LOST FRAGRANCES

Otago Witness, Issue 3756, 9 March 1926, Page 78

LOST FRAGRANCES

By E.H. (Foe the Witness.) Oh© unfortunate development of modern horticulture seems to be that it is depriving us of some of the sweetest scented flowers. In forming new varieties of flowers, gardners study size, colour and form but not perfume. The showy new varieties 1 with weaker perfume or none become established and often supersede the old fashioned fragrant forms, which may become almost unprocurable. This is notably seen with modern violets. The bunches of big, variously purple violets in the windows of flowershopsj never tempt me. They have little scent and what they have is pretty well evaporated by the' time one can carry them home. If one receives a box of violets by post, instead of being deliciously sweet they exude only a stale, used-up odour

It is the force of habit I suppose that makes people cling to these scentless violets, otherwise many another flower might well be preferred. A violet without perfume is an anomaly not worth cultivating. It is seldom that one now meets with the smaller, old-fashioned kind that justified the praise that poets have lavished on the violet from time immemorial.

“Violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of June’s eyes or Cytherea’s breath,” says Shakespeare; and again he makes a hyperbolical lover accuse “the forward violet” of stealing its sweets from the breath of his love, a compliment to the fair ladv. which would be pointless to-day. The violet, a comparatively insignificant blossom, has established itself in human favour through its fragrance, and is now living oil its past reputation. The rose has won the rank of Queen of flowers by combining beauty of colour and grace of form with unsurpassed fragrance. A rose ought to bo sweet, and while we may admire beautiful scentless roses we cannot give them the same place in our affections that is held by the old-fashioned fragrant roses. “One might as well love a beautiful woman without charm, as a rose without fragrance,” says Mrs Cran, “it is unthrifty foviug.” So I sav of the scentless, or nearly scentless, violet. I believe the wild, white of English lanes is said to be the sweetest variety of all. I wonder why no one has thought it worth while to introduce it into this country.

Some plants seem to vary in fragrance or to lose it all together, independent of cultivation. Musk is a notable example. It used to be commonly grown in pots as a house plant on account of the fragrance of its leaves. But one never meets with it so grown now, and the musk which has established itself as a weed in this country and flourishes so abundantly in damp situations is absolutely scentless. T remember we used long ago to nip off the flower-buds from our pot musk. It was said that if allowed to flower the plant would lose its So perhaps this is the explanation of the scentlessness of our wild musk. It has been reported that English musk has lost its fragrance of recent vears. and if there be a connection between flowering and scentlessness it would seem that English people must have desisted from cultivating musk in the old-fashioned way. Often we miss fragrances if not very powerful because w© have not heard of the flower leaf as fragrant, and it does not occur to us to test its quality. Many gardens and wild flowers which are never praised for their sweetness have

nevertheless their peculiar fragrance. Asd sometimes the scent varies with the stage of growth of blossom or foliage. ‘How many modern people know the fragrance of dying strawberry leaves? Have the strawberry plants lost their oldtime virtues of their leaves?

Bacon, is his essay “Of Gardens” gives a list of plants to be cultivated for the perfume of their flowers or their foliage. Of those most to be prized for yielding their fragrance to the open air, he places first the violet, “especially the white double violet which comes twice a year, about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose; then the strawberry leaves with a most excellent cordial smell; then the flower of the vines—it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth ; then sweet-briars; then wallflowers, fivhich are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower-chamber windows ; then pinks and gilliflowers.” We love the fresh fragrance of sweet briar leaves to-day. Wallflowers, pinks and gilliflowers (carnations) delights us with their fragrance as they did Elizabethans. But what modern Englishman or woman has discovered the fragrance of vine flowers? I have never heard of it except in this essay of Bacon’s. In all the years when I lived in a home which had strawberries in its garden I never noted any fragrance about strawberry foliage. It is that modern strawberry plants do not possess this virtue? One would be inclined to think so.

