PERFUMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

PERFUMES.

AN AGE-OLD TASTE.

THEIR HISTORY IN ANCIENT DAYS.

In the matter of perfumes, as in many other ways, we are daily growing more luxurious. The reign of scent is, indeed, with us: its alluring bottles in chemists' shops oust the homely remedies for the ills that flesh is heir to. It invades the drapers' show windows, and sits among frills and furbelows, coats and skirts, hats and umbrellas; whilst inside the many emporiums where one scarcely expects to meet it, its bottles heap themselves up on every side, dazzling our senses, and throwing an exotic atmosphere round our prosaic purchases within.

An Old Saying. Meanwhile, the elders and the wise shake their heads sadly; there is an saying, they tell us, v.hat when society or an individual steeps itself in perfume, then the deterioration of society or that individual has begun. They point' to the lessons of history, for when the love of perfumery seized on the imagination of the Greeks, its use at last literally ran riot at Athens. The perfumers' shops became the rendezvous of fashion; there was no getting away from scent; it emanated from persons and rooms, in wine and in food. Greek outdid Greek in inventions for its use. Doves drenched in perfume were let loose from cages at the end of a feast, each dove scattering a different perfume from its soaked and flapping wings. Long before the days of the great ladies of Greece and Rome, we read of the groves of myrrh trees of the Queens of the Pharaohs from which the fragrant resin was extracted for the making ol colonnades covered a site as large as a town, wherein philosophers gravely discussed insolvable questions. The gossips gossiped, reputations were gained—and lost, the beauty specialists plied their trade, and after the bath each limb was anointed with its special oil or essence as; Mint for the arms, Palm oil for the jaws, An unguent of marjoram for eyebrows and hair, Essence of ground Ivy for knees and neck. In the baths of Diocletian (A.D. 302) there were 3200 marble seats for the use of the bathers. Indeed, the use of aromatics in the East dates from the very dawn of history; and have we not the sacred record of a "pot of ointment very precious" broken in the supreme sacrifice of penitence and penance by Magdalen the Great Penitent.

Groves of Myrrh Trees. The luxury of the baths of Ancient Rome was proverbial. Their marble their precious balms and unguents. The original recipe of "The Precious Ointment" can be found to-day in the Eber Papyrus now treasured in Berlin. Later, perfumers from the East made up part of the motley throng brought back to Europe by the Crusaders, and perfumes and their makers poured also down the great trade routes opened by Venice. The Moors gave the art of perfumery to Spain; whilst France owed her knowledge of the art to the Italians, bidden by Frances I. to his gorgeous court. But one may too much of a good thing, and the world at last tired of having its nose perpetually exercised. Perfumes, therefore, became anathema until resuscitated by the beautiful Anne of Austria. Here in England, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, with a queen on the throne feminine accessories came to the fore, and the leaders of fashion carried charming little scent boxes —"sweet coffers," and decorated toilet bottles called "casting bottles," whilst little balls of perfumed paste called "pomanders," jewelled, and often of exquisite workmanship, were hung round the neck or carried in the pocket. They were the predecessors of the vinaigrettes of our grandmothers, and 'of the tiny flasks of Chelsea china in which the patched and powdered ladies of the time of George 11. kept their scents." But in the later Georgian and the Victorian days the cult of perfumery did not run with the mentality of the time, and the leaders of fashion restricted themselves mainly to lavender bags and great bowls of potpourri, which were a charming and innocent means of gratifying the nose. And what refreshing odours were wafted from those great old linen presses, where linen old and new—fine inherited linen, and the store replenished year by year, rested together in warm security, sweet with the dried lavender and rose leaves picked fresh each year in the garden.

It Gave Them Courage. Perhaps some subconscious medley of remembrance of those gardens and the lavender and soft linen, waiting when work was over, gave courage to our hard-worked legislators, toiling and moiling in the heat of ■ a London summer; for, time was, in the old Whig and. Tory days, when the hereditary landowners of our country were content to bear, through long scorching summer months, an atmosphere in the Houses of Parliament that would seem intolerable in the present day. Groaning under the discipline of hot conventional clothes, thinking longingly of deserted country homes, of the soft shade of woods cool gardens, of rivers and fishing rods, and all the good things of English country life, they loyally laid them all aside, bearing the burden and heat of the day in obedience to duty, and for love of country. To desire to be a member of Parliament was an honourable ambition; when gained, it was. an honourable distinction. The many privations, discomforts, annoyances, which that distinction brought in its train—among them the atmosphere of the House of Commons—were accepted as "all in the day's work"—pro patria. But in the rush and hustle of modern life bur overstrained nerves no doubt need either calming or stimulating, as the case may be, and perfume, we are told, is shortly to be put to a serious use, for the aromatic spraying of the House of Commons. # When this comes about, perfume may influence our politics, and possibly, indeed, the future history of the world, for the suggested "Mixture of alcohol, oxygen and perfume" gently permeating the House of Commons would no doubt assist the deliberations of that august assembly. What emotional bills .nlay not emerge from the soothing, fragrant atmosphere? What a comforted, all's-well-with-tlie-world feeling will stead over the mind as members take their seats. But apart from questions of comfort to the flagging nerves of our legislators, what an impetus could in this way be given to the manufacturers of English perfumes.