BIRKBECK COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Scented Visions

The Nineteenth-Century Olfactory Imagination

By

Christina Rain Bradstreet

A thesis submitted to the University of London

for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art

°jýe
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 Declaration of Originality

I declarethat this work presentedin this thesisis, to the best of my knowledge and belief,

original and my own, except as acknowledgedin the text.

Signed

Christina Rain Bradstreet

Dated
 3

Abstract

This thesis considers the role of smell in art and aesthetics during the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. It explores the growing interest of a number of artists and

literary figures, c. 1860 -1910, in cultivating an olfactory aesthetic. Through examination

of artistic engagements with the sense of smell, it reveals how and why artists became

occupied with olfactory perception and its representations, arguing that scents were

increasingly perceived as an important means of communication in art, being influential in

the life of the imagination owing to their emotional reverberation and associational nature.

The thesis also examines popular ideas about the aesthetic status of perfume and argues

that it was the perceived contradictory nature of smell as both sensuous and spiritual that

rendered it so problematic and ripe for discussion in late-nineteenth-century writings

about the nature of art, beauty and aesthetics.

This project carves out new territories within the history of visual culture through

exploration of the areas of overlap and interplay between the visual and the olfactory,

from the visualisation of invisible odour to the influence of scent upon mental imagery.

Artistic sites of interaction between smell and the visual, such as perfume concerts that

triggered visions of place, paintings of women smelling roses or bodily representationsof

incense in dance, provide new and fertile grounds for exploring the social and cultural

fabric of the period. By drawing upon culturally specific ideas about smell, with reference

to such themesas female sexuality and the erotic imagination as well as the Orient, health

and disease,spirituality and the soul, this thesis offers fresh interpretative insights, being

the first art historical project to bring into play the growing body of cultural and historical

researchon the senseof smell.

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Table of Contents

Illustrations List 5
..............................................

Introduction 14
..............................................

Chapter One FragranceVisible 39

.........................

ChapterTwo Rotten Headsand Wallflowers.......... 98

ChapterThree Picturing Perfume 162

.........................

ChapterFour A Trip to Japanin SixteenMinutes.... 227

ChapterFive A Breath of the Orient 287

....................

Conclusion 348
...............................................

Bibliography 365
...............................................

Illustrations 403
...............................................
 VO-

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lynda Nead for recognising my vision for this thesis and for helping me

with her expertise and encouragement.It was her scholarship that inspired me to pursue art
history.

My thanks go to Patrizia di Bello, Kaycee Benton, John Onians and Peter Trippi who all read

drafts of parts of my work. Gabriel Koureas and the members of the Birkbeck School of History

of Art Postgraduate Writing Group gave me excellent feedback as did the participants of the

`Other than the Visual' session at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) conference in 2006

and the `Art and the Senses' AAH SMG conference at UEA (2006). The members of Victoria

resolved research queries on a number of occasions. I am indebted to my dad and sister for their

grammatical expertise and patience in proofreading.

I would like to thank Kaycee Benton and Ronald Berg for their generosity with information on
Charles Courtney Curran; and Julian Hartnoll for allowing me accessto Waterhouse'sThe Soul

of the Rose.

I am very grateful to the Arts and Humanities ResearchCouncil for the award that made this
thesis possible. I would also like to thank Caroline Arscott, Hilary Fraser, John House, Lynda
Nead, Elizabeth Prettejohn and Giles Waterfield for their help in keeping me in part-time work,

which enabled me to complete it. I am also extremely grateful to my dad for his financial
assistanceduring my completion year. For their hospitality, my deepestthanks go to Jo Griffiths,
Julia Dudkiewicz and Watts Gallery, John House and Daisy and Paul. Mum, Jo, Julia, Chris
Wilkie and Helen Wright were boundlessin their generosityand emotional support.
 5

Illustrations

Chapter One

Fig. 1. John Singer Sargent,Fumee d'Ambre Gris, 1880, oil on canvas, 139.1 x 90.8 cm,

Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Fig. 2. Pierre Bonnard, Nu A Contre-Jour, Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 109 cm, c. 1908. Royal

Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium.

Fig. 3. Rene Lalique, perfume bottle, L'Effleurt for Francois Coty, c. 1908, clear and

frosted glasswith sepiapatina, 11.4cm,private collection.

Fig. 4. Piesse's Odorphone in G. W. S. Piesse.The Art of Perfumery. London: Piesseand

Lubin, 1855.

Fig. 5. Edison's Odorscopein Dickson, William Kennedy Laurie, and Antonia Dickson.

The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison. London: Chatto & Windus, 1894,87.

Fig. 6. Apparatus for Comparing Odors in `The Action of Light Upon Perfumes.'

Scientific American Supplement.1085 (1896): 17338.

Fig. 7. Apparatus for Measuring the Intensity of Perfumes in `The Action of Light Upon

Perfumes.' Scientific American Supplement.1085 (1896): 17338.

 6

Fig. 8. Zwaardemaker's Odormeter, 1888 in Hendrik Zwaardemaker, `The Olfactometer',

Lancet, London, 1889,i, 1300.

Fig. 9. Robert Seymour. `A London Board of Health Hunting after Caseslike Cholera, a

Caricature of the Medical Profession.' McLean's Monthly Sheet of CaricaturesMarch 1

1832. Colour lithograph, 15 x 24 cm, US National Library of Medicine.

Fig. 10. `The Wonders of a London Water Drop', Punch461,18,11 May 1850: 188 - 189.

Fig. 11 `The "Silent Highway" -Man: "Your Money of Your Life! "` Punch 10 July 1858:

137.

Fig. 12. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Pandora, 1878, coloured chalks on paper, 100.8 x 66.7

cm, National MuseumsLiverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.

Fig. 13. Leona Marcelle Beaussart,Papiersd'Armenie, c. 1890, lithograph, 136 x 98 cm,

Musee Internationale de la Parfumerie, Grasse,France.

Fig. 14. Rene Lalique, perfume bottle, Cyclamen for Francois Coty, c. 1912,clear and

frosted glass with greenpatina, 14cm,private collection

Fig. 15. Rene Lalique, perfume bottle, Flacon Rosace Figurines, for Francois Coty, c.

1912,clear glasswith blue patina, 11 cm, private collection.

 7

Fig. 16. H. S. Melville, wood engraving in JamesGreenwood, Curiosities of SavageLife,

2nd Series, vol 1 (London: Beeton, 1863), 81.

Fig. 17. Nasal shapesin Eden Warwick, Nasology: or Hints towards a Classification of

Noses(London: Richard Bentley, 1848).

Fig. 18. `Our Nasal Benefactors,' Punch, 35,887,10 July 1858: 12

Fig. 19. Sampsonand Mordan and Co., Perfume and Smelling Salt Bottle in the style of

opera glasses,c. 1879, Enamel and Silver gilt with mirrors, Private Collection.

Chapter Two

Fig. 20 John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856, oil and varnish on canvas, 104 x 74,

ManchesterArt Gallery.
 8

Chapter Three

Fig. 21. Charles Courtney Curran, Scentof the Rose, 1890, oil on panel, 11.43cm x 31

cm, Beverley and Ray Sacks.

Fig. 22. John William Waterhouse,The Soul of the Rose. 1908, Oil on Canvas, 88.3 x

59.1 cm, Pre-RaphaeliteInc, Julian Hartnoll.

Fig. 23. Curran, The Pens, 1892, Oil on canvas, 45.7 cm x 81.3 cm, Collection of Dr.

Ronald Berg, Monticello, New York

Fig. 24. Curran, The Perfume of Roses, 1902, oil on canvas, 74.3 x 59.4 cm, National

Museum of American Art, SmithsonianInstitution.

Fig. 25. Curran, The Cobweb Dance, 1904. Oil on canvas, 76 x 51 cm, Cragsmoor,New

York, Blake Benton, Fine Art.

Fig. 26. Waterhouse,Summer,c. 1882,oil on canvas,31 x 25 cm, private collection.

Fig. 27. Waterhouse,The Shrine, 1895,Oil on Canvas,88 x 42 cm, Private Collection.

Fig. 28. Luigi Russolo, Profumo, 1910, Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 64.5cm, H. L Winston of

Birmingham, USA.

Fig. 29. Unknown artist, Incense, (details unknown) Reproduction printed by Gilchrist
 9

Bros, Leedsreproducedin Penrose'sPictorial Album, 16, (1910): 112.

Fig. 30. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, The Three Perfumes, 1912, Watercolour and

pencil on vellum, 50.2 cm x 47.6 cm, Cranbrook Art Museum.

Fig. 31. Jan Toorop, Two Women, 1893, Pencil and Coloured Crayons and watercolour

heightened with white on brownish paper, in a contemporary carved frame designedby

the artist, 24.5 x 37.5 cm, private collection.

Fig. 32. Illustration in Harry Thurston Peck. `The Morality of Perfumes.' Cosmopolitan

25 (1898): 590.

Fig. 33. Alphonse, Mucha, Chocolat Ideal, 1897,print, 778 x 117 cm.

Fig. 34. Privat Livemont, Raiah, Colour lithograph, 78 x 43.5 cm.

Fig. 35. `Lundborg's Heather of the Links. ' McClure's Magazine 6(1898): 153.

Fig. 36. The Magical Incense in Lacfadio Hearn, Ghostly Japan. London: Kegan Paul,

1905,90.

Fig. 37. Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, The Lovers World, 1901, Watercolour and

Bodycolour on paper, 111.6x 66 cm, Bristol Museumsand Art Gallery.

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Chapter Four

Fig. 38. Programme for Rice's Sunday 'Pops' at the New York Theatre, November 30th

1902. Box 11, The SadakichiHartmann Papers,Special Collections Library, University

of California, Riverside.

Fig. 39. A line of people queuing at the Great Exhibition to dip their handkerchiefsinto

Rimmel's perfume fountain. Front cover of Rimmel's 1861 Perfumed Almanac. John

JohnsonCollection of Printed Ephemera,Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Fig. 40. J. Defies and Son, 1870,Domestic PerfumeFountain, Glassbulbs with metal

base

Fig. 41. Ticket for a Perfume concert, Box 11, The Sadakichi Hartmann Papers,Special

Collections Library, University of California, Riverside.

 11

Chapter Five

Fig. 42. Henry Siddons Mowbray, Rose Harvest, 1887, Oil on canvas, 35.6 x 50.8 cm,

Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte.

Fig. 43. Ludwig Deutsch, Le Fumeur, 1903, Oil on canvas, 58 x 41 cm, Private

Collection.

Fig. 44. Rudolph Ernst, In the Alhambra, 1888, Oil on panel, 61.3 x 49.2 cm, Private

Collection.

Fig. 45. Harem Girl Smelling a Rose in Rimmel, Eugene.The Book of Perfumes.London:

Chapmanand Hall, 1864.p.91.

Fig. 46. Photographer Unknown, Ruth St. Denis, without usual black wig, in Incense,

photographic print by 1908,19 x 11 cm, mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public

Library, Denishawn collection no. 151.

Fig. 47. Photographerunknown, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense,photographic print, 1906-

7,15 x 10 cm, mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn

Collection no. 153.

Fig. 48. Notman, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense, photographic print, 1908,24 x 18 cm,

mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn collection no 153.
 12

Fig. 49. Photographerunknown, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense, 1908, photographicprint,

24 x 17 cm, mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn

Collection no. 162.

Fig. 50. Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis with native Hindus in first costume for

Radha, 1904,21 x 26 cm, photographic print, mounted on paper 40 x 34 cm, New York

Public Library, Denishawn Collection no. 9.

Fig. 51. White Studio, New York, Ruth St. Denis with native Hindus in first costume for

Radha, 1906,28 x 36 cm, mounted on paper 34 x 40 cm, The New York Public Library,

Denishawn Collection no. 22.

Fig. 52. Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1906, photographic postcard, 14

x 10 cm., mounted on paper 40 x 34 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn

Collection, no. 43.

Fig. 53. Otto Sarony, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1908, Photographic print, 18 x 13 cm,

mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection, no.

74

Fig. 54. Aura Hartwig, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1906, photographic print, 19 x 15 cm,

mounted on paper 32 x 27 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection no.

42.
 13

Conclusion

Fig. 55. George Frederick Watts, Choosing, 1864, Oil on strawboard, 47.2 x 35.4 cm,

National Portrait Gallery.

Fig. 56. Viktor Schramm, Perfect Scent, 1898, Oil on wood, 61 x 55 cm, Private

Collection.
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Introduction

`A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash

entire epochs of our dearest experience, ' wrote Helen Keller in Sense and Sensibility

(1907), a collection of essays offering a poignant glimpse into the vividness and beauty of

her sensed but unseen and unheard world. Keller, born blind and deaf, found intense

pleasure in the sense of smell and doubted if there were `any sensation arising from sight

more delightful than the odors which filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or

the tide of scents which swells, subsides, rises again, wave on wave, filling the wide world

invisible " She cherished the sense of smell for its emotive power to
with sweetness.

unseal the hidden worlds of the imagination and her reflections on the olfactory revealed

the intimacy of that sense to internal states of consciousness, emotion, memory and

fantasy.

Smell is a potent wizard that transportsus acrossthousandsof miles and all

the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home,

to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous

and fleeting, causemy heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered

grief. 2
I
Keller, like a number of creative intellectuals around the turn of the twentieth century,

believed that odours had the potential to shakeman's inner life profoundly, and that they

played an important role in the imagination due to their emotional reverberation, intimacy

1Helen Keller, 'Senseand Sensibility,' The Cent uy Magazine 75.4 (1908): 574.
2Ibid.
 15

and associationalnature. Her reflections on the poignancy of smell correspondwith those

of her contemporary Rudyard Kipling, who wrote in his poem Lichtenberg (1903) that

`smells are surer than sights and soundsto make your heart-stringscrack'.

In her celebration of the power of smell to stir the memory and the imagination, Keller,

like Kipling, was writing at an historical moment of heightened appreciation of the sense

of smell. During the period c. 1860 - 1910, there was a growing cultural interest in

cultivating an olfactory aesthetic. Whilst there was no organised movement to this end, a

number of art and literary figures were reflecting upon the emotive and imaginative

properties of perfume or becoming occupied by the representation of scent in their work.

Philosophical discussions about whether the pleasure derived from fragrant odours could

be extended, enriched and elevated into an art-form, comparable with music and painting,

from including artists and popular writers on the '

arts. Such
came a number of quarters,

pleas for the sense of smell posed a challenge to the traditional marginalisation of the so-

called lower senses of smell, taste and touch in aesthetics, art history and criticism. In the

writings of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, Aquinas and Plato, right through to

Kant at the end of the eighteenth century, smell was argued to be inferior to vision and

hearing in dignity, beauty and intellectual power and thus irrelevant for aesthetic and

artistic attention. Whilst the visual was privileged as a rational source of knowledge, able

to transcend lowly sensuality, smell was traditionally devalued as the least rewarding and

most dispensable of the senses, unworthy of cultivation and unfit for the realms of culture,

3 Rousseauwrote, 'Smell is the senseof the imagination' in lean-JacquesRousseau,Emile: On

Education [First Published Paris. 1762], vol. II (London: J. M. Dent, 1911) 90.
4 Rudyard Kipling, The Five Nations (London: Methuen, 1903) 5.
5 `A Plea for the Senseof Smell,' Putnam's Monthly Magazine 13 (1869): 815 18.
-
 16

6
pleasure and refinement. Keller, for example, championed smell in her writings,

lamenting the fact that it `doesnot hold the high position it deservesamong its sisters.''

Despite the growing interest in olfactory aesthetics amongst artists, writers and poets of

the period, who were increasingly challenging, disregarding or working outside the

hegemony of sight to produce works that included, or powerfully evoked, non visual

elements, Keller acknowledged that attitudes to smell remained fraught with

contradiction.

When it woos us with woodland scentsand beguiles us with the fragrance

of lovely gardens, it is admitted frankly to our discourse. But when it

gives us warning of somethingnoxious in our vicinity, it is treated as if

the demon had got the upper hand of the angel, and is relegated to outer

darkness,punished for its faithful service!

Although associatedwith earthly pleasures,vulgarity, dirt, diseaseand decay, smell was

also understood as signifying inner or inherent reality and held a long, historical

associationwith ideas of spirituality and the soul.9 Smell remained, in Steven Connor's

terms, `the hinge or Janus-sense.Drawn downwards to the lower featuresand functions of

6 Kant, Critique
of Judgement, 1781. On the hierarchy of the senses, with an emphasis on Plato and
Aristotle see Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (London: Cornell

University Press, 1999) 11 - 37. For a survey of philosophical approaches to the status of smell in

aesthetics, see Annick Le Gu6rer, `Olfaction and Cognition: A Philosophical and Psychoanalytic
View, ' Olfaction. Taste and Cognition, ed. Catherine Rouby (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002) 3- 16.

7Keller, 'Senseand Sensibility, ' 573.
8 Ibid.
9 This idea was expressed,for example, in `The Five Senses:Taste
and Smell,' Leisure Hour 15
(1866): 216. `Every separatesensemay be said to have two aspects:one the material or unrefined;
the other the poetic.'
 17

the body, it also looks down its nose at them, having an orientation towards the higher

senses.i1° As this thesis will demonstrate, it was the complexity of smell's cultural

associationsthat rendered its status within the hierarchy of the sensesambiguous and a

controversial topic of debatein the field of nineteenth-centuryaesthetics.

This thesis considers the importance of the previously neglected role of smell in art and

aestheticsof the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines artworks that

place an emphasisupon smell and which make a statementabout olfactory experienceand

its cultural associations,from visual representationsof smell in painting and other media

to artworks that engaged directly with that sense,perfume concerts and certain avant-

garde theatrical and dance productions to perfume itself. Such artistic engagementswith

the senseof smell have received almost no attention by art historians. Over the past two

decades,feminist and other art historians have done much to break from the traditional

to
canonical approach art history, which favoured ideas of the individual, male genius and

the idea of the `masterpiece' and which promoted the idea that certain cultural objects or

value.' 1 Nevertheless, to a large extent scholars have

style are of greater aesthetic

continued to prioritise the celebrationof the visual imperative of the `great' male sculptors

and painters, at the expenseof non-visual artists who were often female and whose work

was often classed as applied arts or `craft' rather than `high art'. Underlying this almost

total disregard of olfactory aesthetics are long-held notions about smell being too

10StevenConnor, `Intersensoriality,' (A talk given at the Conferenceon the Senses,ThamesValley

University), February 6,2004, www. bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc/intersensoriality, (accessed 14 August,

2006).
11Griselda Pollock, Differencingthe Canon: Feminist Desire
and the Writing of Art's Histories
(London: Routledge, 1999).
 18

`primitive' and too `feminine' to have any real intellectual or artistic function.12Indeed,

the fact that smell has been trivialised and ignored in the history of art has much to do

with what ConstanceClassen,David Howes and Anthony Synnott have describedas the

western `olfactory silence' of the last two 13

centuries. There is much evidence to support

their theory, as outlined in Aroma (1994), that from the eighteenth-centuryonwards, smell

its
was marginalised and repressedand social history ignored.14As one writer observedin

an article for Cosmopolitan on `The Morality of Perfumes' (1898):

A `smell', whether agreeableor not, is usually allowed to pass unnoticed,

and to give any thought to the cultivation of this senseor its delectation is

regardedby the Anglo-Saxon race especially, as being at the best decidedly

effeminate, and at the worst as somethingthat is positively low. ' 15

Indeed, it is precisely this associationof smell with the undesirable, with lowliness, with

backward civilisation, poverty, dirt, disease,bodily functions, sex and effeminacy that has

led to the near exclusion of the olfactory from the history of western art.16

This thesisbreaks down the idea, prevalent in mainstreamaestheticdiscourse,art criticism

and cultural theory, that art is exclusively visual in nature. This is a concept that is already

beginning to be questionedas scholarsincreasingly turn their attention to the cultural and

aesthetic significance of the non-visual senses as alternative modes of sensorial

12ConstanceClassen,David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell
(London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1994) 84.
13Ibid 4.

141bid 13.
is Harry Thurston Peck, `The Morality of Perfumes,' Cosmopolitan 25(1898): 565.
16Running a search of article titles containing the
word `olfactory' in The Bibliography of the
History of Art in January 2007 generateda list of just 43 works, compared to 12,512 that used the

word `visual'.
 19

"
engagement. This growing awarenessof the role of cultures other than the visual, in

making senseof our objects of study, is in part due to the emergenceof the wider field of

`visual culture' and its inclusion into art history's fold. The formidable literature generated

in recent years on the cultural construction of sight in art history and the semiotics of

visual representation has begun to prompt a parallel awarenessof the absence of a

comparable discourse on the relevance of the non-visual sensesfor the appreciation and

understanding of the '$

visual arts. This lack was first indicated by the anthropologist

Constance Classen. In The Color of Angels (1998), she observed that art history's

traditional ocularcentric approach `begs the question of how the non-visual sensesmay

have been theorised and evoked in earlier periods of art.' 19Her work initially inspired

further anthropological research into the role of the sensesin past and present artistic

°
culture. Such research tended to have an emphasison artworks that place a different

aestheticvalue upon the sensesto that of the Modem West and was typically undertaken

with a view to expanding awarenessof the various constructions of the sensesin different

17Anumber of works on this theme are currently in preparation. These include two books based

upon research presented at the conference: Art and the Senses, (Oxford 2006) and a panel session

at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) annual conference entitled Other than the Visual: Art
History and the Senses (Leeds, 2006). The AAH graduate conference, Art and the Senses (UEA,

2006), indicated the strength of new research being undertaken in this field. Uncommon Senses: An

International Conference on the Senses in Art and Culture (2000) and Sensory Collections and

Display (2005) were organised by the Concordia Sensorial Research Team at Concordia

University, Montreal.
18On ocularcentricism, see Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-

Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

19ConstanceClassen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

(London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 7.

20 See,for example, StephenHouston and Karl Taube, 'An Archaeology the Senses:Perception
of
and Cultural Expression in Ancient Mesoamerica,' Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10.2 (2000):
261-94.
 20

contemporary and historic world cultures. It is only very recently that art historians

themselveshave begun to open up the history of art to non-visual sensoryinfluences and

in
to turn attention towards an examinationof the senses aestheticexperience?'

Howes arguesin SensualRelations (2003) that `critiques of the dominanceof sight tend to

remain within the realm of vision and rarely consider what alternatives to hypervisualism

might lie within other sensory domains, or emerge from combining the sensesin new

ratios.' He urges academicsto `break free from the spell of the specular and look, not

beyond their noses,but at their noses and all the rest of the human sensorium.i22Scented

Visions, however, makes no attempt to `break free' from the specular,but insteadfocuses

simultaneously on the nose and beyond, on visions inspired by scent and scentsinspired

by the visual. The influence of JacquesDerrida upon Howes is clear. Derrida has argued

that the westernprivileging of the sensesof sight and hearing occurs through the stripping

away of their and,

sensuousness relatedly, their cross-modal functions with the other

senses.He has led Howes to suggestthat a more nuancedunderstandingof the sensescan

be attained through studying the relationships between them and the way in which they

23
work together. Yet Howes, like Classen, Drobnick and a number of other cultural

historians of the sensesaffiliated with CONSERT (The Concordia Sensoria Research

21See,for example, Larry Shiner and Yulia Kriskovets, `The Aesthetics of Smelly Art, ' Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65.3 (2007): 273 - 86. Jim Drobnick, `Toposmia: Art, Scent and
Interrogations of Spatiality, ' Angelaki 7.1 (2002): 31 - 46. Drobnick, 'Inhaling Passions:Art, Sex

and Scent,' Sexuality and Culture 4.3 (2000): 37 - 57.

22David Howes, SensualRelations: Engaging the Sensesin Culture and Social Theory (Michigan:

University of Michigan Press,2003) xiii.

23On Derrida, see Fiona Borthwick, `Olfaction and Taste: Invasive Odours and Disappearing

Objects,' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8 (2000): 1. Seealso Connor, `Intersensoriality.'

Walter Ong, The Presenceof the Word, 1967.
 21

Team), is determined to undermine the visual hegemony and thus has turned attention

exclusively to relationships between the non-visual senses24Whilst this course of action

was arguably necessaryto enable a destabilising of the premises of ocularcentricism,one

can now conceptualisea study of visual culture in which the sensesare placed on a more

equal footing.

If mainstreamart history seemingly has no odour, as indicated by Jim Drobnick, the only

establishedart historian working exclusively in the field of contemporary olfactory art,

this is not due to its total neglect by artists25The appeal of challenging, disregarding, or

working outside the hegemony of sight, by producing works that include, or powerfully

evoke, non-visual elements or which explore multisensorial approachesto the public's

consciousness,is strong amongstcontemporaryinstallation artists26It was also strong, as

this thesis will demonstrate,in late nineteenth-centuryartistic circles. From the host of

paintings depicting women smelling flowers to the developmentof olfactory semanticsin

avant-garde theatre, artists enlisted the sense of smell in a variety of ways and with

diverse intent. 7 Indeed, scentswere employed to suggesta fuller multisensorial aesthetic,

24As Connor has argued, an `interest in `the senses'can often nowadaysbe decodedas an interest

in 'the other senses.' Connor, `Intersensoriality.'

25 Drobnick, `Reveries, Assaults and Evaporating Presences: Olfactory Dimensions in

ContemporaryArt' Parachute89. Winter (1998): 10.

26 Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, `Scent as a Creative Medium: Olfactory Dimensions in Artistic

Practice', Sense of Smell Institute: A Leading Global Resource on the Science of Olfaction, New

York, 1998, http: //www. senseofsmell. org/resources/research_detail_. php? id=75&

category=Cultural%20and%2OHistorical%2OPerspectives&cat=Cultural, accessed 10 September,

2006. Drobnick and Fisher, `Perfumatives: Olfactory Dimensions in Contemporary Art, ' Aroma-

chology Review 3.1 (1998): 1-6.

27 Eleanor Margolies, `Smelling Voices: Cooking in the Theatre,' Performance Research 8.3

(2003): 11- 23.

 22

to promote a state of heightened aesthetic reflection and to induce visions including

memories, dreamsand hallucinations. Odours becamean increasingly important meansof

communication in art. They influenced mood and atmosphereand were employed as a

semiotic device, signalling meanings ranging from romance to danger and exoticism.

Smell, both real and in representation,aroused,reminded, alerted, seduced,guided and

inspired aft-audiences.8

`I sing of scents, perfumes, odours, whiffs and niffs; of aromas, bouquets and fragrances;

and also ... of effluvia, reeks, fetors, stenches, and stinks', began Dan Mckenzie in the

opening lines of his study of smells, Aromatics and the Soul (1923)29 However, in

contrast to Mckenzie's broad sweep of good and bad smells, this study focuses primarily

upon floral fragrances and sweet perfumes. It was these scents that were frequently used

by artists whereas odours typically perceived in the west as unequivocally foul (such as

excrement or putrid matter) were generally thought devoid of aesthetic appeal and hence

denied status within the arts. However, whilst artists did engage with perfume, it is

important to remember that perfume itself often had an earthy constituency, for example

having a fecal odour as its base note. In his cultural-historical study of the role of smell in

European literature, The Smell of Books (1992), Hans Rindisbacher has argued that in the

nineteenth century, smell entered French and German literary descriptions on two main

lines: `First, along the line of class and, by extension, of the general social, hygienic,

medical, and sanitary conditions of a significant part of the population; and second, along

28 Jenny Marketou, `Smellbytes: The Smells of My Imagination,' Performance Research 8. On

Smell (2003): 85.

29Dan Mckenzie, Aromatics and the Soul: A Study Smells (London: Heinemann, 1923) 1.
of
 23

the line of gender, sexuality, sensuality and the erotic.00 With regard to nineteenth-

century art, however, only the latter applies. The idea, espousedby the popular science

writer Grant Allen in Physiological Aesthetics 1877, that bad smells pained the nose and

were incapable of stimulating aesthetic pleasure, was widely held and visual

representationsof stench were almost entirely absent, even from realist paintings that

focused on the sanitary conditions of the great unwashed.1 Consequently, the major

themesof this thesis are dictated by the popular associationsof sweet scents- with female

sexuality and the erotic imagination, as well as with the Orient, spirituality and the soul.

`ScentedVisions' sets out to demonstratehow a full understandingof cultural perceptions

of the senseof smell can heighten the interpretation of olfactory art and aesthetics.By

uniquely placing researchinto odour, femininity and difference into the context of the arts,

it draws upon and develops the work of cultural historians of the senses whilst in

particular addressingthe dearth of work on the gendereddynamics of smell. In teasing out

the spectrum of cultural meanings and experiencesgeneratedby the olfactory c.1860 -

1910, as revealed and reflected in the art of the period, this thesis draws upon Constance

Classen's Worlds of Sense (1993) and Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synott's

Aroma (1994), two ethnographically-groundedinvestigations into the cultural history of

the senses.2 These authors have argued that the attention and status accorded to the

various sensory channels is contingent on historical and social circumstances.Perception

is as much a learned, cultural practice as it is a physical act and is invested with particular

30Hans Rindisbacher, The Smell of Books (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992)

145.
31Grant Allen, Physiological Aesthetics(London: King, 1877) 80.
32 Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures

(London and New York: Routledge, 1993). Classen,Howes and Synnott, Aroma.
 24

culturally-constructed meanings and values by different periods and societies. Aroma,

with its Examination of the diversity of olfactory practice amongst different ethnic groups

(including cultural differences in the hierarchy of the senses, odour preferences,

classification systems and vocabularies for conveying the idea and the essence of smell),

has proven particularly important in establishing olfactory perception as culturally specific

rather than biologically determined. By exploring the culturally specific ideas about smell,

this thesis offers unique `readings' of paintings such as John Singer Sargent's Fumee

d'ambre gris (1879 -80) (chapters one and five), John William Waterhouse's The Soul of

the Rose (1908) (chapter three) and George Frederick Watts's Choosing (1864)

(conclusion). In doing so, the extent to which the omission of smell from the language of

art history has constrained our understanding of these well-known (if under-researched)

works becomes apparent.

The potential of a sociocultural sensuousscholarship to stimulate richer readings of art

remains largely unrealised and the cultural connotations of smell and its influence upon

the production, consumption and critical analysisof visual media have been insufficiently

researchedby historians of visual culture. Artists' responsesto the olfactory are found not

only in painting but also in drawing, advertising and ephemera,sculpture, photography

and early film, as well as in literature, theatre and dance; and art criticism, artists'

writings, travel diaries and letters. As a result, this project is inter-medial in scope,

working across different forms of visual and literary media in order to expand and enrich

the intellectual parametersof this study of the history of art and the senses.Moreover, a

strong understanding of contemporary attitudes to smell in relation to all areas of

intellectual life is essential in order to fully appreciatethe cultural nuancesconveyed in

artworks. As Richard Stamelmanhas observed:

 25

The cluster of images, feelings, and desires traditionally associatedwith

scentintersectedwith the notion and practicesthat constituted other cultural

images systems: systems associatedwith the body and the senses;with

hygiene, science and medicine; with pathology and death; with spirituality

and religion; and with, of course,everydaylife 33

This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach,therefore, working across a number of

disciplines, including the natural sciences,medicine, physiology and early psychology,

sexology,physiognomy, psychical research,theology, anthropology, geographyand urban

studies, as well as writings on perfumery, travel-writing, gardening, cookery and

4
etiquette. It explores both the continuities and the inconsistenciesof the cultural history

of smell as it emerges in these different forms of discourse. However, it is the art

historian's close and sustainedcritical-looking, aestheticappreciation and formal analysis

of style that differentiate this study from those of cultural historians of the senseswho

have sometimesmade the non-visual aspectsof art the object of their study. This project,

then, aims to interlock a strong engagementwith the visuality and materiality of the art

object with extensivehistorical, social and cultural research.

The study of the sensesin nineteenth-centuryart has mainly been limited to work on the

role of synaesthesiain Symbolist painting and theatre, with very little if anything having

33 Richard Stamelman, Perfume. Joy, Obsession. Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History

of Fragrance
from 1750 to the Present (New York: Rizzoli, 2006) 28.
34 On intermediality and interdisciplinarity, see Lynda Nead. `Whither the Field of Nineteenth-

Century Art History? ' 19: Interdisciplinarities in the Long Nineteenth Century 1.1 (2002),
http://www. 19thc-artworldwide.org/spring_02/articles/whither.shtml, (accessed14 August 2007).
 26

been published as yet on the distinct roles of sound, smell, touch and taste. 5 Despite the

lack of sensorial art histories for this period, this project is very much rooted in the field of

Victorian art. It arose out of an interest in the influence upon artists of Victorian ideas on

public and private health and on moral and sexual purity: ideas which have engaged art

historians since the 1980s, in works such as Lynda Nead's Myths of Sexuality (1988) and

Victorian Babylon (2000) or Alison Smith's The Victorian Nude (1996) and J. B. Bullen's

The Pre-Raphaelite Body (1999) 36 Moreover, the historiography of cultural and historical

research on the senses, upon which this thesis draws, can be said to have begun in 1982

with the publication of Alain Corbin's remarkable cultural history of smell in eighteenth

and nineteenth-century France. Drawing upon the history of science, medicine, hygiene,

public health, literature, architecture and urban development, Le miasme et le jonquil

(translated into English four years later as The Foul and the Fra rgant) shows the distinctive

approach of the French Annales school, which, founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre

in 1929, incorporates social scientific methodology into history. Corbin's book combines

history with geography and sociology in order to take account of economic, intellectual,

political and cultural influences on a long or `total history' of a social phenomenon - in

's John Harrison, Synaesthesia:The StrangestThing (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2001). On

sound in nineteenth-centuryart see Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music Representations
and the History of the Body (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press,
1993). On touch seePatrizia di Bello, `Vision and Touch: Women, Photography and Visual Culture
in the Nineteenth Century,' Visual Delights, eds. Simon Popple and Vanessa Toulmin
(Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Flick Books, 2003) 3- 17.
36 See for example, Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Representationsof Women in Victorian

Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). Nead, Victorian Babylon: People. Streets and Images in
Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Alison Smith, The
Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art (Manchester:ManchesterUniversity Press, 1996). J.
B. Bullen, The Pre-RaphaeliteBody: Fear and Desire in Painting Poetry, and Criticism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998).
 27

37
this case the evolving nature of cultural attitudes to smell Following his own earlier

work on the representationof prostitution in the nineteenth-century social imagination,

Corbin continued his investigations into the anthropology of western ideas of purity and

pollution by pursuing an avenueof investigation into the history of the sensesthat was first

opened by Lucien Febvre. In his book Le Probleme de L'incroyance au XVIe Siecle

(1942), Febvre maintained that in the sixteenth century people had gradually lost their

senseof smell; but Corbin took issue with that conclusion and demonstratedthat from

1750 - 1850, the sense of smell in fact increased in discernment, lowering society's

threshold for stenchand leading to a campaignof '$

deodorisation.

Corbin argued that in this period, there were an increasedattention to and awarenessof

smells and a subsequentgrowth in the refinement of olfactory sensibility as thresholdsof

tolerance for stenchwere abruptly lowered, in tandemwith new ideas about air, spaceand

disease.Connecting the growth of public health measureswith Foucault's emphasison the

growth of discipline and surveillance, Corbin argued that `olfactory vigilance' and the

deodorisation campaignsof the mid-nineteenth century originated with doctors, chemists

and health reformers, all of whom believed that diseasescould be diagnosed and cured

through proper interpretation and control of odours. This led, he argued, to the

arrangementof private and public spaces,

with the bourgeoisie assertingtheir social status

37Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination (London: Papermac,

1996 [1986]), Robert Mandrou, Introduction to Modem France: 1500 - 1600: An Essay in
Historical Psychology (London: Edward Arnold, 1975). Norbert Elias, The Civilising Process
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).
38Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais,

trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

 28

and authority through physical distancing from the dangerous smells of the criminal and

urban poor. There was, he argued, a particular preoccupation with excrement; public

health investigators set themselves to classifying the smells of the different gases that

emerged from latrines, pits, cesspools and `that corresponded to a progressive aging and

corruption of fecal 9
matter'. Similarly, the smell of corpses was closely analysed for what

it could reveal about contagion and the spread of disease, whilst the parts of living human

bodies were also classified according to their characteristically different and distinctive

smells. There had long been scientific accounts concerned with odour, but the extent and

intensity of the preoccupation were new. The association between disease and the stink of

decay on the one hand and health and natural aromas on the other resulted in a redefinition

of the limits of the pleasurable and the intolerable.

In showing that both popular and scientific responses to smell were bound up with the

emergence of bourgeois morality, Corbin demonstrates that this growing nasal refinement

reflected new social divisions and the arrangement of public and private spaces along

class lines, whilst providing a new language in which to describe and justify them. The

suggestion that smell worked as an arena for structuring social roles and interactions has

clearly informed Classen, Howes and Synnott's study into the ways in which social

distinctions of gender, class and race are learnt through the sense of smell. In Aroma, they

argue that `odours form the building blocks of cosmologies, class hierarchies, and political

odours, and can enforce social structures or transgress them, unite people or divide them,

empower or disempower. i40Likewise Howes, in Sensual Relations, has argued that `every

domain of sensory experience is also an arena for structuring social roles and interactions.

39Corbin, Foul and the Fragrant 29.

40Classen,Howes and Synnott, Aroma (abstract,inside cover text).
 29

We learn social divisions, distinctions of gender, class and race, through our senses.'"

The argument made in Aroma, that the elite rules from a centre of olfactory neutrality

whilst minority groups (women, the working class and ethnic groups) are marked by their

odour, has been applied by Janice Carlisle in Common Scents(2004), in which she argues

that in mid-Victorian fiction, smell was the obvious and appropriate register of class.42

Corbin's revelation about the importance of odour as a cultural and political marker of

difference, developedby Classen,Howes and Synnott and applied by Carlisle, forms the

theoretical bedrock of my study of smell, female sexuality and the Orient, in chapter five.

Moreover, Corbin's ideas about changing perceptionsof the senseof smell, from c. 1760

1880, leave the reader curious to know what followed. This thesis resumes where
-
Corbin left off, whilst shifting attention to the relationship of art and cultural attitudes to

the sense of smell. Originally conceived as a research project on the British Victorian

olfactory imagination, it has broadened its horizons to encompassEurope and North

America. This was necessarybecause despite cultural differences in perception, ideas

about smell readily diffused across monarchical reigns, national boundaries and the

century divide, due to the international and on-going nature of intellectual exchange.

If Corbin opened up the historical sociology of smell, it was Patrick Süskind who put

smell prominently onto the historical map in the public consciousness. In his

internationally acclaimed bestselling novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (first

published in German in 1985 and subsequentlytranslated into 37 different languages),

Süskind can be seento have taken direct inspiration from The Foul and the Fragrant,with

41Howes, Sensual Relations xi.

42Janice Carlisle, Common Scents: Comparative Encounters in High Victorian Fiction (Oxford,

New York: Oxford University Press,2004) 24.

 30

its exhaustive account of the effluvia of slaughterhouses,tanneries, cesspoolsand fish

markets and its fascinating insights, such as that red-haired women were believed to

emanatean exceptionally pungent and arousingbody 43

odour. The hegemonyof the visual

has been challengedin recent years by a growing body of sensuousscholarshipin cultural

studies with an intense new focus on the sensesas mediators of experience:both Corbin

and Süskind were highly influential in bringing about this `sensualturn. '44Prior to these

two landmark books, the senses and sensuality were typically bypassed by most

academics as antithetical to intellectual investigation, being considered, as Howes has

argued in SensualRelations, as `the gaudy clothing that had to be removed to arrive at the

naked, abstract truth. AS The impulse to study the senses, to return to embodied

experiencesof the world and to the phenomenology of things, is also partly a reaction

against the incorporeality of conventional academic writing Wi4h and its concern with

representations,discourses and cultural politics, which prompted Connor to write in an

article on phenomenologyin 1999, `I want cultural writing to get back its senseof smell'

and Dominque Laport in The History of Shit (2000) to attempt `to reverse the

deodorisationof languageby meansof a reeking syntax.946Today, the apparentimbalance

of the sensesis being addressedthrough a florescenceof popular writings on the senses,

such as Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses(2000), as well as theoretically

engaged studies in the field of the cultural history of the senses,such as the Sensory

43Suskind has consistently declined to comment upon his novel. Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The

Story of a Murderer (London: Penguin, 1987). Robert M. Adams, `What the Nose Knows [Review

of Suskind, Perfume and Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant],' New York Review of Books 20
November 1986: 25.
44Howes, SensualRelations xii.
45Ibid.
46Connor, `Cp: A Few Don'ts by a Cultural Phenomenologist,' Parallax 5.2 (1999): 19.

Dominique Laport, History of Shit (Cambridge,M. A.: MIT Press,2000) ix.

 31

Formations series (edited by Howes) and The Sensesand Society journal, which brought

out its first issue in 2006.47

It is clear that the `olfactory silence' has at last been broken. 8 Though there remains a

paucity of what Claire Brant has termed `smell studies', things have moved a long way

since 1994, when a critic reviewing Aroma in New Statesman and Society found the idea

of a cultural history of smell as `redolent of academic obscurantism ... [and as reeking] of

tenured frippery. A9 In the years following Hans Rindisbacher's declaration in The Smell

of Books (1991) that `the nose has gained in stature' smell has become a legitimate

50
subject for study. Today, the historically constructed (and therefore relative) meaning of

all phenomena is insisted upon and deemed to give crucial insight into the workings of

5'
social power. In 2006, Jim Drobnick provided a much needed overview of the current

state of research into the cultural history of smell in his Smell Culture Reader, which

brought together the work of cultural historians, anthropologists, olfactory scientists and

perfumers. Collectively, the book's entries reinforced the importance of the sense of smell

to sex, social status, personal identity and cultural tradition. The same year saw the

publication of Nosegay, edited by Lara Feigel, the first anthology to compile literary

writings on smell, from Pliny the Elder to Baudelaire, Helen Keller, George Orwell, Roald

47The seriesincludes Drobnick, Smell Culture Reader(Oxford, New York: Berg, 2006).

Empire of the Senses,The Smell Cultural Readerand The Taste Cultural Reader
48Classen,Howes and Synnott, Aroma 34.
49Clare Brant, 'Fume and Perfume: Some Eighteenth-CenturyUses of Smell,' Journal of British

Studies43 (2004): 441.

Simon Finch, `Pongs, Past and Present[Review of Classen,Aroma, 19911,' New Statesmanand
Socie 28 October 1994: 47 section 7.
50Rindisbacher,Smell of Books 9.
51Ibid.
 32

Dahl and Coco Chanel.52 Also in 2006, Richard Stamelman published Perfume: Joy,

Obsession, Scandal, Sin, the most illuminative study yet of perfume's impact on and

interaction with history, culture, society, art and attitudes." The nose has indeed, `gained

in stature' and arguably, the current period seesa popular recrudescenceof the senseof

smell comparablewith that of the late nineteenthand early twentieth 4

centuries. Evidence

of this can be seen in the growth of the olfactory in contemporary art practice, from the

artistic intervention of fragrancesinto ventilation systemsto Helen Paris and Leslie Hill's

Essencesof London (2004), a portrait of the city navigated by smell and to Clara Ursitti's

Bill (1998), a smell portrait of Bill Clinton that filled the gallery with the odour of

55
semen. Likewise, the booming aromatherapy industry and development of new

olfactory-oriented technologies such as electronic noses (University of Warwick) and

aromatic emails (Telewest Broadband)point to a new and intensepublic consciousnessof

the senseof smell.56From the growing attention to olfactory description in contemporary

literature (see for example Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White of 2002) to

the curatorial decision to scent the exhibition space of the Dante Gabriel Rossetti

retrospective at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2004, scent is inspiring the

52Lara Feigel, A Nosegay: A Literary Journey from the Fragrant to the Fetid (London: Old Street

Publishing 2006).
53Stamelman, Perfume.

54Rindisbacher,Smell of Books 9.
ss Drobnick, 'Guarded Breaths: Art and Smell in the [Cough] Metropolis, ' Association of Art

Historians Annual Conference, University of Leeds, 2006. On the olfactory in contemporary

installation art, seeShiner and Kriskovets, `The Aesthetics of Smelly Art, ' 273 - 86.
56Rindisbacher, Smell of Books 9. On the integration
of smell in modern technology, see Joseph
Kaye, `Symbolic Olfactory Display, ' Unpublished M. A. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2000.
 33

imagination 57
popular and permeating our understandings of the past. All this, juxtaposed

with the release of Tim Twyker's film adaptation of Patrick Suskind's Perfume (2006)

will doubtlessly spur on this olfactory revolution, bringing about a more sensuous

approach to history.

This thesis, then, takes a timely historical look at a neglected aspect of art and cultural

studies,uncovering nineteenth-centurydebatessurrounding the role of smell in aesthetics

and revealing when, how and why artists drew on olfactory perception and its

representation. Chapter one, `FragranceVisible', pursues an exploration of the cultural

unfolding of olfactory perception in the nineteenth century through a study of

osphresiology, the science of smell. As Corbin has stressed in his remarks upon

methodological approachesto the history and anthropology of the senses,it is essentialto

understand contemporary ideas about how the sensory system functioned if one is to

comprehendfully its representations.In the concluding chapter of his book Time, Desire

and Horror (1991), he arguesthat a historian of the senses`must be capableof deciphering

all the references and of detecting the logic of the evidence ordered by the dominant

scientific convictions at the period under consideration.i58 Although we cannot assume

that the artists and writers under consideration were necessarily au fait with the latest

scientific research on the sensesand their work may reflect outmoded or rudimentary

popular understandings, or even contain traces of several scientific systems mingling

confusedly together, knowledge of how sensoryorgans were perceived to work is crucial

to decoding cultural perceptions and value systemsrelating to the senses.Thus, chapter

57Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White (Edinburgh: Canongate,2002).
58Corbin, 'A History and Anthropology
of the Senses,' Time, Desire and Horror: Towards a
History of the Senses(Oxford: Polity Press, 1995) 189.
 34

one of this thesis also works on the notion, that, as Connor has also argued, `to understand

the workings of any of the sensesit is necessaryto remain aware of the fertility of the

relations between them.' Indeed, the more it concentratesupon the apparatusof smell, the

more revealing it becomes about `intersensorial spillings and minglings.'59 Indeed, in

chapter one it becomesclear that there was a growing impetus to force smell to surrender

its secretsto the eye. Underlying the growing scientific interest in understandingolfaction

from the mid-nineteenth-century onwards, in terms of the physical mechanismsof the

senseof smell as well as of the nature, measurementand classification of odour, were

concernsabout controlling smell and making it knowable and thus less sinister. Attempts

were made to visualise the invisible sense of smell scientifically through the visual

scrutiny of odour molecules under the microscopeand smell-mapping projects, as well as

through artistic and literary imagery. By dealing critically with the biological and

chemical in conjunction with their social connotations,this thesis aims to achieve a more

holistic perspectivethan hashitherto been attemptedby cultural historians of the senses.

Chapter two, `Rotten Headsand Wallflowers', continuesto probe the parametersof visual

culture through the study of the visualisation of the invisible. The theme of the mutually

informing relationship between the seen and the unseen, introduced in Kate Flint's The

Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000), is taken up in this chapter with regard to

smell, ghosts and the scent-inspiredvisions of the 0

mind's eye. It introduces the idea of

the visual-olfactory imagination, arguing that from the mid nineteenth century, a number

59 Connor, `Intersensoriality,' (A talk given at the Conference

on the Senses,Thames Valley
University), February 6,2004, www. bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc/intersensoriality, (accessed 14 August,
2006).
60Kate Flint, The Victorians and the Visual Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000).
 35

of artists and writers were delighted and disturbed by the power of scent to spark the

visual memory, including memories, imaginings, dreams and hallucinations. At the same

time, there was a fascination with the potential of visual imagery to elicit a subjective

olfactory responsein the viewer. Visions induced by smell, and smell sensationsinduced

by the visual, were seen to lie on the cusp between the physiological and pathological,

between imagination and hallucination and to render indistinct the threshold of sanity. By

referenceto an account published in the Journal of Psychical Researchin 1906 about the

synaesthesicgaze of a Miss Goddard, who claimed to be able to detect the smell of

flowers and rotting heads emanating from the pictorial content of painted canvases,the

olfactory imagination is consideredin the context of hysteria and the degenerativestateof

man's olfactory lobe. Drawing upon John Everett Millais's painting Autumn Leaves

(1855-56) and Vernon Lee's collection of short stories, Hauntings (1890), chapter two

reveals that ideas about scent, memory and organic decay were closely bound up with

contemporary concerns about mental disorders and the physiological decline of the sense

of smell in civilised man.

Chapter two also pursues nineteenth-centuryideas about intersensoriality and the brain

mechanisms involved in integrating information across the' senses, with particular

referenceto the mutual affinity of sight and smell. Researchinto the interconnectednessof

sight, sound, touch, taste and smell and the fusion of the sensesin perceptual experience

has become a growth area in recent scholarshipwithin both the sciencesand the arts. An

international conferenceat Oxford, Art and the Senses(2006), focussedon the complexity

of the cognitive system, pulling together the latest scientific, experiential and artistic

evidence of the cross-modal integration of the senses.However, this thesis demonstrates

that in the nineteenth century, there was already considerable interest in the brain
 36

mechanismsinvolved in integrating information across the senses.Ideas developed by

nineteenth-century physiological psychologists about the perception of visual

representationsof non-visual phenomenaoffer important new insight into the Victorian

gazeand inform my interpretationsof the imagesdiscussedin this thesis.

