve during the night. If a perfume extracted from these flowers were let open in the same circumstances, no evil effect wouli arise from it. All that can be said is that some delicate people may be affected by certain odours; but the same person to whom a musky scent would give a headache might derive much relief from a perfum with a citrine basis. Imagination has, besides, a great deal to do with the supposed noxious effects of perfumes Dr. Cloquet, who may be deemed an authority on this subject, of which he made a special study, says in his able Treatise on Olfaction:—"We must not forge that there are many effeminate men and women to be found in the world who imagine that perfumes are in jurious to them, but their example cannot be adduced as a proof of the bad effect of odours. Thus Dr. Thomas Capellini relates the story of a lady who fancied she could not bear the smell of a rose, and fainted on receiving the visit of a friend who carried one, and yet the fatal flower was only artificial."¹

Were any other argument wanting to vindicate perfumes from the aspersions cast upon them, I would say that we are prompted by a natural instinct to seek and enjoy pleasant odours, and to avoid and reject unpleasant ones, and it is unreasonable and unjust to suppose that Providence has endowed us with this discerning power, to mislead us into a pleasure fraught with danger, or even discomfort.

¹ Pliny, in his Natural History, mentions eighty-four remedies derived from rue, forty-one from mint, twenty-five from pennyroyal, forty-one from the iris, thirty-two from the rose, twenty-one from the lily, seventeen from the violet, etc. (Pliny’s Nat. Hist. b. xx. and xxi.)

¹ It is related that during the great plague which visited Marseilles four robbers, who had become associated, invented an aromatic vinegar by means of which they could rob the dead and the dying, without any fear of infection. This vinegar was long known in France under the name of Vinaigre des quatre Voleurs, and gave the first idea of Toilet Vinegar.

¹ Osphrésiologie, on Traité de l’Olfaction, par le Dr. H. Cloquet, chap. v. p. 80.

THE BOOK OF PERFUMES. CHAP. II.

AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE

CHAPTER II.

THE EGYPTIANS.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love sick. . . .

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

LONG before any other nation, Egypt had learned, or rather invented, the art of raising lofty temples to its gods, magnificent palaces to its princes, and immense eities for its people, and of decorating them with all the various treasures which nature had placed at its disposal. Whilst the Jews and other surrounding people were confined to the simplicities of pastoral life, the Egyptians were enjoying the luxuries of refinement, and carried them to an extent which was not surpassed, if equalled, by those who, after them, successively held the sceptre of