Meanwhile we must trust to the perfumer to set the fashion, and to impose upon us his bouquets at his own good will. We are, in fact, the slaves of his nose. All the fashionable world, like the Three Kings of Brentford, but a little while ago were smelling at one nosegay in the celebrated “Ess Perfume;” later still, we have had imposed upon us “Kiss-me-Quick;” and now the latest novelty of the season is “Stolen Kisses,” with its sequel, “Box his Ears.” Why are the Messrs. Piesse and Lubin so amatory in their nomenclature?
Besides the processes of maceration and absorption, or enfleurage as the French term it, there are several other methods of obtaining the odours of flowers, the principal of which is distillation; by this means the essential principle, or the otto of the flower only, is extracted. It is an old saying that we can have too much of a good thing, and it will be verified by an inspection of a perfumer’s laboratory. One is apt to think that a connoisseur’s wine-bins contain the dearest liquids in the world—old port at two guineas a bottle looks extravagant enough; but let us enter the dark little room where the perfumer keeps his ottos and extracts. He draws you a drop of oil of jasmine, holds it to your nose, and tells you with a complacent smile, that it is only worth nine guineas a wine-glass full—he shows you a little bottle of otto of roses from the far East. The principal rose farms of Europe are situated in the Balkan in Bulgaria, and the expense of the perfume may be estimated, when we state that it requires at least 2000 blooms to yield a single drachm of the otto. Different districts have their own peculiar shades of difference, just as different vineyards produce different qualities of wine. The Provence roses of the south of France have a fragrance peculiarly their own, which is attributed to the fact that the bees carry the pollen of the orange blossoms into the rose buds, and it is to the delicate flavoring of the orange that this otto owes its value. The suggestion of the bridal flower is indeed very slight, but herein the charm is constituted, as the eating-house connoisseur well knew when he ordered a slice of beef cut with a hammy knife. Some of these precious ottos and extracts smelt at in the bulk are positively disgusting; take civet, for instance—a pot suddenly opened is enough to knock you down. It is the infinite subdivision of the scent which gives it its true value as a perfume. Some astounding tales have been told of the persistence of scents, but we know that some of them have outlived the memory of great empires, and probably will yet exist when the New Zealander takes his seat on the broken arch of London Bridge: there is to be seen at Alnwick Castle a jar of perfume, at least three thousand years old, which still gives out a perfume. We know no better illustration of the infinite divisibility of matter than is afforded by the history of some of the more persistent perfumes. But it is not the animal perfumes alone that are disagreeable in a concentrated form—all flower odours are more or less changed; otto of roses is anything but nice, and otto of violets is for all the world like prussic acid. When they are diluted with an appropriate quantity of spirit, they regain all their delicacy, just as they do when subjected to the diluting influence of the gentle breeze in the summer evening.
The concoction of bouquets is the triumph of the perfumer’s art. His nose must have the most delicate appreciation of the harmonies, so that no one odour shall outrage another. A writer in “Chambers’s Journal” has very subtly remarked that scents, like sounds, affect the olfactory nerve in certain definite proportions. Thus there are octaves of odours, the different notes of which agree with each other. Let us take heliotrope, vanille, almond and orange blossoms, for instance, and we find that they possess a cognate smell. There is another series of perfumes which constitute a higher octave, such as citron, lemon, orange peel, and verbena. Again, we have half-notes, such as rose, and rose-geranium; and minor keys, such as patchouly, vilivart; and, lowest in the scale, musk and other animal odours strike a deep base note.
The skilful perfumer with this full gamut before him can make a thousand different harmonies; indeed, the combinations are endless, but they must be made with a full knowledge of the art. He can no more jumble half-a-dozen perfumes together, and expect to be able to please the nose, than he could strike half-a-dozen notes at random, and expect to charm the ear with the harmonious effects of a chord. But an harmonious perfume is not all that is required; the British public are very exigent, they want a delicate yet strongly marked odour, and a persistent one at the same time,—two totally incompatible qualities, for an odour that strikes powerfully upon the nose must be a very volatile one; and, if it is volatile, how can it be expected to remain in the handkerchief for any length of time?—it is like eating a cake and expecting to have it afterwards. The perfumer gets over the difficulty by making some persistent odour, such as musk or vanille, the base of his perfume. The effect of this, however, is to give the scent two different odours, the volatile perfume on its departure leaving behind it the base, which is often objected to as smelling “sickly.” The moral of our story is, that we should not expect a delicate perfume to be two things at the same time—volatile and lasting.
England is famous for only two products used in perfumery—lavender and peppermint. We grow roses also in large quantities, but only for the purpose of making rose-water. Our flower-farms are situated at Mitcham and Hitchin. English lavender is worth four times as much in the market as any other, and it is a scent which partakes somewhat of the national character; it has, indeed, a sad and grave smell, and possesses a certain poetic grace, but is withal healthy and invigorating. We are informed that this and peppermint form the base of many kinds of cheap perfumery; but musk is the pièce de resistance of the manufacturers. People very commonly say, “I detest musk—I never have a perfume containing musk.” The perfumer smiles, and gravely assures them the articles he sells do not contain it. All the while he is well aware that it forms a very