Chapter three, `Perfumed Pictures', considers the conception and critical reception of

scent-evocativeimages with reference to the idea, outlined in chapter two, that many

nineteenth-centuryscientists believed that looking at a representationof a fragrant object,

such as a rose, could elicit an olfactory responsein the viewer. This area of physiological

psychology will be shown to have beenparticularly relevant to the artist Charles Courtney

Curran, who published an account in Palette and Bench (1909) of the artistic methodsfor

the pictorial realisation of scent in floral paintings and the olfactory experiencethat such

skilful depictions should engender.Following on from the discussion in chapter one on

nineteenth-century interest in rendering smell visible, chapter three offers a visual

typology of the modes by which invisible scent was endowed with a visual presenceand

demonstrateshow, in painting and other visual media, representationsof smell act as

emotional and intellectual markers that influence mood and meaning, conception and

reception. Aiming to unite strong visual analysis with an awarenessof the culturally-

specific resonances of smell and their impact upon the interpretation of art, it

demonstrateshow a study of nineteenth-century ideas about the arousing potential of

floral scent can reveal new insights into the erotic charge of the many nineteenth-century

representationsof women smelling roses.

Chapter four, Olfactory Aesthetics, develops the arguments outlined in chapters one to

three about the areas of intersection between sight and smell by moving away from the
 37

visual representation of smell in art to the production and reception of olfactory art-works

and their impact upon the It

mind's eye. considers the perfume concert A Trip to Japan in

Sixteen Minutes, held by Sadakichi Hartmann at the Carnegie Lyceum in 1902, in which

audiences, inspired by the emotive and imaginative properties of the scents released into

the theatre environment, were invited to embark upon a journey of the visual imagination

to Japan. Though smell was the primary medium, the visual, in terms of the images of

place conjured in the mind's eye, was essential to the success of the performance.

Hartmann's artistic intentions are contrasted with the critical reception of the

performances, enabling a discussion of the debates surrounding olfactory aesthetics at that

time. It will be seen that calls for an aesthetic reconsideration of this previously neglected

sense remained problematic, given the difficulties in producing narrative meaning (in this

case, an imaginary olfactory journey) and controlling audience responses to this most

elusive of senses. Hartman's scent concerts failed to register with his audiences as a

coherent event. Their expectation that to go to a concert as part of a theatrical

entertainment involved being addressed first and foremost by sound and vision meant that

in the absence of sufficient visual or textual clues, the scents drifting from the stage

remained meaningless `stink' and the olfactory equivalent of noise.

Moving from Hartmann's use of the scentof carnation to symbolise and evoke visions of

Japanto a broader consideration of the smells of the East generally, chapter five picks up

the discussionbegun in chapter four on smell as a symbol of place. A Breath of the Orient

explores the idea of perfume as a potent metaphor for Western ideas of the East. As a

melange of pure floral top notes and a base note derived from gross animal matter,

perfume was used to convey the complexity of ideas surrounding the Orient as both

sublime and erotic, spiritually uplifting and yet socially decayed. This chapter pulls
 38

together a number of the themesof this thesis,revealing that smell is tied up with ideas of

difference, femininity, sexuality and the erotics of death. In recent scopophobic

scholarship, the eye has been aligned with Western patriarchy, capitalism and

imperialism; but this chapter demonstratesthat the senseof smell is similarly implicated.

Perfume-inspiredvisions of the east,Orientalist paintings of heady-scentedambiencesand

the use of scentin Orientalist danceform the casestudies for this final chapter.

Conclusion

This thesis, therefore, carves out new territories within the history of visual culture by

opening up study of the areas of overlap and interplay between the visual and the

olfactory. The aim is to restore the sensuousnessof the eye by drawing attention to the

`co-operationsand conjugations' of sight and smell and in so doing to demonstratehow

understandingsof visual culture might be expandedupon through a comparative study of

6'
olfactory culture It will become evident that within the context of the growing

nineteenth-centuryinterest in olfactory aestheticsand the literary and scientific fascination

for synaesthesia,the interplay of the olfactory with the visual played a particularly

important role in both art and literature. This thesis explores scientific and literary ideas

about scent,memory and the visual imagination and demonstratestheir influence upon the

arts, from painting to literature and performance.Thus, from paintings of women smelling

rosesto Ruth St Denis's use of the body to representincensein her oriental dances,artistic

sites of interaction between smell and the visual provide new and fertile grounds for

exploring the social and cultural fabric of the period.

61Connor, `Intersensoriality.'
 39

Fragrance Visible

Introduction

In John Singer Sargent's Fumee d'amber gris, odour is reinterpreted as sight [Fig. 1]. The

painting, begun during a trip to Morocco during the winter of 1879 - 80, depicts an

Eastern woman infusing her robes and her senses with the musky scent of ambergris.

Depicted in the delicious throes of anticipation, her pleasure appears to lie as much in the

anticipation of the leisurely ascending perfumed air, rising from the perfume-burner in the

middle ground of the picture, as in the realisation of the sensory experience. Her

downward gaze directs the viewer's attention to the spurts of smoky paint that issue from

the censer, wafting skywards, as if summoned by a charm. Mesmerised, our eyes linger

over the coiling, escalating twists of pure perfume, rendered in translucent wisps of

vapoury, violet paint, before being lured upwards by the gleaming fabric of the figure's

upper garment. Then, as the eye sweeps across the canvas, it is again attracted to the

smoky-violet fumes, the hue of which is iterated in the swirls of shadows around the

figure's sleeves and ruff. Drawn to this rising trail of colour, the eye traces the entire

length of the woman's left contour. The pattern of viewing, the movement of the eye as it

takes in the canvas, echoes and reinforces the trajectory of the scent, bringing to mind the

part seen, part visualised ascension of the perfumed air from source to consumer.

This painting createsa senseof ambiguity over what the eye seesand the mind fabricates.

Through the almost animate radiance of the glistening sunshine,it is as if one can seethe
 40

molecules of fragrance vibrate and tremble in the air, revealing Sargent's debt to and

reworking of Impressionist atmospherics.The painting has the appearanceof watercolour,

so translucently are the oils applied; and this works to capture the delicate subtletiesand

ephemeraleffects of light and atmosphere,

with the colours diffused in such an ethereal

manner as to reveal scent's spreadingyet evanescentform(lessness).The scentedsmoke

seemingly diffuses as it rises, mingling first with the mottled light of the lower robe,

which is dappled with tinges of bluish smoke,before dancing in the dazzling, pearl lustre

of the central cloth. It dissolves in the diaphanous sheen and melts in the resplendent

yellow, giving the illusion of soaking into the drapery itself and drenching the figure in

sunlight and perfume. Flickering against the lucid Eastern light, the vapour seemsto be

shifting, evanescentand intangible. Now you seeit, now you don't.

In Sargent'spainting, ambergrisparticles are almost visible, like motes of dust, dancing in

It
a sunbeam. might be comparedto Pierre Bonnard's The Bathroom of 1909, in which the

artist's lover, Marthe de Meligny, is depicted holding an open bottle of perfume, the

fragrant vapours and molecules from which seem to fill the air, like the shifting rays of

shimmering, trembling light that radiate through the room [Fig. 2]. In his cultural history

of fragrance, Perfume (2006), Richard Stamelmanhas described how Sargent `translates

fragrance,reveals the mechanicsof its expansion,gives form to its vaporous emanations,

and makes visible its invisible presence'. His account of the visual representation of

perfume in The Bathroom might equally be applied to Fumee d'amber gris.

Seenbut not smelled, perfume becomesvisual; it is expressedand represented

through the medium of light. Like wind whose reality is perceived through the

effects it leaves in its wake - bending tree limbs, blowing snow, scudding
 41

clouds - perfume, in order to be seen,must first undergo a transformation, a

it
changeof state; must becomeshimmering, liquid light. 62

Like Bonnard some thirty years later, Sargentattemptedan artistic transformation of scent

into light; an undertaking which echoed the efforts of contemporary scientists to get to

grips with this intangible and elusive phenomenon.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scientists were increasingly

concernedwith understandingsmell, the nature of its communion with the body and its

impact upon the intellect and the emotions.Emphasiswas frequently placed on the ability

to track smell visually, to map its path through both the body and the city. For example,as

part of his many investigations into the senseof smell around the turn of the twentieth

century, the Dutch olfactory scientist Hendrik Zwaardemakerdivided the head of a dead

horse through the nasal plane and applied a glassplate so that it closed one nasal cavity, in

place of the septum. On drawing smoke through the nose, he was able to observethrough
"
the glass the movements of odour through the nasal cavities. Further researchinto the

visualisation of olfactory flow through the nostrils was undertakenby the physiologist E.

Paulson in 1895. Paulson sliced the head of a horse cadaver in half, lined the mucous

membraneof the nasal cavity with tiny squaresof litmus paper and then sealedthe head

back up again, before pumping air saturatedwith ammonia vapour through the nose, re-

separatingthe two parts of the head and observing where the particles landed, as indicated

62Richard Stamelman, Perfume. Joy, Obsession,Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance

from 1750 to the Present(New York: Rizzoli, 2006) 17.

63John Berry Haycraft, `The Senseof Smell,' Text Book of Physiology, ed. E. A. Schäfer,vol. 2

(Edinburgh: Pentland, 1900) 1249.

 42

by the bluenessof the litmus paper.TMIn the sameperiod, there was a popular interest in

charting the pathways of foul odours through urban spaces,as seenin Rudyard Kipling's

`The City of Dreadful Night' (1899), discussed in chapter five. 5 Odour, that unseen

phenomenonthat wafted through streets and alleys and surged through nasal passages,

was scrutinisedunder the bright light of scientific investigation and popular inquiry.

Despite contemporary ambiguity about whether smell had a visible presence that was

simply invisible to the naked eye or whether it was an unseeable presence, with no visual

form or appearance (a confusion that related, it will be argued, directly to scientific

uncertainty about the chemical and physical makeup of smell), a number of attempts were

made to conceptualise the olfactory in visual terms. After the discovery in 1803, by

Thomas Young, that light, like sound, travels in waves, it made increasing sense to

visualise smell as being transmitted in a similar manner, despite the lack of scientific

confirmation of this 66 Thus, in 1899, scientists at the Paris Academy of Sciences argued

that smell had no physical matter but could be thought of in terms of rays of short wave-

lengths, analogous to light, sound or x-rays. Scientists Vaschide and Van Melle argued

that smell waves seemed to hold out the promise of contiguity, providing not only a visual

means to configure the invisible and to represent the unrepresentable but also a kind of

64 Haycraft, `The Sense of Smell,' 1248. E. Paulsen, `Experimentelle Untersuchungen Über

StromungenDer Luft in Der Nasenhohle,' Sitzungsbericht der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften

(1895).
65Rudyard Kipling, `The City of Dreadful Night, ' From Seato Sea,vol. 2 (1899) 89.
66Lynn Gamwell, Exploring, the Invisible: Art. Science and the Spiritual (Princeton and Oxford:

PrincetonUniversity Press,2005) 152.

 43

for 7
odour. Meanwhile, as will be seen, there were other scientists
material realisation

who sought to scrutinise the physical constituency of odour molecules under the

microscope. Such researchfiltered into the public consciousness,for example, prompting

the horticulturalist Frederick W. Burbridge to remark, somewhat cryptically, in a Royal

Horticultural Society lecture on fragrant plants in 1898, on his frustration at being unable

to accompany his lecture with visual aids that in some way gave an authentic visual

presenceto the odours under 68

discussion. Moreover, as this chapter will demonstrate,
in

the popular and artistic imagination, smell found visual embodiment in a range of visual

guises, from shimmering fragrance trails to the personification of miasma as demonic

creatures.

As JosephAmato has suggestedin Dust (2000), new high-powered microscopesextended

enormously the once limited reach of man's vision and knowledge69 To a great extent the

infinitesimal was embraced, as the microscope brought myriad hitherto unseen entities

into the visual terrain; the kingdom of life became suddenly boundless, as whole new

microcosms revealed their secretsto the eye. In the 1850s and 1860s natural theologists

advocated a culture of observation and what Amy King has called `a methodology of

70
minuteness' One thinks of the descriptive writings of Charles Kingsley on `minute

67N. Vaschide and Van Melle, `Une nouvelle hypothesesur la nature des conditions physiquesde

l'odorat, ' Comptesrendus 129.26(1899): 1285 - 87.

68F. W. Burbridge, The Book of the ScentedGarden (London and New York: Lane. The Bodley

Head, 1905) 24.

69 Joseph A. Amato, Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible (Berkeley, Los Angeles,

London: University of California Press,2000) 97.

70Amy M. King, `Reorienting the Scientific Frontier: Victorian Tide Pools and Literary Realism,'

Victorian Studies47.2 (2005): 154.

 44

philosophy' or Philip Henry Gosse's Evenings at the Microscope (1859). 71 Yet whilst

Gosse and Kingsley marvelled at the flawless precision of God's most minute
creations,

there was also a more disturbing side to these revelations. The fact that everything was

seen to be teeming with micro-organisms altered, as Amato has observed, `people's sense

of what inhabited the unseen worlds around and within [their] own bodies, ' and this led
...
to a heightened sense of fear and fascination with the unseen and the unknown. 72

Smells were invisible and as Kate Flint has argued in the Victorians and the Visual

Imagination (2000), `that which was not visible, did not so much inspire as frighten'. "

Odour can be thought of as one aspect of the growing lexicon of minute and invisible

things which, from the comma-shapedcholera bacillus to the X-ray (1895), radioactivity

(1896) and the electron (1897), becamea site of debate and perturbation associatedwith

the dangersthat might lay siege to the unsuspectingbody.74Many of the new fields that

emerged in the nineteenth century, including bacteriology, helminthology (the study of

parasitic worms), entomology (the study of insectsin spreadingdisease)and protozoology

(the study of single celled micro-organisms as the cause of dysentery, etc) were

committed to illuminating and eliminating invisible menaces.The scientific and popular

impulse to see smell can be related to this contemporary concern with gaining a stronger

intellectual grasp of and consequentlycontrol over the invisible, through visualisation.

71CharlesKingsley, 'My Winter Garden,' ProseIdylls New

and Old (London: Macmillian, 1873).
Philip Henry Gosse, `Wonder at Minuteness,' The Romance of Natural History (London: James
Nisbet, 1860) ch. 6.
72Amato, Dust 97.

73Kate Flint, The Victorians

and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000) 34.
74TeresaBrennan
and Martin Jay, Vision in Context: Historical and Contempora Perspectiveson
Sight (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) 85.
 45

Like unseen spirits, called up and materialised into more tangible and comprehensible

visual forms, smells began to be conceived of in visual terms. As it will be demonstrated

in chapters two and three, artists and writers frequently correlated smell and spirits in their

work, drawing upon the presence of an odour to symbolise a spiritual presence on the

threshold of visual manifestation. Thus, for the first in a series of early art nouveau

perfume vials designed by the glass-designer Rene Lalique for Frangois Coty, moulded

and pressed glass was used to render the nebulous form of a sylph materialising out of

plumes of vapour that appear to emanate from the voluptuous curving petals of a flower

[Fig. 3]. 75 Coty, who was popularly known as the `Napoleon of Perfume' due to his

Corsican roots and command of the perfume industry, is said to have persuaded Lalique, a

neighbouring shopkeeper on the Place Vendome in Paris, to accept his commission by

using the argument that `a perfume needs to attract the eye as much as the nose. v76

As Orla Healy has indicated in her book CC (2004), Lalique's dazzling glasscreation for

L'Effleurt (1908) revolutionised the marketing of perfume by originating the conceptof a

specific bottle designed for a single fragrance: previously scent had been purchasedin

plain pharmaceutical bottles for decanting into the consumer's personal, decorative

bottle." The spirit motif continued to be important in his subsequentscent bottle designs

for rival perfume companies such as Worth, Forvil, D'Orsay, Guerlain and Rogeret et

Gallet. Indeed, the embodiment of scent as spirit was recurrent in the nineteenth century

and will be explored throughout this thesis, for examplewith referenceto CharlesWebster

75 Stamelman,Perfume 179 84.

-
76Orla Healy, Coty: The Brand of a Visionary (New York: Assouline, 2004) 15.
77Healy, CM 15.
 46

Leadbeater's ghost story The Perfume of Egypt (chapter two) and the fairy paintings of

Charles Courtney Curran and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale(chapter three).

Visualisations of scent as spirit should be thought of within the wider context of the

language of air (including clouds, light and shadow, glass and ether), which, as Marina

Warner has argued in Phantasmagoria(2006), acted as a predominant metaphoric vehicle

for spirits and etherealbeings, as well as for the soul.

Clouds are interfused with anagogicideas of the highest heaven,the aether;

they mark out the spaceof the world above, creating pontoons and bridges

between the two spheres, human and divine; they are vectors of

otherworldly beings from heavenly realms; they pun, with dream wordplay,

on the nature of spirits. Clouds, vapor, smoke, foam, steam, and their

spirituous, sublimed counterparts among airy, misty, gaseous substances

have servedto make manifest the invisible, supernatural,imponderable,and

ineffable according to the promptings of belief and fantasy. Clouds and

cloudiness offer a magical passkey to the labyrinth of unknowable

mysteries, outer and inner. And they operate all unconsciously, sometimes

at the most patent levels, as a perennial visual and verbal expression for

inner space.78

Spirits, it seemed,were literally a cloudy matter; and vaporous, insubstantial scent,which

could not be seized or defined, servedas a related mode for figuring the invisible and the

impalpable and for conveying the inexpressiblerealm of the supernatural.

78 Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions. Metaphors, and Media (Oxford: Oxford

University Press,2006) 89.

 47

The limits of the visible and the world of the invisible were under intense investigation at

this time from psychics fascinated by paranormal apparitions, spirit photography and the

depiction of auras or psychic realms. 79 The American clairvoyant and seer, Andrew

Jackson Davis, wrote in Death and the After-Life (1866) of his interest in the new

technology of photography as a means of registering upon photosensitive material images

of spirits that the eye was otherwise incapable of apprehending. Photography it seemed,

could make truths that were ordinarily invisible visible, and represent a reality that could

not otherwise be given an ordinary, conventional form. Fascinatingly, he pondered the

idea that if the invisible spirit realm could react upon tangible photographic paper, then so

too might other intangible phenomena such as smell.

A gentleman, who is an expert in science, says that he can demonstrate

that the photographic instrument can photograph invisible substances....

Perhapsin this manner, one of thesedays, Art will catch the fragrance of

a flower, so that you can take the likeness of an odor to your friends! Men

will then say, `Is it possible that for centuries we have been only able to

smell without seeing,while now we can seewhat we have known only by

the olfactory nerves?i80

Like Burbridge's whimsical desire to illustrate his lecture with images of odour, this

remark is significant in its referenceto a recurring issue that ran through much nineteenth-

century discourseon smell: the idea that it was not sufficient to perceive smell by the nose

alone. Caught in the photographer's flashlight, odour would be exposed and its beauty

79Louis Kaplan, `Where the ParanoidMeets the Paranormal:Speculationson Spirit Photography,'

Art Journal 62 (2003): 22. Vince Rea, Art of the Invisible. Exh. Cat. (Jarrow, Tyne and Wear: Bede
Gallery, 1977) 3- 11.
80Andrew JacksonDavis, Death and the After-Life (New York: A. J. Davis, 1866), 68.
 48

accentuated through illumination, easing anxieties about the unknown, just as the

capturing of a spirit on a photographic plate dissipated fear of the after-life.

Yet spirit photography was just one aspect of the nineteenth-century desire to see the

unseen. Indeed, Flint's discussion in The Victorians and the Visual Imagination of the

way in which writers tried to visualise or at least create language for what could not be

seen,leaves one with the sensethat there was nothing the Victorians believed they could

not visualise, if only subjectively in the imagination. This chapter, then, is about ways of

understanding smell and how, so often, these understandingswere played out in visual

terms. However, in order to be receptive to the subtle responsesto olfactory sciencemade

by artists such as Sargent;and to be equippedto identify patterns of devianceor adherence

to sensory norms suggested in their works; it is necessary to begin by focusing on

olfactory physiology, or the natural healthy functioning of the olfactory system. Artistic

representationsof and engagementswith the senseof smell can only be fully understood

in the context of the conventional wisdom and contested knowledge that constituted

scientific understanding of olfaction. This chapter sets out the principal scientific

foundations concerning the nature, mechanicsand purpose of smell, upon which popular

perceptions of the sense were largely founded. The intention is not to present a

comprehensivesurvey of nineteenth-centuryolfactory research,but to identify the kinds

of information exchangedbetween scientific and lay cultures. Since cutting-edgeresearch

was slow to diffuse out of the medical journals and into the public consciousness,this

chapter considers both the conventional beliefs about smell and more progressive

scientific thinking. In the context of this thesis, accessible interpretations of smell, as

found in student textbooks and medical dictionaries, are as significant in terms of their

cultural significance as scientific treatises. Ultimately, it is not so much the science of

 49

smell that is relevant here as the ways in which it was understood by artists and their

audiences.

Osphresiology, the science of smell, filtered through different strands of intellectual life

and into popular commentary, frequently becoming interwoven in the art and literature of

the period. Though not meticulous about scientific intricacies, public comprehensions of

the sense of smell were influenced by both the established doctrines and prevalent debates

about smell. Artists, novelists and poets were influenced and informed by the current

developments in olfactory science, which often enriched their portrayals of people, place,

character, atmosphere and mood. Medical writers, in turn, were frequently drawn to the

olfactory imagination of writers such as Zola and Huysmans to illustrate and enliven their

theories. To better access this rich tapestry of cultural responses to smell, as it consciously

or unconsciously infiltrated the minds of the educated middle-class, it is necessary to

explore the disciplinary imbrications between not only established subjects such as

physiology, anatomy and medicine but also fledgling fields which had not yet forged

discrete disciplinary identities, such as neurology, psychology, and sexology. This

chapter, then, offers an overview of the most salient principles of olfaction as it

materialised across the broad scientific spectrum.

'x
ýýý
 50

Ways of Smelling

Throughout the nineteenth-century,the mechanicsof the senseof smell were shroudedin

"
obscurity. The difficulty lay in positing a link between the nasal anatomy and the

physical properties of odorants that would sufficiently explain the action of odours upon

the olfactory membrane. Scientists were as baffled in 1900 as they were in 1800 by the

actions of odours on the nose as well as by the physical qualities of odour itself. In 1816,

Charles Bell, in his popular textbook The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body,

gave the vague but by no means atypical description of olfaction as a `mysterious and

probably inexplicable ... intercourse betwixt mind and matter.'82The publication of the

hefty Osphresiologie in 1821 offered no significant scientific breakthrough, being simply

the first comprehensive collection of existing scientific, philosophical and folk

observations on the classification, mechanism, pathology, effects and practical uses of

83
smell. Nevertheless, this tome by the Parisian ear, nose and throat specialist Jean

Hippolyte Cloquet set the benchmark for osphresiologyfor many decadesto come and in

point of fact, very little new material was written about smell over the course of the

remainder of the century. Indeed, over eighty years later, the essentialphysics of olfaction

81Despite many scientific advances,olfaction continues to court controversy today. See Chandler

Burr, The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume. Obsessionand the Last Mystery of the Senses
(London: William Heineman, 2003). Burr gives an account of the academicstorm causedby Luca
Turin's recent, radical new theory of olfaction basedon mechanical molecular vibrations, which is

at odds with the theory presented by Nobel-Prize winners Linda Buck and Richard Axel that
odours are distinguishableby their molecular shape.
82CharlesBell and John Bell, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body, 4th ed. (London:

Longmans,Hurst, Rees,Orme and Brown, 1816) 2.

83J. Hippolyte Cloquet, Osphresiologie:traite des odeurs.du
senset des organs de 1'olfaction 2nd
ed. (Paris: Mequignon-Marvis, Libraire, 1821) 3.
 51

remained arcane and with relatively little else to turn to, Havelock Ellis extensively mined

Cloquet's thesis for his retrospective survey of nineteenth-century ideas about the

physiology and psychology of smell, which appeared in Sexual Selection in Man, the

fourth volume of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1905). In this review of a century

of developments in the study of smell, Ellis, whose own interests lay in the emerging field

of sexual psychology, found much to say about the effects of smell upon the mind and

body, but conceded that `the most fundamental principles of olfactory physiology and

psychology are still somewhat vague and uncertain. '84

The absenceof an official recognised and rational explanation of the mechanism of the

nose and brain as a device for receiving, distinguishing and experiencing odours was

reflected in the lack of cohesion in most nineteenth-centuryessayson smell. Rather than

offering a comprehensiveoverview of the working of the olfactory system, textbooks on

the physiology of the sensesusually organised olfaction into autonomous sections on

odour property and classification, nasal anatomy and its ailments. In stark contrast to the

exhaustive material available on the `noble' senses of sight and hearing, smell was

generally sketched out in a few cursory pages, a perfunctory mix of surmise and

superstition. As a result, illustrations were rarely expended on the nose, despite the fact

that diagrams were frequently supplied on the workings of the eye and the ear. The

extremepaucity of published researchon the physiology of smell, in comparisonwith the

reams of text published on sight and hearing, not only reflected the disproportionate

degreesof knowledge, but also the relative lack of intellectual curiosity towards a sense

that, as seen, was traditionally dismissed as `low'. The deficient investment in olfactory

84Henry Ellis, Havelock, `Sexual Selection in Man, ' Studies in the Psychology
of Sex:, vol. IV
(Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1905) 55.
 52

science and medicine impacted upon the way in which the status of this sense was

perceived in wider culture. As an article on the senseof smell in the American popular

journal, Hamer's New Monthly Magazine in 1855 explained, the lack of understanding

about this sensewas closely bound up with the widespread neglect of the pleasuresit

afforded. Of all the senses,

none is less known and more neglectedthan that of smell. The very manner

in which it performs its marvellous duties is a mystery; the thousand

sources of pure, exquisite enjoyment that it affords us daily are carelessly

overlooked, and the loss is

of the sense scarcelyregarded. s

As evidenced in popular writings such as this, the scientific abstrusenessof smell

contributed towards a mythos of odour as ineffable, indescribable,intrinsically mysterious

and even pseudo-magical. Such ideas coalescedto form a trivialised and romanticised

perception of the senseof smell, the result being that both in the scientific community and

beyond, smell was conceived of as the `fallen angel', to draw on Helen Keller's epithet, to

be discussedin the conclusion of this thesis.86

Despite the apparentimpenetrability of the olfactory mechanism, a few hypotheseswere

proposed in the nineteenth century. Up to the early 1860s, most Western thinkers had

equatedthe sensationof smell with the chemical irritation of the olfactory membranethat

lines the nasal cavities. The view was held that the senseof smell was dependentupon

odorant molecules stroking or scratching the surface of the olfactory membraneand that

the degree of softness or roughness of this experience determined the extent of

85`The Senses:Part 3: Smell,' Hamer's New Monthly Magazine 12.70 (1856): 494.
86Helen Keller, `Senseand Sensibility, ' The Century Magazine 75.4 (1908): 77.
 53

gratification afforded by the $7

experience It was not uncommon for this supposed

excitation of the olfactory epithelium to be describedin somewhat eroticised terms. The

`soft,' `tender,' `delicate' and `naked' membrane lining the nostril cavities was often

described as vulnerable and exposed to the `violations' of smell, suggesting that the

popular association of smell with sexual deviance (a theme that is explored throughout

this thesis), informed even the most basic of physiological accounts88 However, as Anne

Harrington and Vernon Rosario have shown in `Olfaction and the Primitive: Nineteenth-

Century Thinking on Olfaction' (1992), advances in cellular and molecular sciences

during the 1860smade possible a new theory of olfaction basedon molecular vibration.89

In 1862, Max Schultze,best known for his earlier discovery that cells are small massesof

nucleated protoplasm, localised the olfactory membrane high up in the nasal cavity and

identified the membrane's cilia (long hair-like cells), as the olfactory receptors90 This

breakthrough led to awarenessthat as scent vapours dissolved into the moist mucous

membrane,the gyratory pathway and the rate of motion of the scent molecules changed.

The molecular agitations in the membranecells causedby the change in chemical status

from gas to liquid set the cilia vibrating, which activated the transmission of neural

impulses to the cerebral olfactory centre, where odour recognition transpired. It was

87Seefor example, Gerald Griffin, The Christian Physiologist: Illustrative Tales of the Five Senses

(London: Edward Bull, 1830) 206.

g$See for example, Robert Hooper, Lexicon-Medicum or Medical Dictionary, 4th
ed. (London:
Harper, 1820) 820.
89Anne Harringon and Vernon Rosario, `Olfaction and the Primitive: Nineteenth-CenturyThinking

on Olfaction, ' The Science of Olfaction, eds. Michael Serby and Karen Chobor (New York:
Springer Verlag, 1992) 7. Seealso John Berry Haycraft, `The Objective Causeof Sensation- Part
3, the Senseof Smell,' Proceedingsof the Royal Society of Edinburgh XIV. 124 (1886 - 87): 207.
90Edwin G. Boring, Sensationand Perceptionin the History of Experimental Psychology (London,

New York: Appleton-Century, 1942) 440.

 54

thought that olfactory sensationswere determinedby the rate and pattern of the constantly

jiggling odorous particles. Molecules sharing the same frequency would emit the same

smell. Precisely how vibratory matter stimulated the cilia was uncertain, for as John Berry

Haycraft, author of one of the most thorough surveys of olfactory science of the late

nineteenth century, observed, `we know next to nothing as to how it is that ether

vibrations stimulate the cones of the retina, still less can we guess at the action of the

vibratory atoms and molecules of ordinary matter on the sensitive end organs of the

nose.'91

In the late 1790s,a French scientist, publishing under the name B. Prevost, demonstrated

that certain odorous substances,whether solid or fluid, when placed on moistenedglassor

in a saucer of water, instantly acted on the molecules of the liquid, repelling them and

producing a vacuum. This reaction could be observed under the microscope, enabling

visual distinction between odorous and inodorous bodies92 However, it was not until the

1870s that this earlier research into ways of making the chemical reactions of odour

sensibleto sight was taken up once more, by the French physiologist Liegois. Liegois paid

particular attention to the motions of circulation and displacement of odoriferous

substances,such as camphor and succinic acid, upon the surface of water, with a view to

establishinga theory of odours.He was able to reveal that under the microscope, different

smell particles could be seen to have different patterns of movement, separating and

diffusing from the water at different rates according to their affinity with the fluid, and he

suggestedthat they might move upon the moist surface of the olfactory membranein the

91Haycraft, `Objective Causeof Sensation,' 218.

92FernandPapillon, `Odors and Life, ' Popular ScienceMonthly 6(1874): 144.
 55

same manner and thus mechanically irritate the "

nerve-endings. Since different smells

were now thought to be distinguished according to the rate of their molecular vibration,

the olfactory was likened to the auditory, with its dependency upon sound wave

frequency.

This newly discoveredaffinity with the more prestigious senseof hearing can be seenas a

factor in the contemporary rise in the aesthetic status of smell, which is discussedin

chapter three. For example, in an article entitled `The Neglected Sense,' published in the

popular journal Nineteenth Century in 1894, it was argued that perfume deservedto be

held on an aesthetic par with music. The author, Edward Dillon, drew on recent

suggestionsthat `the stimulus to the olfactory nerve be really ... some form of vibratory

movement,' adding that:

there are indeed, points of referencebetweenthe terminations of the olfactory

nerve on the surface of the mucousmembranewhich lines the passagesat the

back of the nose, and the arrangementat the end of the nerve of hearing

known as the organ of Corti. [Located in the ear drum.]94

The implication was that if the nose functioned according to a similar mechanismas the

ear, then smell could potentially be as noble as sound in the hierarchy of the sensesand it

might become possible to think about smell, like sound, as a sensethat complemented

sight and visual beauty. Dillon, a committee member of the exclusive art collectors group,

the Burlington Fine Arts Club, had developed an interest in the aestheticsof smell after

93Stedley, William Thomas. `Smell'. 1911. Classic Encylopedia: Based on the 11th Edition of the

Encylopedia Britannica. www. 1911encylopedia.org/smell, (accessedMarch 16th 2007).

94Edward Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' Nineteenth Century 35 (1894): 577. For another discussion

of the relationship between smell and soundseeR. A. Dewe, `The Scienceand Harmony of Smell,'
Merry England 22 (1893): 125 - 26.
 56

curating an exhibition of assorted antique Japaneselacquer and metal ware, which

included a number of fine censersas well as accoutrementsrelating to the ancient gameof

perfumes or `incense arrangement' known as Ko-awase95 It was this game, discussedin

further detail in chapter four, which inspired Dillon to consider the high statusof smell in

ancient Japan and its relative neglect in contemporary Britain: and from there, to

contemplation of the possibility of raising `the olfactory senseto the level of an art' such

as music.96

Dillon was not alone in thinking about the parallels of perfume and music. For example,

Burbridge observedin The ScentedGarden(1905) that

sounds may be analysed and set down by notation, as in music, but who shall

analyse and give to us a chromatic scale, so as to speak, of the thousand and

one whiffs of fragrance, or the myriads of odour waves that bombard the

nose? 97

In fact, as Dillon was aware, `more than one ingeniousperson' had attemptedto construct

`a scale of perfumes finding parallels between different scents and the notes of an

octave'. 8 Most notably, George William Septimus Piesse,the founder of the grand Paris

and London-based perfumery Piesse and Lubin, had attempted to classify smells, like

musical notes, according to their `pitch,' and in so doing, had created an `odorphone' or

taxonomy of perfumes in which individual scentsand `bouquets' were classified in terms

of their apparent correspondencewith musical notes and harmonies [Fig. 4]. In his

95For a history of the Burlington Fine Arts Club see: `The Burlington Fine Arts Club,' Burlington

Magazine 94.589 (1952): 97 - 99.

96Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' 577.
97Burbridge, Book of the ScentedGardenix.
98Dillon, 'A Neglected Sense,' 577.
 57

exhaustive guide to perfume making, The Art of Perfumery (1862), Piesse argued that

`scents like sounds, appear to influence the olfactory nerve in certain defined degrees.

There is, as it were, an octave of odours like an octave in music. Certain odours coincide

like the keys of an instrument.i99To prove this claim, he illustrated how some fifty odours

could be matched with musical notation on a stave, placing one half in each clef, and

extending above and below the lines, the notation acting as visual signs by which smells

could be recorded and read. According to this gamut of smells, note D (1st spacebelow

clef) corresponded with violet, whilst ambergris, which has a sharper (higher) smell,

correspondedwith note F. Together, sunflower, vanilla and orange blossom created a

perfect harmony, whilst laurel, pink and thyme equalled dissonance.Though rejected by

many as `perfect nonsenseand humbug,' to quote from a book review of a subsequent

perfume treatise by the American perfumer William D. Henry, Piesse's idea became

proverbial, helping to take the idea of sympathy between scent and sound beyond the

physiology textbooks into writings on art and aestheticsand, as chapter four will reveal,

even influenced Sadakichi Hartmann in his attempts to orchestrate the harmonics of

100
perfume.

Whilst Piesse's odorphone was widely rejected due to its lack of scientific grounding, a

systematic and scientific nomenclature for smell remained elusive. The pioneering

eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus had, in 1752, devised what

became the standard classification system, in which smells were classed into seven groups

(aromatic, fragrant, musky, garlicky, goaty, repulsive and nauseous), according to the

9' GeorgeWilliam SeptimusPiesse,The Art of Perfumery (London: Piesseand Lubin, 1855) 153.
100William D. Henry, `The American Perfumer,' Manufacturer and Builder 8.3 (1876): 68.
 58

characterof the 1°'

olfactory sensation. By 1900, this broad system was found inadequate

by scientists such as Zwaardemaker,who made a number of attempts to group smells

according to their chemical composition, intensity or molecular vibration range, though

of these can be said to have gained a consensusof scientific approval.' 02From the
none

1600s, men of science had increasingly recognised that an understanding of the origins

and nature of phenomena could only be reached by forging some degree of order.

Endeavours in classification in many areas of the natural sciencesreached a particular

fervour in the 1840s and 1850s, when it was deemed imperative to make senseof the

confusion of names that had haphazardly been applied to species and phenomena,to

identify common features and reconsider patterns of geographic distribution and

diversification.103By 1900 much of the natural world had been collected, dissected,

analysed,mapped, named and labelled and for this reason there was a certain amount of

frustration amongst scientists about the resistanceof smell to classification. Indisposedto

analysis, smell, unlike the other senses, seemed to flout orderliness, as the Welsh

Darwinist and surgeonJohn Berry Haycraft noted in his important chapter on olfaction in

Textbook of Physiology of 1900. The bewilderingly random spectrum of scents and

he
stenches, observed, `are called by the names of the bodies that give them out and of

these there are an infinite 104

number'. Moreover, as Zwaardemaker observed in L'annee

101Carolus Linnaeus, `Odores Medicamentorum,' Amoenitates Academicae3.183 (1756). Cited in

Lyall Watson, Jacobson'sOrgan and the RemarkableNature of Smell (New York, London: Norton,
1999)3-5.
102Adalbert Junker Von Langegg Ferdinand and H. Zwaardemaker,Die Physiologie Des Geruchs

(Leipzig: [n.pub], 1895).

103David Cahan, From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-
Centurv Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Boa
John Berry Haycraft, `The Senseof Smell,' Text Book of Physiology, ed. E. A. Schafer,vol. 2
(Edinburgh: Young J. Pentland, 1900) 90.
 59

Psychologque, `we live in a world of odor, as we live in a world of light and of sound.

But smell yields us no distinct ideas groupedin regular order, still less that are fixed in the

memory as a grammatical discipline."os They could not be arranged rhythmically in

spectra, like colours, nor in octaves, like sounds. Rather they appearedto be unrelated

phenomena.As Fernand Papillon explained in his article `Odors and Life' published in

Popular ScienceMonthly, (1874)

if the harmony of colour and sounds exists, it is because optics and

acoustics are exact sciences,and harmony in this case is reduced to

numerical relations determined in a positive way. These relations, as

concerns odours, can have no other basis than a capricious and relative

sensibility. They are thus incapableof being reducedto form, a fortiori

of being translated into fixed 106

precepts.

Frequently described as unknowable, smell, it seemed,was beyond control, reluctant to

yield its secrets for the interests of science; and in this respect, was regarded as more

subversivethan the other senses.

Of all five senses,smell was consideredthe most subtle and the most difficult to regulate,

measure and define.107This was certainly the view of the plain-spoken, American

industrial chemist and educatorRobert Kennedy Duncan. Implicitly rejecting the ideas of

Andrew Jackson Davis on the photography of the invisible, he made the point, in an

article on perfume manufacturein Harper's Magazine in 1906that:

105Hendrik Zwaardemaker in L'annee psychologigue, 1898,203 cited in Henry Havelock Ellis,

'Sexual Selection in Man, ' Studiesin the Psychology of Sex (Philadelphia: Davis, 1905) 91.
106Papillon, `Odors and Life, ' 147.
107Whilst there is no firm agreementamong neurologists as to exactly how many sensesthere are,

for the sake or simplicity, this thesis maintains the traditional model of the five senses.
 60

Light and sound can be accurately measured by photographic and

phonographic devices respectively, and there exists in consequencea well-

ordered, tenderly trimmed body of knowledge relating to them; but odor can

be measuredonly by the nose, an instrument eminently practical, to be sure,

as a detector ... but of small utility as a quantitative measurerof one smell as

ios
againstanother.

The nose, as we have already seen,was not consideredsufficiently reliable or accurateto

gauge with precision the physical and chemical make-up of smell and yet, despite the

various attempts to `see smell', ultimately it was the nose that offered the only valid

meansof perceiving and comprehendingodour.

There were however, limited technologies for measuring smell, the majority of which

remained somewhat obscure both in mainstream and scientific culture. The odorscope,

one of a number of inventions by Thomas Alva Edison for dealing physically with the

invisible and the impalpable, detectedand measuredodours imperceptible to the ordinary

senses,so that even `a few drops of water or perfume thrown on the floor' would record a

decisive response [Fig. 5]. 109Edison chose the name `odorscope' to suggest a device

offering an olfactory equivalent to the microscopeand there are other similarities between

optical and olfactory technologies. For example, in 1896, M. E. Mesnard and M. Gaston

Bonnier devised a transportableapparatusfor measuringthe intensity of perfumes and for

108Robert Kennedy Duncan, `Harvesting Floral Perfumes,' Harper's Magazine Advertiser 113.June

- Nov (1906): 934.

109William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and Antonia Dickson, The Life and Inventions of Thomas

Alva Edison (London: Chatto & Windus, 1894) 81. Frank Lewis Dyer, Edison, His Life and
Inventions, vol. 2,2 vols. (New York and London: Harper, 1910) 590. Burbridge, Book of the
ScentedGarden 29.
 61

comparing odours, the design of which immediately strikes the viewer as having the

appearance of an olfactory counterpart to the microscope. Rather than being set up to

enable the eyes to peer downwards through a lens, this covered box had an orifice

surmounted by a cone, into which the nose fitted snugly, allowing the smeller to focus

upon the scents inside. A length of thread saturated in essential oil was wound within the

box, the idea being to measure the amount of scented thread needed to produce an effect

upon the olfactory membrane. By impregnating different pieces of thread with different

scents, and testing each in turn, the odoriferous intensity of different scents could be

[Figs. 6 7]. 10 Better known however, was Zwaardemaker's olfactometer of

compared and

1888, which became the standard device for testing olfactory thresholds. This involved

placing rubber tubes of scent into the nostrils and measuring the amount of odorous

for the scent to be first [Fig. 8]. ' 11

surface exposure necessary perceived

Despite equipment such as this, scientists grappled for a definition of odour, and it is not

surprising that the lack of clarity amongst physiologists and chemists left non-specialists

baffled. As late as 1905, Burbridge wrote in his guide to the contents and potentialities of

the scented garden that scientists were unable to offer anything more precise than that

odour, like electricity and ether, was `a very subtle and unknown quantity' and that no one

knew absolutely or precisely what this unseen phenomenon was.

even the smallest known insect can be caught in a microscope and made

to give up the secret of its organisation, but what it is that the warm

summerbrings us from the wild flowers of the hillside or wafts to us from

110'The Action of Light Upon Perfumes,' Scientific American Supplement.1085 (1896): 17338.
111 See Hendrik Zwaardemaker, `On Measurement of the Sense of Smell in Clinical

Examination,'Lancet (1889): 1300 - 02.

 62

the choice exotics of the hothouse,no man has been able to determine.So

fine, so subtle, so imponderableit eludesweights and measures.' 12

Betraying his uncertainty about the physical nature of smell, whilst neverthelessrevealing

an awarenessof areasthat had long been of interest in olfactory research,he suggested

that:

odour seemsto be a product given off by the action of oxygen on essential

oils, -a vapour being evolved under certain physical conditions of heat,

moisture, or pressure,-and even light and darknessnow and then have some

sharein its evolution! 13

In referring to smell as a `very subtle and unknown quantity,' Burbridge, no doubt

inadvertently, revealedthe tenacity of the spiritus rector or `guiding spirit' theory of smell,

an eighteenth-centurypremise that was extensively cited in the first half of the nineteenth

century by writers drawing upon Cloquet's Osphresiologie.Dubbed the 'aroma theory,' it

defined odour as an oily, salty, `subtle fluid' that was `volatile, being very fleeting, very

expansible,weightless, completely invisible and inaccessibleto the senses,

were it not for

the olfactory membrane'.' 14It was a definition that had long been deemed archaic by

12 Burbridge, Book of the ScentedGarden29.

13 Ibid. 27. See for example, James Stark, `On the Influence of Colour on Heat and Odours,'

Philsophical Transactionsof the Royal Society of London 123 (1834): 285 - 312.
114Cloquet, Osphresiologie 21,39 40. Cloquet quoted the eminent eighteenth-centuryphysician
-
Hermann Boerhaave.Havelock Ellis quoted extensively from it in the Sexual Selection of Man in
1905. 'Fluid' can be used as a generalterm for either a gas or a liquid in which particles flow freely

and give way before the slightest pressure.However, Boerhaave's use of the term fluid seemsto
have causedconfusion and there is much uncertainty in the early and mid nineteenth century about

whether odour could be liquid or not. Even as late as 1887, the perfumer and scientist Charles
 63

Burbridge's contemporariesin the field of science.Indeed, from the 1860s onwards, the

developmentsin molecular sciencepreviously discussedhad gradually brought about an

acceptancethat the manifestation of odour occurred when particles disengagedfrom the

surfaceof matter and dissolved into air or liquid, and acted on the surface of the olfactory
15
nerves! Although almost nothing was known about the exact nature of theseodoriferous

particles, their action, or the laws which regulatedthem, `the corpusculartheory', as it was

known, did at least offer, for the first time, proof of the molecular affinity between a

its
substanceand smell. The concept quickly took hold within scientific discoursebut both

theories ran parallel or were fused indiscriminately in the public consciousnessfor many

yearsto come.

These two theories concerning the physical nature of odour were influential in shaping

popular representations of smell. The corpuscular theory was an important factor in

maintaining the prevalent associationof smell with ideasof identity, characterand quality.

This was becausethe releaseof odour particles from matter seemingly revealed inherent

realities, inner essenceand the secretsof identity. Whilst vision enabledacquaintancewith

surface appearance,smell got to the heart of things, heralding the state of matter.1'

Indeed, the chief purpose of the nose was to evaluate the quality or character of the air

taken into the lungs and to detect the presenceof potential poisons or culinary delights.117

In his Essayson Health-Culture (1887), the Germanphysician Gustav Jaeger(best known

Piessein Olfactics and the Physical Sensestatesthat odour is probably `always gaseous',inferring

a degreeof uncertainty.
115Hanringonand Rosario, `Olfaction and the Primitive, ' 100.
116SeeJeanPaul Sartre,Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) 211.
117See for example, Julius Bernstein, The Five Sensesof Man (London: C. Kegan Paul and Co.,

1881) 288.
 64

for his woollen textiles), even went so far as to insist that `when a physician approachesa

sick-bed he should simply use his "18

nose to ascertainthe causeof the stench. This was

not a new idea; the French physician, Ernst Monin had argued in 1855 that smell was

crucial for medical diagnosis, being `the subtle soul of clinical instruction'. `With

practice,' he had written, `medical nostrils learn to sniff the air constantly, attempting to

take note of the mysterious similarities and secret affinities of olfactory symptoms,

recognising them in all the variety of their infinite nuances.i19 In particular, the

recognition of characteristic odours symptomatic of specific diseaseswas an important

aspect of differential diagnosis, which relied upon comparative lists of symptoms for

diseasesthat might otherwise be easily confused. Thus for example, Cholera Morbus

could be distinguished from Asiatic Cholera by the presence of a faecal or mouse-like

odour emanating from 120

the stools. Though JonathanReinarz has suggested,in an essay

on smell in Victorian England, that smell played a less important role in diagnosis once

`the medical community left smells behind and moved onto microbes,' it is clear that

odours continued to be perceived as accuratemarkers of the preconditions for diseasewell

after germ theory becamerecognised.'21

The physical function of the nose as sentinel of the lungs was closely twinned to its

metaphorical counterpart as a moral guardian of the mind. In Gerald Griffin's The

118Gustav Jaeger,Dr Jaeger'sEssayson Health-Culture (London: Waterloo, 1887) 68.

119Ernst Monin, Les odeurs du corps humain (Paris: [n. pub.], 1855) 16. Cited in Annick Le

Guerer, Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell, trans. Richard Miller (London:
Chatto and Windus, 1993) 101.
120Condict Cutler, Manual of Differential Diagnosis (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1886) 29.
121Jonathan Reinarz, `Uncommon Scents: Smell and Victorian England,' Sense and Scent: An

Exploration of Olfactory Meaning, ed. Bronwen Martin and Felizitas Ringham (London: Philomel,
2003) 138.
 65

Christian Physiologist of 1830, a mix of scientific surmise and religious tract, the senses

are defined as `gates by which all earthly knowledge - all good and all evil are transmitted

to the mind'. He argued that `as the true springs of our mental life, ' through which all

knowledge of objects in the surrounding world is gained, the senses were the primary

resource for the life of the soul, an idea that percolated through writings on the senses for

decades to come. '22A delicate enjoyable scent was thought capable of `lifting the mind to

a degree of almost rapturous ecstasy', whilst a foul stench could only have a dissipating

influence. 123From this basis, the nose often assumed a metaphorical role as a detector of

moral stench in literature. A fascinating example of this is a remarkable short story by

Paul Lafargue entitled `The Rise and Fall of Dr. Vaughan Trotter'. The story, which has

some surprising parallels with Patrick Suskind's Perfume (1987), was published in 1898

in the Practitioner, a magazine for medical professionals containing news items, reviews,

short stories, poems and relevant trade promotions, and is about a celebrated London-

based physician with remarkable powers of diagnosis. 124Hailed as an academic genius,

the secret of Dr. Trotter's extraordinary talent lay in his powers of nasal acuteness, which

enabled him to make accurate diagnoses solely upon the ability of his sensitive nose to

detect and distinguish canker. Whilst his sense of smell revealed the truth about his

patient's conditions, on a personal level the outcome was a life of masquerade; he was at

constant pains to conceal from the world the vulgar truth that his brilliance was based

purely on olfactory acuity and not the outstanding intellect with which he was universally

attributed. When his unfailing sense of smell leads him to make the shocking discovery

122Griffin, Christian Physiologist 16.

