HISTORY OF SCENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 310, 22 March 1928, Page 7

HISTORY OF SCENT

PERFUMES OF THE PAST

Royalty lias always favoured perfumes, from Cleopatra to Victoria, says “T.P.’s Weekly.” Three thousand five hundred years ago a great queen of Fgypt sent an expedition far south to the land of Punt, to bring back myrrh and incense. Alexander is said to have had the floors of his apartments sprinkled with scent. Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, during the games at Daphne, employed two hundred women to sprinkle the spectators with perfumes from golden vessels. And, says Mr. C. J. S. Thompson, in his pleasant book, “The Mystery and Lure of Perfume,” all through history there are records of kings and queens who have used sweet scents and fragrant odours. A King’s Recipe Our own King Edward VI. desired above all things to have his apartments smell of the rose; and so rose-water and powdered sugar were burned on the embers in his room—but, says the 16th century recipe, “you must burn sweet cypress-wood before, to take away the gross air.” Henry VIII. seemed to favour the odour of ambergris. that strange substance, a secretion of the spei’m-whale, found floating in tropical seas. At any rate among the Aslimolean manuscripts there is the recipe of a perfume for the “King’s Most Excellent Majestie,” which gives directions for the compounding of. rose-oil, rose-water, fine sugar, musk\ and ambergis—a mixture in which the ambergris would predominate. And Queen Elizabeth, too, loved sweet scents, notably the rose. George IV. made acquaintance with his favourite scent in romantic circumstances. At a State ball he became suddenly aware of a delicious perfume which accompanied the beautiful Princess Ester hazy wherever she went. The Princess was implored to yield her secret; and on her informing the king of the particular essence she was using, he adopted it as his own perfume. Indeed, he appears to have spent increasingly large sums of money on it. In 1821, the court perfumer’s ledger records an account of £l6 17s 6d. By 192 S the bill had risen to £SOO 17s lid! Many notable names are to be found in the pages of this royal ledger. In 1803 the Duke of York is put down for £143. In 1834 we find the names of the King and Queen of Hanover, and the Empress of Russia; in 1814, the Queen of Wurtemburg; in 1828. the Duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria’s favourite scent is reputed to have been the English “Ess. Bouquet.'’ Queen Alexandra favoured essence of white rose.