In a little garden anthology edited by Mary Coxhead under the title of “Garden Fancies” I find it querried by one writer (H. A. Bright), whether anyone now living can smell the scent of dying strawberry leaves. “We all remember,” says one writer, “how Mrs Caskell in her delightful story gives Lady Ludlow the power, but we all seem to have lost it. Certaiuly my dying strawberry leaves give me no sense of sweetness. Was it a mere fond or foolish fancy or were the strawberries of Elizabethan gardens different from those we are now growing?” Bacon certainly was not a man to be deceived by “fond and foolish fancy,” and he speaks as if the fragrance of strawberry leaves in their decline was strong, and appreciable by everyone. Sir John Suckling somewhere has the comparison, “Wholesome as dying leaves of strawberries.” Against the idea that strawberry leaves no longer exhale this dying fragrance I find the following testimony by Mrs Cran in her book “The Story of my Ruin,” in the chapter “A Berry Farm.”—

“After the fruit has passed, and the leaves begin to flush red and gold in decay, the strawberry beds still have a treasure to offer those who are sensitive to autumnal beauty, and that is their tender perfume; very delicate, pitiously sweet. The smile of the dying.”

The next time I have an opportunity I shall test the fragrance, or lack of fragrance, of dying strawberry leaves for myself. But doubtless just as some people cannot hear sounds audible to others, because too high or too low for their range of hearing, so some people can enjoy fragrances imperceptible by others. Elizabethans seem to have thought more of the fragrance of plants they grew is their gardens, than we do. We neglect some of the sweetest of flowers, as the lily of the valley, and the night flowering stock, which sheds such delightful fragrance upon the summer night air. Lavender and a few other sweet scented herbs are prized for making scent-sachets, but not many people now-a-days plant trees, flowers, and herbs with the special design of making their gardens fragrant. Perhaps in these days of hurry and racket we do not spend so much time in quiet enjoyment of our gardens as the Elizabethans spent in theirs. To Bacon evidently, sweet scents made a large part of the pleasures of a garden He wanted to enjoy the fragrance of flowers out-of-doors. “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music, than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.” And then he proceeds to enumerate them. BOOKS OF THE DAY. A FRENCH CLASSIC. “ The Spider and the Fly.” By Alfred do Vigny. Translated from the French by Madge Pemberton. (Paper, 2s net.) London: Stanley Paul and Co. Messrs Stanley Paul and Co. deserve the thanks of the reading public for their enterprise in publishing cheap editions of translations of famous foreign writers. This volume is uniform with several of the novels of Alexandre Dumas and novels by various other French and Russian, German, and Italian authors. Perhaps “The Spider and the Fly,” originally published by Alfred de Vigny in 1826 under the title of “Cinq Mars,” is not one of the publishers’ most fortunate selections. De Vigny has a place in the first rank of French writers of the first half of last century, but bis fame rests on his poetry, not his prose romances. He wrote these under the inspiration of the historical romances of Sir Walter

Scott, hut he had nothing like Scott’s power of portraying character and manners, and his inode of narration inclines to he tedious. His prose style, like that of his verse, is exquisitely finished, but this distinction is necessarily largely lost in translation. Howew ; as a variety from fiction of modern life, this presentiment of the chivalry and cruelties, intrigues, and chicaneries of the France of Richelieu and the weak Louis XIII mav be read with interest.

Cinq Mars, the hero of the romance is a real character, but the author has taken liberties with history in regard to him and to other persons of the story. A romantic love story is invented for Cinq Mars, the heroine being a young lady of rank who, in high quarters, is designed as the future Queen of Poland. The character of Cinq Mars himself is idealised. There is a pathetic interest in the actual record of this youth, who, after experiencing Fortune’s favour and reverses, was brought to the scaffold at the age of 22, but he seems to have been vain and devoid of remarkable qualities of character.

In the romance Richelieu is the 6pider into whose web the romantic youth is beguiled to be eineshed and devoured. In brief outline the main facts of his career are the following:—At the age of i 8 he left his family home of Chaumont in Touraine, and went to seek advancement at Court, where he was introduced by Richelieu, who had been his father’s patron. He was given Court positions, and enjoyed the favour of the King. But he showed" ambitious aspirations that gave offence to Richelieu. He claimed a seat in the royal council, aud when Richelieu opposed him he entered into a conspiracy against the Minister. This led to Richelieu’s charging him with treason, and the fickle king was induced to consent to his execution.