123Ibid. 207.
124Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murder (London: Penguin, 1987). P. Lafargue, `The

Rise and Fall of Dr. Vaughan Trotter, ' Practitioner (1898): 129 -132.
 66

that his wealthy patron's daughter has committed a violent murder, he harbours her secret

as well as his own, fearing an exposure that would ruin him. Increasingly tormented by

guilt, however, and pained by the stenches of the city that plague his excruciatingly

delicate nose, he flees to the barren Australian desert where he seeks respite in an

125
odourless environment.

The idea that the senseof smell was employed as an accuratedetector of the quality and

characterof individuals forms the central thesis of Janice Carlisle's interesting evaluation

of social relations in mid-Victorian novels, Uncommon Senses of 2004. This book

explores literary descriptions of the scentsand stinks perceived when two charactersmeet

for the first time and experience a `gut reaction' about one another. She indicates that a

direct association is often registered in fiction between the nature and status of

relationships and a liking or loathing for the scents that envelope or emanate from

characters. For example, she arguesthat `in novel after novel, men identify their matesby

noticing the floral scents that surround them and make aromatic their promise of

fertility. ' 126Carlisle's arguments could be strengthenedwith reference to nineteenth-

century ideas about the in

role of smell stimulating the passionsand prompting instinctive

responses of attraction and repulsion. Of particular relevance here is the theory put

forward in the late eighteenth century by the French material philosopher Pierre Cabanis

that the olfactory organs acted in sympathy with other internal organs such as the

digestive tract. It was for this reason, he explained, that smells instinctively induce

125The idea of the desertas odourlesswas often repeatedin nineteenth-centurywritings on smell.

126Janice Carlisle, Common Scents: Comparative Encounters in High Victorian Fiction (Oxford,

New York: Oxford University Press,2004) 83.

 67

salivation or nausea- that is to say, `gut 127

reactions'. Cabanis's ideas about the basic,

primal and instinctive sympathy or functional relationship between the olfactory system

and the other bodily systemswere taken up by Cloquet, who arguedthat the senseof smell

helped identify potential mates by bathing `us in a more or less constant atmosphereof

odors, which perpetually move us to sympathy or antipathy,' desire and approach, or

repugnanceand withdrawal. 128

From such beliefs, it was only a short step to the conveyance of moral judgements in

olfactory terms. Critics, for example, frequently expressedtheir opinions of literature with

reference to the language of smell. Whilst the novelist, travel writer and literary critic

Margaret Oliphant was lauded in her obituary in The Times for a writing style that

breathed `the freshnessof the sea winds, of the hills, the fields and the heather,' J. C.

Shairp observedthat on reading the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, `the fragrancesthat

cross your path are those of musk and incense rather than of heather and mountain

thyme.' 129Indeed, a number of critics excoriatedRossetti, imagining his work to emanate

a feminine yet stifling fragrancethat was sickly, cloying, seductiveand impure. Kernahan,

for example, found it stifling in its excessive sensuousness,`like the overpowering

sweetnessof hyacinths so that amid all the odorous deliciousness,we gasp for a breath of

127J. Hippolyte Cloquet, `Dissertation sur les odeurs et les organs de l'olfaction, ' Faculty of

Medicine in Paris, 1815,4.

128Harringon and Rosario, `Olfaction and the Primitive, ' 105.
129'The Death of Mrs Oliphant,' The Times 28 June 1897: 10, col. A.

J. C. Shairp, `Aesthetic Poetry,' Littel's Living Age 38 (1882): 228. For more on the languageof

smell in the criticism of Rossetti see:Christina Bradstreet, 'Diagnosing the SensualistDisease:The

Languageof Health and Diseasein the Critical Responseto Dante Gabriel Rossetti c.1870-1900,'
BA dissertation,Leicester University, 2001.
 68

130
outer air again'. Literary metaphorsof text as a foul or fragrant perfume that enteredthe

body with corruptive or nutritive effect, clearly reflect ideas relating to the `corpuscular

theory' of smell as an indicator of identity, but also resonate with contemporary fears

about miasma (discussedbelow) and the pernicious invasivenessof smell, which can be

seento have emergedout of `aromatheory'.

Perhapsthe main legacy of the earlier `aroma theory' was the much repeateddescription

of the `subtlety' of smell. This term held a number of layers of meaning. According to the

Oxford English Dictionary, definitions of `subtle' include `exility of particles,'

`penetrativenessarising from lack of density,' `perspicacious,' `pervasive or elusive by

reason of tenuity', `fine or delicate to such an extent as to elude observation,'

`immaterial,' `not easily grasped, understood or perceived,' `abstruse,' `stealthy' and

`insidious'. Thus descriptions of `subtle scents' often took on a sinister register, being

evocative of the insidious elusivenessof invisible, ethereal odour. Yet whilst odour was

described as elusive, stealthy and subtle, it was generally understood to be a material

emanation and so could also seemmore real, tangible and concrete than sight and sound.

This paradox is insinuated in Wilkie Collins's creepy tale of suffocation, 'A Terribly

Strange Bed' of 1852, in which the image of odour creeping stealthily into the nostrils

heightensthe pitch of terror. The victim lies awake questioning his sanity and sobriety as

the canopy of the four poster bed he lies in is slowly screwed downwards onto the

mattress by murderous villains in the room above. In the `silence and darkness of the

night' the sensesof sight and sound fail him. He is unable to believe his eyes and thinks

130John Coulson Kernahan, `A Note on Rossetti,' Sorrow and Song (London: Ward, Lock, 1894)

55. See also William JamesDawson, The Makers of Modern English: A Popular Handbook to the
GreaterPoetsof the Century (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890) 341.
 69

that he is hallucinating. It is only when the `dusty odour from the lining of the canopy'

comes `stealing' into his nostrils that an `instinct of self-preservation' kicks in. He rolls

off the bed seconds from being 131

smothered alive. Unlike the vision of the slowly

descending canopy, the unseen, `dusty odour' is instantly real and persuasive,

counterbalancingthe evidenceof the other senses.

Miasma

From the middle ages until the development of germ theory in the 1860s, smell was

regarded not only as a symptom of disease but also as the cause. In 1846, at a meeting of

the Metropolitan Sewage Committee, the public health pioneer Edwin Chadwick warned

that `all smell is, if it be intense, immediate acute disease; and eventually we may say that,

by depressing the system and rendering it susceptible to the action of other causes, all

is disease.' 132The miasma theory, upon which Chadwick's ideas were based,
smell

maintained that cholera and other diseases were caused by miasma or poisonous vapours,

which, consisting of particles from decomposed matter or miasmata, were identifiable by

their foul odour. Because miasma was believed to be an odorous mist, odours were

commonly associated with pestilence. It follows, therefore, that the desire to `see smell'

was associated with a need to learn about and combat disease. For example, in Daniel

Defoe's fictional journal, The Plague Years, published in 1761, a group of physicians

discuss the idea that the foul-smelling and diseased breath of a Plague victim would, on

131Wilkie Collins, `A Terribly StrangeBed,' HouseholdWords 5.109 (1852): 129-37.

132Edwin Chadwick, `Metropolitan Sewage Committee Proceedings,' Parliamentary Papers 10
(1846): 651. Allan Conrad Christensen, Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Contagion: `Our
Feverish Contact' (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). Ronald Hare, Pomp and Pestilence:
Infectious Disease,Its Origins and Conquest(London: Victor Gollancz, 1954).
 70

condensing upon glass, reveal under the microscope, `living creatures ..., strange,

monstrous and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to

behold'. 133By the 1800s, there was a cultural drive to track down the source of cholera, as

can be seen in a satirical sketch in McLean's Monthly Sheet of Caricatures (1831) entitled

`A London Board of Health Hunting After Cases Like Cholera' [Fig. 9]. In this cartoon, a

group of health inspectors sniff at muck heaps and drains, in pursuit of the cause of the

epidemic, whilst one frustrated figure exclaims, `Oh, if I can but find a smell! ' There is as

much emphasis upon looking as smelling in this image. One bespectacled gentleman says

to his colleague, who peers into a narrow window, `the scent lies strong here. Do you see

anything? ', implying, with typical disregard for the value of nasal perception, that it

would not be until the cause or source of the disease had been seen, that it could truly be

said to have been discovered.

The scientific concern with exploring the world through the lens of the microscope,from

the air we breathe to the water we drink, both reflected and intensified concerns about

miasma.In 1850, Arthur Hill Hassall published a study of Thames water pollution, which

included colour plates illustrating the microscopic `animal and vegetableproductions' that

existed in drinking water supplied by the different London 134

water companies, Inspired

by this study, Punch magazine illustrated the hideous life-forms `revealed in a drop of

London water through the Molecular Magnifier, illuminated by the Intellectual Electric

Light' [Fig. 10]. London well-water, it was claimed, having percolated through the city's

graveyards, naturally contained in solution the bodies of aldermen, churchwardensand

133Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the PlagueYear (London: Nutt, 1722) n.p.

134Arthur Hill Hassall, A Microscope Examination of the Water Supplied to the Inhabitants of

London and the SuburbanDistricts (London: SamuelHighley, 1850).

 71

undertakers as well as bailiffs and slopsellers, and it was this myriad of miniscule yet

hideous forms that could now, for the first time, be seen.In considering the `life in death',

Punch suggesteda link with Spiritualist attempts to see the invisible, arguing that the

Molecular Magnifier offered `a spectaclenot only defying the naked eye but all vision

which is not in a measurepsychical'. This spectacle,it was claimed, transcended`all that

has hitherto been deemed astonishing', mystifying even the aforementioned Andrew

Jackson Davis who, upon entering a higher sphere of consciousness,was famed for his

to
ability accessdivine truths and the scientific laws of the 135
universe.

Hassall's research,satirisedin Punch, suggestedthat the fetid reek of the Thameswas due

to the emanationsfrom the putrid organic matter polluting the river. 136Yet malodorousair

was itself thought to contain rotting vegetation. In a letter to the editor, published in The

Times in 1854,a writer calling himself `The Investigator' observed:

I think if the public could be brought to seethat which floats in what they

smell from sewers and cesspools,they would be more careful in the

removal of filth in such a way as to ... limit the escapeof its life-crowded

'
atmosphere. 17

The author claimed to have conductedan experimentby which he coveredthe airshaft of a

cesspool with a glass plate smearedwith glycerine. Eight hours later, on removing the

135`The Wonders of a London Water Drop, ' Punch 18.461 (1850): 188 89. See StephenHalliday,
-
The Great Stink of London: Sir Bazalgetteand the Cleansingof the Victorian Metropolis (Phoenix
Mill and New York: 1999) 32 - 40.
136StephenHalliday appearsto have missedthe connectionbetweenthe Punch image and Hassall's

plates.Halliday, The Great Stink 24.

137Investigator, `Will It Ever Be Possibleto Map a Smell?,' The Times 29 September1854: 9,
col
A.
 72

plate and looking at it under the microscope,he was able to see decaying organic matter

and thousands of maggot-shapedorganisms and bodies, `shaped like mushrooms, the

stalks of which twisted about as the umbrella head revolved'. Smell and miasmatawere

one and the same to `The Investigator', who continued, `it would not surprise me if

particles of scent - say from the fox or civet - could be made apparent to the eye. ' Using

basic plate culture techniques such as this, the writer believed that it would be possible to

`map smells' or to lay down on paper their organic atoms, `so as to show their outline'. 138

The Investigator's comments also captured the imagination and the mirth of Punch, which

suggested in an article entitled `Fragrance Visible' that further investigations would be

likely to show that `every odour has its shape; and we shall be able to distinguish the

perfume of a dead well from that of a pig-sty, by looking at it through a magnifying

glass. ' 139

Whilst an interest was emerging in seeing the actual form of miasma under the

microscope, there was also a popular fascination with artistic depictions of foul-smelling

phenomena as well as with imagining smell in purely fantastical visual terms. During the

long, hot summer of 1858, concerns about miasma reached fever pitch as the stench of the

River Thames became unendurable and the death-rate from cholera soared.140Punch

magazine ran a number of articles, denouncing the filthy-state of the Thames and the

to '41 In one
apparent apathy of government with regards mobilising a clean-up campaign.

such article, Punch made the fictional announcement that the popular marine painter

138Investigator, `Will It Ever Be Possibleto Map a Smell?': 9, col A.

139'Fragrance Visible, ' Punch 27 (1854): 140.

140Halliday, The Great Stink.

141A number of theseare cited in Ibid.

 73

Edward William Cooke had been commissioned by the government to undertake a

painting of the Thames at low-tide. The imagined companionpiece to the recent `pleasant

little sea-whiff,' A Sniff of the Briny -Day after a Gale, on display at the Royal Academy,

was to be entitled A Sniff of the Slimy. The painting, it was proposed, would be

undertakenbetween Lambeth and St. Stephens,Westminister, `where the Thames is seen

and smelt to the greatest advantage'. The background would include `bone-boiling and

grease-mills', the middle distance some `half-submerged putrescent canine carcasses,

'

whilst the foreground or `forefilth' would include a sketch of a recent governmentsteam-

boat expedition, sent out to ascertainthe extent of Thamespollution, with actual portraits

of the appointed members of this `Thames Sniffing Committee'. The MPs amongst this

party would be painted as `they actually appeared,with their right thumbs and forefingers

closely clasped upon their noses'. In what must surely be considered an attempt to poke

fun at Ruskin's exhortations of truth to nature, the author suggestedthat in order to paint

the river as faithfully as possible, the artist had consideredusing watercolours prepared

from river water, but on chemical analysishad ascertainedthat:

what is called in compliment the `water' of the Thames, is in reality a

semi-liquid kind of mud; an artificial compound of pestiferous ingredients

in which the aqueousparticles can only be distinguished by inspection

through a microscope.

Painting en-plein air was to be `perilous' work and Punch, no doubt amused by the

apparent exertions of Pre-Raphaeliteartists such as Millais, who claimed to go to great

lengths and to spendlong hours toiling in all weathersto achieve the desired,painstaking

illusion of verisimilitude, was pleased to learn that Cooke was undergoing a course of

nasal training, having a pail of Thames water brought within `nose-shot' of his studio
 74

every morning, so as build up his powers of endurance.He was, Punch reported, now able

to `inhale no less than four distinct sewer-sniffsper hour,' without collapsing. 142

The following week, Punch visualised the invisible deadly miasmas emanating from the

Thamesas `The "Silent Highway" - Man' [sic] who demands`your money or your life, '

drainage or disease [Fig. 11]. In this wry comment on the ongoing parliamentary

deliberations about the cost of implementing mains sewerage,the figure of Death was

depicted rowing along the Thames, claiming the lives of those reluctant to contribute to

sanitisation costs or to commit to a program of reforms. Ultimately, however, as

Stallybrassand White have observedin the Politics and Poetics of Transgression(1986), it

was the `silent' sense of smell, rather than the clamour of cholera victims, that finally

engagedsocial reformers.143
Nauseatedby `The Great Stink' that infiltrated Westminster

in 1858, the government was forced to take combative measures,the outcome being the

successfulimplementation of Bazalgette's 144

seweragesystem.

In Membranes (2000), a study of nineteenth-centurymetaphors of invasion, Laura Otis

argues that the body was thought to have permeable boundaries through which

undesirable influences could penetrate,rupturing the integrity of the individual. 145

Otis's

study focuses on nineteenth-century expressions of germ theory, in which microbial

invasions of the body were defined in terms of aggressiveforeign policy. However, just as

142`The Thamesin Its True Colours,' Punch July 3rd 1858: 2.

143Peter Stallybrass, White Allon, The Politics and Poetics of Trans reg
ssion (London: Methuen,
1986) 139.
144SeeHalliday, The Great Stink.
145Laura Otis, Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth Century Literature, Science and

Politics (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

 75

odours continued to be important in signalling the presenceof diseaseafter the discovery

of microbes, it is clear that the metaphor of diseaseas an invasive force, suggestedin

images of warfare, rape or venomous bites, predated the work of Pasteur and Koch.

Before germ theory, miasma had likewise been thought to probe the body with corruptive

potential. Indeed, the passagesof the nose which ferry aromas,breath and mucous were

regarded as vulnerable inroads leading deep into the body. The nostrils were constantly

open, in readiness for the passage of air but, being impossible to close, they were

perceived as defencelessagainst the encroachmentof unsolicited odours into the inner

sanctumof the body. By exciting the nerves in the lining of the olfactory membrane,any

smell entering the nasal cavities could have direct communication with the brain. In

Olfactics and the Physical Senses,Charles Piesse (a member of the Royal College of

Surgeonsand heir to the perfumery Piesseand Lubin), like Griffin, imagined the senseof

smell as a sentinel of the airways, standing `guard over the very air we breathe'. Vigilance

against toxic odours was of the utmost importance and to ensure this, he argued, it was

necessaryto cultivate the sense of smell, for `when untrained ... the sentinel through

neglect fails at his post, and enemiesrush in ... passing unchallenged into the highways

and byways of the tissue of the lungs - fitting Soil!'la6

Metaphors of invasion by the unseen enemy, miasma, were rife in the numerous

newspaperreports of the intolerable stench of the heavily-polluted Thames during that

scorching summer of 1858.Punch imagined an enemy incursion: `there floated around the

doors of the Legislative Palace, an enemy, mighty, deadly, subtle and irresistible,

146CharlesHenry Piesse,Olfactics and the Physical Senses(London: Piesse

and Lubin, 1887)71.
 76

threatening destruction That enemy emanated from the Thames'. 147Likewise, the
...

Illustrated London News conjured up images of a fleet of lurking, looming clouds

embarking on an ambush of the city. Miasma was likened to a mob of marauding invaders

that `rushes up the streets that lead from the river to the Strand, ' whence they set out to

strike the kingdom's central governmental and legislative systems, so that even the `mayor

is besieged in court'. 148If the nose was a vulnerable point of entry to the body, the river

was also a gateway, leading straight to the heart of the body of the British Empire, its

capital city. Just as the river mouth was likened to the nasal apertures or nostrils, `the

streets leading up to the strand' represented the `nasal cavities' by which odours advanced

quietly and surreptitiously to the olfactory membrane, with devastating effect. 149

Continuing on the theme of invasion, the writer went on to imagine that in facing an

imminent attack from France or America, England had decided to pre-emptively

annihilate itself with toxic fumes.

London may observethat it is possible a fleet from Toulon may be examining

the charts of the Thames and an army of long militia-men from the Green
...;
Mountains may be en route for Pall Mall via Liverpool (though we don't

much believe in the probability of either event); but those are no reasonswhy

be
we should poisoned d'avance. 150

Like a national invasion, the penetration of the nostrils by a foul smell representeda

disruption to the integrity of the body and a subversionof selfhood.

147
'The LastMan in the House,' Punch10July 1858:18.
148`Notes of the Week, ' Illustrated London News 19 June 1858: 603.
149Ibid.

150Ibid.
 77

Vampire imagery was another meansby which the idea of contaminatedair invading the

body and rendering it an agent of contagion was popularly expressed.For example, an

anonymous poem entitled Vampyre appearedin the pages of Punch in the autumn of

1846, giving the invisible, elusive threat of miasma the tangible, visual persona of a

bloodthirsty spectrewith a `venomoustooth'.

The Vampyre! The Vampyre! Avoid him! His breath

Is the reek of the charnel,the poison of death:

He has broken his prison of pestilent clay,

And the grave yields him up, on the living to prey.'5'

The `glimmering vapour' that creeps along the ground towards its victim and the `foul

mist that over the sepulchrewaves' allude to contemporaryconcernsabout the scourgeof

typhoid that swept across London that year and which was thought to have its origins in

the stench of decomposingcorpsesemanatingfrom the 152

city's overcrowded graveyards.

Like a `sleeping infant', miasma's victims were defencelessto their fate.153The horror of

its
miasmawas stealth: pervasiveand invisible, it was impossible to regulate.

By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the emotive force of Chadwick's claim that

`all smell is disease' had waned. Nevertheless,the tenacity of long-establishedanxieties

about the senseof smell as a harbinger of moral and physical corruption (even after the

131`The Vampyre: No Superstition,' Punch 13 (1847): 143.

152SeeLacquer, Thomas, `Spacesof the Dead in Modernity. ' Cultural Matters.1: Remembranceof

Things Past (2001), http://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/cultural-mattersAaqueur.

html (accessed 8
August 2007).
's3`The Vampyre: No Superstition,' 143.
 78

demise of miasma theory), should not be underestimated.154Whilst germ theory had

proven microbes to be the causeof disease,disagreeableodours were now often thought

of as potential carriers of germs,leading Burbridge to write in 1905:

I believe all pleasantodours are harmlessand very often they are actually

beneficial. On the other hand, whilst many disagreeableodours may be

harmless, but few of them do us any good and some of them carry the

germsof dire disease to

and often prove a scourge the human race. '55

Thus smell continued to be associated with danger. 156 Interestingly, Dante Gabriel

Rossetti, in his two versions of Pandora (1869 and 1878), painted the evils of the world as

winged creatures swirling in the fumes of smoke and fiery vapour that pour forth from the

opened casket, so that it is possible to think of the `ill-born things' in terms of a foul

[Fig. 12]. 157Yet, by the turn of the century there was a greater sense of indulgent
miasma

sensationalism about the fear of smell than had been present half a decade earlier, when

stench was truly feared as pestilential. In the horror literature of the 1890s, there was a

greater element of thrill about the fear of miasma. In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), the

stench of dried blood betrays the heinous presence of the Count. When Jonathan Harker

infiltrates the vampire's lair, he is sickened by the overpowering `earthy smell, as of some

dry miasma' and has the impression that the breath of the monster has `clung to the place

154Edwin Chadwick, `Metropolitan Sewage Committee Proceedings,' Parliamentary Papers 10

(1846): 651. Smell continued to be thought of a legacy of man's roots in the animal kingdom, being
inextricably linked to bodily functions and especially sexuality, diseaseand death.
155Burbridge, Book of the ScentedGarden 13.
156In J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, (1904) Peter smells the danger of approachingpirates in his sleep,

and wakes up just in time. James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1906).
157Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Ellis and Elvey,

1893).
 79

and intensified its 158

loathsomeness'. To Harker it seemsthat the `stagnantand foul air' of

Dracula's den is `composedof all the ills of mortality' and that `corruption had become

itself corrupt.' 159Harker, of course, ultimately triumphs over the vampire; by the 1890s,

when urban dwellers were increasingly reaping the benefits of decadesof sanitaryreform,

the threat of odour was likewise deemedassailable.

In Leona Marcelle Beaussart's poster for Papier d'Armenie (c. 1890), a haloed girl is

seated on some steps overlooking the Gothic facade of a French church or cathedral,

nonchalantly burning strips of Papier d'Armenie, a blotting paper infused with the scent of

Armenian benzoin resin, the stringent soapy fumes of which drive away a host of demons

including the hovering form of winged death with its scythe [Fig. 13]. 160Darkness is

falling and a bat hovers over the tombstones of the adjacent graveyard, suggesting that the

ghoulish forms represent not only malevolent forces but also miasma rising from the

rotting corpses. Yet the girl seems unperturbed. The sanitising act of burning Papier

d'Armenie is presented as an exorcism ritual and the image makes reference to the

purifying use of incense in the Roman Catholic Church, discussed further in chapter

158Bram Stoker, Dracula (Harmondsworth: PenguinBooks, 1994 [1897]) 299.

159 Ibid.

160On the table besideher is a box of Papier d'armenie, the packaging of which testifies to the gold

medals awardedto the manufacturersat the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Slipping to the floor are
promotional leaflets outlining the cleansingproperties of benzoin and its power to purify the air. It
seemsthat around 1890 scientists investigating the product placed two pieces of meat in individual
covered dishes and burnt Papier d'armenie in one of the dishes.After one week the meat that had
been exposed to the benzoin fumes was still edible, whilst the other was putrefied. Some
information about the awards,packaging and leaflets can be found at www. papierdarmenie.fr. The

companyhasbeen running since 1885.

 80

161
three. The disinfectant has the power to purge the human spirit: The text `parfume

assainit,' superimposedover the image of the fumes, is a play on words suggestingthe

moral value or 'saintliness' of the product as an agent for securing, as Richard Stamelman

suggests,`the health of the body and therefore the purity of the 162
soul'. Though half a

decade on from the great cholera epidemics and outbreaks of influenza, smallpox,

measles,scarlatina and whooping-cough that blighted Europe's cities in the 1840s and

1850s,the poster clearly bearsthe legacy of the horror engenderedin the sanitationreports

and newspaperarticles of that period. It brings to mind, for example, a description given

by England's Registrar General,William Farr in 1843, of a `disease-mist,arising from the

breath of two millions of people, from open sewersand cess-pools,graves and slaughter-

houses,' which, `like an angel of death' had `hovered for centuries over London' but

which might yet `be driven away by legislation'. 163Whilst Farr lobbied for sanitary

reform, in Beaussart's poster combative measuresare in place, as the scent of the resin

expels the evil odours and with them, the odours of evil. 164

161Eileen Cleere has argued that in late Victorian writings unclean spirits are attributed to sanitary

defectsfrom foul drains to rotting corpsesand that exorcism and sanitation are often accomplished

simultaneously. Eileen Cleere, `Victorian Dust Traps,' Filth: Dirt, Disease and Modem Life, eds.
William Cohen and Ryan Johnson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) ch. 6.
Cleere discussesWilliam Bardwell, What a House Should Be Versus Death in the House (London:
1873) and J. E. Murdoch, The Shadow Hunter: The Tragic Story of a Haunted Home (London:
Fisher Unwin, 1887).
'62Stamelman,Perfume 163.
163William Farr, `Causes of the High Mortality in Town Districts, ' Fifth Annual Report of the

Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages (1843) 418 [207]. Cited in John M. Eyler,

Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore and London: John

Hopkins University Press, 1979) 70.

164Stamelman,Perfume 169.
 81

If by the 1890sand early 1900sthere was a strongerelement of sensationalthrill attached

to the horror of miasma, there was also a greater senseof fascination with the natural

beauty of smell as it might appearunder the microscope. The demise of miasma theory

correspondedwith a rise in the pleasuretaken in perfume and this influenced the way in

which smell was sometimesvisualised. In 1909, Coty launched his perfume Cyclamen in

a flagon designed by Lalique that incorporated an intaglio motif of winged nude fairy

figures reaching up to and smelling a flower, their wings cascadingdown each panel of

the beautifully tapered six-sided bottle [Fig. 14]. The effect of transparentglass with the

fairies outlined in black enamel created a cellular effect, reminiscent of examining a

damselfly under the microscope. In Rosace Figurines (1912), another piece from the

extraordinary Lalique - Coty collaboration, fairy figures are depicted as the visual

embodimentof the scent [Fig. 15].165

Moulded into the clear frosted glass are four nymphs

holding hands in a circle. The spherical design of the perfectly round bottle and the

outlines of the fairy forms suggestsa view under the microscope, as if we are witnessing

under the lens the constituency of a droplet of Coty's scent, a vision of beauty that is in

strong contrast to the monstrositiesthat Punch, back in 1850, imagined to exist in a drop

of Thameswater.

165Felix Marcilhac, Rend Lalique, 1860-1945: maitre verrier: analyse de l'oeuvre

et catalogue
raisonne(Paris: Les editions de l'amateur, 2004) 327, no. 488.
 82

Civilisation and The Nose

In `Fragrance Visible', the Punch article of 1850, in which it was imagined that the

distinctive shapes of different odours, from perfume to pig-sty pong, could be

distinguished under the magnifying glass, the author made the following intriguing

observation:

It is to be apprehendedthat the celebrateddispute between the eyes and

nose in regard to the spectacles,will be revived, with a complication

derived from the fact that glassesare now made use of by the former to

make researchesin the province of the latter. Perhapsoptical instruments

will in time be constructedof suchpower as to enableto seea nasty smell

at a distance it
and give a wide berth or get out of its way.' 66

Whilst the reference to optical instruments for seeing smell clearly relates to the

contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific research in that field, the suggestion of a

`dispute between the eyes and nose' is both ambiguous and nonsensical. Nevertheless, it

might be read as an allusion to man's ability to smell many things that were beyond the

power of the microscope to reveal, such as the odour of 0,000,000,005 gram of oil of

in litre of air. 167It might also be supposed to refer to contemporary ideas

peppermint one

about the civilising process.

166FragranceVisible, ' 140.

167William H. Howell, A Text Book of Physiology, 2nd ed., vol. Muscle and Nerve, Central

Nervous System, The Special Senses, Special Muscular Mechanisms, II vols. (London and
Philadelphia: Saunders,1901) 409. On the ability to smell what cannot be seenseeJosephMaskell,
The Five Senses:God's Gift and Man's Responsibility, Addresses to Children (London: Parr,
1888) 38.
 83

The elevation of sight in modernity was often presented in evolutionary terms as the final

stage of sensory and social development. Civilised people, it was held, perceived and

appreciated the world primarily through their eyes. Primitive people, by contrast, were

thought to place equal importance on their ears, tongues and particularly their fingers and

noses, for knowledge of the world. Charles Darwin attributed this notion of a social

progress from the `lower' senses to the `higher' to biological progress, suggesting in his

theory of evolution that sight became increasingly important to humans as they evolved

from animals and learned to walk upright and took their noses off the ground. 168Later, in

the 1880s, the anthropologist Dr. J. L. Fauvelle argued that there was an inverse ratio

between smell and sight, suggesting that in the animal kingdom, as well as in the human

race, `the eyes acquire parallel axis and reach their highest perfection, the nose retires

from its prominence in position and function. '169For this reason, Grant Allen, whose

popular expositions on various aspects of the evolutionary idea in biology and

anthropology were important in bringing Social Darwinism to the attention of lay-readers,

explained in an essay of 1881 entitled `Sight and Smell in Vertebrates' that visible

symbols were the language of thought amongst civilised beings. `Our world, ' he argued,

`is a picture, with a background of tangibility' whilst the mental landscape of hunting

animals could be thought of as `a series of continuous and mutually related smells, with a

background of visibility'. 170In this context, the reference in Punch to the `celebrated

dispute between the eyes and the nose' provides satirical comment upon the contemporary

169CharlesDarwin, The Descent of Man. and Selection in Relation to Sex, vol. 2,2 vols. (London:

Murray, 1871) 17.

169`Notes,'American Journal of Psychology 1.2 (1888): 732.
170Grant Allen, `Sight and Smell in Vertebrates,' Mind 6 (1881): 31.
 84

fascination with the relative evolutionary advanceand decline of the sensesof sight and

smell.

By the turn of the twentieth century, an inverse correlation between olfactory sensibility

and social progress was firmly established in the public mind. For example, in his

pioneering study of psycho-sexual behaviour, Sexual Selection in Man, Havelock Ellis

argued that although smell was the most highly developed of the senses in most mammals,

olfactory-dominated behaviour (both sexual and non-sexual) diminished with the

evolutionary advances of man. Ellis argued that whilst for man's remote ancestors sexual

odours were the `chiefest avenue of sexual allurement' (sic), the significance of smell had

diminished amongst the civilised population of the modern West. 171Though the sense of

smell was fundamental to animal survival, it was, he argued, no longer the `leading

channel of intellectual curiosity' for civilised man. 172Whilst olfactory perception was

essential for enabling animals to gauge edibility, detect danger and identify potential

mates, the sense of smell was almost redundant in man, for whom knowledge was

received, learned and retained through processes of education, nurture and memory.

Indeed, Sigmund Freud's well-known claim in Civilisation and Its Discontents (1930) that

man's erection from the quadripedal stance initiated an intellectual distancing from the

animals, can be seen to be clearly based in Darwinian thinking. Freud argued that, once

elevated from the level of sexual and faecal stenches, man visually surveyed the landscape,

the intellect. 173Man's liberation from

enabling the prioritisation of sight as the sense of

171Ellis, `Sexual Selection in Man, ' 82.

172Ibid.
173Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961)

46.
 85

olfactory drives was the key to the developmentof intellect and reason over baseinstinct.

Smell was forever tainted through associationwith faecal and sexual odours and it was for

this reasonthat writers such as Ellis and Freud sought to distanceman from such earthly

vulgarities by writing the repressionof smell sensationsinto the history of the civilising
14
process.

In the light of this, the prominent nose becamea sign in visual culture for an acute and

animalistic olfactory perception and conveyed a sense of barbarity. Just as optical

investigations into the sense of smell by scientists led to a popular interest in the

visualisation of smell, so too did evolutionary studies of the nose lead to the visual

representationof that organ as a meansto not only suggestthe presenceof odour, but also

to make social and cultural statements.Thus, for example, in a wood-engraving by H. S.

Melville in James Greenwood's novel Curiosities of Savage Life (1863), an Ethiopian

thief-taker is depicted dragging an assistantround the tribal village to `smell out' the thief

who stole from his client [Fig. 16]. Like a dog on a lead, the brutish tracker crawls on all

fours, nostrils flaring, hot on the trail of the villain. 175The image suggests an extra-

to
sensitivity smell amongst `backward' African tribes and black people, an idea that was

later corroborated by the physician William Ogle, who correlated olfactory sensibility

with the intensity of pigmentation of the olfactory membranelining the nostril cavities. In

The Descent of Man, Darwin supported Ogle's observation that the yellow-brownish

pigment of the nasal membrane was dark in tone due to the fact that intense colours are

174On smell and civilisation see Mark Jenner, `Civilization and Deodorization? Smell in Early

Modem English Culture, ' Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, eds. Peter Burke,

Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 127 - 44.
175H. S. Melville, wood engraving in JamesGreenwood,Curiosities of SavageLife, 2°dSeries,vol

1, (London: Beeton, 1863), 81.

 86

efficient at absorbing odorous particles.176For this reason, the darker olfactory

more

membrane of all non-white races was thought to be especially odour absorbent.Despite

the extensivetesting of sensoryperception undertakenby the Cambridge Anthropological

Expedition to the Torres Straits in 1898, which disproved this idea, white racial

be in
cloaked physiological terms, for long to "'
time come.
superiority continued to a

Ogle's theory correlating skin tone and odour absorption was also adopted by many

Westernwriters, c. 1870- 1900, as a meansto reaffirm racial hierarchies. It not only lent

scientific weight to the popular conclusion that dark-skinned races were superior smellers

but also helped to uphold long-held Western prejudices about the supposedpungent body

odour of black people. For example in Sexual Selection of Man, Ellis upheld the

stereotype that `the white races smell less strongly than most of the dark races, odor

seeming to be correlated to some extent with intensity of pigmentation, as well as with

hairiness.'17' This he claimed, explained why South American Indians, `have an odor

than that Europeans,though as strong as most negroes'.19 An olfactory

stronger of not

map of the world's population could thus be drawn up: Europeans,he wrote were thought

to be odourless or at least not unpleasantly sweet or bitter; Australian blacks smelt

phosphoric; the Chinese musky, and Negroes stank of ammonia and were rancid, like a

176Darwin, Descent of Man 18. See also William D. Ogle, `The Nasal Membranes,' Medico-

Chirurgical TransactionsI (1870): 278.

177'Physiology and Psychology, ' Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological pedition to Torres
Straits, ed. Alfred Cort Haddon, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901) 1-140.

`Special Issue: The Torres Strait Expedition, ' Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
35.4 (1999).
'78Ellis, `Sexual Selection in Man,' 60.
179Ibid. 61.
 87

goat.180
The claim was often made that black people were more vulnerable to shark attack,

for just this reason."'

Whilst dark skin was seen as a sign of both olfactory acuteness and strong body odour, it

was also commonly held that the nose was an important visual key to identifying not only

racial type but also social, intellectual and moral status. During the mid nineteenth

century, studies in naseology (the study of nasal appearance) developed as a sub-branch of

physiognomy, the theory that the study and judgment of a person's appearance provided

insight into character and personality traits, and such ideas were in evidence throughout

the 1800s.182For example, a writer on this topic for Harper's New Monthly Magazine in

1856 regarded the nose `as one of the high prerogatives that makes man differ from the

brute, ' since unlike the snouts of lowly, ground-sniffing animals, the elegant and refined

human nose was shaped in the image of God. 183Yet within humanity, there were definite

degrees of refinement, and the nose, as the `outward representative of the sense of smell, '

was considered an indicator of high or low character. Physiognomists claimed that the

form, direction, outline and skin tone of the nose revealed important information, with a

fine nasal physiognomy demonstrating man's elevation from the basest dependency on the

vulgar sense of smell. Nasal shape was considered particularly revealing in terms of

olfactory acuity and subsequent moral standing. For the Scottish physiognomist Alexander

180Ellis also claimed that a `goaty smell produced by venery' was particularly common in women

and especially harlots. SeeIbid. 64.

'a' Paul Budker, The Life of Sharks(New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) 72.
182On the influence of physiognomy and phrenology in nineteenth-century artistic renderings of

character and type, see Mary Cowling, The Artist as Anthropologist: Representations of Type and

Character in Victorian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 79.

183`The Senses:Part 3: Smell', 494. See also `A Vision of Noses,' Blackwood's Magazine 48

(1838): 648 - 60.

 88

Walker, who brought his interestsin physiology and aestheticsto bear on studiesof facial

beauty such as Physiognomy Founded on Physiology (1834) and Beauty. Illustrated

Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in Women (1836), the Roman or

aquiline nose was generally deemed the `highest' nasal form, being a hallmark of

intelligence and refinement. In contrast, the small, depressed,pug or snub-nose,was a

sign of low development. Thought to resemble an animal's snout, it was said to be

Irish 184
poor and the criminal classes.
prevalent amongstthe

Nasal shapewas also believed to influence the way in which odour was inhaled and thus

In
experienced. Physiognomy Founded on Physiology (1834), Walker arguedthat the flow

of odorous air circulating the nostril cavities was dictated by the shapeof the nose, which

impacted on the volume and the rapidity by which scent particles triggered the nerves of

the olfactory membrane.For example,he arguedthat the elevated,aquiline nose permitted

the gentle savouring of scent through `a more direct, extensive, and continued application

of odours' [Fig. 17]. For those bearing such a nose, odours passeddirectly upwards and

lingered gently in the large nostril cavities, enabling a leisurely, refined and delicate

`intellectual 185
sentiment' and aestheticpleasure. In
appreciation of scent as a source of

contrast, the pug-nose was described as `calculated to receive rapid impressions and to

lead to rapid emotions'.186Bearers of this type of up-turned nose looked as if they were

permanently taking short, sharpinhalations, which led to an over-stimulation of the nerves

184Alexander Walker, Physiognomy Founded on Physiology (and Applied to Various Countries,

Professions and Individuals) (London: 1834) 258.

185Ibid.
186
Ibid. 260.
 89

and an inappropriate degree 187

of sensual excitement. The healthy enjoyment of sweet

fragrancesby those with an aquiline nose was generally deemed a unique attribute of

civilised man, whilst the ability to detect and differentiate faint or obscure odours was a

trait associatedwith animals, primitives and depravedpersons.'88

Large, prominent noses were often considered a sign of strong character and moral

decency.189In an article entitled `Notes on Noses', which appeared in the Illustrated

London News in 1842,it was arguedthat whilst a large-nosedman:

does not always rise in the world, he very seldom sinks into the lowest

current of society; his nose keeps him always floating above. He is

generally, at least, decent and frequently highly respectable in his

character and conduct. On the other hand, the small-nosed man can

achieve little. It is morally impossible that he can rise in the world; his

nose keeps him down 190

...

In this article, the writer drew upon binary distinctions of high and low, beauty and

monstrosity, moral elevation and immoral depravity, to create the ideal of the upwardly

mobile, elevatedman of society. The large, elevatednose of civilised man `turned his nose

up' at earthly stenches,in contrast to the pug-nosed, debasedcreature whose nose, like

that of an animal, was trained on earth-boundfilth.

187Walker, PhysiognoMy 260.

188`The Senses:Part 3: Smell', 499.

189Ibid.
190'Notes on Noses,' Illustrated London News 28 May 1842: 36.in Cowling, The Artist as

Anthropologist 148.
 90

However, as Sander L. Gilman has argued in Making the Body Beautiful (1999), the

pathology of the oversized and abnormal nose was a familiar symbol for disreputability

and difference and in particular in respect to noses marked by nasal tumours known as

19' For example, Punch magazine frequently drew upon nasal physiognomy
rhinophymia.

to make statements about moral corruption. During the Great Stench of 1858, it carried an

article entitled `Our Nasal Benefactors, ' which gave ironic tribute to the `nasal gallantry'

of the group of MPs who had undertaken a `Smelling Expedition' along The Thames to

determine the state of the river [Fig. 18]. The members of the party (whose portraits, as we

have seen, were supposedly to appear in the painting, Sniff of the Slimy), Punch claimed,

were to be offered the `Order of Nasal Valour, ' a medal commemorating `their

distinguished nasal service'. On one side would be depicted a vignette of Father Thames

`seen in his most filthy and disgusting aspect,' whilst the other side would feature the

forefinger'. ' 92 The

outline of a nose, `pressed rather tightly with a thumb and

accompanying illustration depicted the design for the medal showing Father Thames

bearing an engorged and tumid toper's nose, whilst the reverse showed a puffed-up and

pompous MP pinching a carbuncled and distended nasal monstrosity. Interestingly, the

two sides of the medal, as illustrated, might be thought to resemble a pair of lenses, such

as pair of spectacles or opera glasses, with the two portraits appearing as the view through

the lens. In this way, the image reiterates once again the link, so often found in Victorian

visual culture, between smell and visual technologies. At any rate, for Punch, images of

nasal deformity enabled commentary upon the political stench brewing with regard to the

191Sander L. Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)

119.
192'Our Nasal Benefactors,' Punch 35.887 (1858): 12.
 91

incompetenceof a laissez-faire governmentthat had failed, at that date, to take action to

combat the polluted stateof the river.

In Jewish Frontiers (2003) and The Jew's Body (1991), two books on the constructionand

reconstruction of Jewish identity, Gilman argues that Jewish nostrility, as the hawkish

shape of the Jewish nose was sometimes termed, was seen as an iconic, visible and

pathological sign for the circumcised penis, which was considered stunted, mutilated,

diseasedand different-looking. 193Likewise, sexual offenders, it was believed, often had

genital malformations and could be detected and exposed through recognition of the

physiognomic features of their huge, repugnant noses. It is no coincidence, Gilman

suggests,that in the newspaper illustrations of 1888, Jack the Ripper was frequently

depictedbearing a distinctively Jewish nose.194Indeed, there were other racial stereotypes

at work at this time which related nasal physiognomy with sexual deviance.For example,

in PhysiognomyFounded on Physiology, Walker describedthe large `negro' nose as

very active in the procuring of animal emotion [or passion]. - its wings

expanding to inhale the air of the odours which it wafts; and its form

and development must therefore be regarded as indicating power for

procuring emotion, as the under-lip indicates capability of procuring

195
passion.

Such ideas were rooted in the late nineteenth-century concern with nasal pathology. For

example, in 1884, John Noland Mackenzie gave an address to the Baltimore Medical

193Sander L. Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York, London: Routledge, 1991) 131. Sander L.

Gilman, Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies. Histories and Identities (New York, Basingstoke:
PalgraveMacmillan, 2003) 116.
194Gilman, The Jew's Body 113-16.
195`The Senses:Part 3: Smell', '499.
 92

Academy regarding nasal reflex neurosesin which he argued that due to a supposed

reciprocal relationship or affinity between the nose and the genitals, nasal malformation

and dysfunctioning frequently signalled sexual abnormality. For example, chronically

swollen and dripping noseswere often diagnosedas symptomatic of sexual diseasessuch

as syphilis or of a lack of sexualrestraint and `over stimulation' of the genitals.According

to Mackenzie, `the natural stimulation of the reproductive apparatus when carried

...
beyond its normal physiological bounds, as in coitus or menstruation [is] often the
...

enacting causeof nasal congestionand inflammation.' Menstrual irregularities were said

to force blood up the nose, engorging the tissue and causing `vicarious nasal

menstruation', whilst masturbation was believed to cause nasal inflammation that could

in
result a discharge from the nostrils and a perversion of the senseof smell.' 96

Nasal physiognomy was also linked to contemporary phrenology, a science that claimed

to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the

shape of the head. For example, the Scottish physiognomist, Walker, argued that there was

a correlation between the size of the posterior of the brain (associated with animal

passions and the interpretation of olfactory phenomena), and moral status. Individuals

sporting an aquiline nose were generally found to have a flat posterior of the brain and to

be less prone to scent-triggered emotions and sentiments. Alternatively, the flattened nose

was associated with `an extended posterior part of the head, as in the negro, ' for whom

scent induced `the gratification of passion. 197

Discourses on the sense of smell were thus

interwoven with ideas about physiognomic indications of the propensity for sensual

gratification and human moral behaviour.

196John Noland Mackenzie, American Journal of the Medical Sciences87 (1884): 363.
197`The Senses:Part 3: Smell', 499.
 93

In the emerging field of neuroscience, long-established notions about the relative

importance of smell to animals compared to man, and savages compared to civilised man,

were given scientific grounding by Pierre Broca in 1878. Broca, a neurologist whose work

on the olfactory lobe and memory is discussed in greater detail in the following chapter,

was fascinated by the relations between the anatomical features of the brain and mental

capacity and consequently made a thorough comparative study of the olfactory lobe sizes

of higher and lower vertebrates. He concluded that in contrast to that of most animals, the

olfactory lobe in man was shrinking over the course of the ages, as the sense of smell

became subordinated to the senses of sight and hearing, whilst the frontal white matter of

the `intellectual cortex' was subsequently gaining in power and size. 198In particular, an

out-sized limbic fissure (the fine sulcus which separates the temporal lobe from the

rhinencephalon, the part of the brain associated with effects of smell upon memory and

emotion) was flagged as a sign of `incomplete evolution' because it was particularly

in the `inferior 199It was, Broca

prominent mammals, non-Caucasians and all of races'.

claimed, almost entirely absent from healthy European brains, but was strongly

discernible in some `idiots and imbecilesi20° As Grant Allen also explained, in civilised

man the `olfactory nerves have little to do with the main work of the brain' and have thus

`shrivelled away almost to nothing'201 Moreover, the `special olfactory centres' that once

occupied the cerebral hemispheres had `dwindled' and been supplanted by cells for the

`reception and co-ordination of visual sensations' and the `comprehension of visual

198Paul Broca, `le grand lobe limbique et la scissurelimbique dans la serie des mammifs,' Revue

d'anthropologie 2 (1878): 386.

199Paul Broca, `Sur la circonvolution limbique et la scissure limbique, ' Bulletins societ6

d'anthropologie 2 (1877): 648.

200Ibid. 648. Seealso Allen, `Sight and Smell,' 469.
201Allen, `Sight and Smell,' 471.
 94

symbols'.202
The dethronement
of the olfactory centre was therefore an index of evolution

that objectively distinguished monkeys from man and Europeans from so-called

Primitives. Neuroanatomy leant clear authority to the proverbial conception that `the

lower mammalshave smell, the Primatessight' as their prime mode of perception. 03

The scientific devaluation of the senseof smell caught the imagination of a number of

popular writers. For example, in his article critiquing the aesthetics of `The Neglected

Sense', Edward Dillon, refereed to earlier in this chapter, argued that smell was close to

redundancy,being superfluous to the survival and intellectual enlightenment of advanced

mankind. He stressedthe `vastly greater importance of the sense of smell to the lower

animals than to man, and to man in past ages and remote countries than to the Western

European of the present day' as a meansof explaining the Ancient Japanesefascination

with perfume paraphernalia, as exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894.204

Echoing the terminology deployed by both Broca and Allen, Dillon defined the senseof

smell as `the remnant of a once powerful mechanism', and lamented the fact that due to

the decline of the sense of smell, olfactory art forms, however exquisite, would never

attain any significant status in enlightened cultures205Havelock Ellis, however, was to

take a slightly different stance, believing that it was possible for modern society to

continue to develop the `finer manifestations' of smell and the aestheticsof perfume, even

though `the grossermanifestations of sexual allurement by smell belong, so far as man is

concerned,to a remote animal past which we have outgrown and which, on accountof the

202Allen,`Sight and Smell,' 469.

