SCENT STORIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

SCENT STORIES

PERFUME’S PART IN WORLD HISTORY If history is to be believed, the use of perfumes has not been altogether confined to the fair sex. Napoleon, who was surely a man’s man, had an inordinate fondness for perfumes and made use of eau de cologne in, what seems to us, prodigious quantities He used it like water and poured it over his neck and shoulders. Sixty bottles a month was a fair average for him, says an Australian writer.

When we read of the love of many of the ancients for flowers and sweet scents, it seems as if we have lost, in these mechanistic days, something of deep value. Perfumes we have : of many and varied kinds, and their manufacture is a great industry; we, too, decorate our houses with flowers. But can we compare our use of. these with, for instance, the Khaleef of Arabia, who was so obsessed with his love of the rose, beloved of all Arabia, that the ■ flowers, in his time, were allowed to grow nowhere but in the gardens of his palace? He insisted on wearing rose-coloured clothes, and his rugs were sprinkled with rose-water. In Rome, in its luxury days, the cult of perfumes amounted almost to a craze. When dining, the wealthy nobles delighted to have fountains of rose-water playing, fresh rose-leaves were scattered about the floor or showered upon the guests’ heads, while garlands were placed on their brows and festooned over their robes. The Roman women, too, used cosmetics and powders to beautify their skins. These sometimes took the form of pastes made of pea-flour or barley-meal, which were applied to the skin and allowed to remain on for several hours, in order to make it soft and supple. Then the cheeks were “polished with a wash of asses’ milk,” which treatment, after all, is not so different from the beauty masks of our own day! \

Baths of Perfume Attar of roses was discovered according to tradition, by a lady rejoicing in the lovely name, “Light of the World,” the favourite wife of a sultan, who noticed the oily particles floating on the water of her rose canal. In ancient Egypt, the foods, sweetmeats and sherbets were flavoured with perfumes, and their fragrance filled the air in every well-to-do house. The women bathed in perfumed water, and the men used scented ungents for their bodies. At their banquets the guests waded through roses (let us hope the thorns were removed!). We pride ourselves on our modern freedom with regard to “making-up,” yet there are still some benighted males in the community who think they prefer beauty unadorned! A Chinese husband thinks differently. One of the presents a bride usually receives from the Chinese bridegroom is a toilet-bag containing the following: “A box to hold betel-nut for chewing, a small bottle of attar of roses, a bottle of sprinkle rose-water, a box of spices, a powder made of galls and vitriol for blackening the teeth, a box for ponder to blacken the eyelids, and one for Kajul (similar to Kohl) for darkening the eyelashes!” He is going to make sure that his wife presents a modish appearance! Duirng the excavations at Luxor, a jar of ointment was found in a tomb; the ointment had kept its perfume, although that tomb had been sealed for three thousand years. Perfume was beloved of the Egyptians. Remember Cleopatra and her barge, from which

“A strange, invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs.” Scent in Biblical Times But Cleopatra was not the first woman who is recorded as having used perfume as an aid to beauty. Judith, when she went forth to seek Holofernes “annotated herself with precious ointment, and decked herself bravely to allure the eyes of all men that should see her.” From the earliest times, the Hebrews made use of aromatic substances. The Jewish Kings were annotated with the Holy Oil. and there is a beautiful incident related by St. John, when Mary annotated the feet of Jesus: “Then Mary took a