De Vigny represents Cinq Mars as a patriot who desired to maintain the old political institutions of France against the encroachments of the autocratic Cardinal Minister. Among the many dramatic passages in the history one representative of the darkest features of the times, is a trial for heresy and witchcraft, ending in the death by slow fire after previous torture of the chief accused.

AN AMERICAN MOTOR COMEDY. “Gas—Drive In.” A high-powered comedyromance that hits on everv cylinder. By E. J. Rath. (Cloth). New York : G! Howard Watt. Per Dynock’s Book Arcade, Sydney.

The sub-title is so descriptive of Mr Raths last story that little need be said of its plot or its quality. Mr Rath’s people always do highly remarkable things, but their adventures and escapades wind up pleasantly, and the breezy geniality of his rather farcicial comedy disarms criticism. In the present story it is the heroine who does the most eccentric things. Vivian Norwood, a well-to-do young woman and a champion motor car driver, loses her pet “Asteroid”—has it stolen from the street side while she is in a store. But worse than the loss of the car is the Io6S of a letter marked

“personal and confidential,” which she had placed in a secret -ocket of the car. The letter, in fact, contained the acceptance of a marriage proposal, and having changed her mind very quickly, the recovery of her letter becomes to her all important. Before long she finds _ that a man of position and means is driving her car. In hopes of lighting on it she has bought and begun to operate a motor garage. Now she schemes to get access to the car, and her first expedients failing,, she runs her emergency motor car into a ditch on a country road a little in advance of her hero in her “Asteroid,” feigns a dead faint, and is picked up and carried off to his country house. But her manoeuvring is vain; she has lost the key of the secret compartment of the car. The comedy develops with a rapidity of action characteristically American, a motor run, and the marriage of hero and heroine between sitting down to breakfast and acactually breakfasting - at a country inn, making an appropriate windup to the story. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. The “Everylady’s” for March contains a new serial, “Who Rideth Alone,” by Captain P. C. Wren, author of “Beau Jeste.” It is a desert romance, and the hero is a young Etonian of Anglo-French parentage whose is plunged into the life of the French Foreign Legion. His adventures and love for the heroine, Mary Vanbrugh, should prove most interesting, as they appear month by month. Some amusing Royal incidents are recorded in “Prince Charming and His Future.” Other articles tell of the career of Harriet Bennet; of the fine works of the Victorian League; of how one Australian woman keeps house in Constantinople; of the reason why women love certain books; and of the advantages and disadvantages of flats and houses. There are some crochet patterns and some of the latest fashions. The concluding chapter of the Beatrice Grimshaw serial is also given. * * * The February issue of “The Strand Magazine” opens with “Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure,” a story of pure P. G. Wodehouse humour, about charming Roberta Wickham, Mr Gandle, and Mr Potter. Such sentences as Lady Wickham uttered, a bereaved cry, such as a tigress might, who sees its prey snatched from it, run through the story. An interesting tale is told by Molek Hanoum, the heroine of “Loti’s Great Romance,” “Disenchanted.” It records truly how she escaped from the harem, and became a dressmaker. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's serial, “The Land of Mist,” takes Professor Challenger through more adventure, and his colleague proves strange indeed. This is the secondlast instalment. Other stories include

“The Down and Outer,” by Gerald Villiers Stuart; “Beware of the Pickpocket,” by F. 0. L. Fairlie; and "Touch and Go,” by “Sapper.” The full story of the wonaeful film “Zeebiugge” is told for the first time by Fenn Shene. The many vivid war scenes and explosions which were obviously faked are carefully explained, with illustrations. H. M. ‘Bateman, artist-humorist, gives some amusing sketches. “The Guardsman Who Dropped His Gun” being funniest of all. A Stacy Aumonier story concludes the number.

The latest issue of that populai weekly magazine, Humour, inaugurates a big jumbled word competition in which cash prizes to the value of £IOO are offered. There is a first prize of £SO and 19 other prizes. Humour is one of the most entertaining of weekly magazines, and in its pages it to be found a reflex of the world’s cleverest witticisms in picture, verse, and anecdote.