203Ibid. 453.
204Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' 587.
205Ibid. 577.
 95

diminished acuity of our olfactory organs, we could not completely recall even if we

desired to. 1206 Such a view was at odds with that of the perfumer Charles Piesse, who

promoted fragrance as a `distinguishing sign of higher culture, ' and argued that neglect

rather than attendance to perfume was likely to initiate a `relapse into barbarism' because

`when we begin to neglect or ignore any sense we commence a retrograde motion in

civilisation. '207 He advocated the rigorous training of the sense of smell, since `the

absolute loss of all sense of smell, or its complete neglect' would, he argued, be

tantamount to mental degradation, given that the intellect is utterly reliant on the senses

for its information. 208Meanwhile, the concept of developing the sense of smell was

abhorrent to the physician and social critic Max Nordau. Nasal tutorage for purposes of

olfactory art, he argued in Degeneration (1895), was symptomatic of what he deemed

`degenerative art'. In particular, Nordau, whose ideas on this theme are discussed in

further detail in chapter two, believed that the idea of raising the animal sense of smell to

the level of an art defied the evolutionary primacy of sight and sound and challenged the

whole Enlightenment rationalist and visualist project. It was, he argued, to be regarded as

degeneration 209 For all three parties, however,

an atavistic process and a sign of .

moderation in the enjoyment of olfactory pleasures was paramount. Regardless of

authorial stance on smell, the idea of a balance between a healthy, delicate appreciation of

fine smells and an inappropriate and indelicate indulgence of sensuous pleasures runs

through much of the nineteenth-century literature on the sense of smell. The corporeal and

206Ellis, `Sexual Selection in Man, ' 110

207Piesse,Olfactics 6.
208Ibid.
209ConstanceClassen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

(London and New York: Routledge, 1998). Max Nordau, Degeneration,trans. from 2nd ed. of the
German(London: Heineman, 1895) 502 - 04.
 96

earthy side of human existence remained at the crux of olfactory discourse despite

attemptsto construct an identity that was distancedfrom the vulgarities of smell. Much as

odour was rejected as repugnant and distasteful, the centrality of that senseto sex and

survival, as well as to memory and the emotional life, remained both inescapableand, as

will be revealedin the following chapters,at the heart of the Victorian fantasy-life.

Conclusion

For those artists and writers with an interest in boosting the aestheticstatus of smell, the

nineteenth-centurydesire to experiencethe olfactory through visual meansnot only raised

the profile of smell by bringing about a greater understandingof a perceived threat but

also elevated and intellectualised that lowly animal sensethrough association with the

noble senseof sight. Indeed, if to

one were nominate an object that best representsthis

theme, it would surely be the exquisite pair of beautifully jewelled and enamelledsilver-

gilt perfume and smelling salts bottles producedby the decorative arts company, Sampson

Mordan and Co in 1879 [Fig. 19]. The two identical bottles were shapedand combined in

the form of a pair of opera glasses,with the caps forming the `eye pieces' and the bases

mirrored so as to resemble the lenses. In this object, mysterious, sensual perfume is

intellectualised and made knowable through reference to the visual technology that the

bottles suggest.Yet to open the lids and to hold up this apparentpiece of visual apparatus

to the face is not to facilitate viewing of the external world. Rather, the smeller (acting the

role of viewer) is bombarded by the fragrance held within, taking him or her far away

from the here and now, into the interiorised, imaginary worlds of the olfactory

imagination. As an object, these perfume-bottle / opera glassescan be seenbeautifully to

encapsulatea forgotten nineteenth-centuryfascination with the oscillations and overlaps

 97

between experiences of olfaction and vision and the intersections between the

technologiesof looking and smelling.

 98

II

Rotten Heads and Wallflowers

Introduction

`An orange-budwill carry us to Sorrento,a rose to Persia and the Paradiseof the Houris

A lady with a sandal-wood fan will diffuse around the room delicate dreamsof Araby
...
the Blest.' Thus mused one writer in an essayupon the aestheticsand idiosyncrasiesof

smell, in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1869, an American monthly with popular

coverage of the 210

arts and sciences. Scents were perceived to stir the Victorian visual

imagination, stimulating dreams and reveries, hauntings and hallucinations that enriched

the mental life. Scents bewitched the mind. They influenced dream imagery, roused the

imagination and reawakened dormant memories of past scenesor surroundings. They

created instant shortcuts to distant ages and exotic lands and they raised the spectresof

long-deceasedloved ones. Perfumes were described as illumining the mind, lighting up

memories and sparking flashbacks or visions. In short, scents inspired visions that both

delighted and disturbed, rendering indistinct the threshold of sanity.

As seen in the previous chapter, the scienceof olfactics was dominated in the nineteenth

century by the search for ways to make smell visible, both literally and metaphorically.

Another key arearelating to the field of osphresiology,however was the scientific interest

in the power of scentto induce and intensify the visions of the mind's eye. Continuing the

210`A Plea for the Senseof Smell,' Putnam's Monthly Magazine 13 (1869): 317.
 99

theme of the relationship of sight and smell, this chapter explores nineteenth-century

popular and scientific ideas about the visionary potential of scent. It considersideas about

the nature and formation of scent-inspired visions, or scented visions as they will be

known, and reveals their association with mental health disorders, particularly those

perceivedto afflict women, suchas hysteria.

Whilst the concept of smell as visually evocative is familiar to us today, the idea of the

elicitation of subjective olfactory responsesfrom visual imagery is less so. Therefore, this

chapter also develops the theme of the mutual affinity of sight and smell through an

exploration of what shall be termed the olfactory gaze, the idea that looking at pictures

with olfactory associations, such as a painting of roses, could trigger subjective

experiencesof smell, whether as a normal healthy function of the mind or as a perverse

hallucination. In doing so, this chapter fundamentally changes our understandingof the

experience of looking it
at art as was comprehendedin the nineteenth century. Pictures

ostensibly have just one sense-dimensionand yet, in order to suggest a full-bodied and

sensualexperienceof an imagined world, they make an appealto the other sensesthrough

the associations of the images represented. In the nineteenth century, however,

physiologists describedthe visual evocation of the non-visual sensesas a directly physical

experience,as this chapter will demonstrate.This concept was well-established amongst

artists and viewers alike and is therefore, an essential context for understanding the

conception and reception of visual representationsof smell, as explored in the following

chapter, with reference, for example, to Charles Courtney Curran's writings on painting

techniques for stimulating olfactory responsesto flower paintings. Like scentedvisions,

this mode of olfactory-looking proves to have been heavily implicated in issuesof female

mental pathology. Thus, in exploring the dialogue between visions induced by smells, and
 100

smell sensationsinduced by the visual, this investigation into the olfactory imagination

uncovers highly-gendered understandingsof the interrelationship of sight and smell with

regardsto both physiological psychology and the pathology of the mind. 11

Fragrant Herbs and Autumn Leaves

Despite the pathological implications of the olfactory imagination, to be discussedin this

chapter, belief in the emotive power of scent to arouse memory and to stimulate the

mental faculty of visualisation was not essentially a medical understandingbut one that

reflected a wider cultural having

consensus, developed in the enlightened circles of the

Romantic sensualistsin the early 1800s.Throughout the nineteenth century, the middle-

class reading public remained captivated by the fragrance-fuelled fantasies of George

Sand, Thomas Moore and Albert Tennyson, whilst the nostalgic delights of scent

entrancedthe diverse readershipsof Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola and Algernon Charles

Swinburne?'Z Due to their intimate, imaginative and emotional appeal, scent-inspired

visions diffused beyond avant-garde literature and made their mark upon the popular

material that the Victorians read and wrote. It was from this popular basis that scented

visions began to intrigue scientifically, reaching a climax in the 1890s and early 1900s

when experimental psychologists at Cornell University began to test the prevailing

211The affinity between smell and the non-visual sensesis not discussedhere, since these were

rarely consideredin relation to the themesof memory and the imagination.

212See for example, George Sand on the nostalgic pleasuresof reminiscence. `By a link between

memories and sensations that everyone knows, and cannot explain, I never smell convolvulus
flowers without seeing the place in the Spanish mountains and the wayside where I first plucked
them.' George Sand, Histoire de Ma Vie, cited in Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour
and the Social Imagination (London: Papermac,1996) 202.
 101

assumptionsabout the role of odour in stimulating mental pictures. 13It is no coincidence

that the French novelist Marcel Proust's extraordinarily evocative passages on the

psychology of smell were in gestation in the same years that these experiments into

involuntary memory were undertaken!14

The most celebrated account of the power of scent for recalling vivid memories must

be the famous in Proust's A

multi-volume novel la Recherchedu Temps
surely episode

Perdu (1913) in which the sudden conjunction of flavours of madeleine cake dipped in

lime flower tea revive in an instant long-forgotten childhood memories. In the novel, the

sudden retrieval of early memories of entering his aunt Leone's bedroom on Sunday

mornings and sharing her madeleinesdunked in tea is described by the narrator, Marcel,

in sumptuous detail. For him, visions spring into being from the taste of cup of a tea so

vividly that `the old grey house on the street,where her room was, rose up like a stageset

the entire town, with its people and houses,gardens,church, and surroundings,taking
...

shapeand solidityi215 The reinstatementof this scenefrom the past opens the floodgates

of memory, launching his self-revelatory quest to retrieve progressively more detailed

Zia See J. W. Harris, `On the Associative Power of Odors,' American Journal of Psychology 14

(1908): 557 - 61. Alice Heywood and Helen Vortriede, 'Some Experiments on the Associative
Power of Smells,' American Journal of Psychology 16 (1905): 537 - 41. Edward Titchener and
Bolger E. M., `Experiments on the Associative Power of Smells,' American Journal of Psychology
18 (1907): 526 - 27.
214See Douglas W. Alden, `Proust and Ribot, ' Modem Language Notes 58.7 (1943): 501 07.
-
Renate Bartsch, Memory and Understanding: Concept Formation in Proust's A La Recherche Du

Temps Perdu (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005).

215Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970)

61. A useful guide for finding the references for `memory and scent' scenes in Proust's The
Remembranceof things Past is P. A. Spalding, A Reader's Handbook to Proust: An Index Guide
(London: Prior, 1973).
 102

memories of the people and incidents relating to his childhood at Combray. Proust's

clinically-detailed account of the sudden elation of recapturing visions of the past and of

the accompanying sense of transcending time and mortality has led to the coinage of the

phrase `the Proust phenomenon' to describe odour-cued memory. 216Yet Proust was by no

means the first to write in this vein and his work was clearly influenced by standard

nineteenth-century approaches to the theme, in which smell was employed as literary

device for accessing childhood memories and matters close to the heart.

The extraordinary immediacy and potency of smells for unleashing the visions of the

mind's eye held a particular imaginative appealnot only for avant-gardewriters interested

in engaging with the aestheticsof smell, such as Proust, but also for writers targeting

popular audiences.In the late 1890sand early 1900s,the sameperiod in which Sadakichi

Hartmann, discussedin chapterfour, experimentedwith the faculty of smell to manipulate

mental imagery amongsttheatre audiences,a number of writers of sentimentalnovels and

short stories demonstratedtheir fascination with the emotional poignancy of odour and its

impact upon the visual memory. In their works, scent became a standard trope for

bridging the past and present.In stories such as Margaret Elenora Tupper's The Scent of

the Heather (1895), scents enabled accessto the cherished and formative memories of

fictional characters,whilst also appealing to the reader's own archive of experience.17

This was because,as one writer observedin an article entitled `Odors,' published in 1898

in the popular American literary journal, Lippincott's Magazine, odours were thought to

216Simon Chu and John Downes, `Odor-Evoked Autobiographical Memories: Psychological

Investigations of Proustian Phenomena,' Chemical Senses25 (2000): 111 - 16.

217 Margaret Elenora Tupper, The Scent of the Heather, ed. Margaret Elenora. (London:

Leadenhall, 1895).
 103

be `sentient with life, our life'.

From childhood to maturity and old age they mark the stagesof our passage

through life with the sameunerring certainty that the hands on the clock tell

the hours. All our sorrows andjoys, failures and successesare marked with a

distinctive odor.218

In this article, one of a plethora of popular American magazine articles dedicated to

exploring the idiosyncracies of smell and memory that emergedaround 1900, the author,

followed what had become a literary convention of tracing relationships through the

course of a life-time, through odour memories. Referring to the scent of the flowers

scatteredupon the coffin and placed on the grave,he wrote:

Tuberoses take us back again to the scene of our childhood, to the little

church with straight-backedbenchesand uncushionedseatswhere our mother

took us as children. She is here again today, but it is for the last time, and as

we see the cloth-covered coffin borne reverently by loving hands, and look

upon the peaceful face within we feel as though our hearts should 219
break.
...
Such passageswere typical for their melancholic, plaintive air. Indeed, due to the

particular poignancy of memory during bereavement, olfactory reminiscences often

enabledauthorsto pursuerelationshipsbeyond life into the `after life'.

The power of scent to deluge the mind with deeply melancholic thoughts of the past ran

through a number of writings on the senses.For example, in a much earlier article on

218SamuelM. Warns, 'Odors,' Lippincott's Monthly Magazine 61 (1898): 269.

219Ibid. 272. A similar description is given in Harry Peck, `The Morality of Perfumes,' The

Cosmopolitan 25 (1898): 585. `The odor of a single tuberose will bring to his very eyes a black
draped coffin buried in flowers and telling not only of an endedlife but a breaking heart.'
 104

smell and memory published in 1855 but written in much the same vein as comparative

articles of the late 1890s, a writer for Harper's New Monthly Magazine imagined a

scenario in which a favoured scent momentarily evoked the welcome apparition of a

deceasedlover. `An open door wafts a favourite perfume to us, and she whom we loved

stands in passing beauty at our side.s220Heavy scents, however, are sufficiently

overpowering as to vanquish this entrancedstate;the vision fades and a state of conscious

awarenessreturns. `Stale musk or nauseouscamphor breathes upon us, and palls and

shrouds hide once more the faded forms of those that to

are gone a better home. '
922 By

evoking memories of bygone days and thus raising the spectresof distant or even long-

departed loved ones, sweet smells even induced ghostly manifestations, as will be seen

later in this section.

John Everett Millais's well-known Pre-Raphaelite painting Autumn Leaves (1855-56)

demonstrates much the same fascination with the emotiveness of scent and its potential to

revive cherished childhood memories as does the literature just discussed, sharing in

particular that sense of wistful melancholy found in both the Lippincott's Magazine article

of the 1898 and the Harper's New Monthly Magazine article of 1855, with which the

222[Fig. 20] Indeed, this portrayal of four girls tending to a

painting was contemporary.

bonfire of burning leaves has been seen by Malcolm Warner as a visual response to the

familiar association of autumn with nostalgia, found in poems such as Dante Gabriel

uo'The Senses: Part 3: Smell, ' Harper's New Monthly Magazine 12 (1856): 494.

221Ibid.

222See Nic Peeters. `Scent and Sensibility: An Appreciation of Millais's `Autumn Leaves' The

Review of the Pre-RaphaeliteSociety 11.2(2003): 37 - 50.

 105

Rossetti's The Fall of the Leaf or William Allingham's Late Autumn 223In particular,

Warner's argument that Millais was influenced by his friend Tennyson is particularly

persuasive. By moving the viewer to think of `the days that are no more, ' the painting

to
seems resonate with much the same sentiment as Tennyson's Tears, Idle Tears. 224This

sense of melancholy that suffuses Autumn Leaves is achieved through the representation

of autumnal atmospherics. A dusky twilight closes over the deep-blue of the distant hills,

which are tinged with the fading embers of the setting sun, suggesting both the dying day

and the approach of the end of the year. The painting poignantly evokes a sense of the

chill autumn air upon ruddy faces, the rustle of the wind through half-bare trees, the

desolate garden beneath a greyish autumn sky and the muted activity of a solemn October

afternoon, whilst the sombre-toned dresses and the girls' pensive expressions enhances

this plaintive mood. The painting is a lamentation of the passing of summer and of the

transience of youth and beauty. It situates itself within the historical tradition of the

vanitas painting and borrows familiar artistic tropes, such as the depiction of drifts of

smoke to symbolise the ephemerality of life. The theme of time, mortality and grief is

suggested in this momento mori by the fallen leaves that make up the bonfire225 In a

gesture of offering, the central and eldest girl holds out a handful of leaves, to be dropped

like a votary upon the burning pile. Her sacrifice, the artist seems to suggest, will have no

223William Michael Rossetti, ed., The Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Ellis and

Elvey, 1891). William Allingham, Flower Pieces and Other Poems (London: Reeves and Turner,
1888).
224Malcolm Warner, 'John Everett Millais's `Autumn Leaves': A Picture Full of Beauty and

without Subject, ' Pre-Raphaelite Papers, ed. Leslie Paris (London: Tate, 1984)) 128. Tears Idle
Tears is from Tennyson's long poetic medley The Princess. Alfred Tennyson, The Princess
(London: Edward Moxon, 1854).
225In Millais' painting Mariana (1851), dead sycamoreleaves, strewn over the embroidery and the

floor also indicate the passageof time.

 106

impact upon the destructive hand of time; decay is inevitable and like the leaves,the girls

will wither, age and die.

There is a poetic and reverential stillness about the work that is createdthrough the lack of

narrative and by what Ruskin described as the girls' `quiet reverie'. 226Certainly, for

Millais, the painting was about self-reflection and the inward gaze. 27In a letter to the art

critic F. G. Stephens,he statedhis intention for the picture `to awakenby its solemnity the

deepestreligious reflection. I chose the subject of burning leaves as most calculated to

produce this feeling'. 28 This meditative mood was achieved in several ways. For

example, as Warner observed,the autumnal haze createsan air of reticence and mystery

which `suggestsan image from the memory, the imagination or a dream, rather than a

scenedirectly perceivedi229Moreover, the glowing sunsetgives the girls a kind of halo or

aura that suggestsillusion and the imagination. The rising smoke that hovers, ghost-like,

in the air, seemsportentous of the raising of thoughts and apparitions. Lastly, with their

226John Ruskin, Royal Academy Notes (London: Smith, Elder, 1856) 66.
227Critics were struck by the lack of narrative in Autumn Leaves and by the mystical and

introspective mood it inspired. A hostile review published in the Art Journal, in 1856 attackedthe

religiosity of the painting by asking:

In what vein of mystic poetry will the picture be read? The artist awaits the

assignment of the usual lofty attributes. The work is got up for the new
transcendentalism,its essencesare intensity and simplicity, and those who yield not
to the penetration are insensible to fine art ... We are curious to learn the mystic
interpretation that will be put upon this composition.
The reviewer feared that despite the futility of a painting merely `got up' in the guise of a `new
transcendentalism,' many would read it as `an essential sign of the divine afflatus.' 'Royal
Academy Pictures,' Art Journal 18 (1856): 171.
" Letter to F. G. Stephens,StephensPapers,BL cited in Warner, 'Millais's `Autumn Leaves,'
156.
229Warner, `Millais's `Autumn Leaves, 140.
 107

haunting dark eyes, the two girls, who appearto be dressedin mourning, seem to direct

their gaze out of the painting and into past times and distant places.230Whilst depicted

within a representationof a memory image of childhood, thesechildren also seemto guide

the viewer towards his or her own subjectiveconsciousness.

The bonfire, it can be argued, is suggestiveof an accumulation of past experiences,with

each leaf representingan individual recollection. In this compost heap of memory, some

of the leaves are fresh, whilst others are decaying or irrecoverable. The freshest and

greenestor most vibrant and richly-coloured leaveson the top and outer circumferenceof

the heap suggestthe most vivid and reattainablerecollections; the crisp and drab and the

dank and slimy leaves,below and within representthe most faded and irrecoverablerelics

of the mind. The leaves, as they glide or flutter down or over the precipice to the bottom

of the pile, seemto evoke the instability and fragility of memory. If the painting has the

haunting quality of memory, it is a memory surely inspired by the scentof burning leaves.

Autumn Leaves draws on ideas that were familiar in the 1850s about the haunting

poignancy of autumnal aromas and their potency for reviving powerful and visceral

231As Malcolm Warner has suggested, Millais may have had

reminiscences of childhood.

in mind lines from A Spirit Haunts The Year's Last Hours, another of Tennyson's

232
nostalgic poems

230Critics railed about the direct and thus vulgar gaze of the
girls who, they felt, seemed to confront
the viewer. 'Royal Academy Pictures, ' 171.
231Indeed, according to a note in a diary belonging to Tennyson's wife, Millais became familiar

with the smell during a visit to their home on the Isle of Wight in 1854, when he was 'beguiled into
sweepingup leaves and burning them'. Warner, 'Millais's 'Autumn Leaves,' 131.
232Alfred Tennyson, The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson (London: Macmillan, 1894) 55.
 108

My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves

At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves

In the painting, an associationbetween the image of the leaves and their familiar smoky

smell on the bonfire is made visually manifest. Flames or burning embers are not

depicted, and the only visual indication that the leavesare burning, as the title suggests,is

the delicate dabs of thinly-applied white paint that seem to puff through the dark slimy

mats of shifting and mouldering matter. Yet, due to the strong associationsof burning leaf

litter with its distinctive aroma,thesemisty marks can be read as representingnot only the

smokebut also the smell of the leaves.

Although the visual references to smell in Autumn Leaves reflected the mid-Victorian

appeal of the olfactory imagination, the redolenceof the odour of autumn leaves was not

explicitly referred to in the original critical reviews of the painting. Indeed, William

Holman Hunt's autobiographical history of the Pre-Raphaelitemovement, published in

1905, appearsto have been the first written account to refer to smell in relation to the

painting. Hunt claimed to recall some remarks made by Millais as early as 1851, which

implied that the evocativenessof smell was very much in the artist's mind at the time of

the painting's genesis.

Is there any sensationmore delicious than that awakened by the odour of

burning leaves?To me nothing brings back sweeter memories of the days

that are gone; it is the incenseoffered by departing summer to the sky, and

it brings on a happy conviction that Time puts a peaceful seal on all that has
 109

233
gone.

Regardlessof the veracity of Hunt's account of a conversation describedas having taken

place more than half a century earlier, the inclusion of this written reference to smell in

Pre-Raphaelitismand the Pre-RaphaeliteBrotherhood seemsparticularly revealing about

the early twentieth-century poetic sensibility and the favouring of sweet, natural odours

for their power to create shortcutsto sentimentalisedversions of the past. Hunt's record of

Millais's remark can be seenas a responseto the turn of the century cultural fascination

with an olfactory aestheticrevival, whilst having its roots in a memory from the 1850s,

when the popular interest in the evocative appealof scent was in its nascentstages.

Certainly, the visionary sentiment sought by Millais reflects the mood found in a number

of writings in the 1850s about the propensity for natural scents to inspire not only deep

meditation on the past, but a transcendental mood of religiosity. For example, in `My

Winter Garden' (Fraser's Magazine 1858), an article on minute philosophy or the

theological revelations of the small in nature, Charles Kingsley described the state of

spiritual ecstasy attained from inhaling the `fresh healthy turpentine fragrance, ' that

pervaded a fir grove near his home in Eversley. The smell of `dead leaves, ' was, he wrote:

far sweeterto my nostrils than the stifling narcotic odor which fills a Roman

Catholic cathedral. There is not a breath of air within: but the breeze sighs

over the roof above in a soft whisper. I shut my eyes and listen. Surely that

is the murmur of the summer sea upon the summer sands in Devon far

away. I hear the innumerable wavelets spend themselves gently upon the

shore, and die away to rise again. And with the innumerable wave-sighs

233William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London:

Macmillan, 1905) 286.

 110

come innumerable memories and faceswhich I shall never seeagain on this

earth.

Like the smell of burning mulch on an autumn evening, the `fresh healthy turpentine

fragrance' inspired exquisite melancholic reveries, so that Kingsley imagines himself

alone `in a `dead world ... so full of life' 234

For Kingsley, sound is an intermediate step

in the generation of visions, coming between the primary olfactory stimulus and the

higher faculty of mental visualisation. Scent enhancedattention to the soft soundsof the

wind in the trees; and this is the sensual trigger for the waves of visual memory that

follow.

Somethirty years later, the novelist Vernon Lee, also drew a connection between ghosts,

memory and the aroma of organic decay.For her, the sixth sensecould best be likened to

the elusive senseof smell. `A genuine ghost story! But then they are not genuine ghost-

stories, those tales that tingle through our additional sense,the senseof the supernatural,

and fill places,nay whole epochs,with their strangeperfume of witchgarden flowers,' she

wrote in the introduction to Hauntings, a collection of ghostly tales published in 1890, in

which ghosts are exposed as the product of the grieving mind whilst retaining their

darkly ambiguous power over the imagination 235Unseen and intangible,

obscure and .

scents signified an almost unknowable presencehanging in the air, which mysteriously

altered moods, swayed emotions and arousedthe imagination. This affinity between scent

234CharlesKingsley, `My Winter Garden,' Fraser's Magazine (1858): 412 13.

-
235Vernon Lee, Hauntings: Fantastic Stories (London: Heinemann, 1890) ix. On art's attempt to

render the supernatural ambiguous, see Vernon Lee, 'Faustus and Helena. Notes on the
Supernaturalin Art, ' Cornhill Magazine 42 (1880): 212 - 18. See also the smell of herbs in the

yellow drawing room, where the ghosts of Alice and the highwayman linger in Vernon Lee, The
PhantomLover: A Fantastic Story. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1886) 64.
 111

and the supernaturalhad its roots in the technology of the memory and the mind.

They [ghosts] are things of the imagination, born there, bred there, sprung

from the strange confused heaps, half-rubbish, half-treasure, which lie in

our fancy, heaps of half-faded recollections, of fragmentary vivid

impressions, litter of multi-coloured tatters, and faded herbs and flowers,

whence arises that odour (we all know it), musty and damp, but

penetratingly sweet and intoxicatingly heady, which hangs in the air when

the ghost has swept through the unopeneddoor, and the flickering flame of

candle and fire start up once more after waning 236

For Lee, ghosts occupied the borderlands between the healthy and the disturbed

imagination. They were memory relics or tracesof the past, revived and re-formed by the

imagination into new visionary constructs and they lay on the cusp between the natural

remembranceof faces from the past and disturbing hallucinatory apparitions.

By indicating supernaturalpresencesand invoking the flash of visual hallucination, smells

could be thought of as a bridge from the known range of human senseand experienceinto

237
transcendentalrealms. In 1907, the Journal of the American Society for Psychical

Research reported on the capacity of smell to act as a vehicle for telepathic

communication between the dead and the living. A `sensitive,' it seemed,might become

alert to a supernatural presencevia smell. In a letter to the editor, a bereaved mother

236Lee, Hauntings ix x. On the `indissoluble connection' of fragrant herbs with the idea of death,
-
seeThomas Adolphus Trollope, What I Remember,vol. 1 (London: Bentley, 1887) 73.
237For a fascinating example of smell telepathy, by which a sudden recollection of a vision of

violets leads to a hallucination of their smell in the mind of another, see P. H. Newnham,
`Telepathic Transmission of the Sensationof Smell,' Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
1(1885): 443.
 112

describedhow her dying son had spoken on his death-bedof his love of violets. A few

months after his death, shewas alone in her room sewing,

when all at once, first a faint and then a very pronounced odor of violets

filled the room - there certainly were no violets anywhere; it was not the

season to have them around, - what was it - "Why! Charlie is here"

somethingsaid within me. 238

`Since we could not see him, ' the mother concluded, `this was surely a beautiful way for

him to impress us with his presence, ' suggesting that whilst her sense of sight was

receptive only to corporeal and earthly presences, her intuitive nose was super-receptive to

phenomena thought to lie beyond the normal range of perception. As Kate Flint has

argued in Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000), `the unseen could be far more

suggestive than the seen.'239

As discussedin the previous chapter, in the popular consciousness,tenuous smell often

found visual substantiationthrough embodimentin spirit form. Likewise, however, it was

commonly held that smells endowed the `unseen world' with a detectable, sensual

presence.In the seanceliterature and spiritualist writings of the late nineteenth century,

invisible, mystical presencesoften manifested themselves as fragrant perfumes2'0 For

.

example, in his autobiography, Incidents of My Life (1863), Daniel Dunglas Home drew

attention to various published accounts of the `spirit smells' that wafted through his

23$`Letter to the Editor, ' Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (1907): 437.

23' Kate Flint, Victorians and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2000) 22.
240See Steven Connor, 'The Machine in the Ghost: Spiritualism, Technology and The `Direct

Voice', ' Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis.History, ed. Peter Buse (London: Macmillan,
1999) 203.
 113

infamous seances.Drawing on the testimony of the London barrister Henry Diedrich

Jenckens,Home reported how, at a seanceof 1868,the aromasof otto of roses,millefleurs

and lavender water were wafted acrossthe 241

room However, perhapsthe most aromatic

of Victorian seanceswere those attendedby or presided over by William Stainton Moses

in the 1870s.Replete with levitations, spirit writings, strangelights and ghostly music, the

meetings of the future President of the London Spiritual Alliance rarely disappointed

attendees.According to an account given some two decades later by Frederic W. H.

Myers, a founding member and leading spokesmanof the Society for Psychical Research

who recalled the seanceswell, the scentsof musk, verbena and new-mown hay had been

producedin abundanceon theseoccasionsand were thought to be brought by angels.

They fanned us with perfumed air as soon as we sat down, and rained wet

scent over us, which they made from some sweetbriar we had in the room.

We were deluged with this most fragrant perfume; it fell all over my face,

arms, and hands; it was poured over eachmember of the circle, and into our

hands on request242

Scents came in various ways; sometimesbreezesheavy with perfume swept around the

room; other times essencessprinkled from the ceiling in gentle showers or streamedover

the participants hands as if poured from a jug. The fragrance of verbena even oozed from

Moses's scalp, proliferating and intensifying when wiped away. Bombarded with

fragrance,sitters were both enrapturedand overwhelmed. 43

241Daniel Dunglas Home, Incidents of My Life (London: no publisher, 1863) 181.

242Frederic W. H. Myers, `The Experiencesof W. Stainton Moses,' Proceedingsof the Journal of

the Society for Psychical Research11 (1896-97): 48.

243Myers, `Experiences of Stainton Moses,' 59. For more examples of scents at seances,see:

Trollope, What I Remember 383. For the unpleasant`charnelhouse' smell of a spirit, seeFlorence
Marryat, There Is No Death (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1891) 151.
 114

Such ambrosial presenceswere surely the inspiration of Charles Webster Leadbeater's

short story The Perfume of Eft (1911), discussed in detail in chapter five. As a

theosophist and clairvoyant, trained by the renowned medium and psychic Madame

Blavatsky, at whose seancesoriental perfumes frequently accompaniedobject levitations,

Leadbeaterwas well aware of the spiritual significance of scent.244In the story, an Oxford

student,working late in his room one night, is disturbed from his studiesby the sensethat

he is not alone. He glances hurriedly around but there is nothing unusual to be seen.

Gradually, however, the presence manifests itself as an odour, described as the faint

waftings of `a strange subtle perfume of ancient easternmagic! ' As the scent intensifies

and as the presencebecomesstronger,an apparition takes form.

A stronger whiff than ever greetedmy nostrils, and at the same time a slight

to
rustle causedme raise my eyes from my book. Judge of my astonishment

when I saw, not five yards from me, seated at the table ... the figure of a

man! Even as I looked at him the pen fell from his hand, he rose from the

chair, threw upon me a glance which seemedto expressbitter disappointment

and heart-rendingappeal,and - vanished!

Throughout the narrator's account of the haunting, vision and smell are the key senses

called upon. He stares at the spot where the figure had stood and `rubs his eyes

mechanically, as though to clear away the relics of some horrible dream'. As `the strange

magical odour fades' it `flashes' upon him that `the haunting sense of an unseen presence'

has gone. Though the apparition comes in a `startling light' its absence gives him a `sense

of freedom such as a man feels when he steps out of some dark dungeon into the full

244Alfred Percy Sinnet, Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky (London: The Theosophical

Publishing House, 1913). Leadbeaterwas tutor to Sinnet's son.

 115

bright sunlight' 245

The `flash' of scented visions was frequently rehearsedin nineteenth-century literature

and it was their vividness and immediacy that so intrigued and disturbed. Smells, it was

often suggested, surged and streaked through the mind, exciting the nerves with

overwhelming force becausetheir neural impact was so suddenand intense. In a blaze of

light, the visions they inspired came, as Rudyard Kipling described in his poem

Lichtenberg (1903), `quick as a shot through the brain'. 246Although the implications of

scentedvisions for mental health were of particular concern during the 1890s and early

1900s,it is important to note that by then the history of the olfactory imagination had long

been intertwined with that of the developing field of mental pathology. A particularly

early example of the scented vision as a sign of mental disturbance can be found in

George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel of 1859. As the protagonist, Feverel,

stands outside Lucy's house in the darkness, desperately willing her to be home, the

intense scent of late clematis excites `blood and brain', kindles his mental turmoil and

for his descentinto fever and temporary insanity.247

seemingly acts as the catalyst

The smell of late clematis brought on the wind enwrappedhim, and went to

his brain, and threw a light over the old red-brick house, for he remembered

it
where grew, and the winter rose-tree,and the jessamine, and the passion-

flower: the garden in front with the standardroses tended by her hands; the

long wall to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a

245Charles Webster Leadbeater,The Perfume of Egypt and Other Weird Stories (Adyas, Madras,

India: The TheosophistOffice, 1911) 91.

246Rudyard Kipling, The Five Nations (London: Methuen, 1903) 191.
247George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (London: Chapman and Hall, 1859) 158.

Thanks are due to Marie Banfield for drawing my attention to this material.
 116

further gardenthrough the wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond

the happy circle of her dwelling! It flashed before his eyes while he looked

on in the darkness248

In this world, reconstructedvia a chain of associations,scent triggers the illumination of

the mind's eye, creating a sceneso vivid that Feverel struggled to distinguish fantasyfrom

fact.

He listened to nothing but his imperious passion. She was there; shemoved

somewhereabout like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet

householdduties. His blood beganto sing: 0 happy those within, to seeher,

be
and about her!249

However, the flash of inner light kindled by the clematis scentoffers

the reverse of hope ... it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully

building up on a groundlessbasis. He knew she was not there; she was

...

gone. But the power of a will strainedto madnessfought at it, kept it down,

forth her have it as he dictated?so

conjured ghost, and would

In this intensely dramatic passage,Feverel, whose very name suggestsfever and mental

turbulence, is resistant to reality; his scent-inducedvision of Lucy is hallucinatory and

seemssinisterly suggestiveof his mental and emotional imbalance.

The brilliancy of the scented vision that flared up before the mind's eye was also

wonderfully evoked in the article on the idiosyncracies of smell in Harper's New Monthly

Magazine in 1856, previously mentioned for its passage on perfume, mourning and

248Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134.

249mid. 133.
250Ibid, 135.
 117

ghostly memories.

The sweet fragrance of cypress-wood is full of richest recollections of the

fragrant Orient, and the faint perfume of the rose of Damascus paints with

the lightning's flashing light the brilliant bazaar and the distant Houran on

251
our mind's eye.

Almost contemporary with The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, this article also implied

something of the disturbing power of smells with reference to the flashbacks of the

traveller whose nervous system has been overwrought by the sensory impressions

confronted in the East, an idea explored in further detail in chapter five252 Visual

memories, impressed upon the mind in association with certain smells, could be revived

with

striking, almost stunning suddennessand force ... the very moment that

similar odors affect our nerves. ... The little fragrant atoms now affect

precisely the same minute, delicate nerves that they once before, perhaps

years ago, had touched; there a thousand forgotten but not effaced

impressionshave been slumbering since and at the magic touch revive once

more and causeus kindred 53

sensations.

Smells were believed to have such an immediate and overwhelming effect due to the fact

that the olfactory nerves make up the first pair of cranial nerves and were thus seen to

have a particularly direct connection to the central nervous system. Indeed, it was due to

this perceived neurological propinquity that the olfactory imagination came to be so

251`The Senses:Smell,' Harper's New Monthly Magazine 500.

252On the maddening effects of the sensory stimuli of the East, see Eleanor Fraser Stansbie,

`Richard Dadd: Art and the Nineteenth Century Asylum, ' Unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck
College, University of London, 2006,31-32,51-52.
253`The Senses:Smell,' Haroer's 500.
 118

closely associatedwith neural pathology and all the connotationsof nervous disorders.

Arguably, another reason that the affinity between the senseof smell and the senseof

sight was so arresting was because a physiological connection was not immediately

apparent and because, despite the cultural interest in finding and forging sensory

interconnections as described in chapter one, the two senseshad tended to be primarily

thought of in terms of difference. Unlike the sensesof taste and smell, which were often

thought to work in tandembecausethey sharedsimilar sensorymechanisms,the sensesof

sight and smell were understoodto operateby completely distinct modes. Both taste and

smell were dependentupon the reaction of molecules upon the membranesof the throat

and the nose, and it was sometimessuggestedthat dependingwhere a particle landed, it

might be experiencedas either a taste or a smell. In contrast,vision was understoodto act

not through physical contact, but at a distance from the object, via ethereal or aerial

undulations cognised through the organs of sight. Thus, whilst the ability of odours to

suggest subjective impressions of taste was considered quite mundane, the visionary

potential of smell seemedquite startling and unnatural.

The Olfactory Gaze

If the release of odours from rotting organic matter was thought to induce morbid

memories and hallucinations, it was also commonly held that the olfactory imagination

was itself borne of mental decay, and in particular female mental disorders.The olfactory

imagination was often perceived as a noxious bi-product released from decaying bodily

and mental matter and in particular the `female hysteric.' This concept emerges in a

fascinating editorial in the Journal of the Socie for Psychical Researchof 1907, entitled
 119

`Olfactory Hallucinations Associated with Subconscious Visual Perceptions, ' which

provided an account of two curious cases of olfactory hallucination, seemingly induced by

254The subject was a Miss Goddard, who claimed that some years earlier,
visual media

during a visit to an exhibition of French paintings in Bond Street, she had encountered a

painting `representing a pyramid of human heads in various and advanced stages of

decomposition'. She described her response to the painting in physical terms:

I walked towards it, looking at something which had taken my attention in

my catalogue, when I became conscious of a most horrible and

overwhelming stench such as would probably have been causedby remains

of the kind in reality. I did not 'know anything about the picture, its subject,

or its position in the gallery, and it was not until I was close to it that I

perceived what it was at all. Sight had, therefore, nothing to do with

suggesting the odour to the sense of smell. I mentioned the fact to the

friends who were with me, but they only laughed at me and said there was

nothing of the kind, that it was merely imagination worked upon by the

horrid subject of the painting.255

This, she claimed, had not been her only experience of this kind. At a recent Royal

Academy show, she had become `suddenly aware of a delightful scent of wallflowers,

stocksetc, such as one would expect in a lovely old fashioned garden'.

People do not generally use a scent of that kind (wallflower), and I was

wondering where it came from, when on looking up, I saw a painting

representingjust such an old garden,and which I think I should have passed

250`Olfactory Hallucinations Associated with SubconsciousVisual Perceptions,' Journal of the

Society for Psychical Research12 (1906): 189.

255Ibid.
I
 120

without seeing, if the scent had not made me look round. This was not all.

Before leaving the Academy, I usually go once through the galleriesjust as

they are closing for one last look round when the crowd has gone. I did so

on this occasion, and on, passing the picture, the same thing happened

again. I did not know I was near it, until the scent of the flowers made me

look up. Without this I should have certainly missed seeing it the second

time, as I had quite forgotten in which gallery it was hanging. 56

Miss Goddard's conviction in her exclusive powers for the reception of the supernatural

emanationof odours from pictures was met with scepticismby Frank Podmore,honorary

secretaryof the Society for Psychical Research.Founded in 1882by a distinguishedgroup

of Cambridge scholars, the Society was the first of its kind to investigate allegedly

paranormal or psychic phenomenain a scientific and unbiasedway through the promotion

and support of research in this area. The Society's journal was its principle forum for

debate and dissemination of information about current developments in the field.

Dedicated, therefore, to the rational investigation of seemingly paranormal phenomena,

Podmore opposed the implied conjecture of paranormal influence and suggested an

explanation based on scientific theories of sensation,perception and the unconscious.A

sceptical critic of spiritualism, whose tendency was to accept the evidenceon the positive

side, but whose doubts always assailedhim on reflection, Podmorerefused to entertainthe

idea of canvasesemanating smells, whether of sweet floral fragrance or the stench of

decomposing flesh. S' Rejecting her contention that `sight had nothing to do with

256thid
257Fodor, Nancy. `Frank Podmore.' Encylopediaof Psychic Science, 1934,

http://www. survivalafterdeath.org/researchers/podmore.
htm, (accessed9 August 2007).
 121

suggesting the odour to the sense of smell, ' he instead pursued ideas about synaesthesia

and the potential of the mind to conjure pungently realised, subjective sensations of odour,

aroused by subconscious sightings of the canvasses. Informed by psychological

investigations into the relationship between unconscious cerebration and conscious mental

processes, he proposed that `there can be little doubt that the hallucinations were due to

Miss Goddard's having already seen the pictures subliminally before coming aware of
...

the smell', and concluded by directing the reader to further literature on the psychology of

synaesthesia258

The tone of Podmore's analysis suggestsnot only his reluctance to accept a paranormal

explanation, but also a sense of impatience with what he clearly regarded as mere

feminine fancy. From Podmore's perspective,Miss Goddard's conviction that the smells

had not been inspired by the pictorial content was entirely irrational. Her word alone was

insufficient proof of the implausible presenceof cottagegarden scentsin the empty Royal

Academy rooms and he called attention to the fact that the fetor of mouldering heads,

within the New Bond Street gallery space, was positively denied by her surely more

credible companions.Indeed, Podmoretook care to handle her statementin such a way as

to place her in clear opposition to the rational-thinking of the Society. Readers were

encouraged to treat her story with suspicion and to look beyond her own somewhat

irrational conclusions for the explanation of this seemingly extraordinary encounter.

Moreover, pains were taken to indicate that she was socially somewhatremoved from the

enlightened spheresof the Society. Her personal account reached the Society third hand

through an all-female grapevine, being originally told to a female friend, whose sister

259`Olfactory Hallucinations,' 189.

 122

related the story to the Society's female secretary.Whilst the genderedinflections of this

casestudy in relation to ideas about the diseasedfemale body and mind will be returnedto

in greater depth later in this chapter, this section will consider some of the researchof

leading psychologists that may have influenced Podmore's belief in the curious power of

the visual to produce subjective sensory states.In particular, it will consider the multi-

sensorynature of the gaze and of art spectatorship,in relation to the ideas of `sympathy'

that had so exercisednineteenth-centuryphysiologists since the early 1800s.

When considering Miss Goddard's story and the editorial account that followed, it is

important to rememberthat in the nineteenthcentury, the mere idea of fragrant things was

often thought sufficient to 2'9

evoke a subjective olfactory response. The synaesthesic

nature of memory was a recurrent point of interest to nineteenth-centurywriters exploring

the mutual relations of the mental and the physical. For example, Robert Stodart Wyld

approachedthis issue in The Physics and the Philosophy of the Senses(1875), in which

he began to consider in physiological terms popular anecdotes about the capacity of

visual impressionsto induce subjective sensationsof smell.

The mountains of Switzerland we associatewith the flavour which the sun

exhales from her pine forests. The bank of the Tweed's "silvery stream,

glittering in the sunny beam" is even in our minds seasonedwith the odour of

whin blossoms260

Wyld argued that sensuouslysaturatedand sumptuousimages held the potential not only

to seducethe eye but also to stimulate the other sensoryorgans.He believed that no matter

259Seefor exampleThe Senses(London: Religious Tract Society, 1843) 131.

260Robert Stodart Wyld, The Physics and the Philosophy of the Sensesor the Mental and the

Physical in Their Mutual Relation (London: King, 1875) 286.

 123

whether painted on canvas, sketched in the ink of memory, raised in dreams or

hallucinations, inspired by the written word or experiencedas a fleeting impression upon

the retina, visual imagesheld the potential to activate the non-visual senses.

In 1874, George Lewes described the tendency of the visual to act as a gateway to sensory

memory as `perfectly familiari261 Yet, although prevalent by the 1870s, this idea had in

fact developed in the dialogues and debates of successive thinkers on mental physiology

and had crystallised over a period of about fifty years. It was rooted in early nineteenth-

century writings on the relationship between subjective and objective sensations such as

James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) and John

Abercrombie's Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and Investigation of Truth

(1830), in which it was argued that the apparatus of the sense of sight actually participated

in the process of memory, since mental visions involved the retransmission of the original

impressions along the same nervous filaments to the same points of the retina. 62

However, it was the physiologist Alexander Bain who developed the ideas of his fellow

Scotsmen to produce the most comprehensive and widely-known nineteenth-century

theory of the relationship between sensations and ideas. In The Senses and the Intellect

(1855), Bain, who was the first to meticulously apply physiology to the elucidation of

mental states, pointed towards a multi-sensory model of memory and imagination in

which not only the eye but all of the sensory organs were activated. He endorsed the idea

upheld by Abercrombie that remembered sensations only differed from primary sensations

261GeorgeHenry Lewes, Problemsof Life and Mind, 2 vols. (London: Trubner, 1874) 256.
262JamesMill, Analysis of the Phenomenaof the Human Mind, 2 vols. (London: Baldwin and

Craddock, 1829) 52. Cited in Rick Rylance, Victorian Psychology and British Culture 1850 - 1880
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 59. John Abercrombie, Inquiries Concerning the
Intellectual Powers, and the Investigation of Truth (New York: Collins, 1850) 58.
 124

in terms of intensity. Memories were simply fainter reruns of actual senseimpressionsand

should be considered as real sensations. They were resuscitations of past sensory

impressionsthat reinstated the `sameparts as first vibrated to the original stimulus. The

rush of feeling has gone on the old tracks and seizesthe samemuscles and would go the

length of actually stimulating them to a repetition' 263`Rememberedsensations,' as he

.

called them, were brought into play through the power of association;ideas reactedupon

the sensory centres, triggering sympathetic sensory and muscular reactions. M For this

reason, he claimed, `the imagination of visible objects is a process of seeing; the

musician's imagination is hearing; the phantasiesof the cook and the gourmandtickle the

palate; the fear of whipping actually makesthe skin tingle. 9265

When a dog's nose quivers

in its sleep, its olfactory apparatusmight really be excited by the rabbit in its dream.266

Likewise, Bain thought that the human mind, when thinking about the visual aspectof an

odorous object, was capable of exciting memories of smell. The activity of gazing at the

visual image of any odorant could arouseneural replays of sensory activity, which were

experiencedas actual olfactory responses.

The seemingly irrational potential of the image to activate non-visual subjective

sensationswas therefore considered to be rooted in ordinary perception. For example,

William Benjamin Carpenter, whose book Principles of Mental Physiology (1874) did

much to educate the public on the mechanismsof thought and to bring into prominence

the importance of unconsciousmental processes,observedthat it was due to an inherent

263Alexander Bain, The Sensesand the Intellect (London: Parker, 1855) 334.
264Ibid.
265Ibid. 339.
266Ibid. 334.
 125

and natural inclination to associateideas that `the shapeand colour of the orange bring

before our consciousnessits fragrant odour and agreeabletaste.'267Thus, due to the power

of association to revive past sensorial memories, it would be perfectly possible for the

sight of a painting of decomposing skulls or of cottage garden flowers to stimulate an

olfactory sensationin the viewer.

Visual imagery was generally consideredto be the most effective stimulus for reviving the

idea of smell. Bain argued that it was far easier to bring visual images to mind than

olfactory or gustatory memories and for this reason pictures acted as ideal mental

substitutes for those less memorable senses.`The process of employing one senseas a

substitute for others avails itself principally of vision, the most retentive of them all. v268

For Bain, the shapeand colour rather than the scent,taste or texture of an orangewas, `by

its in other words, its "idea"'. 269`Thus it is, ' he

pre-eminence revived manifestation,

wrote,

that objects thought of on account of their taste or smell are actually

conceived under their visual aspect.The image of a rose dwells in the mind

as a visual picture and in a very inferior degreeas a perpetuatedimpression

of a sweetodour. 270

James Sully, an adherent of the associationist school of psychology, whose views had

great affinity with those of Bain, agreed. In Illusions (1881), he claimed that the lower

sensesare rarely recalled but instead became `transformed at once into visual, instead of

267William B. Carpenter,Principles of Mental Physiology, 3rd ed. (London: King, 1875) 252. See

also JamesSully, Illusions: A Psychological Study (London: Kegan Paul, 1881) 20.
268Bain, The Senses349.
269Alexander Bain, The Emotions and the Will, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1865) 216.
270Bain, The Senses362.
 126

into olfactory or gustatory precepts. That is to say the dreamer does not imagine himself

tasting, but seeing an object'. 271In ordinary recollection and dreams, fragrant
smelling or

things bypassed the olfactory and were directly translated into a visual mode of

expression. Both Bain and Sully considered the image as a kind of shortcut to the idea of

the object, a means of encoding or translating all the properties of the article into a

memorable and recordable sign. For example, the swirling shape of the rose expressed a

the `idea' the including its texture. 72

generalised representation of of rose, scent and silky

In ordinary recollection, fragrant things bypassed the olfactory and were directly

translated into a visual mode of expression. In The Senses and the Intellect, Bain had also

claimed that any one of the characteristics of a rose could revive the others. `The odour,

the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk, - each of these by itself will hoist the entire

impression into view. '273An object, he argued, was `a group of sensibles, ' any property of

which could revive the feeling of the others. The senses, he argued, could even be fooled.

A marble or wooden body painted to look like an apple might fleetingly revive memories

of the `sweetness and fragrance formerly experienced in conjunction with the colour and

form of the apple' 274The implication is that artistic verisimilitude thus had the capacity to
.

evoke non-visual sensory impressions.

