Smell
As a child I affected to despise perfumes, and would claim I was allergic to them: they made me want to sneeze. Ours wasn’t a family of fragrant sophisticates: my mother sometimes wore Lenthéric’s Tweed, and, later, Panache; and my father might have splashed on some Old Spice or Brut 33 before the odd night out.
Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, The Story of a Murderer, was an eye-opener for me: a first indication of the romance and fascination of perfumery. I must have been about seventeen when I read it. It planted seeds that were slow to germinate. I was in mid twenties before I began (intermittently) to wear cologne myself, Christmas or birthday gifts of such & such by Armani or Calvin Klein. Typically for me, it was other books, rather than aromas themselves, which aroused my interest further: Tisserand on aromatherapy, Stoddart's Scented Ape, Corbin's The Foul and the Fragrant.
In Bristol, I lived near Cotham Hill, a street redolent with the smell of the half dozen Indian restaurants and takeaways that lined it, and of one shop in particular, Amphora Aromatics, a notable stockist of aromatherapy and perfume oils. Entering this store I was daunted by the magnificent array of bottles on its shelves, filled with oils and tinctures of every hue, and yet longed to possess a little of each & every one of them. The shop sounded out a truly orchestral olfactory chord that, when I close my eyes, I can still readily summon to mind.
My nose is hardly better than my part-deaf left ear, or my myopic eyes: but even so I've hankered after dabbling with a perfumer's laboratory of my own. This desire was precipitated into action after I read Mandy Aftel’s Essence and Alchemy the other week. While I mistrusted its likening of perfumery with the spagyric art, as a primer of practical perfumery it was inspirational, and prompted me to spend a good deal of money on all manner of essences and oils, in an international spree of on-line orders.
Yesterday afternoon I picked up the first of the orders I placed last week, which contained Benzoin, Bergamot, Clove Bud, Cypress, Silver Fir, Galbanum, Lime, May Chang/Litsea Cubeba, Bitter Orange, Black Pepper, Peru Balsam, Sandalwood, Costus Root, Opopanax, and absolutes of Champaca, Lavender, Oak Moss, Osmanthus, Tonka Bean and Tuberose. Tonight, all being well, I will begin experimenting…