By the turn of the century, theseideason sensoryrecollection had impacted upon the field

of education.For example, ReubenPost Halleck, an American writer on education,was a

firm proponent of the belief that the health of the intellect was dependentupon the ability

271Sully, Illusions 141.

272For more on `signs and the idea', see Lionel John Beale, The Laws of Nature in Relation to

Mind and Body (London: Churchill, 1851) 12 - 20.

273Bain, The Senses411.
274Ibid. Seealso Lewes, Problemsof Life and Mind 294.
 127

to revive and reconstruct sensory impressionsin the mind. In Education of the Central

Nervous System(1896), Halleck maintainedthe importance of training the sensesin order

to develop the mental life, arguing that by practicing the ability to recall different sensory

impressions,the imagination could be enriched and learning enhanced.275In particular, he

regarded sensory exercise as a prerequisite for the study and aesthetic enjoyment of

literature. Stressing the importance of having memories to call upon whilst reading,

Halleck argued that literary appreciation was dependentupon the maximisation of one's

repertoire of sensory experiences.It should be the case,he suggested,that `when a word

like "pear," "rose," "turnip" or "codfish" is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind

is a definite odour image 276`Any student', he wrote, `can find in Shakspere's(sic) works
.,

a throng of images which demanda cultivated senseof smell for their interpretation and

full comprehension'. 77Likewise, the fragranceof Eden in Milton's ParadiseLost would

be rendered inaccessible to readers with an undeveloped olfactory retention. 78 The

abundanceof flowers in Milton's L cidas had been carefully selected,he claimed, `not for

275Halleck's interest in the

revival of memories of smell was long-lasting. In 1904 he attended the
Address of the first annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, which

aimed to gather material for a comparison of the different senses with respect to the intensity of
their retention. Buchner, E. F. 'Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Southern Society

for Philosophy and Psychology, Baltimore M. D. And Philadelphia, P.A., December 27 and 28,

1904'. Toronto, 1905. Classics in the History of Psychology. An internet resource developed by

Christopher D. Green, August 2001, http: //psychclassics. yorku. ca/Special/Institutions/firstSSPP

proc. htm, (accessed 9 August 2007).

276ReubenPost Halleck, Education of the Central Nervous System (New York: Macmillan, 1886)

154.
277Ibid. 19.
278Ibid. 113. Likewise, the evocativenessof Gray's Elegy in lines
such as `The breezy call of
incense-breathing mom' would, he argued, `receive scant interpretation' from those with an

untutored senseof smell.

 128

their colours but for their fragrance:' the flower-names themselves demanded `definite

odour imagesto interpret them fully'279 The ability to form interpretative imagesbasedon

for 280
personalexperience,was essential pleasantand rapid reading.

In Uncommon Senses (2004), Janice Carlisle maintains that in the nineteenth century

reading novels and looking at images was considered a form of `olfactory $'
exercise'? In

her brief examination of mental physiology c. 1850-1870, she surmises that words and

images associated with the sense of smell were thought to excite sensations in anyone who

read, heard or looked at them and suggests that Victorians `might have found occasions

for sensory response in the olfactory images of the novels that they read'282 Whilst

Carlisle gave little evidence to support her theory, the writings of Halleck suggest that this

was certainly considered the case at the end of the nineteenth century. Halleck's argument

that `the study of books will be much easier later in life if the senses have first been well

trained' reflected contemporary concern about bodily and mental degeneration in the

283Sensory exercise was considered so important because it was perceived

civilised world.

to maintain the nerve cells in the vigorous and healthy state necessary for elevated mental

activity. Halleck expressed concerns that the mind was being stunted by the lack of

opportunities for urban dwellers to come into contact with and be stimulated by the

natural world and that consequently, the pleasures of the higher realms of thought and

emotion would remain inaccessible to the multitudes. Influenced by degeneration theory,

279Ibid. 113
280Ibid. 138.
281Janice Carlisle, Common Scents: Comparative Encounters in High-Victorian Fiction (Oxford:

Oxford University Press,2004) 385.

282Carlisle, Common Scents7.
283Halleck, Education 137.
 129

but in opposition to Max Nordau, who, as seenin chapter one, strongly maintained that

the cultivation of the animalistic senseof smell should not be encouraged,Halleck was

also concernedby the habitual neglect of the senseof smell in Western culture. In order to

strengthen their mal-developed olfactory brain tracts, city children should be taken on

to the countryside, in order to encounternatural 284

scents. Activities such as learning
visits

to discriminate flowers by their fragrances would strengthen the olfactory lobe by

increasing the blood supply sent to those brain cells. Repeated exercise would enable

heightening the thrill of 285

discernment.
easierolfactory recognition,

Halleck's system of education was founded on a belief in the plasticity of the developing

child's brain. Drawing upon The Sensesand the Intellect, he repeated Bain's argument

that every time sensations are recalled, the memory tract is reinforced, making the

recollection more definite and long-lasting. Moreover, he argued that by strengtheningthe

fibres that connectedmemories of the different sensory properties of an object, sensory

exercise would enable associatedideas to flow with greater fluidity. Having extensive

experienceof producing school textbooks, he designeda series of sample lesson plans to

familiarise studentswith a variety of scentsand to develop and strengthentheir ability to

recall those smells. One such lesson involved the reading of poems with the purpose of

forming mental recollections of the smells described. `If no definite images are

forthcoming to interpret certain objects, let the sensessearchthem out and receive training

therefrom.'286For another class,it was suggestedthat studentsbe presentedwith a phial of

to
scentand asked visually imagine its source.Next they would be presentedwith a visual

284
mid.122.
285
Ibid.241.
286Ibid. 241.
 130

image of an odorant such as a rose and invited to recall its scent. ParaphrasingBain's

example of the rose as a composite of characteristic sensory impressions, Halleck

explained that the idea of rose scent can instantly bring to mind the flower's visual aspect
87
and tactile characteristics. With practice, he suggested,it is possible to flick rapidly

between recollections of the different sensoryqualities of an object. By strengtheningthe

ability to revive the memories of difference the

senses, powers of the imagination could be

enhanced.

Halleck's educational theory was founded on the controversial assumption that it was

possible to recall memories of any sense.Certainly, Halleck was well-informed about the

ongoing and vociferous debates about the ability to revive sensory memories and the

differences in the intensity of recall. Whilst somepsychologists argued that the onslaught

of evolution had rendered the olfactory lobe so defunct that it was impossible to recall

odours, Halleck argued that the skill had simply been neglected in the civilised world but

that it could, and indeed should, be revived through systematictraining. He sided with the

French psychologist Alfred Binet on this unresolvedmatter, arguing:

We agree with Binet that the normal man is one who can form definite

images from all the sensesand who can recall almost equally well the

odour, colour and touch of a rose, the taste of whipped custard as well as the

soundmade in beating it. 288

287Bain, The Senses411. Halleck, Education 154.

288Ibid. 122. As Halleck explained, `somepsychologistswith a poor senseof smell' claimed

that no definite odour images could be recalled and that the muscular sensationproduced
when sniffing in the air from the imaginary object made it seem as if the odour image was
being recalled. `The memorial representation of smell is composed principally, if not

exclusively, of three disparate factors: the visual image of the odiferous object, the sensation
 131

Yet despite the fact that many physiologists hailed sensory recall as a normal

physiological act, it was neverthelesscommon for experiences such as those of Miss

Goddard to be deemed questionable and even disturbing in nature. The boundaries

between healthy sensory simulacrum and disturbing hallucination were dependentupon

patriarchal ideals of genderand status.

Indeed, as the century progressed, there was a greater alignment of the olfactory

imagination with contemporary concernssurrounding female mental health, as the focus

of mental sciencebegan to shift from the study of ideas and the physiology of the mind to

the gendering of pathology, hallucination and mental disturbance.Interest in the sensory-

suggestive potential of visual imagery was one aspect of nineteenth-century scientific

enquiries into the interface between mental physiology and pathology. By the turn of the

century, the idea that the normal, healthy capacity for visual sensations to activate

associated non-visual subjective sensations becomes amplified and distorted in an

unbalancedmind, was a mainstay of mental pathology. Whilst the act of looking at an

image of a flower and being gratified by a fantasy of its scent was considered a normal

physiological act, it could neverthelessbe imbued with pathological connotations when

experiencedby a female perceived as too highly sensitive, imaginative or creative. For

example, in `Odors and Life', the article in Popular ScienceMonthly (1874) in which, as

seen in chapter one, Fernand Papillion considered,amongst other issues relating to the

physiology and pathology of smell, the difficulty of classifying smell, the case was

consideredof a woman who `declaredthat she could not bear the smell of a rose, and was

ill
quite when one of her friends camein wearing one, though the unlucky flower was only

of movement in the nose (inspiration), and the touch temperaturecomplex occasionedby the
inspired air. ' Ibid. 154.
 132

artificiali289 An accountwas also given of-

a woman affected by disorder of all her senses. Whenever she saw a well-

dressed lady passing, she smelt the odor of musk, which was intolerable to

her. If it were a man, she was distressingly affected by the smell of tobacco,

though she was quite aware that those scents existed only in her

imagination. 290

Moreover, olfactory illusions or hallucinations inspired by visual phenomenawere most

commonly associatedwith women who were not necessarily consideredclinically insane

but who nevertheless, showed signs of mental abnormality. For example, in an article

about the effects of sensorystimuli on hallucination, a writer for the American Journal of

Insani in 1891 described the case of an `hysteric-epileptic' for whom smells revived

visual images so powerfully that she was transported into a visionary world of her own

making. For her, `the smell of cologne water made her imagine that she was in a flower

'29'
garden. Even though the patient was well aware of the parametersbetween reality and

illusion, her scented visions were incorporated into a body of evidence intended to

indicate sexual irregularity, `hysteria' and insanity.292 Articles such as these

sensationalisedand made disturbing female sensory disorders. Whilst the problems of

distinguishing between innocuous illusion, individual idiosyncrasy and perverse

hallucination were often noted, subjective olfactory impressions, associated with

subconscious visual perceptions, were commonly identified as symptomatic of

289FernandPapillon, `Odors and Life, ' Popular ScienceMonthly 6 (1874): 147.

290Ibid.
291`Disordersof Smell in the Insane,' American Journal of Insanity 52 (1895 96): 181.
-
292On hysteria seePeter Melville Logan, Nerves and Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in

Nineteenth - Century British Prose(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

 133

293
psychoses Delusions of rose scent arousedby the sighting of an artificial bloom or

visions of a flower gardeninspired by the scentof cologne implied deviation from rational

thought.

Sensory Expectations

Frank Podmore's conviction that Miss Goddard had been primed for the reception of

multi-sensory phenomenaby the visual content of the paintings on display would seemto

stem from ideas about the role of expectationupon perception which dominatedpsychical

researchin the period. Despite all her declarationsto the contrary, Podmore insisted that

Miss Goddard must have unconsciouslyviewed the paintings and that in doing so, shehad

transgressedthe fine parametersbetween suspendeddisbelief or illusion and detrimental,

hallucinatory delusion. This viewpoint is reminiscent of Sully's argumentin Illusions that,

on looking at a figurative painting, the self is surrenderedto the overwhelming illusions of

Art and becomesoblivious to the external world.

The viewer gives himself up for a moment to the pleasantdelusion that he is

looking at actual receding space.Ideally, the painting should carry the mind

on to the actuality, and the spectator may even appear to himself in

momentsof complete absorption,to be looking at the actual scene294

According to Sully, the expectant state of mind, customary on entering a picture gallery,

had the effect of intensifying the idea and reducing the pressure of the actual. In these

circumstances, paintings could attain the highest accolade of realist artifice, that of

293As Sully maintained, `illusion and hallucination shadeinto the other much too gradually for us

to draw any sharp line of demarcationbetweenthem.' Sully, Illusions 20.

294Ibid. 89.
 134

sensory deception; they were capable of inducing a willing suspension of disbelief and a

subjective indulgence of the senses. That is to say, when in a state of illusory expectation

before an artwork, an imaginative person might experience olfactory sensations on

looking at visual reminders of smell295

Yet total artistic absorption, Sully argued, should only be momentary since `the superior

force of present realities', or the clamour of external impressions that continuously

bombard the senses,should suffice to overcome `the comparative weaknessof the nerve

currents of the idea'. 296

`Indeed', he continued,

the undeceiving circumstances, the flat surface, the surroundings, and so on,

would sometimes be quite sufficient to prevent the least degree of illusion,

were it not that the spectator comes prepared to see a representation of some

real object. ... [In this state of eagerness,] the slightest impressions which

answer to signs of the object anticipated ... are instantly seized by the mind

and worked up into illusory 297

perceptions.

Illusions should be no more than the fleeting fantasy of the moment, before the intellect

sets perception to rights. Thus, however mesmerising, the visual illusion of a painting

should never prove all-consuming; some consciousnessof the nature of pictorial artifice

should be retained throughout. Whilst a degree of illusion was acceptable, Miss

Goddard's steadfast convictions about the olfactory emanation of paintings seemedto

mark her as mad, or, at the very least, as subject to the inane impulses of a fanciful

295Sully, Illusions 107. On sensorial expectationsee Robert Macdougall, `SensoryHallucination,'

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 147 (1902): 402. On sensorial expectation at seancessee
Carpenter,Principles of Mental Ph ssiology165.
296Ibid. 106.
297Ibid. 105 07.
-
 135

imagination.

In the years following Sully's pioneering research into the unconscious, psychologists

began to design experiments to establish formally the role of anticipation in the

incitement of sensory illusion and to demonstrate the ease by which the mind can be

duped into becoming receptive to non-existent sensations?" For example, in 1895, Carl

Emil Seashore, an American psychologist with a substantial reputation for his work on

the psychology of hearing and his wideranging studies of sensory perception, undertook a

number of experiments to explore the relationship between suggestion, expectation,

association and illusion. In one test, participants, believing themselves to be contributing

to an investigation of odour detection thresholds, were invited to smell the contents of a

dozen bottles of oil of cloves set out incrementally according to strength. When further

smelling samples were brought out, participants were asked to indicate the solution from

which the scent of cloves first became perceptible to the sense of smell. Whilst

participants were led to believe that the samples would become progressively more

concentrate, plain unscented water was administered on each occasion. The result was

that almost three-quarters of the people experimented upon claimed to perceive a faint

fewer than ten the bottles. 299Such experiments were

scent of cloves after smelling of

useful in establishing the significance of what was known as 'expectant attention' and its

relation to hallucination.

298Seefor example, Emile Yung, 'On the Errors of Our Sensations:A Contribution to the Study of

Illusion and Hallucination, ' London. Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of
Science 15 (1883): 259 - 70.
299C. E. Seashore,'Measurementsof Illusions and Hallucinations in Normal Life, ' Studies from

the Yale Psychological Laboratory 3 (1895): 61.

 136

Although Seashore'sinvestigations emphasisedthe normalcy of the associationbetween

suggestion,expectancy and mental deception, the underlying conviction was maintained

that persons of sound mental health were adept at the prompt recognition of perceptual

fallacies. It should be noted that Seashoreexcluded women from taking part in his

experiments into the illusions of the sane. Instead `all possible precaution was taken to

securenormal judgement' and as such, only advancedmale students were selected.He

consideredwomen to be ineligible for this test as the possessionof a `firm inhibiting force

in the form of discriminative consciousness [for checking the] vagaries of the

...
imagination' was requisite 300So, whilst Seashore'stests corroborated evidencethat mild

subjective sensationscould be induced in men of healthy intellect, vivid and intensely felt

hallucinations remainedbeyond the pale of `normal' mentality.

The vividness of Miss Goddard's olfactory hallucinations must have seemedparticularly

remarkable in view of the fact that the recollection of odour was generally consideredto

be difficult or even impossible to achieve, an idea that dated back to the work of

Alexander Bain.301In The Sensesand the Intellect, Bain had indicated the difficulty in

reviving subjective sensationsof odour with any clarity. Whilst pictures and visions of

fancy could be recovered almost exactly as seen, `recollections of taste and smell,' were

he claimed, `very difficult to realise perfectly'. 02Indeed, referring to the hierarchy of the

as
senses, outlined in the introduction to this thesis,he arguedthat `the complete revival of

the sensationsso as to live them over again belongs only to the two highest senses,and

30°Ibid. 65. See also Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (London:

Macmillan, 1883) 163.

301Bain, The Senses344.
302Ibid. 338.
 137

chiefly to sight.'303In contrast, the basest sensesof smell, taste and touch were much

harder to recall: `what we recover chiefly about them is the expression and sentimentof

liking or aversion that they produced.' Only `by a great effort of mind' could an extremely

familiar smell, such as the odour of coffee, be `very nearly' recovered304Nevertheless,

familiarity with a smell did help to promote both the easeof recollection and the potency

of the image.

The single taste of sugar by repetition impressesthe mind more and more

and by this circumstancebecomes gradually easier to retain in idea. The

smell of a rose, in like manner, after a thousand repetitions comes much

to
nearer an independentideal persistencethan after twenty repetitions 305

Tellingly, Bain suggestedthat if man were more dependent upon ideas of smell, the

revival of olfactory memories would be 306

enhanced However, to be dependentupon the

sense of smell was to belong to the lower animal kingdom and acute olfactory

hallucinations were incongruentwith the trajectory of evolution. It was in part due to these

evolutionary argumentsthat Miss Goddard's ability to realise pungent subjective olfactory

sensationswas treated with such marked suspicion. It is quite possible that readersread

her case as indicative of subjective hyperaesthesia,or a heightened sensitivity of the

olfactory nerve, attained through a habitual exposureto smell or even a peversedelight in

odour inhalation. 07As a woman who not only experiencedodour hallucinations, but who

also might have actively developedthis sensitivity, Miss Goddard was marked by all the

303Ibid. 348.
304Ibid. 344.
305Ibid. 344.
306Ibid. 344.
307Victorian concerns about the corruptive potential of miasma and the inhalation of air-borne

diseaseare relevant here.

 138

negative connotationsthat surroundedsmell.

A Flight of Pink Roses

As part of his broader project of identifying and measuring variable traits of inherited

human intelligence according to race and gender, Francis Galton, a key figure in the

developmentof the fields of psychometrics,differential psychology (the study of the ways

in which individual people differ in their behavior) and eugenics,gave some consideration

to the types of person most susceptibleto the olfactory imagination in his book Inquiries

into Human Faculty and its Development (1883)308Galton was concernedwith the issue

of gender and the idea that imaginative, creative, childish or feminine sensibilities were

most prone to the `visionary tendency,' whilst gentlemen of science were least likely to

visualise or hallucinate309He strongly maintained that women with creative sensibilities,

including novelists, artists and musicians,experiencedthe most vivid hallucinations and to

make this point, he cited numerous examples of women with inherited artistic aptitude

who seemedto demonstrateexceptional receptivity to, and often disorders of, the sensual

life.

To support his claim, Galton drew upon an autobiographical narrative by Mary Eliza

308Galton, In uiries 163.

309On compiling the responsesof a survey questionnaire for his
article 'Statistics of Mental
Imagery' (first published in Mind in 1880), Galton had been surprised to find that most men of
intellect claimed that mental imagery was entirely unknown to them, being no more than a fanciful
figure of speech.Even Royal Academicians claimed to paint from the idea without resort to the

visual imagination. In contrast, Galton knew from previous researchthat the generalpublic claimed
to seemental imagery habitually. Francis Galton, `Statistics of Mental Imagery,' Mind 19 (1880):
304.
 139

Haweis. Mrs Haweis was an artist, illustrator, novelist and writer on such themes as The

Art of Beauty (1878), The Art of Dress (1879) and The Art of Decoration (1881). A

prolific contributor to the Lady's Realm, she was an arbiter of elegance and a paragon of

feminine artistic discernment. Having stressed Mrs Haweis' creative and imaginative

nature, Galton cited her account of a recurring hallucination that she claimed to have

experienced since girlhood.

All my life long, I have had one very constantly recurring vision, a sight

which came whenever it was dark or darkish, in bed or otherwise. It is a

flight of pink roses floating in a mass from left to right, and this crowd or

mass of roses is presently effaced by a flight of `sparks' or gold spectres

across them. The sparks totter or vibrate from left to right, but they fly

distinctly upwards. They are like tiny blocks, half gold, half black, rather

symmetrically paced behind each other, and they are always in a hurry to

efface the roses; sometimes they have come at my call, sometimes by

surprise, but they are always equally pleasing. What interests me most is

that, when a child under nine, the flight of roses was light, slow, soft, close

to my eyes, roses so large and brilliant and palpable that I tried to touch

them; the scent (original emphasis)was overpowering, the petals perfect,

with leaves peeping here and there, texture and motion all natural. They

would stay a long time before the sparks came, and they occupied a large

area in black space.Then the sparks came slowly flying and generally, not

always, effaced the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed.

Since an early age the flight of roses has annually grown smaller, swifter

and farther off, till by the time I was grown up my vision had become a

speck, so instantaneousthat I had hardly time to realise that it was there

 140

before the fading sparks showed that it was past. This is how they still

310
come

For Galton, this testimony demonstratedthat multi-sensual visions belonged to a puerile

and feminine disposition. The vision was most intense during childhood, when the `flight

of pink roses' was so intensely evocative that an overwhelming scent seemedto exude

from the almost palpable petals. As a mature woman, the visions grew fainter, and whilst

at first she had supposedthem to representa divine encounter, in time she was able to

rationalise them in psychological terms 311Galton categorised Mrs. Haweis, not as

`disturbed', but as one of `a notable proportion of sanepersons moving in society and

...
in normal health' who experiencedhallucinations at one or more periods of their lives.

Such emotional extremes, he suggested,were typical of creative, highly strung women

with a tendency to become too immersed in fantasy. Whilst such experiences are

established as normal and `common to the best of us,' the passageresonateswith the

morbid undertones of Mrs. Haweis's somewhat unwholesome interest in the evocation

and retention of hallucinatory phenomena.

The gendered accents of Galton's approach to the imagination (and the olfactory

imagination in particular) continued to be elicited in the vocabulary of American

experimental psychology during the late 1890s and early 1900s. During this period,

familiar ideas about the role of smell in raising memory were increasingly scrutinisedand

310Galton, Inquiries 165.

311Likewise in 'Statistics of Mental Imagery,' Galton claimed that on collating the responsesof

public school boys of differing agesto his questionnaire,he had discovered that the ability of boys
for mental visualisation declined as they progressedthrough the school. Male fanciful tendencies,
he suggested,were suppressedwith age, discipline and education. Galton, `Statistics of Mental
Imagery,' 316.
 141

prevailing assumptions about the role of odour in stimulating mental pictures were tested.

In 1899, the psychologist Will Monroe presented his research on the influence of taste and

odour upon the visual content of dreams and in doing so launched what was to become a

long-running investigation in the American Journal of Psychology into the efficacy of

sensory stimuli for influencing the nature and flow of mental imagery. In one experiment

designed by Monroe, female participants were requested to crush a clove in their mouths

before bed and the next morning to record what they remembered of their dreams. Monroe

concluded that the smell and taste of the clove significantly raised the prominence of

smell within dreams, whilst also increasing the frequency of visual imagery with obvious

olfactory associations. One student had dreamt of `smelling and seeing spices, ' whilst

another had dreamt of sketching cowslips whilst inhaling their fragrance. A third student

dreamt of modelling the continents of Asia out of sand, from which some sweet-smelling

312 In Monroe's research, odour in dreams was intimately connected with

peas sprung up

the female, visual and creative imagination.

Interestingly, this kind of researchinto the sensoryaspectsof dreams may have impacted

upon the way in which Mrs Haweis's vision was later interpreted. In 1894, in a feature

upon the `Natural History of Dreams', an unnamedjournalist writing for the Scotsman

consideredthe caseof Mrs Haweis's vision of roses,noting that it appeared`as distinctly

real as flowers in broad daylight' and appealedto the nose so that 'she could smell their

(original emphasis). 13The writer chanced across Galton's narrative from an

perfume'

indirect source,reading a precis of it in an article on the imagination in dreams,published

in The Contemporary Review in 1892, in which the prolific English journalist, Frederick

312Will S. Monroe, 'A Study of Taste Dreams,' American Journal of Psychology 10 (1899): 326.
313'The Natural History of Dreams,' ScotsmanNovember 24 1894: 10.
 142

Greenwood had marvelled at the sensual tangibility of the vision.314 In reading

Greenwood's article, the writer for the Scotsmanmisinterpreted the text, understanding

Mrs Haweis' vision to have occurred between the statesof wakefulness and sleeping, at

the moment of `dropping off to sleep'. Such a vision, he argued, could not have occurred

during sleep proper since, `unlessthe olfactory nerves are excited by a real odour in the

room ... we never dream we perceive an odour; it never occurs to us that we realise the

sensationof any smell.' Indicating an awarenessof contemporaryresearchin this field, he

confirmed his belief that `much as flowers and fruits are dreamt of, a distinct recallable

odour of them does not occur to the dreamer unless some exciting cause is present to

suggestthe idea.i315

The study of scentedvisions was dominatednot only by female participants but also by

female researchers,being pioneered in single-sex, further education institutions. Indeed,

researchersAlice Heywood and Helen Vortriede at Vassar College, New York were

probably the first to test the superiority of smell for the revival and enhancementof mental

pictures within laboratory conditions?16Their `minor studies' of 1905 was not only a

qualifying responseto Monroe's researchinto smell and dreamsbut also emergedout of

studies on the distracting nature of smell and its tendency to trigger trains of associated

314Frederick Greenwood, 'Imagination in Dreams,' Contemporary Review 62 (1892): 165 82.

-
Green went on to publish his material on the 'Imagination in Dreams' in 1894. Greenwood's
interest in physiological psychology may have developedduring his period in office asjoint editor

of the Cornhill with G. H. Lewes.

315`The Natural History of Dreams,' 10.
316Heywood and Vortriede, `Associative Power of Smells,' 537 41.
-
 143

ideas. 17 In the process of Heywood and Vortriede's investigations, female participants

were asked to look at a picture of a simple shape for five seconds whilst inhaling an odour

from a phial. After an interval of one minute, the process was repeated with a different

picture and odour. When a total of six pictures and six odours had been presented, the

odours were supplied on their own and in a new order. The participant was then asked to

describe whatever imagery came to mind. It was discovered that odours were no more

successful in reviving memories of shapes, than any other kind of sensory stimuli. Even

when the experiment was simplified by using squares of plain-coloured paper instead of

shapes, the results failed to corroborate the familiar belief in the superior associative

power of smells, compared to a range of other stimuli such as nonsense syllables. So well-

established was the idea that smells stimulate a flow of ideas relating to the object from

which they emanate or circumstances in which they were experienced, that rather than

dismissing the evidence of popular experience, Heywood and Vortriede attributed the

negative results to the unrealistic circumstances of the laboratory. They surmised that in

everyday life, the smell of box might revive early memories of playing in the garden

because for a child, the smell was so unusual and so overwhelming that the associations of

the moment would become fixed in the mind. 318

In 1907, Edward Titchener, head of the psychological laboratory at Cornell University and

editor of the American Journal of Psychology, entered into this debate by returning to

Heywood and Vortriede's hypothesis for the supremacyof smell for inducing visions and

317F. E. Moyers, `A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, ' American Journal of

Psychology 8 (1897): 405 - 13. L. G. Birch, `A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the
Attention: Distraction by Odors,' American Journal of Psychology 9 (1897): 45 - 55.
318Heywood and Vortriede, `Associative Power of Smells,'541.
 144

visual memories. Acknowledging the veracity of their theory, Titchener observedthat the

smell of box would probably be diffused over a large area of the gardenand thus would be

associatedin the child's mind with a varied and complex visual situation. As such, he

decided to repeat Heywood and Vortriede's experimentswhilst attempting to reproducea

little more accurately the conditions of everyday experienceby using complex coloured

pictures (as opposed to simple shapes)and suffusing them with scents. Fifty envelopes,

each stuffed with a wad of cotton wool saturatedwith a different scent,were pastedto the

backs of fifty different picture postcards.The length of time allotted for looking at and

smelling the postcards was also increased.Once again, however, when the participants

attempted to recall the pictures on presentation of just the scent, the results were

inconclusive 319

A number of suggestionswere made to account for the disparity between laboratory

evidence and popular experience. Heywood and Vortriede suggestedthat in daily life,

smells were `attended to in a greater degree and more for their own sake' than other

320
sensations This, they suggested,
was partly due to the effects of olfactory fatigue (the

temporary, normal inability to distinguish a particular odor after a prolonged exposure),

which meansthat smells are comparatively rarely consciously perceived and so are all the

more striking when they In

are. addition, they claimed that smells seem more detached

than other sensations and are less likely to be perceived as part of a `closely welded

sensationcomplex' 321
A smell may be perceivedwithout its sourcebeing seen,and on the

319Edward Titchener and Bolger E. M., `Some Experiments on the Associative Power of Smells,'

American Journal of Psychology 18 (1907): 526 - 27.

320Heywood and Vortriede, `Associative Power of Smells,' 541.
321Ibid. 540.
 145

rare occasions when a smell is experiencedin close alliance with another sensation,it

becomesimmediately more memorable and the two experiencesare vividly connectedin

the mind. It was also suggestedthat in everydaylife, the conditions would occasionallybe

such as to favour smells, whereasin the laboratory, the conditions were arrangedso as not

to favour smell sensationsany more than other stimuli, and that for these reasons,the

associativesuperiority of smells failed to emerge.22

Further researchin 1908by J. W. Harris also corroboratedthese findings. Like Heywood,

Titchener and Vortriede, Harris concluded that when odours invoked the past with any

clarity, they did so becausethey were associatedwith comparatively little else other than

the circumstanceswhich they recalled. If odours seemedmore powerfully evocative than

other sensorystimuli, it was becausethey were less often and less attentively experienced,

and thus had 323

a greater resonance. However, Harris's contribution to the debatedid not

so much concern the question of the ability of odour to inspire visions as the types of

people most susceptible to this phenomenon. This Galtonian line of enquiry garnered

somewhat predictable results, with women of creative sensibility responding to the

associative and emotional qualities of smell to a far greater degree than rational men of

science. Indeed, Harris found that on being presented with odours, numerous mental

visions were forthcoming for a female artist, whilst for a male academic,none at all were

encountered324The ability to experience mental visions inspired by smell remained a

predominantly female and artistic phenomenon.

322Heywood and Vortriede, 'Associative Power of Smells,' 541.

323Harris, 'On the Associative Power of Odors,' 559 61. In addition, he indicated the tendencyto
-
ignore all the times that odours do not recall vivid memories.
324Ibid. 559.
 146

Wallflowers to Wallpaper

From Galton's researchof the 1880sto Harris's studies in the early 1900s,the olfactory

imagination was primarily associatedwith female eccentricity and creative sensibility.

However, as in the associated field of mental pathology, subjective sensations (and

particularly those of smell) were increasingly defined as detrimental hallucinations,

symptomatic of mental disturbance.Even when occurring in persons of otherwise robust

health, they were almost always regardedas suspiciousmanifestations325In his thorough

summary of the state of researchon `Olfactory Hallucinations of the Insane,' published in

the Journal of Mental Science in 1899, St. John Bullen argued that subjective sensations

of smell were common amongstpatients with chronic delusional tendencies.In particular,

hallucinations of the sense of smell were considered as a sign of `the grave and

fundamental disturbance of mind' generally thought symptomatic of cerebral disease,

epilepsy, syphilis, alcoholism and traumatic cerebral injury. Bullen supported a claim

madein the American Journal of Insanity in 1895that smell hallucinations were due to the

`enfeeblementof the olfactory lobe' and the `dischargeof lesions in the olfactory quarters

of the brain'. 326

John Hughlings Jackson - an expert in seizures and epilepsy and one of

the most prolific writers on olfactory hallucinations in the nineteenth century - had

suggestedthat many `lunatics' suffered `softening of the olfactory nerve ... softening or

325Tuke argued that subjective sensationsare `feeble in ordinary Memory and Imagination, [and]

brilliant and phantasmatic in abnormal states of the brain or nerves'. Daniel Hack Tuke,
Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body in Health and Disease Designed
Elucidate the Action of the Imagination (London: Churchill, 1872) 54. See also Alfred McCorn,

`Hallucinations: Their Origins, Varieties, Occurence and Differentation, ' American Journal of

Insani 57 (1901): 426. `Illusions and Hallucinations, `British Quarterly Review 36 (1862): 392.
326St. John Bullen, F., `Olfactory Hallucinations
of the Insane, ' Journal of Mental Science 45
(1899): 524.
 147

discolouration of the olfactory bulb and adhesions of the olfactory nerves to the dura

mater' which frequently led either to anosmia (the loss of the sense of smell), or to a state

of subjective olfactory hyperaesthesia 327 In addition, he proposed that the apparent

relationship between the defects of the sense of smell and the disorders of the mind was

due to the close proximity of the olfactory lobe to an important division of the anterior

lobe of the cerebrum- the chief organ of intellectual life. 328

An association between perverse female sexuality and olfactory hallucination was also

by
noted a number of writers on sensorydelusions329As Bullen indicated in his review of

the study of olfactory hallucinations, many writers found a revelation of man's latent

animalism in the supposed connection between hallucinations of smell and sexual t

olfactory hallucinations were associatedwith the revival of a long-suppressedassociation

of smell with the sexual instinct, others believed they attended the involution of the

reproductive system, arguments that were not mutually exclusive 330Almost all of the

casescited involved female subjects and olfactory hallucination emerged primarily as a

female condition. In 1894, the pathologist Craig Goodall, in his study of `The Insanity of

the Climacteric Period', drew a link between smell hallucinations, uterine disorders and

sexual craving, whilst a secondspecialist confirmed a `distinct and a frequent association

between olfactory hallucinations and sexual disturbance,i. e. masturbation, sexual excess,

327`Disorders of Smell in the Insane,' American Journal of Insanity: 337.

328Cited in Carl Munger, `Parosmia:With History of a Peculiar Case,' 14 (1904): 386.
329See Richard Krafft-Ebing and Gilbert Chaddock Charles, Psychopathia Sexualis (Philadelphia

and London: Davis, 1892). George Henry Savage, Insanity and Allied Neuroses: Practical and
Clinical (London: Cassell, 1884).
330For a full discussion of the relationship between sexual disorders and
olfactory delusions see,
Bullen, `Olfactory Hallucinations of the Insane,' 513 - 33.
 148

lactation, climacteric insanity, etc'.331Indeed olfactory hallucination cameto be associated

with all the major factors thought to contribute to the Victorian nervous disorder of

hysteria, the symptoms of which were said to include faintness, nervousness,insomnia,

muscle spasm, reproductive disorders, depression, loss of appetite, sexual

dissatisfaction.32

Olfactory hallucination was also popularly regarded as a symptom of ovarian disease. For

example, Edmund Parish, in his important study of the borderlands between normal and

fallacious perception, Hallucinations and Illusions (1897), claimed that `olfactory

hallucinations are frequently found in association with local disease of the ovaries, and of

the reproductive organs in general. '333 Likewise, Bullen considered that olfactory

hallucinations arose `in connection to perverted activity of the reproductive systems

...

[and particularly] disorders of the active florid ovary' 334Statistics were often cited, for

instance that nearly twenty-seven per cent of patients at Bethlem with ovarian disease

hallucination. 335This connection had been made for many years and it
suffered olfactory

was no coincidence that in 1874, Francois Lelut, a physician at Salpetriere, the notorious

Parisian asylum for insane and `hysteric' women, cited the case of an inmate `who fancied

that she constantly perceived a frightful stench proceeding from the decay of bodies she

"i Craig Goodall, 'The Insanity of the Climacteric Period,' Journal of Mental Science(1894): 237.

Dr Connolly Norman cited in Bullen, 'Olfactory Hallucinations of the Insane,' 532.

332Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: 'Hysteria, ' The Vibrator, and Women's Sexual

Satisfaction (Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins University Press, 1999) 14.

33;Edmund Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions (London: Scott, 1897) 28.
334Bullen, `Olfactory Hallucinations of the Insane,' 524.
335Goodall, 'The Insanity of the Climacteric Period,' 237.
 149

imagined buried in the courts of that institution' 336As such, Miss Goddard's account of

the fetor of putrefied skulls might have been consideredindicative of the rotting head or

rotting ovaries of a madwoman. Indeed, it would seem that for Frank Podmore and his

readers, Miss Goddard's account of the emanation of odours from paintings of rotten

headsand wallflowers, strongly intimated the illusions and hallucinations of a `hysterical'

mind.

An article in the American Journal of Insanity (1901) maintained that `patients often

complain that they smell various noxious gases, faeces, chloroform and, more rarely,

like the fragrance of flowers 037

etc. Whilst Miss Goddard smelt both the
pleasantodours,

stench of rotten heads and the sweet scent of wallflowers, most instancesof parosmia,or

olfactory hallucination, were described as offensive rather than fragrant and were

the `kakosmia' `stinking smell' 338Bullen observedthat

originally given name meaning

they tended to be described as `foul, filthy, putrefying, deathly or corpse-like' and were

likened to `burning gas, blood or poison' 339Likewise, the English

sometimes sulphur,

physician and expert on mental illness Daniel Hack Tuke listed in his entry on `smell

hallucination' in the Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (1892) the smells of faeces,

rotting bodies, burning, cooking, sulphur and electricity as the most common

336Papillon, `Odors and Life, ' 147.

337`Olfactory Hallucination, American Journalof Insanity 57 (1901): 87.
338Munger,`Parosmia: With History of a Peculiar Case,' 384. For more on the subjective

perception of nonexistent disagreeable odours, see Jonathan Hutchinson, `On Subjective

Aberrations of the Senseof Smell,' Archives of Surgery, vol. II (London: Churchill, 1891) 302 -
05. Seealso Herbert Tilley, 'Three Casesof Parosmia,' Lancet (1895): 907 - 08.
339Bullen, `Olfactory Hallucinations of the Insane,' 528.
 150

complaints. ao

The smell of decomposition (whether fetid or sweet) was said to plague patients with

diseasedand odorous organs.No sharp line could be drawn in the writings of this period

between illusions, in the proper senseof misconstrued sensations,and hallucinations of

smells, where no odorant was present. It was difficult to assesswhether the patient was

simply misattributing the smell of their own diseasedorgans to an imagined objective

source, such as the decay of dead bodies, or suffering these delusions due to visceral

disturbancesSatFor example, Hughlings Jackson described how one patient with a foul

body odour was often disturbed by visions of `a little black woman who was always very

engaged in cooking'. The hallucination was multi-sensory, being accompanied by the

smell `of burning dirty stuff. Following a post-mortem enquiry at which a uterine fibroid

the size of a hen's egg was located, her apparentolfactory hallucination was ascribedto a

from her diseasedbody.342

Likewise, as
misconception of the actual stenchemanating own

340Daniel Hack Tuke, `Smell, Hallucination,' A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, ed. Henry

George Savage, vol. II (London: Churchill, 1892) 1175. Electricity was sometimes described as
having a phosphorous and sulphurous odour. See Connor, Steven. `Volts from the Blue: A Talk
Given at the Day Conference Electra: Electricity in Culture at the Royal Institution, 22 May
2004.'London, 2004, December 8th 2004, http://www. bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/volts, (accessed9
August 2007). Seealso `Electricity and Odors,' The Digest 31.24 (1905): 875.
341Henry Maudsley, Physiology and Pathology of the Mind (London: Macmillan, 1867) 248. See

also Parish, Hallucinations 28.

342John Hughlings Jackson and Charles Beevor, `Case of Tumour of the Right Tempero

Sphenoidal Lobe Bearing on the Localisation of the Senseof Smell and on the Interpretation of a
Variety of Epilepsy,' Brain 12 (1890): 346,51. Another patient who underwent similar experiences

was found to have a tumour the size of an orange upon the hippocampalli (p.347). The smell was
thus `producedby the irritation of the grey matter of the olfactory centre in the right hippocampal
lobule.' (p.351).
 151

Constance Classen has noted in The Color of Angels (1998), the rationalist debunkers of

the odour of sanctity argued that the fragrance of St. Teresa of Avila was simply due to

the `peculiar sweet smell' of diabetes. It was often argued in the nineteenth century that

`the various aromas reputedly exhaled by saints were nothing more than the olfactory

different 343
emanations of pathological conditions.

Points of comparison are evident between the descriptions of the foul-smelling uterine

vapours of patients with ovarian disease and the nature of their multi-sensory

hallucinations. A writer for the British Medical Journal (1894) describedthe caseof `Mrs

C.', a woman with an ovarian cyst, who commonly experiencedhallucinations of putrid-

smelling fish 344Interestingly, in a publication of 1876,Walter Balls-Headley, a specialist

on the diagnosis of tumours, also usedthe term `fishy' to describethe `the very offensive

odour' he encounteredduring an operation to remove an ovarian cyst.

With a little management,I extractedfrom within the mouth of the womb a

decomposedmass, having a most horrible fishy smell, and immediately

there followed, with some little foetid fluid, an escapeof foulest gas; the

results of a retained afterbirth, which having got across,and blocked up the

mouth of the womb, alike preventedthe escapeof gasand of itself. 345

The detritus that partially choked the womb and prevented the regulatory and sanitising

release of gaseshad created a build-up of foul vapours that rendered the female body

343ConstanceClassen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

(London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 57.

344W. S. Colman, `Hallucinations in the Sane, Associated with Local Organic Disease of the

SensoryOrgans,' British Medical Journal (1894): 1016.

sayWalter Balls-Headley, On Internal Tumours: Their Characteristic Distinctions and Diagnosis

(Melbourne: Bailliere, 1876) 56.

 152

toxic. The womb however, was not entirely sealed by this mouldering mass, which

`oozed' a disturbing, `unpleasantly smelling discharge'. This festering emission

transgressed the boundaries of the body and spread the contamination of the female

body. 346 Since smell indicates the decomposition of matter, accounts of olfactory

hallucinations resonated with ideas of the incipient foulness of the female body within

mainstream medical accounts.

Charlotte Gilman Perkins's `The Yellow Wallpaper, ' published in the New England

Magazine in 1892, offers an interesting perspective on the role of synaesthesia and

hallucination in women diagnosed with nervous disorders, being based upon the author's

experiences of postnatal depression and the misguided medical treatment she received. In

this short fictional account of enforced post-natal confinement and the resultant descent

into insanity, the narrator, diagnosed by her physician-husband as possessing `a slight

hysterical tendency', craves company and intellectual stimulation, having little to occupy

her but the yellow-patterned wallpaper that covers the room of the dreary, window-barred

in her days 347Forbidden to write and think, prescribed

nursery which she spends most of

for and infantilised, she becomes increasingly dysfunctional during the `rest cure, ' which

346Balls-Headley's account of unregulated and obscenesmells is reminiscent of the eighteenth-

century diagnosis of hysteria as `the vapours' or foul odours rising from the `wandering' or
displaced womb. For more on `the vapours', see `The Vapours. A Paper Given at Queen Mary,
University of London, December 11 2003'. http://www. bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc/vapours, (accessed9
August 2007). For more on the concept of woman as container, see Lynda Nead, The Female
Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1992) 8. See also, Mary Douglas,
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1966).
347Dale M. Bauer, ed., Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper (Boston, New York:

Bedford Books, 1998) 42.

 153

involves complete inactivity, coerced feeding and isolation.348Gradually, she begins to

obsessabout the patternedwallpaper, fixing her gaze upon its ornamental design until its

`tortuous sinuousness'invades the recessesof her mind. As she watches with unsteady

eyes,the pattern begins to waver and metamorphoseinto `a kind of debasedRomanesque

with a delirium tremens waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity'. 49The
...

columns form a cage, behind which she begins to identify strange moving shapesthat

eventually coalesceinto a female form, trapped,just like her. The cage is a symbol of the

narrator's incarceration within both the specific room and the domestic sphere generally.

It suggests her sense of suffocation and her agitation with the dominant patriarchal

ideologies that governed woman's place within the late nineteenth-century, American

bourgeois home. The term `delirium tremens' also suggeststhe effects of the phosphates

that she is prescribed and serves as a reminder that she is hostage not only to the

institution of marriage but also, perhaps,to an addiction imposed upon her by her husband

- an addiction intended to sedateand further constrainher within those bleak four walls.

The theme of decay runs through the story and it can be arguedthat the putrefied nature of

the hallucinations described have a direct bearing on our interpretation of the narrator's

mental state. For her, the wallpaper's florid arabesques,

resemble fungi, the symbol of

organic decay. `If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of

toadstools budding and sprawling in endless convolutions - why that is something like

348The rest cure was advocated by the American physician Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, to whom

Gilman sent a copy of the story. Julie B. Dock, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's `The Yellow
Wallpaper.' And the History of Its Publication and Reception. (University Park, Pennsylvania:The
PennsylvaniaStateUniversity Press, 1988) 89.
349Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 48.
 154

it. '"° Later the figure in the wallpaper assumesa multiheaded form and is throttled as it

tries to escape the relentless pattern. The toadstool buds become the figure's rotting,

strangulatedheads.

She is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through

the pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it multiheaded form and is

throttled as it tries to escape the relentless pattern. The toadstool buds

become the figure's has so many heads. They get through, and then the

pattern strangles them off, and turns them upside down, and makes their

eyeswhite! If those headswere covered or taken off it would not be half so

bad 351

If the rotting heads seem emblematic of the narrator's mental collapse, her olfactory

hallucinations, evoked by the sight of the wallpaper, corroborate this reading. The `dull

yet lurid' wallpaper is described as `repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean

`old foul, bad things' 352

The paper gives off an odour
yellow' that reminds one of yellow

that worsens with the damp weather. She writes: `The only thing I can think of that it is

like is the colour of the paper! A yellow smell.' Her gaze then is synaesthesic;as she

looks at the yellow paper with its swirling serpentinepattern that echo pictorial notations

of smoke, vapour and odour she smells its `sickly sulphur tinti353 Since the foul smell of

sulphur was one of the most common odours perceivedby patients with parosmia,it could

350Ibid. 51.

35'Ibid. 55.
352Ibid. 54. SusanLanser has argued that the term `yellow' had connotations of disease,ugliness,

inferiority and decay' for nineteenth-century American readers. Susan S. Lanser, `Feminist
Criticism, 'the Yellow Wallpaper' and the Politics of Color in America, ' Feminist Studies 15
(1989): 429.
353Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 53.
 155

thus be argued that Gilman evoked the writings of Tuke and others on the theme of

hallucination and mental health 354Indeed, Tuke even described hallucinations of the

smell of sulphur as `strangling smells'; a phrase reminiscent of the narrator's vision of

headsthat are garrotted as they try to force their way out through the gaps in the pattern of

the paper, and which neatly evokes the senseof suffocation felt by the narrator, who is

confined within the 355

nursery.

In `The Yellow Wallpaper, ' the narrator clearly displays symptoms of parosmia, which, as

already stated, were generally thought to be caused by tumours or nervous disorders at

times of female reproductive change, such as menstruation, menopause, and most

relevantly here, lactation. Only she can detect the enduring odour which she describes as

seeping out of the yellow and trailing her every move. Wherever she goes, the smell

pervades the air around her head. It gets into her hair and even when she is out riding, she

can catch it by surprise if she makes a sudden head movement. Like a stalker, it goes

wherever she goes. `It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room,

in the hiding in the hall, lying in for the 356It hangs

skulking parlor, wait me on stairs.

over her whilst she sleeps and it wakes her up in the night. Thus, there is sufficient

evidence in the text to lead us to suspect that the odour (whether real or imaginary) might

emanate not from supernatural forces harboured in the wallpaper but from her own

354It might also be a referenceto concernssurroundingtoxic wallpaper following the discovery in

the 1850sand 1860sthat a popular green wallpaper contained arsenicpigments. See 'Spotlight:
Toxic Wallpaper'. Intute: Science,Engineering and Technology, http://www. intute.ac.uk/sciences/

spotlight/issue12/wallpaper.html, (accessedAugust 22 2007).

355Tuke, Illustrations 252.
356Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 54.
 156

diseasedbody.357However, Gilman maintains a degree of ambiguity about whether the

`yellow smell' is real, the result of a visceral disturbance, bodily corruption or a fancy

arising from the absenceof more appropriatesourcesof mental stimulation.

In her justification of `Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper' (1913), Gilman expressedher

discontent with the medical profession's prescriptions for neuralgia, a `complaint' which

shebelieved to be causedentirely by the restraintsthat middle-class,patriarchal notions of

ideal womanhood placed on her sex and class."' Returning to the story, we find that in a

secretand forbidden journal, the protagonist describedher husband's attemptsto curb her

creative sensibilities. One phrase in particular seemsreminiscent of Galton's accountsof

the hallucinatory propensity of female writers and the ability of men of scienceto repress

the imagination:

He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a

nervous weaknesslike mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies,

I
and that ought to use my will and good senseto check the tendency.359

Later she writes, `I always fancy I seepeople walking in thesenumerouspaths and abors,

but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least.060As a woman who is

357Despite her claims that the wallpaper is the source, she has some uncertainty and thinks

`seriously of burning the house - to reach the smell'. Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 54.
assCharlotte Perkins Gilman, `Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,' Forerunner4 (1913): 271.
359Her artistic sensibility is demonstratedby her appreciationof the geometric laws of good design

and her awarenessthat the wallpaper is `one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing
every artistic sin', as well as her interest in writing. Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 54.
36°Ibid. John's cautions are informed by the writings of psychologists. For example in Illusions.

JamesSully warned that `the best of us are liable to become the victims of absurd illusion if we
habitually allow our imaginations to become overheated, whether by furious passion, or by
 157

receptive to the idea of the supernatural, the narrator knows herself to be perceived as

fanciful by her husband, who, as a man of science, is `practical to the extreme'. `He has

not patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk

of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures 061 Her childish ability to find
.
`entertainment and terror' in the physiognomy of inanimate objects such as walls and

furniture resonates with the connotations of an overactive imagination. 62 Yet the

overwhelming feeling engendered by the text is one of appreciation for the narrator's

creative sensibilities and regret for their curtailment by the patriarchal medical

establishment.

Conclusion

Nineteenth-century medicine did not identify a direct neurological relationship between

the brain structures serving smell, memory and emotion. However, a connection was

acknowledged in a general way. Indeed, the intense emotionality of scentedvisions was

often vaguely attributed to their supposedgenerationwithin the area of the rhinecephalon

or `smell brain, ' the most primitive part of the mind, which, as stated in chapter one, was

associatedwith the primal emotions rather than the civilised intellect. According to the

neuroscientist Paul Broca, whose observationson the shrinkage of the olfactory lobe in

civilised man were discussed in chapter one, the rhincephalon was remote from the

cerebral seats of reason, being located in an ancient and almost redundant area of the

excessive indulgence in the pleasures of day-dreaming, or in the intoxicating mysteries of

spiritualist seances.' Sully, Illusions 118.
361Bauer, ed., The Yellow Wallpaper 42.
362Ibid. 46.
 158

anterior of the brain 363

Broca's assertion that the rhincephalon was an almost defunct and indeed decaying

primeval relic influenced popular perceptionsof the olfactory imagination right up to the

turn of the century. Whilst mental-health specialists often regarded olfactory

hallucinations and scented visions as the by-product of lesions, tumours, fibroids and

other forms of bodily putrefaction, others began to see the olfactory imagination as a

sensory disorder borne of the degeneration of the olfactory lobe in civilised man.

Moreover, the olfactory imagination was seen as an offensive legacy of homosapiens'

animalistic past. Most notably, in his vitriolic attack upon fin-de-siecle aesthetic

modernity, Max Nordau, who, as seenin chapterone, regardedthe aestheticcultivation of

the senseas a sign of atavism, explicitly denouncedthe literary olfactory imagination as a

derivative of the disintegration of the olfactory organ.

Given the condition of the human rhincephalon and its remotenessfrom the intellectual

faculties, the ability of smell to engendercomplex mental imagery was a matter of some

perplexity. Indeed, in Degeneration (1895), Nordau cited familiar anecdotesabout the

evocativeness of smell as further proof of the degeneration of mankind. It was not

possible, he claimed, for intellectual conceptualisationto be facilitated by the senseof

smell. This was because,in civilised man, the evolutionary decline of the human olfactory

lobe and the rhinecephalon was too far advanced. Odours, he claimed, could only

stimulate man with ideas and `in

associations, the most limited degree'.

In order to inspire a man with logical sequencesof ideas and judgements,

363Paul Broca, `Anatomie du lobe olfactif, ' Bulletins societed'anthropolo ie 4 (1879): 75 81.
-
 159

with abstract concepts by scents alone; to make him conceive the

phenomenon of the world, its changes and causes of motion, by a

successionof perfumes,his frontal lobe must be depressedand the lobe of a

dog substitutedfor it. 3

By drawing upon Broca's research on comparative studies of the olfactory lobe in

different animals and races, Nordau was thus able to lend scientific authority to his

denouncementof the oeuvre of writers such as Emile Zola or Joris-Karl Huysmans,whose

works paid court to the senseof smell to a remarkable degree. For Nordau, Huysmans's

general literary commitment to the olfactory sensewas an utterly barbaric, atavistic trait

more befitting of beaststhan mankind.

Nordau's selection of Huysmans as a leading literary proponent of decadencein the late

nineteenth century can hardly have been a controversial choice. No other writer invoked

the delightful and disorientating effects of smell to such a heightened degree.Indeed, his

`Resemblances'of 1880, published as part of Parisian Sketches,a collection of intense

and meticulously observedliterary impressionsof Parisian life in all its odours, might be

thought of as the definitive illustration of the evocativenessof scent in inducing visual

sequencesin the mind. It captures the essenceof sensual excess that so many other

contemporarywritings on scentedvisions pointed towards more tentatively.

First of all there were vague sensations of warmth, faint vapours of

heliotrope and iris, of verbena and reseda, which filled me with the

strangely plaintive charm of cloudy autumn skies ... and women with

indistinct faces and vague outlines, with ash-blondhair, with the bluish pink

364Max Nordau, Degeneration,trans. from 2nd ed. of the German (London: Heineman, 1895) 503.
 160

complexion of hydrangeas, with skirts iridescent with fading glimmers,

came forward [... ]. Then the vision disappeared,and a delicate scent of

bergamot and frangipane, of moss rose and chypre, of marechal and new-

mown hay, sprang out, trim and fresh-looking, with snow-powdered hair,

caressingmischievous eyesand blue and peach-blossomfrills and flounces,

then gradually faded away and disappearedcompletely. [... ]

Described by the Academy in July 1880 as `sometimes crude to banality, sometimes

refined to enervation', `Resemblances'relates a dream of perfumes, from which ghostly

apparitionsof the female form emerge365

This sketch can be seen as the literary prototype for the scene in Against Nature (1884)

when Des Esseintes turns to nasal homeopathy in a vain attempt to cure the tenacious

olfactory delusions that plague him in the form of fragrant bonbons that have been

impregnated with the sensual odours of past lovers. The flavour and fragrance of the

sweetmeats act as a hallucinogenic drug that tears aside the veils and projects before his

eyes `urgent, corporeal reality'. The taste and scent of the sweets help to vivify the `parade

of mistresses' that troops across his field of memory. 366Later, perfumes transport him to

the past so vividly that a forgotten scene suddenly stands out before him `with

extraordinary vividness, ' becoming an image in the mirror into which his eyes

involuntarily gaze. 67 In Huysman's writings, the influence of smell upon the visual

memory is excessive in the extreme, leaäxg. For Des Esseintes, memories of the scents of

or worn by women rouse a chain of visions that are linked to the debaucheries of youth

365Paul Bourget, `Paris Letter,' The Academy (July 31st 1880): 7.

366Joris-Karl Huysmans,Against Nature (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 85.
117Ibid. 100.
 161

and the implication is that Des Esseintes'parosmia is a symptom of syphilis. Smells that

are so excessively heady as to shatter the nerves and induce swooning arouse only

dissipatedideas. His visions of fleshy `Boucher's Venuses' that seemto install themselves

upon the walls of his boudoir can be read as the visual hallucinations thought to
68
accompanyolfactory neurosis. Whilst the negative connotations of the senseof smell

were regarded by critics as highly accentuatedin Huysmans's writings, to some degree

such ideas were in fact latent in much of the thinking about the olfactory imagination in

the secondhalf of the nineteenthcentury, reachinga peak in the 1880sand 1890s,a period

of psychological and psychical research.

368Ibid. 96.
 162

III

Picturing Perfume

Introduction

`A drop of perfume, is much more than a drop of perfume', Richard Stamelman has

observed in his cultural history of fragrance, Perfume (2006), for `in addition to the

pleasureand evocativenessof its fragrance,scentbearswitness to a complicated nexus of

social practices, moral attitudes, sensualdesires,physical impulses, instinctive gestures,

interpretative acts, and codes of sensory behavior.'3'9 From visual representationsof

miasma to the smells of the supernatural or from the olfactory hallucinations of Miss

Goddardto the `paradeof mistresses'that troops acrossDes Esseintes'sperfume-drugged,

syphilitic mind, chaptersone and two of this thesis have demonstratedsome of the ways

in which the emotional and subjective associationsof smell penetrateand mix with a host

of other socio-cultural phenomena.The cluster of images, feelings and desiresassociated

with scenthave been shown to intersectwith the notions and practices that constitute other

cultural systems for

associated, example, with the body and the senses,
sexuality, hygiene,

science and medicine, pathology and death, spirituality and religion. 70 In particular,

visual representationsof smell and the act of smelling are rich with evidence about social

and cultural formations; and so it is to imagesthat this thesisnow turns.

369Richard Stamelman, Perfume. Joy. Obsession,Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance

from 1750 to the Present(New York: Rizzoli, 2006) 29.

370Ibid. 28.
 163

Although the `olfactory silence' has finally been broken by cultural historians of smell

(see Introduction), there can be no doubt that the visual representation of odour has

received little scholarly attention. Smell has beenalmost entirely absentfrom art historical

discourse,in which discussionof the theme of the representationof the sensesin art has

been mainly limited to the traditional genre of the five senses,particularly as found in

seventeenth-centuryDutch 71
painting. Where research has been undertaken into the

representationof the non-visual sensesin nineteenth-centuryart and visual culture, it has

mainly focussed on depictions of sound, and particularly music, in painting 372

Nevertheless,it will be arguedhere that visual representationsof the olfactory played an

important role in late nineteenth-centuryart.

John Chu has noted in `Sensation, Sociability and Philip Mercier's The Five Senses'

(2004) that `seventeenth-centuryDutch paintings expressas much interest in the pulling

off of a plaster, or the foul stenchof a soiled nappy, as they do in the lover's caressor the

perfume of roses. 373

This was not the case in nineteenth-centuryWestern art however, in

which putrid odours were repressedinto more general tropes of contamination, closeness

and invasion of spacethat conveyedideasof dirt and infection but were rarely given direct

371On the topos of the five senses,see Museo del Prado, `Los Cinco Sentidos Y El Arte, '

Exhibition Catalogue,Museo del Prado, 1997. See also Jennifer Ullman, Philippe Mercier and the
Five Senses,Paintings in Focus (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1990). John Chu,
`Sensation,Sociability and Philip Mercier's the Five Senses,' MA, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2004.
Carl Nordenfalk, `The Five Sensesin Late Medieval and RenaissanceArt, ' Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985): 1- 23.

372See for example Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music Representationsand the History

of the Body (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1993).
373Chu, 'Sensation,' 6.
 164

374
representation Due to the persistenceof the miasma theory, which equatedboth good

and bad smells with disease,art presentedan almost entirely deodorised front c.1800 -

1860,with smell being, in the main, absentfrom the visual arts. From the 1860sonwards,

however, the suggestionof sweet fragrancebegan increasingly to infiltrate visual design

and it is that imagery this chapter will explore. This change correspondedwith shifting

sensibilities towards smell and the rise in olfactory aesthetics,as odour beganto shrug off

the worst taboos of diseaseand a fascination with the complexities of perfume as both foul

and fragrant began to pervade the artistic imagination. (See chaptersone, four and five.)

Whilst the sheer quantity of olfactory images and the diversity of visual modes of

olfactory representationto be found in the art of the period c. 1860 - 1905 might at first

surprise, arguably this is due to the unfamiliarity of thinking about nineteenth-century

pictorial representationsof the sensesin this way and of compiling / indexing works from

this period according to this theme. That smell has generally been presumedabsent from

late nineteenth-century imagery has more to do with what Constance Classen, David

Howes and Anthony Synnott regard as the twentieth-century suppressionof this sensory

dimension (seeIntroduction) than a genuineomission from the face of art.375

Another reason that smell has been neglected in studies of nineteenth-century art stems

from prevailing assumptionsabout the maddeningresistanceof odours to visual or verbal

representation.This issue,which will be explored in greaterdepth later in this chapter,has

374David Trotter, Cooking with Mud: The Idea of Mess in Nineteenth-Century Art and Fiction

(Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000). See also Brian Maidment, The Life and Hard Times of
Dusty Bob: A Cultural History of Dustmen 1790-1870(Manchester:ManchesterUniversity Press,
forthcoming 2007).
375ConstanceClassen,David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell

(London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1994).

 165

been noted by Steven Connor in his book Skin (2004), who adds that not only are odours

fragile, delicate and evanescent in nature, but so are `the kinds of awareness' that they

376Certainly, influences
embody. the of smell can be very subtle, shifting moods almost

imperceptibly and indefinably and speaking to our instincts in a way that is hard to

account for in any reasoned way. They can stir memories that are at once too intimate and

too indistinct to be effectively conveyed to others. Indeed, Connor writes that `it is just

this apparent irreducibility to image and concept which makes odour and the idea of odour

077 Perhaps this is so and consequently, it seems important to stress that

so powerful.

despite the fact, or more probably because of the fact, that smell and all that it embodies is

intangible and invisible, artists have continued to rise to the challenge of its

representation.

The fact that odour doesnot lend itself to verbal description or visual illustration has done

little to discourageartists from encoding visually the fleeting five senses.Indeed, as Jim

Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher have noted in `Perfumatives: Olfactory Dimensions in

Contemporary Art' (1998), `representationsof fragrant scenes and the act of smelling

occur in images of all aesthetic styles and historical periods.9378Most researched,of

course was the aforementioned seventeenth-centuryvogue for paintings of the Five

Senses,for which artists drew upon and developed a diversity of pictorial devices to

representthe senseof smell. Metonymic signalling provided visual referencesto both the

situation in which a certain smell was encounteredand the object from which it emanated.

376StevenConnor, `Aroma,' The Book of Skin (London: Reaktion, 2004) 211.

377Ibid.
378Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, `Perfumatives:Olfactory Dimensions in ContemporaryArt, '

The Aroma-Chologv Review 7(1998): 253.

 166

Thus representationsof odorant objects, such as cups of coffee, roses, profusions of

highly-coloured petals, scentbottles or censers,as well as of olfactory experiencessuchas

vomiting, flatulence, smelling flowers, smoking tobacco, applying perfume, burning

incense, crushing or sorting petals and savouring steaming bowls of soup, all had their

place within the artistic lexicon for 79

olfactory expression. The presenceof scentwas also

indicated through the illustration of emotion, facial expression and body language,

whether of attraction or repulsion, pleasureof pain. This is due to the fact that smells are

`very difficult to realise perfectly, and what we recover chiefly about them is the

expression and the sentiment of liking or aversion that they produced,' as the

contemporary olfactory artist Helen Paris has 380

explained Thus closed eyes, a dreamy

smile and a widening of the nasal openingsmight suggestshutting out the clamour of the

external visual world, a deep attentivenessto the non-visual sensesand receptivity to

aromatic pleasures and their effect upon the mind's eye, whilst grimacing, retching,

raising a supercilious eyebrow, narrowing the nostrils, wrinkling or turning up the nose

could evince disgust at foul 381

stench This collective visual vocabulary of smell became

379There are of course some examplesof the Five Sensesmotif in the period c. 1850 1910. See
-
Winifred Sandys,The Five Senses,1911-12,watercolor on ivory, 7.62 x 8.89 cm, The Samueland
Mary R. Bancroft Collection, Delaware Art Museum. The Five Sensesmotif was also sometimes

used in children's educational literature.

380 Helen Paris, '(Re)Confirming the Conventions An Ontology of the Olfactory,'
-
Body/Space/TechnologyJournal 1.2 (2001): 9.
381For example, the fetor of pollution is comically conveyed in the well-known satirical cartoon

'Michael Faraday Offering his Card to Father Thames' in Punch, 1858, through the Doctor's sour-
faced gestureof pinching his swollen nosebetweenraised thumb and forefinger, with closed mouth
tautly down-turned. 'Faraday Giving His Card to Father Thames,' Punch 29 (1855): 27. For
olfactory desire, see Arthur Rackham, 'Giant at Home,' English Fairy Tales, ed. Flora Annie Steel
(London: Macmillan, 1913) 140. See Brant's discussion of visual representationsof flatulence in
 167

so prevalent that despitethe decline of traditional Five Sensespaintings in the modern era,

nineteenth-century western artists continued to draw heavily upon it, adopting the

traditional techniques for evoking pleasurable scents in particular and, as will be seen,

adaptingthem to suit their own more modern styles.

Despite the fact that late nineteenth-centuryartists, both from the Academy and beyond,

had at their disposal a wide arsenalof visual techniquesfor representingfragrance,which

they regularly deployed in their works, olfactory semantics in the visual field remain

uncharted. The visual vocabulary employed for imaging smell has never been properly

documentedand the implications of this culturally-coded languagehave not been gauged.

Thus, having already gained insight into the cultural factors that influenced the nineteenth-

century interest in depicting smell (chapter one) and explored understandings of the

physiological and psychological power of the visual to activate the sensesand to render

aroma palpable (chapter two), this chapter will focus on artistic modes for encoding the

senseof smell. It will demonstratethe ways in which the personal and cultural nuancesof

the olfactory influenced the conceptionand reception of different kinds of image picturing

perfume, floral scents and aromatic drinks. It will explore the three main techniquesby

which nineteenth-century images bear the marks of a sense that at first thought would

seem to resist visual expression: these are representations of the act of smelling,

association with an odorant object and visual manifestations of odour itself. 382The

mechanics of cross-sensorialrepresentation will be integrated into a discussion of the

eighteenth-centuryimagery. Clare Brant, `Fume and Perfume: Some Eighteenth-Century Uses of

Smell,' Journal of British Studies43 (2004): 449.
382On the depiction of the invisible see Richard Hopkins, Picture, Image and Experience: A

Philosophical Inquiry (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,1998).

 168

cultural debates surrounding two key themes of this thesis, smell and female sexual

morality and scentand spirituality.

Wicked with Roses383

Certainly, the abundanceof paintings and other visual images featuring women inhaling

floral fragrance c. 1860 - 1910 forms a compelling body of evidence about nineteenthand

early twentieth-century 384

constructions of gender. Though more often representedas a

solitary rather than a socialised activity, pictures of women smelling flowers impart a

variety of messages. Flowers can be shown to be smelled in manifold ways and

interpretations of such images dependon subtle distinctions in the visual presentationof

the olfactory experience.A variety of factors, such as the precise way in which the flower

is held and its distance from the nose, as well as body posture, facial expression,open or

closed eyes, clothes and environment, have a significant bearing upon the representation

of femininity. Whether the female figure is shown daintily tilting the rose to her face,

presenting the blossom to her lover, or lustily burying her nose into a lavish bloom, the

simple gesture of smelling flowers can present a number of different meaningsincluding

eligibility for polite courtship, sexual impropriety and the fantasy 38'
of sexual abandon. It

383This material has been

published by the author. See Christina Bradstreet. "`Wicked with Roses":
Floral Femininity and the Erotics of Scent. ' Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 6.1 (2007).

http: //www. 19thc-artworldwide. org/spring 07/articles/brad print. html, (accessed 14 September

2007).
384Note there are very few nineteenth-century paintings of men undergoing an olfactory

experience.For exceptionsseethe art of Simeon Solomon.

385Compare, for example, the following engravings: `Illustrations of the Senses:Smell,' Penny

Illustrated Paper, May 23,1868,12, and Frederick Wentworth, 'Marie, ' London Society 26 (July
1874): 66.
 169

can suggesta pre-sexual innocence and a child's inquisitiveness about the world or the

sexual awakening of a young girl entirely overcome by the scent of the flowers around

her386 Indeed, the olfactory invited such a variety of symbolic attachments that

nineteenth-centuryartists were able to use this motif as a versatile sign of female sexuality

to representanything from moral laxity to innocent chastity.

It is because odour is intangible and ethereal that the visual representation of its

perception plays such an important role in locating the place of smell within society and

culture. In his book The Sight of Sound (1993), Richard Leppert has consideredthe way

in which music acts not only as sound but also as sight, as something both observedand

representedas well as heard. He `reads' artistic depictions of music-making c. 1600-1900

for what they suggestabout sound's social meaning and the way in which musical activity

contributes to socio-cultural formations. He argues that although paintings cannot

replicate music, visual records of the sight of music's performance can provide an

important account of what, how, and why a given society heard; and hence in part what

the sounds meant within a particular social and cultural order.387Connections between

sound and society, he suggests,are revealed through artistic engagementwith semiotic

codes that operate as sight when music is made in real life, such as bodily expressions,

gestures,interactions between audienceand performers, use of instruments, costume and

surroundings.The sight of musical performance,he argues,is no less a part of the music

than the fabric of the notes and helps situate sounds within social space. He cites the

Flemish painter David Teniers as an example of an empoweredbourgeois artist who, in

386See for example Leon Frederic, The Fragrant Air, 1894, Oil on canvas, 100 66
x cm, Dr. De
Guide, Tournai.
387Leppert, Sight of Sound 9.
 170

his peasantpaintings, associatedthe soundsof the lower classeswith anarchy, which he

registered visually in rowdy scenessuch as drunken jigs danced to bawdy folk music.

Such images can thus be seento preservea particular social order of sound and to act as

an agent of prestige formation. 88 In much the same way, it can be argued that late

nineteenth-century sights of smell and smelling were infused with class and gender

politics, to which today's viewer remains sensible, though the smells represented

evaporatedlong ago.

Depictions of women smelling flowers defined femininity not only through body language

and the representation of the physical gesture of smelling but also with reference to

contemporary popular and scientific ideas about odour, olfaction and female sexuality.

Yet to date, almost nothing has been written about the ways in which the cultural history

of smell might influence the reading of those works. For this reason,representationsof the

action of women smelling roses will be analysedin conjunction with the specific cultural

associations of floral fragrance in order to attain a nuanced reading of these works.

Through a detailed visual analysis of Charles Courtney Curran's Scent of the Rose [1890,

fig. 21] and John William Waterhouse's The Soul of the Rose [1908, fig. 22], a new

synthesisof art analysis and the cultural history of the senseswill be attempted,in order to

demonstratethe level of enhancedanalytical appreciation that can be attained when these

works are consideredin the context of the interplay between smell and femininity.

Through the thematic comparison of the work of an American impressionist with that of

an English artist often labelled as Post-Pre-Raphaelite, transatlantic commonalities

388Ibid.
 171

regarding the cultural connotations of smell and female sexuality will be revealed. In

particular, due to the cross-cultural pervasiveness of popular and scientific ideas,

knowledge about the effects of odour upon women will be shown to have filtered into the

art of two seemingly disparate artists. Moreover, by demonstratingthe mutual inspiration

that such ideas held for Curran and Waterhouse, a challenge will be made to the

traditional art-historical division between Victorian Neo-classicism, with which

Waterhouse, a Royal Academician, is generally associated and the ostensibly more

progressive impressionist style adaptedby Paris-studio-trainedartists like 3B'

Curran. Most

importantly, however, the ways in which thesepaintings engagedthe senseof smell will

be demonstrated,whilst pursuing the continuities between English and American cultural

connotationsof that sensewith regard to female sexuality.

During his early career, both while training in Paris and on his return to New York,

Curran painted a number of small allegorical oil paintings, which included the Scent of the

Rose, The Pens [1892, fig. 23], The Dew (1900? ), The Perfume of Roses [1902, fig. 24]

and The Cobweb Dance [1904, fig. 25] and which were based upon the Persian myth of

the pens or furies 390These fairy fantasies, in which fairy-women `lie in beds of soft rose

petals, press their noses to the flowers, and luxuriate in an atmosphere that one can sense

palpably' belong to the genre of what Annette Stott has described as American `floral-

389On the art historical division between Victorian art and modernism see Elizabeth Prettejohn,

`From Aestheticism to Modernism, and Back Again, ' 19: Interdisciplinarities in the Long
Nineteenth Century May 2006), http://www. I9. bbk.ac.uk/Issue2articles/Liz%2OPretteiohn.
pdf,
(accessedAugust 14,2006). Though impressionismhad lost its radical edgeby the mid-1880s and
had become firmly establishedas a valid style of painting for American artists, it has, nevertheless
traditionally been regarded as a first phase in the trajectory towards modernism. Curran attended
the Academie Julien from 1889-1891.
390Curran painted over twenty allegorical paintings.
 172

female painting'. 391That is to say, in these works a visual analogy is drawn between

flower and female figure, with composition, colour and texture manipulated to `make the

women look as much like flowers as possible' 392

For example, the dressesworn by the

fairies in The Perfume of Roses are described in the painting's copyright certificate as

`green,red and yellowish costumes' and as correspondingwith the shadesof the adjacent

`Bride, ' Jaqueminot', `Golden Gate' and pink roses that are festooned about the figures,

thus promoting the metaphor of woman as flower through the simple expedient of

juxtaposition. 93However, what is remarkable about these paintings is the way in which

the swooning rose-fairies are made to resembleflowers not only in visual but, as we shall

in
see,also olfactory terms 394

The penis, as Curran explained in an article for Palette and Bench, (a journal for art

studentsof which he and his wife were co-editors), were fairy-like figures `condemnedas

a punishment to live in the air and subsist on the perfume of flowers' and therefore these

the floral fragrance395 In his synaesthetic

works are rich with visual suggestion of

391Annette Stott, `Floral Femininity: A Pictorial Definition, ' American Art 6 (1992): 68,61.
392Ibid. 61. Other artists working in this vein were William Gerdts and Robert Reid. See also

Beverly Seaton, 'Semiotics of Literary Flower Personification,' Poetics Today 10 (1989): 679 -
701.
393Charles Curran, The Perfume of Roses, Register of Copyright, Library of Congress, number

4932, October 18,1892. My thanks to Kaycee Benton for drawing my attention to this document.
394Charles Eldridge, American Imagination and Symbolist Painting (New York: Grey Art Gallery

and Study Center, 1979) 77. As Stott suggests, turn of the century etiquette required women to
`look, smell, and "think" like flowers'.
395Courtney Curran, 'Picture Notes, ' Palette and Bench 1.3 (1908): 56. According to Curran, The

Penis was inspired by Thomas Moore's poem 'The Paradise and the Peri. ' The Penis were fairy-like

beings between angels and demons. They were deemed harmless and beautiful but were excluded

from paradise. See Thomas Moore, `Paradise and the Peri, ' Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance
 173

explorations of the floral-female equivalency, Curran employed a number of visual

techniquesto suggestthe idea of perfume and to draw out the visual comparisonbetween

woman and scent.In thesepaintings, the airinessof the fairy figures acts as a metaphorfor

the insubstantiality of scent although this doesnot appearto have registered directly with

critics, whose commentswere focused mainly upon Curran's use of delicate colouring.396

Yet, as becomes clear from his comments in Palette and Bench, Curran specifically

intended the soft-tinted lighting diffused throughout these works to `suggestthe idea of

perfume' and the scentedrealm within which the fairies dwell. Thus in The Perfume of

Roses,`a warm yellow light falls acrossthe roses and figures from the left, and from the

upper right side, [while a] cool, pearly light gives an opalescentplay of colour on the

'397
shadow sides. Other techniqueswere also employed. Of The Peris, he noted `the linear

schemeof the composition is that of a swinging movement, symbolising the life in the

to
air', contributing a senseboth of the swooping and flitting motion of fairies on the wing

flowing currents of scent. 98In The Cobweb Dance, the dewy threadsof spider silk
and of

radiating from the white lilies appearlike jets of scent spurting into the vapory night sky.

Moreover, in The Peris, diaphanousdressesworn by the fairies float like fragrancetrails

through the air and seem to diffuse into visual nothingness.These sheer, gossamer-like

gowns are particularly evocative of scent, due to the way that they drape against the tea

rose blossoms, with loose swirls of fabric seemingly spiralling out of the surface of the

(London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1817) 133 - 60. For an account of a woman

who claimed to subsist on scent alone, see `Lived on Perfume of Roses: Aesthetic Effect of a Car
Accident on a Chicago Woman,' New York Times 21 January 1905: 1. This article can be

considered in the context of discoursesof hysteria. See,Michelle Stacey, The Fasting Girl: A True
Victorian Medical Mystery (New York: Putnam,2002).
" See,for example, `American Art at the Lotos,' New York Times 17 December 1898: 9.
397Curran, `Picture Notes,' 6.
399Ibid. 54.
 174

petals, like fragrant emanations.Thus perfume and pens are coalescedin these works in

which the simple gestureof holding a flower to the nose works with effects of colour and

composition to suggestthe scentedair within which the fairies live and breathe.

Curran's sylph-like figures, in their elegant wispy dresses, can be read as visual

embodimentsof insubstantialperfume and therefore one can read the title The Perfumeof

Roses as a dual reference to both the olfactory and the female subjects of the painting.

Curran explained that in this painting the effort is made to personify the odours of

different kinds of roses.

In this painting the effort is made to personify the odors of different kinds

of roses. The seated figure at the left holds in her hands one Jacqueminot

rose, her auburn hair rests against another, and she is half intoxicated with

the rich, spicy odor of that rose. The standing figure beside her inhales with

delight the fruity sweetness of a pink rose, while the floating figure,

adorned with light draperies and opal strings, is caressing the faint-scented

399
white rose.

Thus Curran's paintings of fairy-women, subsisting on the scented air they breathe,

present a fantasy in which not only is femininity depicted as rose-scented,but also rose

scentis endowedwith a visual presencethrough the female form.

Curran's paintings present a fascinating definition of womanhood that fuses floral scent

with feminine mystique, and nowhere is this more evident that in Scent of the Rose.As in

the slightly larger pieces already discussed,this miniature painting offers an intimate

399
Ibid.56.
 175

window onto a fairy domain, a rose bush at night. Measuring just over 11 x 31 cm, the

is
size appropriate for a painting that negotiates the limits of the visible and the world of

the invisible through the representation of fairies and scent. Moreover, the small-scale

nature of the work also contributes to a sense of an object for personal, tactile involvement

and private pleasure. In the painting, scent drifts on airy currents, wafting from and

against opulent petals, endowing the painting with a mysterious aura and forming a

tantalising veil through which the pleasures of a feminine realm can be voyeuristically

enjoyed. Behind this perfume screen, a nude, fairy-like figure can be glimpsed, seated

within the cupped petals of a rose. Her body emerges pistil-like from amongst the splendid

corolla; a dainty, doll-like embodiment of femininity that instantly associates female

sexuality with flowers: the reproductive organs of a plant. All around her, roses are blown

open; their petals peeled apart, uncurled and outspread in seductive disarray, as if

simultaneously proffering their scent while lapping it up with their tongue-like forms.

These overblown roses form a kind of floral constellation about her, endowing the

painting with a celestial ambience. Eyes closed, she seems lost in reverie. Her presence

signifies calmness, a lull among the scent-tossed blooms. There is a sense of quiet about

her and her solitude is suggested through the visual emphasis upon the space that engulfs

her. By meandering through the dark chasmic spaces about her, scent, as visualised, works

to emphasise the idea of self-absorption, reverie and the feminine pleasures of the

olfactory imagination.

Perfume has, of course, a long association with the feminine-with sentiment, home-

making and seduction, the privacy of the toilette and the intimacy of lovers-as well as

with personal, womanly experiencesof intuition, memory and the imagination. In that

context, the conjunction of floral fragrance and the female form in Curran's paintings
 176

seemsto promote a traditional ideology of middle-class femininity in which women are

associated with love-making and home-making rather than the wage-earning of the

burgeoning body of financially independentcareer-mindedwomen400While advocatesof

the `New Woman' ideal were campaigning for women to liberate themselvesfrom male

domination and to manage their own lives, deciding for themselves,for example, if and

when and whom to marry and how many children to have, Curran presents the male

voyeur with a fantasy of femininity in which sexually available women while away the

hours by tending to flowers.

If one reads the flower/women metaphor as a conservative response to women's

increasingly active presence in public and political life, the fusion of the fragrant and the

feminine in these works might be seen as integral to an attempt to preserve a hyper-image

of passive femininity. Such a reading may help explain the strong appeal for Curran's

works among middle-class, male patrons of the Arts who favored the suggestion of a

floral femininity embodying, in Stott's terms, `cultivated beauty, silence, moral purity,

graceful but limited movement, decorative function and a discreet suggestion of

fert ility' 401Thus, for example, The Peris and The Perfume of the Roses were bought by

William T. Evans, a dry-goods magnate who, from 1891, housed his large collection of

contemporary American art in a purpose-built picture gallery in his New York mansion 402

Such works were also of national, public interest. The Peris earned the artist an honorable

mention when lent by its second owner, C. C. Glover, to the 1900 Paris Exposition, while

400Carolyn Christensen Nelson, A New Woman Reader (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press,

2000).
401Stott, `Floral Femininity, ' 76.
402William Truettner, 'William T. Evans: Collector of American Paintings,' American Art 3.2

(1971): 50 - 79.
 177

The Dew was bought at the fair by Georges Leygues, the French Minister of Public

Instruction and Fine Arts, possibly on behalf of the Ministry of Fine Arts.403The Perfume

of Roses,meanwhile, was sufficiently valued by Evans to be included in his donation of

art works to the SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum in 1909404It seemslikely that

prized

in offering a conservative reaction to the emergenceof feminist ideals in Europe and

North America during the 1890s and early 1900s, these works satisfied a nostalgic

demandamong private collectors and national institutions for an earlier ideal of a passive

and genteel fertile-femininity.

In Scent of the Rose, the rose incensepermeating the air, suggestedby the violet smoky

haze that caressesthe sumptuousblooms as it spirals out of the thurible held by the rose

fairy, implies feminine fecundity. Like some mystic form of sexual consummation,scent

wafts out from the censertowards the luminous, radiant bloom opposite, to mingle among

its yellow, pollen-smearedstamens.Since a single flower contains both male and female

reproductive organs, it is interesting to note the way in which Curran gendersthese two

voluminous white blooms. While the highly visible stamensof the flower on the far right

suggesta male gendering, the visual emphasison the fairy clearly marks out the left-hand

403The Dew, unlocated. In Curran's original record book, held in the private collection of Kaycee

Benton, he recorded the following information regarding this painting: '1902 - The Dew, 20 x 30

inches - Exhibited at Paris Exposition 1902 - Sold to Monsieur Leygues Ministry of Fine Arts -

Paris. ' See also Diane P. Fischer, Paris 1900: `the American School' at the Universal Exhibition

(New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press,1999) 175.

404`American Art at Paris,' New York Times 28 February 1900: 6. `The Evans Picture Sale,' New

York Times 3 February 1900: 6. `Lotus Club,' New York Times 1 April 1906: 7. According to

artists such as Mary Cassatt,it was considereda great distinction to be included in Evan's gift. See
Truettner, `William T. Evans,' 57.
 178

bloom as female 405In addition, one can note that the censerthat she holds is sphericalin

shapeand might be likened to the flower's ovary which, when fertilised, will mature into a

rosehip, packed with ripening seed. Indeed, the fairy-woman is visually associatedwith

the thurible, to which sheis connectedby her clasp, her gaze,and her deluge of long black

hair, streaming down to her lap. She holds the object in front of her, in line with her

womb, drawing a clear connection between the female reproductive parts of the flower

and that of her own. Moreover, her erotic sensuality,her heat, is suggestedby the jets of

flame spurting from her thurible /womb and the reddish glow that they cast upon her

body. Sexually speaking,sheis ablaze.

In her book Bloom, Amy M. King has traced the broad popularisation of Linnaeus's

system for the gendering of floral parts and has revealed the impact of this widespread

legibility of the sexuality of flowers upon the Victorian literary imagination. Most

notably, she has demonstrated the pervasiveness of the metaphor of feminine `bloom' in

novels to suggest sexual promise, attractiveness and nubility. 406

nineteenth-century

Although, as a painting, Scent of the Rose lacks a marriage plot such as is to be found in

Louisa May Alcott's Rose in Bloom (1876), a novel about the coming of age of a Boston

society debutante, the `bloom' metaphor nevertheless still works to emphasise the sexual

maturity and erotic appeal of the female figure. 07Indeed, in Curran's painting, the female

figure (a bloom among blooms) being cupped by petals is, quite literally, in bloom.

405Stott introduces the idea of genderedblooms in relation to other works by Curran. Stott, `Floral

Femininity, ' 65 - 66.

406Amy King, Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel (Oxford: Oxford University

Press,2003).
407Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom (Boston: Roberts, 1876).
 179

The metaphor of female bloom was often associated in literature with the historic

symbolism of the rose as the female flower or genitalia and also with ideas about the

erotic potential of scent. Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (1861) offers a casein point.

In the seduction scene leading up to the duel between Bazarov and Pavel, Bazarov, a

young doctor, joins Fenichka, the housekeeperand mother of Nikolai's child, as she sits

on a bench arranging red and white roses into a bouquet. The beauty of this restless,

dreamy and languorous girl is like that of the roses she sorts. She is approaching her

zenith, for as Turgenev explains, `there is a period in the life of young women when they

suddenly begin to expand and blossom like summer roses; such a time had come for

Fenichka.'408During their flirtatious exchange, Bazarov requests payment for medical

services but states that he does not require money, leaving her to guess as to how he

would like to be paid. Eventually he tells her he will settle for one of her red roses,which,

suggestively enough, are described as `still wet with dew' 409As she leans forward to

inhale its `wonderful scent,' he kissesher, and the moment is describedin sensuousdetail.

Fenichka stretched her little neck forward and put her face close to the

flower, The kerchief slipped from her hair on to her shoulders,disclosing

...

a soft mass of black shining and slightly ruffled hair. `Wait a moment; I

want to smell it with you,' said Bazarov; he bent down and kissed her

vigorously on her parted lips. She shuddered,pushed him back with both

her hands on his breast, but pushed weakly, so that he was able to renew

408Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons,trans. Richard Hare (London: Huchinson & Co., 1948; New

York: Rhinehart Editions, 1960), http://www. ibiblio. org/eldritch/ist/fas.htm (accessedAugust 14,

2
2006).
409Ibid.
 180

and prolong his kiss 41o

In this scene, `the wonderful scent' incites her arousal and orgasmic `shudder' and is

suggestiveof her peaking bloom and the fresh, youthful scentof her own `rose' or vagina.

Conflations of human and floral sexuality were as common in the visual arts as King has

demonstratedthem to be in literature. For example,John William Waterhousemaintained

a `longstanding association of women with the beauty, simplicity and decay of flowers'

which was conveyed in a recurring motif of flower-women, as Peter Trippi has

observed41 For example, in The Soul of the Rose, the lure of the female figure to the

fragrance of the flower might, through association,suggestthe enticement of insects to

scentedpetals. Indeed, this metaphor of attraction is reinforced in Waterhouse's Summer

of 1882, in which butterflies appear to be drawn as much to the female figure as to the

flowers that she holds [Fig. 26]. As sociologists Gale Largey and Peter Watson have

the
suggested, rose acts as a symbol of attraction since we are drawn to its smell and invite

to admire its aroma! 12Thus, by alluding to ideas about scent and pollination, such
others

paintings can be to
seen evoke female sexual allure and fertility. They are in striking

contrast to stock images, found in cartoons such as those published in Punch, of the

mannish and androgynous `New Woman' for whom both heterosexual intercourse and

desirable413However, such allusions were not

childbirth were neither necessary nor

always so straightforward and it will now be argued that Waterhouse's The Soul of the

410 cola

411PeterTrippi, J. W. Waterhouse(London: Phaidon,2002) 195 96.

-
412Gale Peter Largey and David Rodney Watson, `The Sociology of Odors,' American Journal of

Sociology 77 (1972): 1024.

413Susan C. Shapiro, `The Mannish New Woman: Punch and Its Precursors,' The Review of

English Studies42.168 (1991): 510 - 22.

 181

Rose reflected contemporary challengesto conventional gender roles to a greater degree

than might at first appear.

The Soul of the Rose can be read as an aesthetic response to the erotic olfactory

imagination. 14In this painting, an auburn-haired beauty is depicted leaning against a

garden wall, drinking in the scent of a rose which she pressesto her face. Her thick,

elongated Pre-Raphaeliteneck is extended, stretched out to reach the flower, and every

muscle of her body is strained to the act of smelling. She tilts the flower towards her and

her lips caressits petals with tenderpassion,suggestinga fusion of olfactory and gustatory

pleasure. However, the conjunction of nose and petal provides the compositional focus,

making the painting primarily about the act of smelling and the effect of odour upon body

and mind. By collapsing the spacebetween the petals and the sweeping profile of her

long, aquiline nose, the direct passageof the inhaled scentinto the female body is visually

suggested.The figure's eyes are closed, suggesting total concentration upon this one

sensory impression, and her left hand clutches the wall, as if for support, as the heady

perfume takes its intoxicating effect.

Waterhouse's painting presents a fascinating depiction of a woman in the throes of a

passionatescented vision that is visually implied but not directly rendered. It reflects a

414Also on this theme, see Emma Barton, `The Soul of the Rose,' 1905, Photograph, Royal

PhotographicSociety, Scienceand Society Picture Library. On Waterhouse'sThe Soul of the Rose,

see the catalogue entry by John Christian for lot 166 in 'Fine Victorian Paintings, Drawings and
Watercolours,' Christie's Sale Catalogue June 3 1994: 142. Christian identifies the girl in the

painting with the girl sought by the `pilgrim' in Chaucer's English translation of the traditional
French poem the `Roman de la Rose.' See also A. L. Baldry, `Some Recent Works by Mr J. W.
Waterhouse,R. A., ' Studio July (1911): 176,80. Also Peter Trippi's catalogue entry for lot 100 in
`Victorian and Traditionalist Pictures,' Christie's Sale CatalogueJune 7 2007.
 182

contemporary fascination with the immediacy and emotional poignancy of smell for

raising sentimental visions and visual memories of matters close to the heart, which was

prevalent both in the literature of the period and in its psychological research. In this

context, one can supposethat the scent has arousedher imagination, raising before her

closed eyesthe near hallucinatory image of a male lover. Indeed, her pose provides strong

support for this reading, inviting the speculationthat while clutching the gardenwall, she

imagines leaning upon him, her palm flat againsthis chest. Moreover, we might infer that

the bloom, pressedso sensuouslyagainst her mouth, has, in her mind, taken on the form

of her lover's lips. Certainly, the power of rose scent to arousethe image of a loved one

was proverbial. For example, as early as 1868a writer on the sensesfor the popular Penny

Illustrated Paperhad mused:

Who cannot recall mingling with the perfume of some favourite flower the

still more subtle scent of those glossy tresses,the delicate touch of that

dainty hand as it held the bloom? Alone with a rose for fifteen seconds,a

man might be a fool to all his senses,and, with his arm, in imagination,

round some slim, rounded waist, his eyeslooking for a miniature of himself

in those mirrors that look back at him, his ears waiting for a whispered

word, his lips-well never mind 415

Waterhouse's painting, similarly, suggests the ability of rose-scent to evoke visions.

Indeed, we can read the rose-covered wall as the space in which her scent-fuelled

imagination has projected the form of her lover. It calls to mind the passagein Marie

Corelli's romance The Life Everlasting (1911) in which a red rose, like a rescuing knight,

`clambers' up the turret in which the heroine is imprisoned to reach her as she looked out

415`Illustrations of the Senses:Smell,' Penny Illustrated Paper 23 May 1868: 13.

 183

of her `lofty window, ' its opening petals lifting themselvestowards her like `sweet lips

turned up for kisses' 416

Moreover, in The Soul of the Rose,we can also read the rose bush and wall as a reflection

of the female figure, since clear comparisonsare drawn between rose and woman, which

are pressed together like a mirror image. Her cheeks are suffused with a warm roseate

flush that ricochets from the bloom pressedagainst her face while her green, patterned

robe seemsto replicate the tones and undulating forms of the rose bush that dressesthe

body of the wall 417In this way, her amorousnessmight even be read as self-directed and

hencethe act of smelling flowers as an autoerotic act, particularly when one considersthe

rose / vagina metaphor and that the painting is sometimesknown by the alternative title of

My Sweet Rose418Indeed, if we interpret the act of touching and smelling the rose while

fantasising about a male lover as having masturbatory overtones, the implications of

perversity are heightened by the suggestionof `self-harming,' as the female protagonist

pressesher palm against the thorny stem of the rose bush. In any case, there can be no

doubt that scent is posited as an erotic entity and a sexual stimulus. Indeed, by matching

the hue of the figure's flushed physicality to that of the rose against her cheek, the idea of

pleasurearousedand even consummatedthrough the act of smelling is visually conveyed.

416 Marie Corelli, The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Bernhard

Tauchnitz, 1911) 125.

417According to Annette Stott, it was common for artists to interweave patterns and textures to

unite women visually with floral environments in floral-female paintings. Stott, `Floral
Femininity, ' 75.
41sBarbara Seward,The Symbolic Rose (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1960). It is not known when

the title My Sweet Rose was first coined. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in
1908under the title The Soul of the Rose.
 184

Given the title's allusion to a line from Tennyson's Maud: And the Soul of the Rose went

into my blood' it is clear that Waterhouse"s painting reflects not only popular and

scientific interest in the seemingly mysterious affinity of smell and the memory but also

the contemporary interest in the bodily effects of scent. 19It conveys much the same

sentiment as an article on `flower odors' published in the literary magazine Continental

Monthly in 1864, which describedhow perfumes `knock on the heart-doors of memory'

and hence `fire the eye or blanch the cheek' or causeone to `blush 20
and smile'. Indeed

this connectionbetweenthe `soul' of the rose and the stimulatory action of odour upon the

blood stream and heart-rate is made explicit in Corelli's The Life Everlasting as the

heroine bends her face over the rose against her breast to inhale its `delicious, soft and

penetratingscent' and `half unconsciously' kissesits `velvet petals'.

And so for a while we made silent friends with each other till I might have

said with the poet- `the soul of the rose went into my blood. ' At any rate

something keen, fine and subtle stole over my senses,moving me to an

intense delight in merely being alive... I forgot everything except that I

lived and life was ecstasy!421

In the literature of Corelli and the art of Waterhouse,the inhalation of `penetrating' scents

into the body is imagined to possessan overwhelming erotic chargeof orgasmic intensity.

During the 1880sand 1890sthere was considerablephysiological interest in the effects of

odour stimulation and tranquilisation, both sexual and non-sexual. For example, in

a" Alfred Tennyson, `Maud, and Other Poems,' The Works (London: Moxon, 1855) n.p.
420'Flower Odors,' Continental Monthly: Devoted to Literature and National Poetry 6.4 (1864):

469.
421Corelli, The Life Everlasting 125.
 185

Sensation et Mouvement (1887), Charles Fere published his findings in this field,

concluding that a kind of `sensorialintoxication' could be produced by the inhalation of

odours leading to heightenedvisual acuity and general bodily 422

excitation. His work was

developed by Benjamin Ward Richardson, a London anaesthetistand specialist in the

bodily effects of chemical stimuli, who in 1891 outlined the need for enhanced

understanding of the `direct action of odours on the nervous system'. He urged for an

investigation into why different odours causedrowsiness,wakefulnessor even nightmares

in some people423Five years later, T. E. Shields, a student at John Hopkins University,

published findings from his thesis on `The Effects of Odours, Irritant Vapours and Mental

Work upon the Blood Flow' in the Journal of Experimental Medicine that suggestedthat

pleasantolfactory sensationsled to a reduction in the volume of blood supplied to the arm,

due to an accelerationof the heart rate and a simultaneousincreasein the supply of blood

to the brain 424Sweet scents,it seemed,could causehead-rushand a pounding heart.

This researchwas closely associatedwith experimentsalso being undertaken at that time

into the reciprocal relationship betweenthe nose and the genitals, including `noseto body'

reflexes, such as scent-stimulatedsexual arousal, as well as `body to nose' reflexes such

as orgasmic convulsions induced by fits 425

of sneesing. Thus for example, in 1898,

422Charles Fere, Sensation et mouvement: Etudes experimentales de psycho-mecanique(Paris:

Felix Alcan, 1887) 370.

423Benjamin Ward Richardson, `The Physical Action of Odours,' Asclepiad VIII (1891): 234.
424T. E. Shields, `The Effect of Odours Etc Upon the Blood Flow, ' Journal of Experimental

Medicine 1 (1896): 38. In contrast,unpleasantodours led to a diminution of the blood supply to the
heart and brain.
425Anne Harringon and Vernon Rosario, 'Olfaction and the Primitive: Nineteenth-Century

Thinking on Olfaction, ' The Science of Olfaction, eds. Michael Serby and Karen Chobor (New
York: Springer Verlag, 1992) xxi.
 186

Ephraim Cutter referred readers of the Journal of the American Medical Association to

studies made some thirty years earlier into the action of the scents of cologne, rose,

camphor, and the fumes of ammonia and sulphur upon the `erectile turgescence' of the

nasal mucous membrane. Cutter, a New York physician renowned for the diversity of his

contributions to medical literature, claimed to have discovered in 1866 that

just a few whiffs through the nose of any of theseodors increasedthe blood

flow and produced immediately a livid injection and turgescenceof the

erectile tissues on the turbinated bones that stood out as clearly and

positively as the erection of an excited turkey cock.426

Given that a connection was frequently made in the 1890s and early 1900s between

genital arousal and the erection of nasal tissue, it is clear that Cutter not only used highly

sexualised vocabulary but also made thinly veiled reference to the sexually arousing

powers of perfume. By the end of the nineteenth century, olfactory arousal remained

controversial (for example, imbuing Huysmans' writings with their notoriously risque

edge) but the concept was familiar 427

nonetheless.

The Soul of the Rose can also be seento echo sentimentsexpressedby sexologistsin this

period about the properties of odour and colour as an aphrodisiac.For example, Havelock

Ellis highlighted the nineteenth-century tradition of associating female sexuality with

floral scent in Sexual Selection in Man (1905). He argued that `it is really the casethat in

426Ephraim Cutter, `The Action of Odors, Pleasantand Unpleasant Upon Blood Flow, ' Journal
of
the American Medical Association 30 (1898): 366. Cutter is known for the invention of the
laryngoscope, as well as for his work on medical licensing laws and links between cancer and

nutrition.
427Joris Karl Huysmans, 'The Armpit, ' Parisian Sketches (Sawtry, UK: Dedalus, 2004). First

published as 'Le Gousset' in Croquis Parisiens(Paris: Ikor Vasler, 1880), section 5.

 187

many persons-usually, if not exclusively women-the odor of flowers producesnot only

a highly pleasurable, but a distinctly and specifically sexual, effect. 42' Moreover, Ivan

Bloch, in The Sexual Life of Our Times of 1908,noted the `awakening of libido sexualis

in women by the smelling of a bouquet of flowers'. 51He cites Paulo Mantegazza'sThe

Psychology of Love (1875) to demonstratethe effect of scent-stimulationupon `sensitive'

women and the resemblancebetween the facial expressionsof a woman when smelling a

flower and when experiencingorgasm:

Make the chastestwoman smell the flowers shelikes best and she will shut
...
her eyes,breathe deeply, and if very sensitive tremble all over, presenting an

intimate picture which otherwise she never shows, except perhaps to her

lover.429

While enjoyed by the `chastest women,' this solitary activity was seen to have clear

aberrant overtones. Bloch cites a lady who claimed `I sometimes feel such pleasure in

smelling flowers that I seem to be committing a sin.'430The idea of the pleasureof scent

inhalation as a mild transgressionwas well establishedin nineteenth-centurythought. This

`sin' of scent arousal is presented in licentious detail in Mantegazza's and Bloch's

428 Henry Havelock Ellis, `Sexual Selection in Man,' Studies in the Psychology of Sex

(Philadelphia: Davis, 1905) 102. He cited the caseof a `lady living in India' for whom roseshad
little effect and who was only arousedby the more `penetrating,heavier scents of lilies, tuberose

and gardenia.' The inference was that while sensitive English women could be arousedby the
delicate scent of roses, Eastern women required more potent olfactory stimuli. The sexologist
Collet also posited a close relationship between smell and female sexual arousal; Frederic Justin
Collet, L'odorat et sestroubles (Paris: 1904) 51.
429Iwan Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times in Its Relations to Modem Civilisation (London:

Rebman, 1908) 626.

430Bloch cites Paulo Mantegazza,Fisiologia Dell Amore (Milan: Bernardoni, 1873) 176. See also

Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination (London: Papermac,
1996 [1986]) 81.
 188

writings and I would suggest that The Soul of the Rose is imbued with a similar

voyeuristic charge.

By the 1890s, eroticised ideas about the lewd effects of odour upon the female sex had

been in circulation for many decades.As early as 1851, an article in the Journal of

Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology described the effect of odour upon

heterosexual males as a necessaryand healthy part of the reproductive process, but a

luxury for women

that in some constitutions cannot be indulged without some danger to the

morals, by the excitement of the ovaria which results. And although less

potent as aphrodisiacsin their action on the sexual systemof women than of

man, we have reason to think they cannot be used to excesswith impunity

by most 43'

While for men, female body odour and artificial perfumesworn by women were generally

thought to lead to arousal,copulation, and the propagationof the human race, female scent

arousal was described in masturbatoryrather than reproductive terms, with women being

attractedto floral rather than male body odours. The erotic appealof this displaced female

sexual attraction from the odour of men to the scent of flowers seemsto have been due to

its suggestionof something intimate and contrary to the natural order, from which men

were excludedbut could neverthelesswatch or imagine.

In The Smell of Class (2004), Janice Carlisle has argued that in Victorian literature `the

artificiality of perfume marks the women who are unfit to be wives of the middle-class

431`Woman in Her Psychological Relations,' Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental

Pathology4.January(1851): 27.
 189

men of these stories, whilst the faint hint of flowers, the subtle scent of cultivated nature

and refined fertility, identifies their proper mates.'432Indeed, just as etiquette demanded

that refined women wore just a `faint hint of flowers,' an emphasiswas also placed upon

the importance of smelling roses in moderation. One is reminded of the conservatory

scene in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss of 1860 in which Maggie repressesher

sexual feelings for Stephen out of respect for her childhood sweetheartPhilip and her

cousin Lucy. In the novel, Stephen and Maggie's passion reaches such a rapturous

intensity that Maggie, conscious of Stephen's gaze and her own turbulent emotions,

rejects Stephen'sadvances.

She blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from Stephen's,

going up to some flowers to smell them ... `Oh, may I get this rose?' said

Maggie I think I am quite `Wicked with Roses'; I like to gather them and
...

smell them till they have no scentleft. 433

As Stephen showers Maggie's arms with kisses, the rose becomes a distraction upon

which she lavishes her displacedpassions,until `quivering with rage and humiliation' she

him to leave 434The gestureof spurning Stephenand greedily devouring the scent
orders

of the rose instead is suggestiveof her rejection of productive sexual activity. Maggie can

432Janice Carlisle, Common Scents: Comparative Encounters in High Victorian Fiction (Oxford,

New York: Oxford University Press,2004) 7. She writes `becausemiddle-class women use their
bodies to produce children, thosebodies are marked by the floral scentsthat render them attractive
to the men who will father those children.'
433GeorgeEliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1995) 388.
434Ibid. 389. JaniceCarlisle has arguedthat in high-Victorian fiction, women whose floral odour is

detectedby men are, as a general rule, marriageable.In contrast, women such as Maggie Tulliver,

who are acutely sensitive to the odour of flowers, usually prove ineligible. Thus, `Maggie is here
reversing what the osmology of the 1860s presents as the order of nature.' Carlisle, Common
Scents87.
 190

be contrasted with Fenichka in Fathers and Sons, who is sexually compromised in the act

of smelling, when she allows herself to be kissed by Basarov. In a `quivering' rage,

Maggie is shown to be in a near hysterical state and it seems that the scent, which she

breathes so deeply, excites rather than calms her nerves, leaving her `trembling and

a's It is as if by experiencing the frustrations of sexual continence, Maggie is left

panting'

particularly susceptible to the arousing potential of scent. In a scene in which Maggie `is

quite `Wicked with Roses', ' smell, as the basest sense, serves as the sign and agent of her

its illicit nature 436

sexuality and of

If Waterhouse'sThe Soul of the Rose suggestspassionthrough the depiction of voracious

smelling, then his earlier painting, The Shrine (1895), in which a younger girl, dressedin

white, stoops to smell a jug of roses, suggestsyouthful sexual inquisitiveness and loss of

innocence[Fig. 27]. 37As in The Soul of the Rose,the viewer assumesthe role of voyeur

upon a private and intimate moment. Though succumbing to the pleasuresof scent, the

a
girl's posture suggests readiness to spring apart from the flowers, should she be

disturbed, and this imbues the scenewith a senseof surreptitious pleasure. Indeed, the

is
scene crying out for someoneto come around the corner and catch her in the act. At the

top of the steps,the newcomer would have the moral high ground, looking down upon the

girl. Indeed, it may have been this senseof inappropriate female behaviour that prompted

a critic for the Athenaeum to report that the protagonist's face and figure were `no means

43sEliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) 389.

436On the role of smell within the sensoryhierarchy, seeStevenConnor, `Intersensoriality,' (A talk

given at the Conference on the Senses, Thames Valley University), February 6,2004,

www. bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc/intersensoriality,(accessedAugust 14,2006).

437Other Waterhouse paintings that feature girls smelling roses are A Flower Market: Old Rome

(1886) and The EnchantedGarden(1916).

 191

of a high or fine type' and that she appeared `rather sensual and not so pure as she ought

to be'. 38So while in both The Soul of the Rose and The Shrine, smelling roses within an

enclosed garden space might symbolise the traditional constraints of domesticity, the

insinuation of a solitary woman attending to her own sexual desires might also be

suggestive of contemporary challenges to prevailing attitudes to sexual relations made by

the New Woman and her male supporters.

When examined collectively, as in this section, it becomesclear that paintings of women

and flowers are strongly associatedwith the connectionsof smell with both sex and sexual

innocence.The representationof smell can range from innocently sensualand wholesome

pleasureto perversely sexual and `unnatural' wickedness;and the central paradox of smell

as both morally elevated and base, and as spiritual and sensual,lies at the heart of these

works. Interestingly, the Athenaeumcritic, writing of Waterhouse'sThe Shrine which was

exhibited at The New Gallery in the summer of 1895, was unable to reconcile the

inviolability of a shrine with the vulgar, animal act of smelling; he proposed that this

apparentdepiction of the act of smelling must simply be a false impression causedby the

sketchynature of the painting.

The lady's attitude is so incompletely representedthat we are not quite sure

that she is not smelling the flowers, an act which is quite out of keeping

with the subject, and therefore it could hardly be within the artist's

intention.439

Yet, while the theme of smell as the senseof sensuality, sexuality and earthly pleasures

runs through Curran's and Waterhouse's perfumed pictures, these aspects run hand in

438`The Royal Academy,' Athenaeum3524.May 11(1895): 615.

439 Ibid.
 192

hand with the long, historical association of scent with spirituality and the soul 44°Far

from being `quite out keeping with the subject,' it was possible to consider the

representationof rose inhalation as entirely appropriatefor a spiritually symbolic painting.

Indeed, one might even argue that the titles Scent of the Rose and The Soul of the Rose

are interchangeable.

In a religious tract entitled The Ministry of Nature (1871), the ReverendHugh Macmillan

wrote that `no senseis more closely connectedwith the sphereof the soul than the sense

of smell.' He argued that this is becausesmell `reachesmore directly and excites more

powerfully the emotional nature than either sight or hearing leading at once into the
... ...
ideal world [and] going down to the very depths of our nature'44' This connection of
...

the body, mind, and psyche was powerfully evoked in The Soul of the Rose. As we have

seen, the suggestion of introspection and personal reflection, as well of matters of the

heart, are inherent in the painting and it is surely no coincidence that the rose is growing

up the walls of what appearsto be an Italianate cloistered space,suggestinga monastery

or other place conducive to meditation and spiritual growth.

Scent was also seento evoke the soul in other ways. Aromas or essences(from the Latin

verb esse,to be) were often understoodas signifying inner or inherent reality and floral

fragrancewas particularly associatedwith the soul, while petals were a recurrent symbol

° On scent and soul, see ConstanceClassen,The Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the

Aesthetic Imagination (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 36 - 60.

441Hugh Macmillan, The Ministry of Nature (London and New York: Macmillan, 1871) 26.
 193

of material as opposed to spiritual finery»i2 Thus, scent in The Soul of the Rose can be

seento indicate both the soul of the flower and the true inner beauty of a woman, whose

purity is perhaps symbolised by the flawless white pearls that she wears in her hair.

Moreover, in Curran's fairy fantasias,the visual juxtaposition of fairies and scentsuggests

that thesenebulous spirits can be thought to personify the scentor spirit of the flowers, the

essenceeven of nature. Indeed, I would argue that in line with Christian iconography,

floral scent and the female soul symbolised, in Waterhouse's painting, the bountifulness

God and the essenceof nature. 43 Scent in these paintings can be seen not only to
of

symbolisepassionbut also the life principle itself.

Yet it is through the idea of floral scentsas offering, in Macmillan's words, `an important

meansof communication with heaven and a direct avenue for the soul's approachto the

Father of Spirits', that the conflation of scent, sexuality and soul in these works is best

444
Just as Teresa of Avila was transfixed by the angel's dart of divine love, the
understood.

orgasmicrapture of the female protagonist in The Soul of the Rose might be read as due to

the penetration of the scent, or divine soul of the rose, as it is inhaled into the body. In

Curran's and Waterhouse's paintings, erotic excitement and religious ecstasyare aligned

and the transgressive nature of sexuality is given a transcendent significance through

imagery of women smelling flowers and breathing floral-scented air. Indeed, referring to

Waterhouse'sThe Shrine, Rose Sketchley observedthat `in its poetry of fair colour, form

and arrangement,art such as this has a ministry that reachesbeyond sense' enabling the

442On this theme, see Catherine Lake, The Use of the SensesWhen Engagedin Contemplating the

External World (London: Nisbet, 1848) 29 - 30.

443Macmillan, The Ministry of Nature 24,27.
444Ibid. 26.
 194

attainment of a `final fulfillment beyond-say, rather through, the visible ends of the

world' aas By establishing how the complex olfactory significance of Curran's and

Waterhouse"s scent-evocative paintings builds up a multifaceted presentation of late

nineteenth-centuryfemininity, it is possibleto demonstratethe exciting potential for a new

art historical approachthat allows for a richer, multi-sensory aesthetic.

On the Fragrance Trail

How successful were nineteenth-century attempts to create a multi-sensory aesthetic,

given, that, as has already been suggested, something of the experience of sensory

perception is lost in the translation between actual sensation and representation?In

language, `smell is the mute sense,the one without words, lacking a vocabulary, we are

left tongue-tied, groping for words in a sea of inarticulate pleasure and exaltation,' as

Diane Ackerman has observedin her popular celebration of sensoryexperience,A Natural

History of the Senses(2000) 446In The Smell of Books (1992), Hans Rindisbacher has

likewise commentedon the conversion of olfactory sensationsinto verbal analogy, noting

that:

It is words, sentencesand paragraphsthat form the net in which sensory

perception is caught, but this net is never fine enough to retain it all. Whole

chunks of experienceescape.They remain dangling outside the structuresof

verbal communication in a world of unincorporated individuality. In some

places, indeed, the net seemsto have been woven deliberately loosely, and

445Rose E. Sketchley, 'The All of John William Waterhouse,' The Art Journal (Special No.

Christmas 1909): 25.

446Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (London: Phoenix, 2000) 5.
 195

the for
as a consequence, world of odors, one, largely its
escapes grasp."'

Substituting `words, sentencesand paragraphs'for line, colour and form, it has also often

been suggestedthat the real essenceof scent evades capture in pictorial design. For

example, Clare Brant has observed,in her study of the depiction of odour in eighteenth-

century political cartoons,that the comprehensivevisual recovery of odour is problematic

due to its ephemeralnature. `Preciselybecausesmell is elusive, it evadesrepresentationin

words or pictures: in this senseit conveys somethingin the air, somethingunderstoodand

experiencedyet intangible and invisible even when pervasive.'448

As seenin the previous chapter,however, the assumptionthat smell evadesthe verbal and

the visual is not representativeof nineteenth-centuryideas on sensory perception. In his

book Mental and Moral Science(1868), Alexander Bain claimed that `the representation

of flowers gives an agreeablesuggestionof the fragrance,' an idea that resonatedwith

flower-painters such as Curran, who wrote in Palette and Bench (1908) of his attemptsto

`paint the perfumes of the flowers.'449In his account of his floral fairy paintings (cited

above), Curran intimated an awarenessof psychological research into the suggestive

power of the visual to evoke non-visual sensations,

observing that `there is, more than one

might think, a quality of suggestion possible in the painting of flowers, whereby the

447Hans Rindisbacher, The Smell of Books (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992)

1.
44$Brant, 'Fume and Perfume,' 449.
449Alexander Bain, Mental and Moral Science: A Compendium of Psychology and Ethics

(London: Longmans, Green, 1868) 103. See also Henri Privat-Livemont, The Scent of a Rose,

c. 1890, Oil on canvas, 132 x 92 cm, Private Collection. Eloise Harriet Stannard's The Scentof the
Summer (details unknown). Edmon Francois Aman-Jean,Perfume or Woman with a Rose,
-1891,
Lithograph in black, 23 cm x 36 cm. Paul Longpr6's Summer Fragrance 1903, (details unknown)
.
or GastonLa Touche's The Perfume of Flowers (details unknown).
 196

spectatorcan be made almost to smell the flowers in the picture he may be inspecting.' 450

A year later, in 1909, Curran published in the same art journal an instructive article

entitled `Class in Oil Painting', in which the scientific grounding of his ideas was clearly

evident. Interestingly, he adopteda languagestyle highly reminiscent of a number of the

early psychology texts consideredin chaptertwo.

The editors of this department can recall an occasion when they both

experiencedsimultaneouslythe sensationof the scent of nasturtiums while

looking at a particularly effective picture of that brilliant flower. It was too

startling and vivid and mutual to have been a mere fancy. It was evidently

an emotion born of suggestion451

Unlike Frank Podmore, who, two years earlier, had dismissedMiss Goddard's perception

of odours emanatingfrom paintings as an hallucination and the product of mental debility,

Curran regarded this aspect of the olfactory imagination as the `normal' and `healthy'

sensoryresponseto visual phenomenon.He proposed:

The artist has by virtue of his profession the right to induce by suggestion

any or all of those emotions which he experiencedand which prompted him

to paint the picture. His purpose in painting it is to induce like emotions in

452
the spectator.

Whilst Podmore argued in the Journal of the Socie for Psychical Research that the

smells of rotting heads and wallflowers existed only within the disturbed female mind,

Curran believed that artists could and should develop skills for evoking sensorial

responses.

450Curran, 'Picture Notes,' 56.

451CharlesCourtney Curran, `Classin Oil Painting,' Palette and Bench February (1909): 100.
452Ibid. 100.

i
 197

In `Class in Oil Painting', Curran outlined the necessarypractical application of paint on

canvasfor achieving an appealto the olfactory senses.His ideas reflected late nineteenth-

century ideas about seeing invisible smell, as outlined in chapter one. Arguing that visual

observation was the key `to paint[ing] the perfume of the flowers rather than the exact

actual aspect of them', he urged art studentsto scrutinise flowers under the microscope.

Only through close and careful looking and by observing the properties that are invisible

to the naked eye might one approacha visual experienceof floral fragranceand realise the

sensuousqualities of the rose that are `as much felt 453

as seen' Students,he wrote, should

take the time to observedetails such as that the `light reflected directly from the outside of

petals is cool, while light that goes through petals is warm' or that `the petals of white

roses resemble a multitude of dewdrops'. Moreover, he believed that in order to convey

the beauty of a flower's scent,it was necessaryto capturethe beauty of the flower. `So in

painting any flower with a characteristicperfume try to be so imbued with the charm of

the particular flower that the painting of it will carry all of its qualities to those who see

the picture.'454It was this attention to detail, he argued,that renderedEmily Maria Spaford

Scott's still-life paintings of roses so successful: `does not the appearanceof delicate

beauty and perfume of the flowers reside in the fact that the soft, quiet color of eachpetal

loses into the next, as happensin flowers with semi-translucentpetals?' Studentswishing

to replicate this scentedeffect should take care to avoid an overly crisp style and should

instead adopt `a vapoury softness,a mellow, melting quality easiest securedby rubbing

into another on a slightly roughenedsurface' ass

one color

assIbid. 100.
454Ibid.
455Ibid.
 198

The idea that intense artistic labour and exactitude was necessary to attain olfactory

suggestionwas by no meansnew. For example, nearly half a century earlier in 1856, an

art critic for The Times had noted that the still-life painter Valentine Bartholomew `spares

no pains in his commitment to realism,' adding that if it were not for the depiction of

insectsin The Rosesof Convolvus, `many personsmight commit the absurdity of bending

down to smell the flowers as if they were real ones' ashWhat changed,however, in the

wake of psychological enquiries into sensoryassociationand `sympathetic' reaction in the

1890s and early 1900s, was a genuine belief in the possibility of the olfactory gaze,

meaning that the notion of smelling painted flowers was no longer dismissed as

preposterous.

Nevertheless,by the late nineteenthcentury, the artistic ambition to produce multi-sensory

totalities through meticulous verisimilitude was dismissed as a conservative approachto

art by advocates of the modernist tendency towards abstract expressions of aesthetic

feeling. In 1897, the New York Times scorned the idea that the highest accoladeof art

was to paint with such painstaking fidelity to nature that even representationsof the most

humdrum objects emanatedodour. Attacking the conformity of much English figurative

painting, the paper observed:

True art, says a French critic is not regarded in England "unless someone

can paint a little onion so real that it makesyour eyeswater". Otherwise, the

picture has not fulfilled its necessaryfunctions. That acrid odor, we might

456'The Society of Paintersin Water Colours,' The Times April 28 1856: 12.
 199

say, it's the true soul - the exhalation, from the picture 457

Yet whilst the explosion of artistic activity in Europe c. 1880-1920 saw a departure from

the odour of naturalism as the essence of art, artists working in the symbolist, art nouveau,

jugendstil, expressionist, cubist, futurist and other styles, developed a multitude of new

techniques for capturing in paint immutable intrinsic qualities as opposed to mere external

appearances. With regard to the visual representation of smell, there was an increased

desire to combine figurative representations of olfactory objects, and the visible sights that

accompany the act of smelling, with more expressive codes for rendering the mystique of

smell visually meaningful through colour and form.

Although traditional methods for representing the sense of smell were never entirely

abandoned,a number of progressive artists began to seek ways of attributing smell with

visible properties of colour and form, in order to attend more directly to olfactory

experienceand to bypass the problem of smell's lack of a visible dimension. There was a

greaterrealisation that to endow the disembodiedand ineffable phenomenonof smell with

an imaginary, comprehensiblevisual presencethrough form and colour was to circumvent

the problem of its indefinability and lack of clear articulation. For example, the depiction

of stylised fragrance trails, eddying clouds of smoke and coloured vapours all became

popular means of offering a more direct response to invisible fragrance. Moreover,

something of the essenceof etherealemanationscould be conveyed through visualisation

of the manner of scent's progressthrough the air. Thus, for example, a fetid odour might

be renderedin dirty or violent toxic shadesand be fume-like in form whilst a sweet scent

457`Primitive Art Criticism, ' New York Times 6 March 1897: P134.
 200

might trace in
elegant serpentines gentlepastel colours 458

The notion that painting could affect the senses(especially, but not exclusively, urban

sounds, noises and smells) and appeal to the sensation and experience of speed and

movement through the use of dynamic composition and expressiveuse of colour was one

of the tenets upon which Italian Futurist painting was founded 459
In his manifesto, `The

Painting of Sounds,Noises and Smells' (1913), Carlo Carrä argued that pre-nineteenth-

century painting was `the art of silence' and that until this time, artists had never

`envisagedthe possibility of rendering sounds,noises and smells in painting, even when

they chose flowers, stormy seasor wild skies as their subjects.9460

Whilst artists may have

previously intended to evoke a vague idea of scent through the picturing of its visible

peripheries (e.g.: of source, inhalation gesture and physical effect), it was not until the

1800s that they had begun to seek ways to evoke a physical, olfactory response.Carrä

however, believed that such a synaesthesic`co-operation of the senses' was entirely

possible and that there was an arsenal of visual techniques available to the artist for

approaching this kind of `total painting.' He argued that vibrant colours, such as `reds,

rrrrreds, the rrrrrreddest rrrrrrreds that shouuuuuuut' and `greens, that can never be

that screeeeeeam',could seemto overwhelm vision with their

greener,greeeeeeeeeeeens

458Seefor example Luciano Freire's ironically titled Country Perfume, 1900, oil on canvas,Museo

do Chiado, Lisbon.
459See Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (May 11,1912),

discussedin Jane Sharp, `Sounds,Noises, and Smells: Sensory Experience in Futurist Art, ' The
Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Italian Futurist Painting, Drawing Collage, and Free-Word
Poe ed. Anne Coffin Hanson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) 67 - 80.
460Carlo Carrä, `The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells,' Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umberto

Apollonio (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1973) 151.

 201

intensity and spill into other sense perceptions 46' Different odours could be represented

by different colours that synaesthetically reflected their dynamic essence. Thus, the smells

of railways stations and garages were red whilst the aromas of cafes and restaurants were

deemed silver, yellow and purple 462Xigzags, wavy lines and `the dynamic arabesque' he

claimed, could be used to convey the different `forms and intensities of vibration' that

make up both sounds and smells. These visual formations could reflect the `arabesques of

form and colour' which Carrä believed to be impressed on the mind by any succession of

sounds, noises and smells. He observed:

If we are shut in a dark room (so that our senseof sight no longer functions)

with flowers, petrol or other strong-smelling things, our plastic spirit

gradually eliminates the memory sensationsand constructsparticular plastic

wholes whose quality of weight and movement correspondsperfectly to the

smells found in the room.463

According to Carrä's theory, these corresponding abstract mental images could be

transcribedby the artist into paint on canvas,although few if any Futurist works achieved

this.

Russolo's Profumo (1910), a work that in fact predatesthe Italian Futurist style by several

years, perhapscomes closest to Carrä's ideal with regard to the visual evocation of smell

[Fig. 28] 4M Form and colour affect the sensesin this painting, in which swirling perfume

vapours envelop the face of a woman, which is depicted tilted and in profile in order to

461Ibid. 152.
462Ibid. Animal odours were yellow and blue, whilst female odours were green,blue and purple.
463Ibid. 153.
464Lot 6 in `The Collection of Lydia Winston Malbin, ' Sotheby's Sale Catalogue 16 May 1990.
 202

give prominenceto the outline of the nose.As shebathesin the flowing currents of vapour

that whirl from her hair, her cheeks,parted lips and closed eyes are suffused with a hot

fuchsia blush that suggestsa moment of ecstasycomparableto the rapture of scentin The

Soul of the Rose.Interestingly, Carrä's painting seemsto embraceboth the esotericnature

of smell and the contemporary scientific urge to penetrate its mysteries. The trail of

perfume pursues sinuous lines and curvilinear forms reminiscent of Art Nouveau with all

its mystic connotations (seebelow) and yet is renderedaccording to the loosely scientific

principles of Divisionist colour 465

theory. The effect is extraordinary. At close range each

linear stroke of red, blue, green,orange,yellow and pink paint forms a massof contrasting

touches of pure pigment, meticulously juxtaposed, creating the effect of shifting particles

of scent. At a distance, however, the colours mix optically, creating the visual effect of

intense swathesand swirls of simple colour. As the colours that convey the head,hair and

vapour blend in the eye, the woman seemsto fuse into the scentedambience, suggesting

that fleeting moment in which, through perfume, the body becomes an airborne essence,

as the combined fragrance of flesh and scentvapourise into the atmosphere466

Chromatic division also conveys intangible sensations of odour in Incense (artist

unknown), a painting of a young woman in long, flowing robes towering over an incense

burner, in which the vapourous effects of light capture the invisible yet luminous aroma

emanating from an incense burner [Fig 29] 467The painting reflects spiritual tendencies

that were born within the Divisionist movement and it is thus fitting that it was dedicated

465On the influence of Art Nouveau upon Italian Divisionism, see Vivien Greene, Arcadia and

Anarchy: Divisionism, Neo-Impressionism (New York Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2007)

eh. 5.
466Connor, `Aroma,' 211 26.
-
467The signatureof the artist is almost illegible but it might read B. de Tokaly.
 203

to, and by 1910 in the possession of, the leading spiritualist medium Annie Besant, who

wrote in her autobiography of her admiration for the ritualism, incense and pomp of

Roman Catholicism. 468With eyes closed, hands clasped to her chest and head thrown

backwards at the force of a piercing, overwhelming light, the female figure appears to be

in a state of spiritual ecstasy. Her body seems to loom out of the darkness, as if levitating

or rising up on clouds of scent, whilst the pleats down the length of her column-like dress

form a visual parallel to the spires of smoke rising vertically from the censer. As the

incense drifts upwards, it forks into three jets of scent that blast towards the female figure,

the central ray seemingly piercing her heart. Her face basks in an explosive radiance of

divine light and it is here that the intense brilliancy is achieved most powerfully through

Divisionist strokes of yellow, white, green and blue paint.

An epiphany of light and scent, the brilliant colours of Incense enhance each other to

produce an effect of shimmering luminosity. Up close, each dab of pigment suggests

molecules of scent, visible, like motes of dust, twirling in the sunlight. Yet as the viewer

walks away, the strokes of bright, pure colour fuse in the spectator's eye, creating a visual

parallel of the dissolution of volatile scent into air. These dashesof paint are softenedby

the overlaying of ripples and smudgesof fluid translucent white paint that suggestthe

vapoury fug of a heavily-scented 469

atmosphere The application of Divisionist techniques

for capturing in paint the elusive mysteries of scent and its relation to the soul should be

considered in the context of the contemporary cultural and scientific urge to see smell.

468Annie Besant, Annie Besant: An Autobiography (London: Fisher Unwin, 1893) ch. 3. On the

strong symbolist intentions of Italian Divisionism, seeGreene,Arcadia and Anarchy.

469The subtle modulations of tone create a complex haze of light and colour, prompting the

printing company Gilchrist Brothers of Leedsto choseto reproducethe painting in the tradejournal
PenrosePictorial Album in order to showcasethe quality of their three-colour printing.
 204

Moreover, the Italian Divisionist painter Vittoire Grubicy de Dragon was convinced that

the researchesbasedon the scientific theory of colour, besidesproviding a

technique and a language of greater social expansivenessof the art of

painting, can open the way for an entire aesthetic,suitable for the treatment

of radically new subjects, [and] for the expression of some aspectsof the

beauty of Nature that have never beendealt with before 470

He believed that the `thirst for the new', should lead to the substitution of the reproduction

of `hard, material and precise reality' for `something vague and indefinite' so that `exact

perception will be prolonged by dissolving it like a chimerical vaporous aureole that

permits the mind to ramble amidst incensefumes evoking mystical dreams.9471

Certainly,

in Incense, techniques inspired by colour theorists allowed for a new approach into the

insubstantialrealm of olfactory aesthetics.

Both Profumo and Incense are contemporary with Margaret Macdonald's The Three

Perfumes (1911), a painting which, though stylistically somewhat different, reflects the

same shift from naturalistic depiction of the act of smelling towards sensorial suggestion

through expressivecolour and form [Fig. 30]. In Macdonald's intricate and highly-stylised

watercolour, the essenceof perfume is embodied by the delicate, waif-like female forms

smelling roses within an incorporeal world.472 A haunting meditation on female

spirituality, painted in the Glasgow Style, The Three Perfumes draws upon the softnessof

vellum combined with the smudginessof the washesto create a fluidity and vaguenessof

470TeresaFiori, Archivi Del Divisionismo, vol. 1,2 vols. (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1968) 99.
471Ibid. 89.
472On the Glasgow Style seeTimothy Neat, Part Seen.Part Imagined: Meaning and Symbolism in

the Work of CharlesRennie Mackintosh (Edinburgh: Canongate,1994).

 205

outline, so that the three female figures seem to diffuse into the vapours of the

atmosphere,like the perfumes they represent.The figures evoke exquisite, sensuousand

rarefied perfumes and this idea is reinforced through the sombre colour schemeof red,

violet and cobalt blue gowns and the richly-patterned background. 73 Macdonald's

spiritual visions, like those of her sister Frances, reflected the changing attitudes that

emergedaround the turn of the century in reaction to capitalism and commercialism.The

esoteric mysticism of her work demonstratesthe espousalof spiritual concerns over the

scientific and a yearning for transcendence over materialism. In particular, her

introspective vision of insubstantial scent as the essenceor soul of a woman epitomise the

anti-materialist philosophy of her symbolism.

Another artist to articulate the inarticulatenessof aroma was the Dutch Symbolist painter,

Jan Toorop, whose highly decorative depictions of flat, willowy and elongated women,

rendered in stylised and expressive lines, provided important inspiration to Macdonald

the Glasgow Four.474

In his Two Women of 1893, sinuous lines
and the other membersof

streamup the right-hand side of the silver-painted,wooden picture frame and mingle with

a cloud that snakesits way across the moon [Fig. 31]. These scent lines or `geurlijinen'

are depicted as emanating from the lily representedat the bottom right corner of the frame

and are visually paralleled by the long flowing hair of the two sylphiden or spirits of the

air. These flowing strandsare at onceboth tressesof long flowing hair and scenttrails that

radiate out from a flower smelled by the spirits. They reproduce what the French call

"' Seealso Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, La Mort Parfumee,Pencil, watercolour, gouacheand

gold paint on paper, 63.0 x 71.2 cm, Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow.

474Macdonald may have seen the art of Toorop which was featured in The Studio in 1893 and

1894. The Glasgow Four were Margaret Macdonald, Charles Renee Mackintosh, Frances
Macdonald McNair and J. Herbert McNair.
 206

`sillage,' the wavelike after-effect or wake of perfume that lingers after a woman has

passedby. As they swirl acrossand out of the picture and up onto the upper left sectionof

the frame, the wide arching curves overflow the wooden borders. It is as if the fragrance

of hair cannot be containedin its visual form of paint on canvasand must return to a more

volatile state, diffusing out of the painting into the real space of the viewer. One can

imagine that as the viewer walks away from the painting, he or she will continue to smell

the fragrant presenceof these female spirits. Like the ephemeraltraces left in the air by a

perfume, flesh becomes vapour, breath spirit and the female body a volatile abstract

symbol written invisibly although fragrantly on the wind that carried it away. Woman

becomes ambience: perfume sublimates the female body turning flesh into vapour and

skin into air.

In nineteenth-centuryart, hair often servedas a meansof emphasisingthe sensualityof the

female body. The caressof a lock of hair upon bare skin might imbue a painting with an

erotic frisson, whilst Victorian morality equated loose locks with `loose' sexual

behaviour.475By the turn of the twentieth-century,however, hair had also come to hold an

associationwith female sexual odour, leading the sexologist Havelock Ellis to observein

The Psychology of Sex (1905) that `the odour of hair ... has a sexually stimulating

influence.'476Red hair in particular, was deemed especially pungent, prompting Ivan

Bloch, in The Sexual Life of Our Times (1908), to associatethe auburn `priestesses'of

Alma-Tadema's classical paintings with the `peculiar erotic odour ... diffused by red-

475Elizabeth G. Gitter, `The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination,' PMLA 99
(1984): 936 - 54.
a'6 Henry Ellis, Havelock, `Sexual Selection in Man, ' Studies in the Psychology of Sex

(Philadelphia: Davis, 1905) 102.

 207

haired women'. 7 Interestingly, almost all nineteenth-century paintings of olfactory

experience feature red-haired women, a fact that can only partly be accounted for by the

for luxurious auburn tresses.478

cultural vogue

A fine example of the visual materialisation of odour as flowing, hair-like strandscan be

found in the 1898 edition of the American magazineCosmopolitan, in which an article on

the relationship between perfume choice and personality traits, scent and soul concluded

with a pencil sketch of a female head, from which a flowing mantle of hair is depicted

streamingdownwards and fusing into the scentedsmoke issuing from a candlestick [Fig.

32]479The visual conjunction of tendrils of hair with the swirling abstract curls that

representscentin both this image and Jan Toorop's Two Women is suggestiveof the late-

nineteenth-century commitment to expressing organic forms and natural processes

through decorative flourish such as tendrils and intertwined vines. Clearly, the art nouveau

calligraphy of sinuous curves, curlicues

arabesques, and other flowing, undulating and

whiplash lines, which was so often used to trace not only the hair but also the outlines of

sylph-like female forms, correspondedwell to the trails of smoke and vapour associated
4'0 As Lynn Gamwell has argued in Exploring the Visible (2005), art
with perfume.

nouveau and Jugendstil designerswere inspired by the revelatory experienceof seeingthe

477Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times 623.

476Galia Ofek, 'Hair Mad: Representationof Hair in Victorian Culture 1850-1910,' Unpublished

D.Phil, University of Oxford, 2004 -5.

479Harry Thurston Peck, 'The Morality of Perfumes,' Cosmopolitan 25 (1898): 590.
480Robert M. Craig, 'Art Nouveau and the Rejection of Revivalism, ' Nineteenth Century Studies

88 (1994): 43 - 73.
 208

world at the cellular level48' Whilst scientists increasingly set out to illuminate the

invisible through high-powered microscopes, artists paid tribute to new realms of the

visible in their design work. In the same period as scientists at the Paris Academy were

to
attempting conceptualiseodour as rays and waves and designers such as Lalique were

visualising scentsas nebulous spirit-forms (seechapter one), artists increasingly employed

signs and graphemes, such as sinuous and ethereal fragrance trails, as a means to

more effectively the presence,nature and semantic content of smell482It

communicate

was if following the lavish curves of a fragrance trail could somehow lead the viewer to

overcomethe sensoriallimits of the visual.

The Czech lithographer Alphonse Mucha produced some of the most ornate fragrance

trails to be found in turn-of-the-century art and of all his poster designs advertising

perfume and other aromatic products, Chocolat Ideal (1897) endows aroma with the most

highly tangible presence[Fig. 33]. In this poster,reminiscent of Renaissancealtarpiecesof

The Virgin and the Holy Children, a mother brings a tray laden with steaming cups of

nourishing cocoa for herself and her two eager, clamouring children and in so doing,

the figure.483
Most notably, chocolate-scentedsteamis
appearsas an exemplar of maternal

depicted coiling from the surfaceof the drinks. Depicted in a translucentbluish-grey, with

tints of chocolate brown, this almost sacred aroma is rendered visible and substantial,

481Lynn Gamwell, Exploring the Invisible: Art. Science and the Spiritual (Princeton and Oxford:

PrincetonUniversity Press,2005) 9.
482The use of such signs had its roots in ancient art but was revived in the nineteenth-century.See

Stephen Houston and Karl Taube, 'An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and Cultural
Expressionin Ancient Mesoamerica,' CambridgeArchaeological Journal 10.2 (2000): 270.
483Compare with Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, 1503-1506, Oil on wood, 189.5 x

120 cm, National Gallery, London.

 209

taking the form of boldly defined arabesques. The waves of aroma form an abstract

pattern that flows freely and whimsically up through the picture and into the spandrels,

seductively suggesting the manner in which they tease and tantalise the nose and tempt the

consumer to buy. They are suggestive of aroma as an anticipatory pleasure, heralding the

delicious taste that is to follow 484Nevertheless, having taken the form of decorative, art

nouveau scent-streamers, aroma is shown to be clearly confined within its own sphere and

unable to diffuse into an all-pervasive, shapeless fog. Rather, these sinuous aroma

formations appear flat and inflexible, rigid like the starchy, satin dresses worn by the three

female figures. Indeed, in the upper corners of the image, the curves become three-

dimensional and have the appearance of being carved out of solid matter. Having colour,

shape and form, smell thus has a commanding visual presence. In this way, the image

departs from the traditional topos of the Five Senses in which smell's presence was

merely inferred through the representation of olfactory objects such as incense burners or

inhalation gestures. At any rate, given that nineteenth-century psychologists endorsed the

power of the visual to prompt the recall of past sensory experiences, one can appreciate

the considerable allure of Mucha's vapour trails for regaling the consumer with memories

of the delicious aroma of hot chocolate. As advertisements such as Chocolat Ideal suggest,

vapour trails were not simply visual indexes connoting an olfactory presence but were also

triggers for a truly aromatic experience.

The Fumes of Fancy

The persistence of the idea that vision could activate the senses might explain the

°84On the anticipatory pleasureof smell, seeAlfred Gell, 'Magic, Perfume, Dream,' Cross-Cultural

Studiesin Symbolism, ed. loan Lewis (1977) 28.

 210

heightened emphasisupon the visualisation of scent in promotional material from about

1890 onwards. In the twentieth century, it became increasingly common for

advertisementsto flag-up lifestyle attributes associatedwith a particular scent,rather than

attempting to evoke the character of the scent itself. Around the turn of the twentieth

century, consumers were tantalised with visual images that might evoke the aromatic

qualities of a product. In many cases,this was achievedthrough associationwith the idea

of the olfactory imagination, which could lend an exotic edge or an element of fantasy to

the brand image. One design, by Mucha's illustrious Belgian contemporary, Privat

Livemont, stands out as a fascinating example of an advertisement that brings together

ideas of scent,imagination and Easternallure suchas will be explored in chapter five. In a

richly-coloured and highly sensuallithographic poster for Rajah Coffee and Tea (1899), a

woman is depicted bedeckedin jewelled, oriental opulence holding a cup of the precious

liquid, the steam from which rises upwards to spell out the product's name [Fig. 34] ass

The female figure appearsmysterious and aloof, immersed in savouring both the fine

exotic fragrance and the experienceof Oriental indulgence. The delicate cup is held aloft

for display, poised upon her finger tips as she wafts it before her nose. Her gaze is fixed

upon the cup and this mutual emphasisupon vision and smell evokes awarenessof her

meditative state. She seems captivated by the drink before her and the vapours drifting

above her head, in the air above her sightline, are somehow suggestive of her musings

upon its delightful properties and associations.Here the arabesquefragrance trail with its

suggestionof Eastern decorativeness,

acts as a sign for the twists and turns of the scent-

saySee also Rajah (1897), a colour lithograph by the Belgian designer Henri Meunier in which

ribbons assumetheir meaning as fragrance becausethey are depicted as flowing upwards from the
surface of a steaming hot drink and to touch the tip of the drinker's nose. Henri GeorgesMeunier,
Ra a 1897, Colour lithograph on paper, 65 cm x 80.5 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum.
 211

inspired imagination. 86 It is as if the smudgy swirls of steam, rendered in subtle

gradations of violet and rose, plot the meandering course of her ruminations. At length the

vapours, like her thoughts, coalesce, forming with hallucinogenic clarity the word `Rajah'

in white lettering. The scent of this exotic herbal drink is thus shown to be unique to that

brand; a whiff from the cup evokes a vision of the trade name. In this image, therefore,

both scent and the scented vision it inspires are given a visible and near tangible presence.

A number of attemptswere made in the nineteenthcentury and early twentieth century to

give a visual presenceto the `stuff that dreamsare made of, ' one such being the painting

of this name by John Anster Fitzgerald of 1858, in which the grotesque fantasies of a

seemingly drug-induced imagination emerge out of the cloudy mists of the dreaming

87
mind. Later, such effects infiltrated film. For example, in Princess Nicotine: or the

SmokeFairy (1909), a short trick film by the American filmmaker George Melies, fairies

from cigar smoke interact 488

with and play pranks upon a smoker. Livemont's
reeling

`Rajah,' then, belongs to a wealth of nineteenth-centuryworks in which the inner fabric of

486See the discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper in chapter two, for

more on the connection between arabesquesand scentedvisions.

487Seefootnote 134.
488Directed by J. Stuart Blackton. Seealso a designby V. Gardieu for the music sheetThuriferaires

(incense bearers) by Xavier Privas, c.1860 in which erotic dreams are inspired by incense and

alcohol. See also R W. Buss, Dickens's Dream. (Dickens in his Study at Gads Hill Place.
Surrounded by Creatures of his Imagination) unfinished painting 1872, The Charles Dickens
Museum, London. The tradition of using vapour, mist or smoke to signal inner thought continues
today: the misted screen has become a clich6 of television, as a means of distinguishing the
insubstantialitiesof dream from the lucid realities of waking life.
 212

the mind is visually externalisedas vapour trails 489Nevertheless,it is noteworthy due to

the implied conjunction of aromatic vapour with mental matter. In his negotiation of these

two seemingly ineffable phenomena, Livemont finds expression for both the idea of

aroma and the `stuff' of the imagination in the form of vapour trails.

The theme of perfume vapours as `fumes of fancy, ' out of which scented visions take

shape, was also developed in a striking, full-page promotion for Lundberg's Heather of

the Links of 1892 [Fig. 35]. Published in McClure's Magazine low-priced yet lavishly
.a

illustrated New York literary and political magazine, this image brings together a number

of the issues thus far raised in terms of the effectiveness of the pictorial representation of

scent and scented visions. The advertisement features a large-scale flacon of the perfume

poised upright on the edge of its tartan-patterned presentation box. The glass stopper has

not been firmly replaced and perfume vapours are issuing from the bottle, creating a

forked trail of scent that curls and cascades upwards and around the form of a female

golfer. Engulfed in, and rising out of, the perfume, the figure suggests an encapsulation of

a scented vision. Detached from any background, she seems to belong to the realms of the

olfactory imagination, an idea reinforced by the textual description of the perfume as

`characterised by a subtle, delicate fragrance that recalls to memory the land of the heather

fringed links' 490

As the vision that the perfume inspires, the figure of the Scottish golfer can be read as the

4s9A later work following in this tradition is Estella Canziani's watercolour The Piper of Dreamsof

1914, in which a small boy plays a pipe, sending a trail of vapourish fairy forms wafting through
the woodland air. Here vapour suggestsnot scentbut sound.
490`Lundborg's Heather of the Links, ' McClure's Ma ag
zine 6 (1898): 153.
 213

perfume personified. She can be seento embody the idea of the scent and everything it

standsfor. That is to say, she representswhat Heather of the Links would look like if the

perfume were to take on a visual dimension. Interestingly, this scent-inducedspectre is

endowedwith a marked solidity of form that is in strong contrast to the etherealfemmes

given such vague descriptive definition in HuysmansResemblances,discussedin chapter

two. In her thick dark tweeds, tartan cape and beret, she appearsjust as real and tangible

as the perfume bottle that casts its shadow upon its box. In this way, the subtle

evocativenessof the perfume is offered as a concrete promise. This perfume, Lundberg

seemsto reassurethe consumer,will do more than deliver a mere hint of Scotland.Rather,

it will vividly evoke the familiar American `idea' of the Highlands with its bracing,

wholesomeair, scenic golf coursesand hale and hearty women.

The advertisementpresentsthis artificial heatherscentas an almost natural fragrance,

being `the perfect semblanceof nature's sweetestflowers' 491It draws a correlation

betweenthe perfume's apparentnaturalnessand its wholesomeevocativeness,implying

that such a perfect simulation of the natural scentof heatherwill invigorate the mind and

have a healthy affect upon the imagination. This emphasisupon the naturalnessof the

scentand its wholesome associationsis of particular interest given that, as demonstrated

in chaptertwo, the olfactory imagination was commonly perceived as the unhealthyby-

product of the degenerateand putrefied mind. Unlike Huysmann's account of debauched

visions inspired by the unequivocally synthetic scentsof Jockey Club and Eau de

Millefleurs, this fresh mountain fragranceis shown to inspire wholesome thoughts of the

Scottish landscape.

491Ibid.
 214

The tension found in the Heather of the Links advertisement between the elusive

ethereality of both scents and scented visions and the desire to capture their likeness in

colour, line and form is central to this study. A vivid example of a solution to this

aesthetic problem can be found in Lacfadio's Heam's monograph Ghostly Japan (1905), a

Japanese literary traditions. 92 Hearn, who took the name

rich anthology of oral and

Koizumi Yakumo in 1895, was a lecturer at Tokyo Imperial University and a celebrated

Western writer on Japanese culture. According to Edward Laroque Tinker, a writer and

philanthropist who researched and published on Hearn in the 1920s, he was known for his

acute sensitivity to 93At any rate, he took great interest in Kodo, the
extraordinarily smell.

Japanese art and philosophy of incense, devoting the third chapter of Ghostly Japan to the

role of incense in Japanese art and customs and the aesthetic experience of incense

inhalation. He also explored the relation of incense with the memory and the imagination,

with particular reference to ghosts in the Shinto and Buddhist religions and argued that

scented visions were an integral part of the Japanese cultural imagination, being a major

inspiration for that nation's artists. 94 Appropriately, the chapter was headed by a small

monochromatic print representing a ghostly vision materialising out of a cloud of incense

[Fig. 36]. In the puffs of smoke issuing from the censer, a female figure emerges and takes

form. The outline of the billowing incense cloud transforms into a draped figure, at the

base of which, vertical lines suggest both the upward draft of the rising scent as well as

the folds of the trailing gown worn by this phantom female. Whilst no positive link is

492Lacfadio Hearn, Ghostly Japan(London: Kegan Paul, 1905).

493 Edward Larocque Tinker, `Lacfadio Hearn and the Sense of Smell: A Mystery for

Bibliomaniacs,' The American Bookman. September(1923): 519 - 27.

494Hearn, Ghostly Japan55.
 215

made between image and text, the picture was probably inspired by a well-known

Japanesestory to which Hearn makeslengthy reference.The story, as cited by Hearn, tells

how the Chinese emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty mourned the passing of his daughter

Lady Li so deeply that, fearing for his sanity, he decided to perform an ancient rite using

Hangon-ko or `wizard-incense' to invoke the ghost of his daughter. As Hearn recounts,

the emperor believed that his daughter's ghost could be summoned by concentrating

intently on her face and form, whilst kindling a handful of this `spirit-recalling incense'.

The apparition takes form but is torturous in its evanescence.

Presently, within the blue smoke arising from the incense, the outline of a

feminine form becamevisible. It defined, took tints of life, slowly became

luminous; and the Emperor recognisedthe form of his beloved. At first the

apparition was faint; but it soon becameas distinct as a living person, and

seemedwith each moment to grow more beautiful. The Emperor whispered

to the vision, but received no answer. He called aloud, and the presence

made no sign. Then unable to control himself, he approachedthe censer.

But the instant that he touched the smoke, the phantom trembled and

vanished495

Certainly, something of the ephemeral nature of Wu's vision is captured in the image

heading Hearn's chapter. The wavering outline of the smoke stream as it fuses into the

trailing folds of the figure's kimono suggestsits tremulous fragility. Like the perceptionof

an odour that flickers in and out of consciousnessas the sense of smell fatigues and

revives itself, the scentedvision is depicted as non-continuous, fragmentary in spaceand

episodic in time.

495Ibid. 90.
 216

Connor has written in his book Skin that aromas are `at once a concentration of living

essence,and a volatile flight from shape'.This tension, he writes, is

symbolised by the opaquestopperedbottles in which perfumed substances

are kept. It is almost as though the very condensationof the essencewere

the reasonfor its pent-up desire for diffusion.496

For artists of the nineteenthcentury, however, diffusion was not necessarilyrepresentedas

a releasefrom shapebut as a processof transfiguration into new visual forms, be they the

brand name, `Rajah,' the female embodiment of Heather of the Links, or the trembling

figure of Lady Li. This section, then, has demonstratedthe visual forms which artists

appropriatedto illustrate the releaseof perfume from its pent-up, liquid form.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of

The final image to be discussed in this chapter is Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale's

watercolour The Lovers World (1905), one of the most intensely olfactory images of the

period to embracethe concept of the olfactory imagination [Fig 37]. The picture is of a

morning in spring, when the sun is shining after a recent shower of rain. The birds are

singing and flowers have burst forth. At the centre, a female-figure, wearing an emerald

green, aesthetic dress, gazes sentimentally at a pair of songbirds perched, open-beaked,

amongst blossom-laden branches whilst, in amongst the dewy grassesand daisies at her

496Connor, `Aroma,' 213. Likewise, Alfred Gell has noted that 'a colour always remains the

prisoner of an enclosing form. By contrast, the smell of an object always escapes.' Gell, 'Magic,
Perfume,Dream,' 27.
 217

feet, fairy attendants swing golden censers that billow forth incense clouds. This little-

known yet highly colourful painting, by an artist often labelled as a `Pre-Raphaelite

Revivalist, ' is a treasure trove of visual delights. The more one looks, the more one sees,

from the glossy emerald beads strung about the female figure's neck to the details of the

starlings' plumage or the harebells in the meadow. Yet as a critic for the Magazine of Art

observed two years earlier in relation to Fortescue-Bricksdale's general style,

It is as much things felt as seen that the artist will have us know of. The

mere surface of appearancewill not suffice. It is the germ and the essence

which lie dormant under the surface, of which the artist will make us

cognisant. It is this striving after the fundamental and the spiritual which

makes both her naturalism and her symbolism integral parts of her artistic

equipment. It is her understandingof the spirit that informs the round world

which makes the symbolism, in her passion for realities and the pregnant

meaningswhich underlie them, the force that shewill become. 97

In The Lovers World, scent is given a translucent, gossamer-like presence through a

cocktail of thinly-applied, white, grey, blue, mauve, lilac and pink flicks of paint that form

a misty veil between truth (symbolised by a pre-Raphaelite attention to nature) and the

creations of the fanciful mind. It is the visual negotiation of the invisible (fairies) and the

unrepresentable(scent) that points towards an interrogation beyond the limits of surface

objectivity. In the painting, fairies danceand drift through the gusts of scentedvapour that

swirl and sweep across this flowery fantasia, revealing the artist's fascination for the

497`Our Rising Artists: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale,' Magazine of Art 26 (1902): 260.

 218

interplay between the visual and the non-visual worlds.498As the senseof transitions (of

decomposition and of matter to gas), it seemsappropriate that ethereal smell should be

drawn upon in this painting to signify the threshold between visual and non-visual

499
states. Like the volatile scent that envelops and veils them, the fairies are depicted on

the borderland between the seenand the unseen,now metamorphosing out of the frothy

vapour, now deliquescing back into it. Their world is sightless - their eyes are closed,

blank or obscured- immersed, as they are, so entirely in the world of scent and the realms

of the spirit and inner vision.

This visual elision of fairies with the insubstantiality of scentedvapour suggeststhat these

nebulous spirits can be thought to personify the scent or spirit of the flowers, the essence

even of nature. As Fortescue-Brickdaleherself explained, in responseto earlier criticisms

of the opacity of her symbolism, the female figure is fragranced by the `sweet odours of

the Spirits of the Scented Flowers' 500The metaphoric collapsing of scent and spirit

(which we have already seenin Curran's The Perfume of Flowers) is visually confirmed

in the picture by the depiction of the fairy queen,who, replete with crown, rises out of the

fragrant-looking mist to presentherself in deferenceto the central female figure. The puff

498As one critic remarked in 1901, 'Fortescue-Brickdalebrings the invisible into play
... whilst not
letting the visible go to the dogs.' Edith Sichel, `A Woman Painter and Symbolism,' Monthly
Review 4 (1901): 114.
499David Howes, 'Olfaction and Transition, ' The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Source Book

in the Anthropology of the Senses. ed. David Howes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991)
128 - 47.
50°The text of an exhibition leaflet preparedby the artist can be found gummed to the back of this

painting. The criticism of impenetrable meaning was made in `Art Notes: Side Shows in Bond
Street,' Truth 20 June 1901: 120. Traditionally, censerswere swung gently to and fro in church to

createa current of air that quickened the combustionof fragrant gums.

 219

of floral incense rising up at her side echoesher curves and elongated body, forming an

olfactory counterpart to the fairy that works as a metaphor for the olfactory exchange

betweenthe gross and spirit worlds. Like scentparticles re-concentratingthemselvesback

into solid form, these fairy spirits seemto hover on the edge of actualisation.Not quite in

being, they neverthelessherald their presenceas an odour. Scent and fantasy are thus

visually paralleled in this juxtaposition, with the inner truths of scent inversed and

externalised in fleshed-out fairy form. Moreover, the visualisation of incense in the

painting clearly lends a meditative overtone to the painting, due to its ancient and well-

documentedaffiliation with sacredworship501Traditionally understood as a visible and

olfactory link between earth and sky, humanity and divinity, the spirals of smoke

unfolding from the fairies' censers, symbolise, if not divine communication and the

heavenly ascensionof prayer, then at least personalreflection and introspection 502

The Lovers World can be read as a visual realisation of a romantic reverie or a glimpse

into the mindscapeof one in love. The painting was exhibited at the secondof the artist's

three one-woman exhibitions, `Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of, ' held at the

Dowdeswell Galleries at 130 New Bond Street in June 1905. The exhibition title,

so' See, for example, Constance Classen, `The Breath of God: Sacred Histories of Scent,' The

Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998) 36 - 60.
s°ZFortescue-Bricksdalemay have had in mind the poem Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, in

which Edmund Spenserwrites:

Her thoughts are like the fume of Frankincense,
Which from a golden Censerforth doth rise,
And throwing forth sweetodours mounts fro thence
In rolling globes up to the vaulted skies.
Seealso Jack Tresidor, Dictionary of Symbols (London: Baird, 1977) 108.
 220

misquoting a line from Shakespeare'sThe Tempest,alluded to the artist's attempt to paint

the fantasiesof the mind's eye and makes referenceto Anster Fitzgerald's earlier dream

painting of that name 503As `A Welsh Spinster' observed for the benefit of her young

female charges,the readersof Girl's Own, the exhibited paintings gave an insight into `the

holy of holies - the inner chamberof the mind of a girl'. Her pictures, it was noted, held a

`for those who look with the eyes of the mind as well as the body'. 04With
message

particular reference to The Lovers World, the phrase `such stuff as dreams are made of

can be seen to have had a dual meaning. On the one hand it refers to the content of

dreams, which in this case is representedby the fairy fantasia. On the other hand, the

fragrant fog of vapour trails amongstthe grass seemsto have visualised and given a near

tangible presenceto the physical matter or `stuff' of the imagination, from whence these

fanciful forms arise. As we have seen, imbuing the imagination with a semi-material

presencewas not a new idea. For example, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his poem

`Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of (1897), described`the cloudy shapesthat float and lie

/ within this magic globe we call the brain' 505 However, Fortescue-Brickdale's

503Fortescue-Brickdale'stitle is a misquotation of Shakespeare'sThe Tempest, IV, i, 156-157: 'We

are such stuff / As dreamsare made on. '

504A Welsh Spinister, `A Girl-Painter and Her Paintings,' The Girl's Own Annual 23 (1901): 6.
505Wentworth Thomas Higginson, 'Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of, ' The Century Magazine

32 (1897): 405:
Now all the cloudy shapesthat float and lie
Within this magic globe we call the brain
Fold quite away, condense,withdraw, refrain,
And show it tenantless-an empty sky.
Return, 0 parting visions, passnot by;
Nor leave me vacant still, with strivings vain,
Longing to grasp at your dim garment's train,
And be drawn on to sleep's immunity.
 221

conjunction of the fog of the imagination with fragrant vapours is particularly interesting

given the scientific fascination in this period (discussed in chapter two) for fragrant

dreams and scented visions.

In an interview about A Tale of Love (1996), a film preoccupied with memory and the

sense of smell, scriptwriter and film-maker Trinh T. Minha-ha has outlined her

understandingof the relationship between scent,love and subjective states,and has given

expressionto a set of ideas that would seemto resonatewithin The Lovers World. Minha-

ha's account of the spiritual timbre of smell is analogousto the content of the painting

under discussion and is therefore useful in enhancing this interpretation of Fortescue-

Brickdale's complex work.

Love can awaken our sensesin an intense and unpredicted manner. It can

open the door to another world never experienced before, while literally

blinding to us to the familiar world of reason, of common logic and of

everyday practicalities. The spell of a lover's fragrance, the smell of certain

places, certain cities, certain things related to the beloved is so powerful that

it can induce a state of trance and of madnessquite incomprehensible to

I lie and pray for fancies hovering near;

Oblivion's kindly troop, illusions blest;
Dim, trailing phantomsin a world too clear;
Soft, downy, shadowy forms, my spirit's nest;
The warp and woof of sleep;till, freed from fear,
I drift in sweet enchantmentback to rest.
See also Edward FitzGerald, The Mighty Magician and Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of: Two
Plays Translated from Calderon (Bungay: 1865). Dream versus reality and the slumbering senses

versuswaking reasonare recurring themesin this play.

 222

those who are not in love. 506

Certainly, the power of smell to facilitate accessto altered states of consciousnessis a

strong theme within Fortescue-Brickdale's `dream painting'. Moreover, the spiritual

resurgenceof the newly-in-love is suggestedthrough the evocation of sensualawakening.

As Fortescue-Brickdaleexplained in the exhibition catalogue,the painting discloses:

the mysteries of Spring, the Springtime of Youth, of the World, of Love. As

a flower-sheath drops and shows the bud, so has love unfolded and shown

to this girl Life, Song, Colour and Music. With clasped hands, an action

suggestiveof awakeningafter sleep,shemoves amid Spring Flowers 507

Resplendent with ideas of freshness and of life bursting forth in all its sensuous glory, The

Lovers World draws upon a traditional, religious iconography of resurrection and the

purged spirit in order to suggest this passage from the material to the immaterial. In The

Ministry of Nature (1893), Macmillan described floral scent as `a sign of perfect purity,

health and vigour; a symptom of full and joyous existence'. Referring to popular
...

symbolism, he likened fragrance to an embodiment of prayer: `grateful, unconscious

acknowledgements from the heart of nature for the timely blessings of the great world-

S08Appropriately then, a rainbow, the traditional symbol of tie God's promise

covenant'

to mankind, brightens the sky to the far left of the canvas, creating a bridge between the

S09 The rainbow was sometimes associated with and

natural and supernatural worlds

506Mary Zournazi, `Scent, Sound and Cinema,' Cinema Interval, ed. Trinh T. Minha-ha (New

York, London: Routledge, 1996) 253.

507This description by Fortescue-Brickdale from the original exhibition catalogue is pasted to the
back of the canvas.
508Macmillan, The Ministry of Nature 33.

509Tresidor, Dictionary of Symbols 166.

 223

imagined to emit the fresh scent of dewy grass gleaming in the sun after a rainstorm»°

Moreover, in a form of visual punning that reinforces the symbolism of spiritual rebirth

and the resurrected soul, a rainbow of butterflies described by the artist as `the colour of

Nature's palette' cascades through the clouds and under its arcs" These two `airy'

ephemerals - butterflies and rainbows - can be seen to register the cultural associations of

scent and soul within the painting. Indeed, as scent spirals out from the fairies censers and

the bells hung under the branches peal out their chimes, the painting can be seen to make

allusion to the `bells and smells' of Catholic Ritualism and should be read as a celebration

Nature's High 512

of, in Fortescue-Brickdale's words, `the moment of Mass'
.
Ultimately,

The Lovers World was so successful in offering a heightened sense of visio-olfactory

expression because it adopted a combination of the techniques explored in this chapter for

the visual translation of olfactory phenomena. Through the use of metonymic referencing

(blossoms and incense burners), symbols (butterflies and rainbows), gesture (closed eyes)

and visual manifestations of smell (fairies and scented vapours), it offered a powerful

510See for example, Jarlkzberg, `Odour from the Rainbow,' Notes and Queries 3 (1851): 224. C.

Forbes,`Odour from the Rainbow,' Notes and Queries77.April (1851): 310.

511Rainbow is the collective noun for butterflies. Also in Greek mythology, the butterfly Psycheis

the goddessof the soul. Butterflies were a common signal of the presenceof scent, depicted, as
they so often are, lured towards female figures of fluttering amongst scented vapours. See for
example, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Venus Verticordia, 1864-68, Oil on canvas, 98 x 69.9 cm,
Russell-CotesArt Gallery, Bournemouth, England. Also FrancesMacdonald, Girl and Butterflies,
1907, Pencil and watercolour on vellum, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow,
Mackintosh Collection.
512On the bells and smells debate,seeJamesBentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain:

The Attempt to Legislate for Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) 89 - 90. Nigel Yates,
Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 70 - 74. W. N.
Yates, `Bells and Smells: London, Brighton and South Coast Religion Reconsidered,' Southern
History 5 (1983): 122 - 54. Edwin Godfrey Aitchley, History and the Use of Incense in Divine
Worship (London: 1909) 112.
 224

demonstrationof the synaestheticpotential of painting.

Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to demonstratethe principle modes of artistic description by

which nineteenth-centurypainters, graphic designersand illustrators attemptedto preserve

the ephemeraof scentby transposingit into visual form. Many artists such as Curran were

deeply influenced by developmentsin the field of physiology and early psychology, in

which it was argued that images of smell generatedan active mode of looking, involving

physically-experienced olfactory encounters.To enhancethis visual encounter with the

olfactory, artists sought new ways to overcomethe insubstantiality and impermanenceof

perfume, which always remained just too volatile, fleeting and vaporous to truly be

by
possessedor captured visual symbol, colour or form.513Yet the fact that a scentalways

dissipates,leaving in its wake no more than a faint, lingering trace, seemsonly to have

spurred on artists in their endeavours to overcome this inevitable absence. For the

historian of art and visual culture, moreover, the potential rewards for exploring this

intersection between artistic sensorialimaging and the sensorial experience of the viewer

are great, becauseit enables him or her to push at the boundaries of visual culture, to

probe its limits and to a reach fuller definition of the discipline. Indeed, improved

understanding of the multi-sensorial dimensions of visual culture promises to have

ramifications just as significant for art history as the growing body of scholarly interest in

art's non-visual possibilities.

513Stamelman,Perfume 19.
 225

In focussing on questions of how best to figure, imagine or give the sensation of odour so

it can be seen, this chapter has departed from the approach to the cultural history of the

senses favoured by Constance Classen. In The Color of Angels (1998), Classen

denounced the tendency of modem ocularcentric culture to place a higher value upon

visual representations of the non-visual senses than upon actual experiences of sound,

touch, smell and taste and suggests that the art historical fascination with illusions of the

total sensorium can be regarded as a subtle reinvestment in the pre-eminence of visuality.

Having done much to crack the visualist facade of art history by opening up the discipline

to multi-sensorial media, she is keen to promote art and art history that embrace the

the 514 As key figure within CONSERT, a

aesthetic richness of non-visual senses a

collaborative, interdisciplinary project on the cultural construction of the senses, she has

been involved with research into olfaction in contemporary art, haptic aesthetics and

relationships between the sensory dimensions of objects and practices of collection and

display. Yet her enthusiasm to look beyond visual representations to direct artistic

engagements with the senses raises the question of the extent to which the significance of

visual representations of the non-visual senses has really been explored. The power of the

visual to substitute for the non-visual senses is surely one of the great assumptions upon

which the disciplines of art history and visual culture rest and yet, arguably, it is so

engrained in the visual economy of the West that it has often been taken for granted. For

this reason, this chapter has attempted to readdress the gap in knowledge surrounding

pictorial cross-modality and in particular the ability of the visual to convey both

something of the sensation of smell as well as the cultural connotations of that sense,

514Classen, The Color of Angels 143. For more on CONSERT see `The Concordia Sensoria

Research Team' (CONSERT). Montreal, Canada, Concordia University,

http://alcor.concordia.ca/-senses,(accessed14 August 2007).
 226

before progressing in the following chapter to an exploration of artworks that engaged

directly with odour itself, rather than its representation.

 227

IV

'A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes'515

Introduction

In September 1902, the New York Times made the following grand announcement:

`NEWEST PUBLIC AMUSEMENT. A "Perfume Concert" Soon to be given Here -

Symphonies in Odors to Transport New York Audiences to Japan. 516According to the

newspaper, a new apparatus had been invented for diffusing perfumes in large halls and

by this mechanism, the sensations of a trip to Japan could be conveyed to an audience in

just sixteen minutes by a succession of smells. This `olfactory manipulator' or `patent

smeller', as the paper referred to it, consisted of a system of powerful fans that would

sweep currents of air across vast sheets of perfume-drenched cheesecloths and out into the

517The cheesecloths
auditorium. were framed and could be slotted into a box that sat in

sis An abbreviated version of this chapter is being published in Bradstreet, Christina. `A Trip to

Japan in Sixteen Minutes: Sadakichi Hartmann's Perfume Concert and the Aesthetics of Scent.'
Other Than the Visual: Art History and the Senses.Eds. Patrizia di Bello and Gabriel Koureas.
London: Ashgate, Forthcoming 2008.
516'Newest Public Amusement,' New York Times September14th 1902: 85. Brief mention of this

event has been made in Jane Calhoun Weaver, Sadakichi Hartmann. Critical Modernist. Collected
Art Writings (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991) 3-4,47.
517Twenty cheesecloths (16 x 16 inches) created a surface area of 160 sq ft. The use of

cheeseclothsmay have been inspired by French Symbolist theatre, in which the use bf gauze and
veils to create optical layers was common. Jennifer Cottrill, 'Performing through the Veil: Salome
and Symbolist Theatre (Draft Chapter from Phd Thesis Delivered at the School of History of Art,
Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, Writing Group - 20 May 2005).'
 228

front of the fans and manually shifted like `slides into a magic lantern' 518The resulting

`symphony of odors' would draw upon the evocativenessof scent and more particularly

the feeling of being transportedfrom a mundaneto an ideal world. Although there would

be visual and auditory support in the form of a travel monologue, music and Japanese

geisha dancers,the novelty of the performancelay in the fact that the onus lay primarily

with smell to arousethe intended aestheticeffects.

By October, the excitement in the press surrounding this much-hyped event was

mounting. Tongue firmly in cheek, the New York Times ran another publicity article, in

which it described how the adventurousnose would be borne upon perfume currents and

hence spirited away upon a flight of the imagination, with the body remaining firmly

immobilised in the theatre seat. Drawing upon the concept of the intrinsic airiness of

odour, the perfume concert was imagined to present a kind of fantasy mode of instant air

travel, a magic carpet ride of memory in which gusts of scent would waft the audience

acrossvast tracts of mental landscapeto an exotic Far East:

[the audience] will be wafted from New York by successive puffs of

perfume until, time and space being eliminated, the shores of Japan are

scented and amid a delicious burst of odors from mats and tea-chests,

sandalwoodand said, the Nose will be guaranteedarrival in Yokohama, no

518It is interesting that like Edison's odorscopeand the equipment for measuringperfume intensity

designedby M. E. Mesnard and M. GastonBonnier, seenin chapter one, visual analogieswere also

applied to Hartmann's olfactory apparatus.`Newest Public Amusement,' 352. The New York Daily
Tribune described the use of `thick slabs' of scent but gave no further details. `Did Not Like
Perfume Concert: An Audience Evidently Preferring Cabbageand Onions to Violets and Roses,
Insulted Inventor,' New York Daily Tribune 1 December 1902: 12.
 229

matter in what region that dull clod the body may have been left behind!5'9

The sublimation of body to nose in this animated and jocular account is suggestive of the

overwhelming potency of perfumes, as the non-olfactory senses are imagined to surrender

to the sense of smell, with the audience transcending the confines of the physical into a

world dreamed up by the mind. As the newspaper journalist explained, the seemingly

magical capacity of smell to mediate space and time in the memory would be regulated

and drawn upon as an artistic medium. The concert would attempt to formalise the

mysterious potency of smell for the memory and the imagination into a kind of mental

diversion or escapist recreation with an aesthetic agenda. Odours, ordinarily

acknowledged for their startling and often arbitrary effect upon the imagination, would be

arranged into a melodic composition and released into the auditorium in a controlled

manner, so as to give direction to the olfactory imagination and guidance upon this

designated fantasy voyage. The co-ordinator and conductor of this virtual journey was to

be Sadakichi Hartmann, an American playwright, photographer, painter and writer of

520
growing renown

`There are seriousminds in almost every country, who consider the senseof smell capable

of artistic and intellectual functions,' Hartmann observed in a retrospective article

evaluating his artistic forays with the senseof smell, published in the American art journal

519`ComparisonsMost Odorous,' New York Times October 6 1902: 8.

520Hartmann often went by the pseudonyms 'Sidney Allen' and `Chrysanthemum.' For a

biography of Hartmann, see 'Sadakichi Hartmann,' Dictionary of Literary Biography,

aphy, ed. Peter
Quartermain, vol. 54 (Gale Group, 1987) 118. See also Walter, Marjorie. `Sadakichi Hartmann'.
2000. American National Biography Online, http://www. anb.org/articles/17/17-00381-article.html,
(accessed9 August 2007).
 230

Forum in 1913 under the title `In Perfume Landi521Yet despite the lofty artistic

conception, the perfume concert, held, after several postponements,at the New York

Theatre on 30t' November 1902, was destined to flop. In part, this was due to the

inappropriate nature of the venue. After a deal with the Carnegie Lyceum (an arts venue

that often attracted avant-garde performances, experimental student theatricals and

spiritualist lectures) fell through, Hartmann becamethe penultimate act on the bill of one

of Edward E. Rice's popular Sundaynight benefit concerts. Rice, a renowned composer,

director and producer, was best known for his burlesque musical comedies, which the

New York Times described as consisting primarily of `horse play, ragtime dancing and

singing From
soubrettes'5ZZ the programme for that night's entertainmentHartmann, can

be seen to have performed under the pseudonym of Chrysanthemumand to have shared

the stagewith the RossowMidgets and the March of the Jolly Students[Fig. 38]!

A TRIP TO JAPAN IN 16 MINUTES -A MELODY IN EIGHT ODORS

BY CHRYSANTHEMUM assistedby the Meredith Sisters as the Japanese

twin geisha girls. For the distribution of the perfumes the Hartmann

perfumator will be used. Mr Rice takes much pleasure in being the first

managerto introduce this greatnovelty to the public 523

Faced with a roused and animated crowd more accustomedto `coon songs and horse

play, ' in a room dense with tobacco smoke, Hartmann, after a barrage of audience

interruptions, was reportedly forced to bow and make his apologies, unable to `reach

SZ'Sadakichi Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' Forum 50 (1913): 217.

su 'Perfume Concert Fails,' New York Times December 1st 1902: 5.
" Program of a presentationof a PerfumeConcert at the New York Theatre, Dec. 7,1904, Box 28,

The Sadakichi Hartmann Papers,Special Collections Library, University of California, Riverside.

 231

Japan' in such unsympatheticconditions!524

Regardless of its poor reception in the popular press, `A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes'

may be seen as a fascinating yet under-researched facet of an emerging cultural interest in

inverting the sensual hierarchy and cultivating the aesthetic appreciation of smell. As

Constance Classen has suggested in The Color of Angels (1998), there was a rise in

aesthetic interest in odour in the second half of the nineteenth century, which can be seen

as one element of a widespread movement by artists directed against what was perceived

as the materialist tendencies of modern culture: principally scientific rationalism,

industrial capitalism and bourgeois 525From the 1850s onwards, important

worldliness

figures of the British, American and European literary and art establishments increasingly

reflected upon the emotive and imaginative properties of smell and were preoccupied by

the representation of scent in their work. The poetry of Baudelaire, Rossetti, Swinburne

and Whitman, amongst others, was imbued with scent imagery and poetic realisations of

the effect that scent played upon the memory, whilst the passages (discussed in chapter

two) on the haunting poignancy of smell, by the likes of Charles Kingsley, Vernon Lee,

Rudyard Kipling and Charles Leadbeater, give just a flavour of what must be regarded as

phenomenon 526As demonstrated in the previous chapter, a number

a much wider cultural

524'Perfume Concert Fails,' 5. 'Did Not Like Perfume Concert,' 12. The newspaperreports are

backedup by Hartmann's own testimony. SeeHartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 226 - 27.
525ConstanceClassen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology. Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

(London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 109.

SzeSee for example, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) and Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal

(1861). The 1857 edition of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal included `Exotic Perfume'. `Perfume
Flagon' and `A Phantom II: The Perfume' were added in the 1861 edition which is usually

considered the definitive version. In 1869 Charles Algernon Swinburne penned a letter to Dante
Gabriel Rossetti in which he describedhimself as `especially and extravagantly fond of that sense
 232

of visual artists also explored ways to representfragrance in their works. In this chapter,

however, it will be seen that smell was not only representedin art but also became a

medium for art.

This chapter then, attends to the rise in aestheticinterest in scent c. 1850 - 1910, whilst

focussingupon art forms basedon olfactory stimuli. As Alain Corbin has confirmed in the

Foul and the Fragrant (1986), during this period, `the figure of the perfume artist beganto

emerge' and `over the decadesthe aestheticsof smell became commonplace.'527This

increaseddesire for olfactory pleasuresmanifested itself in a number of different ways.

For example, after the Great Exhibition of 1851 at which visitors queued to dip their

handkerchief in Rimmel's grand perfume fountain [fig. 39], small-scale scent fountains

became fashionable domestic ornaments [fig. 40] 528Rimmel was particularly keen to

promote perfumery as an art, for example by annually promoting his decorative scented

almanacs, Valentine and Christmas cards as artworks for review in the Athenaeum

between 1860 and his death in 1887529Also in this period, Rimmel sponsoreda number

of plays in England, in which sceneswere perfumed using vaporisers or fragranced

and susceptibleto it. ' Rindisbacherfinds this quote in Walder, Ann. `Swinburne's Flowers of Evil:
Baudelaire's Influence on Poemsand Ballads, First Series.' Ph.D diss. Uppsala University, 1976.
SnAlain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination (London: Papermac,

1996 [1986]) 198-99.

528Blanche C. Saward, Artistic Flower Decorations: With Directions for Making Bouquets

(London: n.p., 1877) 33.

529See, for example `Mr Rinnnel, ' Athenaeum 20 (1874): 374. For more on Rimmel's perfume

fountain, almanacs, cards and other publicity devices see Richard Stamelman, Perfume. Joy.
Obsession.Scandal. Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present(New York:
Rizzoli, 2006) 86 - 87.
 233

and at which perfumed programmeswere distributed 530

As will be seenin this
waterfalls

chapter, similar olfactory devices to deliver waves of mood-altering aromas out into the

auditorium were later adopted by French Symbolists, who sought to challenge the

of the theatre as a realm that privileges vision 531Rimmel also facilitated the
assumption

scenting of rooms, with the invention of a particular kind of perfume diffuser and though

the industry of aromatherapyis a twentieth-centuryphenomenon,by the 1890s,interest in

the effects of perfume upon mood, cognition and health 532

was mounting. This was to

inspire Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac,a Symbolist poet of the Belle Epoque and

author of a commentary for the perfume exhibit at the Exposition Universelle in 1900, to

experiment with perfume in home decor by scenting eachroom of his house with different

530According to the programme of a production of The Gardensof the Never Fading loom, held

at the Theatre Royal in Liverpool in 1862, `the balmy fragrance of a blooming parterre on a fine

spring morning' was diffused around the theatre during the scene of `The Fushia Bower of the
Fairies' by meansof a Rimmel perfume vaporiser. JeremyMaas, Victorian Fairy Painting (London:
Merrell Holberton, 1997) cat. 71. A pantomime held at the Adelphi in 1871 featured a waterfall

scented by Rimmel. John Kennedy Melling, Discovering Theatre Ephemera (Aylesbury: Shire

Publications, 1974) 46. The John JohnsonCollection of Ephemeraat the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
holds programmes for London stage performances that were perfumed by Rimmel. Other

perfumers followed his example. For example, in 1869 every person attending a performance of
Friedrich Von Flotow's opera `Martha' at Pike's OperaHouse in Cincinnati received an advertising

programme scented with one drop of Phalons Flor di Mayo. `A Plea for the Sense of Smell,'

Putnam's Monthly Magazine 13 (1869): 318. See also `Perfumed Programmes,' New York Times
27 November 1875: 4.
531The word theatre comes form the Greek theatron meaning `a place for viewing, ' which in turn

derives from the verb theasthai meaning `to behold,' or from thea meaning `sight.' Jessica
Chalmersand Una Chaudhuri, 'Sniff Art, ' The Drama Review 48.2 (2004): 76.
532Stamelman,Perfume 86 87. For nineteenth-centuryarticles on the influence of scenton mental
-
and physical health, see `Health-Giving Perfumes,
' New York Times 1 July 1894: 21. `Perfumes:

Their Use and Abuse,' New York Times 1 October 1871: 3.

 234

perfumesaccording to its function 53'

Moreover, as the perfume writer and researcher, Stephan Jellinek writes in The Birth of

Modem Perfume (1998), perfumery changed more in the thirty two years between 1889

and 1921 than it had during the previous thousand years 534
In an echo of the way in which

in painting artists began to evoke abstract responses to the experience of perfume, rather

than figurative representations of the act of smelling, perfumes were no longer copies of

fragrances found in nature (such as Eau de Lavande or even `Heather of the Links') but

became far more chemically complex and were more dependent upon the imaginative

intuition and genius of the creator. One thinks of Des Esseintes, who, in Joris-Karl

Huysmans's Against Nature (1884), creates perfumes suggestive of `light rain of human

essences' and `laughter in a bead of sweat, joys disporting themselves in full sunlight. ""

As Richard Stamelman writes in Perfume (2006), `perfume manufacturing had moved

away from nature and entered the domain of the artist and artisan. Fragrances with no

equivalent in nature came into being; they were synthetic creations, objets d'Art, inspired

by human desire, imagination ' 536 Liberated from the need to

and the unconscious.

replicate scents found in nature, perfumers began to experiment with scent, creating new

533Edgar Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou: The Butterfly and the Bat (New York: Frick

Collection, 1995) 47- 48. Montesquiou is perhaps best known as the dandy and aesthetewho
inspired Huysman's character of Des Esseintes.SeeRobert de Montesquiou-Fezensac,Count, Pays
des aromates.(1900). For more on Montesquiou and perfume, see Classen,Color of Angels 113 -
14.
ssaJ. StephanJellinek, The Birth of Modern Perfume (Holzminden: Dragoco, Geberding
und Co,
March 1998), 89. See also J. Stephan Jellinek, Scents and Society: Observations on Women's
Perfumes, 1880 (Holzminden: Dragoco, Geberdingund Co, March 1997).
535Joris-Karl Huysmans,Against Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1884]) 95.
536Stamelman,Perfume 179.
 235

perfumesthat consistedof striking olfactory contrasts:

pungent herbal and dry woody notes were used alongside the soft and

narcotic scents of subtropical flowers, the cool freshness of citrus fruits

offset the languor warmth of balsams and vanilla, the innocence of spring

flowers was paired with the seduction of musk and civet. A sense of

harmony was of course, maintained in all this but it was a harmony of a

higher, more complex order. The sophisticatedharmony of artistic creation

had replacedthe simple harmony of Nature 537

This creative ferment coincided with and was spurred on by the introduction of

synthetically formulated perfume ingredients, such as Coumarin, which was introduced

onto the market in 1870 to replicate the scent of freshly mown hay, and vanillan, to

imitate vanilla. In Essenceand Alchemy (2001), Mandy Aftel identifies the first modem

perfume as Jicky by Aime Guerlain, a synthetic cocktail createdin 1889, which contained

coumarin, linalool and vanillan, as well as lemon, bergamot, lavender, mint, verbena,and

fixative. 538
It representeda significant departurefrom the
sweet marjoram, with civet as a

figurative representationsof floral scents that preceded it, whilst the name Jicky, like

many of the perfume brands that followed, attemptedto capture a senseof the complexity

and aesthetic abstractnessof modem perfumes. Just as modernist art was now more

committed to expressing inner essencesthan conveying visual verisimilitude, perfumes,

such as Jicky sought to translate emotion into perfume.

Creative engagementswith perfume coincided with the publication of a number of pleas

for an olfactory aesthetics:one suchbeing the petition made by Felix Feneonin 1886 for a

537Jellinek, The Birth of Modem Perfume90.

538Mandy Aftel, Essenceand Alchemy: A Book of Perfume (London: Bloomsbury, 2001) 37 38.
-
 236

`symbolism of tastesand smells' 5.39

Moreover, in `Plea for the Senseof Smell', published

in Putnam's Magazine in 1869, the author daydreamed of galleries devoted to the

exhibition of perfumes and of rich housesin Fifth Avenue with `vases of porphyry and

alabasterand malachite, filled with rare and delicate essencesdistilled from flowers and

herbs and precious woods so that visitors may inhale from them as they take glances at

fine pictures' 54°Traditionally, however, smell had been denied a place in the realm of

aesthetics.Indeed, a host of argumentswas mobilised against the aesthetic viability of

smell in the decadesthat followed Immanuel Kant's influential relegation of smell to the

bottom rung of the hierarchy of the senses541Critical disparagementsagainst smell tended

to be levelled at smell's primal functionality, its irrational emotiveness, its lack of a

clearly defined language or structural order on which to base a complex artwork and, of

course, the 542

repugnancy of stink. Yet, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, odour

was increasingly acceptedas a legitimate vehicle for artistic expressionas artists seeking

to redefine aesthetic experience began to appreciate the attractiveness of these very

qualities of scent that denied smell conventional aestheticviability. Nevertheless,despite

calls for an aesthetic reconsideration of a previously `neglected' sense, artistic

539Feneon's symbolist manifesto of 1886 is cited in Constance Classen, Howes, David and

Synnott, Anthony, Aroma (London: Routledge, 1994) 120.

540'Plea for the Senseof Smell,' 317.
sai Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowell

(London and Amsterdam: Feffer and Simons, 1978 [1798]) 46. Annick Le Guerer discusses

attitudes towards olfaction in Westernphilosophy in Annick Le Guerer, Scent: The Mysterious and
EssentialPowers of Smell trans. Richard Miller (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993) 141- 203.
542SeeJim Drobnick, `Toposmia: Art, Scentand Interrogations of Spatiality,' Angelaki 7.1 (2002):

31-32.
 237

engagements with the sense of smell remained relatively rare. "" Smell remained very

much on the fringe of aesthetics, confined mostly to aesthetic theory rather than artistic

practice. It continued to be an `orphan and an outcast ... the pariah among the five

senses', as one reviewer of the perfume concert put it, despite a growing recognition that

this was so544 Indeed, it was the attempt to elevate the sense of smell to the level of the

other senses, and the uniqueness of the method of achieving this, that made A Trip to

Japan so exciting and newsworthy; and it was this that led to it being billed (if somewhat

incredulously) as a new art form with the potential to revolutionise the aesthetic status of

smell.

The appeal of scent as a creative medium is explored in the context of the presenceand

purpose of scent in late twentieth-century installation art by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer

Fisher in their article `Perfumatives: Olfactory Dimensions in Contemporary Art',

in the Aroma-chology Review (1998) 545

Whilst creative uses of scent are, as
published

they explain, `complex, diverse and not readily subsumableunder a single rationale,' it is

apparent that artists at the turn of the twentieth century were influenced by many of the

same interests sah

and motivations as recent olfactory artists Then, as now, the possibility

543Smell was increasingly described as `neglected' at this time. See for example Edward Dillon,

`A Neglected Sense,' Nineteenth Century 35 (1894).

544'ComparisonsMost Odorous,' 8.
545Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, `Perfumatives:Olfactory Dimensions in ContemporaryArt, '

Aroma-chology Review 3.1 (1998): 1-6. See also Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick. 'Scent as a
Creative Medium: Olfactory Dimensions in Artistic Practice'. New York, 1998. Senseof Smell
Institute: A Leading Global Resource on the Science of Olfaction. Sense of Smell Institute,
http://www. senseofsmell.org/resources/researchdetail_ php?id=75&category=Cultural%20and%2
(accessed9 August 2007).
OHistorical%2OPerspectives&cat=Cultural
546Drobnick and Fisher, `Perfumatives,' 1.
 238

of drawing upon the cultural nuancesor connotations of scent proved a novel means of

imbuing art with significance; a fact that belies the common assumption that olfactory

stimuli has no meaning and thus cannotreleasea processof perceptual contemplation and

interpretation. 47The belief that `smell provides a primal and pure sensation' was also a

significant factor as was the desire for aromatic materials to provide `the audiencewith

direct and unassailable experiences'.48Scent had a special appeal becauseit made the

body central to the aesthetic experienceand reflected a new kind of interaction between

the body and the artistic medium. It could overwhelm one with phenomenabeyond all

control. An art of odours would draw upon the physical effect of scent and the possibility

of exciting a bodily experience;in Hartmann's terms, a `sensuousand emotional thrill of

' sag
aestheticpleasure

Olfactory artworks were also of conceptual interest because they destabilised the

traditional idea of the autonomy of the viewer. Both sights and smells function at a

distance,with odours and light travelling acrossthe spacebetween the sensorysourceand

the individual. Whilst light waves pass through the pupils and splash against the retina,

their penetration into the body was considered superficial, in contrast to odours, which

circulated deep into the nasal cavities en route to the olfactory epithelium. Smell thus

dependedupon a kind of corporeal intervention, the physical intrusivenessof which could

54' Mädälina Diaconu, `Reflections on an Aesthetic of Touch, Smell and Taste.' Contemporary

Aesthetics 4 (2006), http://www. contempaesthetics.

org/newvolume/pages/journal.php (accessed
August 12,2007).
548Drobnick and Fisher, `Perfumatives,' 1.
549Hartmann, 'In Perfume Land,' 226 27.
-
 239

be an extremely powerful and even unsettling experience550Even at a distance from its

point of origin, smell has the capacity to draw the individual into a highly corporealised

relationship with the art object. By seemingto enter the body and direct the gaze inward,

olfactory artworks could collapse the `assumedseparationof viewer and object, self and

other, inside and outside' "1 As Drobnick and Fisher have explained, `an artwork that

must be inhaled, that fills the air and envelopesthe viewer, that seemsto seepinto one's

very pores, breaks the illusion that a viewer exists just as a scopic viewpoint that is

without a body. ' Whilst one standsoutside a landscapepainting and judges it objectively,

one is immersed in olfactory art; it is immediately evocative, emotional and meaningful "2

All thesefactors contributed to the late nineteenth-centuryaestheticreappraisalof smell.

Despite the many incentives for an art of odour, it is necessaryto stressthat not everyone

who wrote about olfactory aestheticsin the late nineteenth century was supportive of the

concept, as the majority of the reviews of the perfume concert reveal. Moreover, attitudes

to olfactory aestheticswere not always as polarised as is generally suggested.Historians

have tended to focus upon extremeperspectives,for exampleby demonstratingthe radical

Symbolist appeal of multi-sensorial art or the reactionary stance of critics like Max

Nordau, who lambasted olfactory sensibility as the mentality of `comprehensive

drivellers' and `depraved sensualists.553In reality, however, attitudes were far more

550This argumenthas been made by Plohman,Angela. 'At a Distance: Investigation Sensorial

Response'.Winnipeg, 1999.Monstrance:An installation by Diana Thorneycrot, September17 to

October 24.1999. St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Centre,http://www. snac.mb.ca/projects/
html, (accessed9 August 2007).
monstrance/statement.
55'Drobnick and Fisher, `Perfumatives,' 4.
552Douglas Porteous,`Smeliscapes,' Progressin Human Geography9.3 (1985): 359.
553Max Nordau, Degeneration,trans. from 2nd ed. of the German (London: Heineman, 1895) 502.
 240

complex and much less antithetical than previously supposed. Indeed, the plethora of

nineteenth-century writings on this theme reflected a broad spectrum of viewpoints,

including those who remained sceptical but who were nevertheless not prepared to

discount the aesthetic potential of the olfactory.ssaFor example, the popular science

writer, Henry T. Finck, attempted an objective review of the reasons for and against

perfumery as Art in his essay`The Aesthetic Value of the Senseof Smell' (1880), which

was published in Atlantic Monthly, a popular magazine covering art, literature, science

and politics. After much deliberation, he adopted the stance that smell `approachesvery

nearly' but ultimately eludes the aesthetic domain, due to the current condition of the

human olfactory lobe. Like the perfumer Charles Piesse (see chapter one) or the

educational psychologist Reuben Post Halleck (see chapter two), he advocated nasal

tutorage and the exercising of the olfactory imagination and advised against being `too

dogmatic in assertingthe impossibility of an odor art'. 555The author of `Plea for the Sense

of Smell,' took the line that whilst fragrancesthat evoke the same`vague and unspeakable

Seefor example Classen,Color of Angels 91.

"" Some contributions to this debate include George Santayana,The Sense of Beauty (London:

Black, 1896) 65. Sydney Colvin, `Fine Arts, ' EncyclopaediaBritannica, ed. Hugh Chisholm, vol.
10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910/ 1911). Henry T. Finck, `The Gastronomic
Value of Odors,' ContemporaryReview 50 (1886): 680 - 95. Grant Allen, Physiological Aesthetics
(London: King, 1877). For more recent discussionsof these issues, see: Francis Kovach, J., 'The
Role of the Sensesin Aesthetic Experience,' SouthwesternJournal of Philosophy 1 (1970): 91 -
102. Harold Osboume, 'Odours and Appreciation,' British Journal of Aesthetics 17.Winter (1977):
37 - 49. A. T. Winterbourne, 'Is Oral and Olfactory Art Possible?,' Journal of Aesthetic Education
15 (1981): 95 - 102, Donald Mcqueen, 'Aquinas on the Aesthetic Relevanceof Taste and Smells,'
British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 346 - 56. M. W. Rowe, 'The Objectivity of Aesthetic
Judgements,' British Journal of Aesthetics39 (1999): 40 - 52.
555Henry T. Finck, `The Aesthetic Value of the Sense Smell,' The Atlantic Monthly 46 (1880):
of
798.
 241

longings as are stirred by the strains of Beethovenor Mozart, or the colors of Claude and

Titian, have a legitimate place in the world of art', the current age was too gross and

material to put a high estimate upon aroma. Only in some future century when all

political, social and financial problems had been solved, could there be `leisure to take up

this long-neglectedscienceand art of Aromatology'"556

As well as overlooking the subtle range of opinions put forth on this subject, historians

have tended to neglect earlier expressions of interest in the emergence of olfactory

aesthetics.In The Smell of Books (1992), Hans Rindisbacherhas argued that the senseof

smell was `silenced' in the early to mid nineteenth century and that this `silence was

broken' in the final decadesof the century: but this is not really the case557As Corbin has

suggested,`the sensualismthat prevailed almost universally in enlightened circles at the

beginning of the nineteenth century encouragedglorification of sensory pleasure' and

many works of that period abound in references to the delights of rural scents"'

Moreover, as early as 1836, Theophile Thore outlined his `L'Art des Parfums,' in which

he claimed that `one can expressall of creation with perfumes as well as one can with line

and colour.'559What changed towards the end of the nineteenth century were the

frequency and the urgency of this debate, as a number of writers recognised that the

aestheticsof smell had to some extent been neglectedduring the 1840s and 1850s,when

5566Plea for the Senseof Smell,' 316.

557Hans Rindisbacher, The Smell of Books (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992)

186 - 87.
sssThink, for example, of the awakenedsensitivity to odours seen in the novels of Balzac. Corbin,

Foul and the Fragrant 200.

559Article entitled `Z'art des Parfums' published in L'Ariel in 1836. Cited by ConstanceClassenin

ConstanceClassen,Worlds of Sense:Exploring the Sensesin History and acrossCultures (London

and New York: Routledge, 1993) 33.

 242

fears surrounding miasma had reached their peak; but that this trend was undergoing a

processof transformation.

Rindisbacherhas accountedfor the rise in aestheticinterest in smell in the secondhalf of

the nineteenth century in the context of the amelioration of urban air pollution. He claims

that after decadesof public health campaigns,air pollution and stench were no longer a

cause for cultural anxiety and that in a newly deodorised environment, the artistic

conception of olfactory art was possible for the first time in modem history. Yet his

argumentthat the time had come `to remove the metaphorical handkerchief pressedto the

public nose' and to `set the senseof smell free to pursue artistic goals' fails to allow for
560
the complexity of attitudes towards smell. The hypothesis that scent had increased

aesthetic potential in a deodorised environment was first circulated in the nineteenth

century and was mostly upheld by perfume manufacturers with a vested interest in

promoting the aestheticelevation of smell. Indeed, Charles Piesse,of the House of Piesse

and Lubin, was particularly vocal in his claim that in an age of atmosphericrefinement,

the protective role of the nose as a detector of pestilential odours was obsolete and that

henceforth the organ could be solely designatedfor luxurious and aestheticpursuits 561It

seemsthat this routine trade argumenthas been uncritically acceptedin recent scholarship

as representinga fair in
assessmentof the rise olfactory aesthetics562

As Claire Brant has suggested,Corbin's claim that the nineteenth century was steadily

56°Rindisbacher,The Smell of Books 169 70.

-
56!CharlesHenry, `Odors and the Senseof Smell,' Popular ScienceMonthly 41 (1892): 690. Piesse

argued that the laborious functions of the nose were also obsolete as it was no longer neededby
man for the finding of food or the avoidanceof prey.
562Rindisbacher,The Smell of Books 169 70.
-
 243

deodorised has become a kind of orthodox upon which subsequenthistorians, such as

Rindisbacher, have pegged their findings 563Yet it is worth bearing in mind that in the

urban centres of Europe c. 1900, what Corbin has described as `the great dream of

disinfection' remained in some respectsjust that 5C4Far from being as deodorised as

Rindisbacher suggests,the American and European urban atmosphereremained choked

with coal dust and stinking sulphur right up to the turn of the 565
century. Indeed, it was to

become clear from the media's mirthful responsesto Hartmann's `grand odoriferous

'
symphony, that reviewers' considered the notion of olfactory .
aesthetics as ludicrous

given the high levels of pollution in New York. 566Predictably, the reviews included

numerous unsavoury gags about the stench of the urban environment. For example, the

New York Times imagined a time when the art of odours would attain such heights of

sophistication that `a zephyr from Barren Island may be rent apart by the smell expert ...

and, run through the Hartmann machine, come out as a rare sweet song.)567The absurd

suggestion,that the foul odours from the Barren Island refuse disposal sites, fish fertiliser

processingplants and offal industries could be refined and reclaimed for the artist's use, is

a fitting demonstrationof the inability of most reviewers to think seriously about perfume

$63Clare Brant, `Fume and Perfume: Some Eighteenth-CenturyUses of Smell,' Journal of British

Studies43 (2004): 444.

564Corbin, Foul and the Fragrant 4.
565 Indeed, in her catalogue of the Turner. Whistler. Monet exhibition (Tate Britain 2005),

Katharine Lochnan has noted that air pollution in London reached unprecedented levels at the turn

of the century and was 'capable of creating nocturnal effects at midday. ' Katharine Lochnan,
`Turner, Whistler, Monet: An Artistic Dialogue, ' Turner Whistler Monet, ed. Katharine Lochnan

(London: Tate Publishing, 2004) 35. See also Luciano Freire, Coiintry Perfume, 1900, oil on

canvas, 200 x 160 cm, Museo do Chiado, Lisbon.

566`Newest Public Amusement,' 32.
567Ibid.
 244

as a vehicle for art.568

Right up to the turn of the century, both good and bad smells were equatedwith the abject

and were inextricably linked with animal bodily functions, sexuality, death and disease.

Whilst it may be true that the emotive force of Chadwick's claim that `all smell is disease'

had waned by the turn of the century, the tenacity of long-establishedanxieties about the

sense of smell as a harbinger of moral and physical corruption and a disseminator of

disease(even after the demise of miasma theory) should not be underestimated569For

many symbolist writers, the abject nature of smell added to the fascination and dark

beauty of perfume, whilst the ideas and anxieties surrounding smell continued to furnish

critics with their essential arsenal for attack. So whilst progress in urban deodorisation

may have assistedthe creation of a cultural environment in which artists could begin to

conceive of olfactory aesthetics,it was in fact the contradictory nature of smell's status

within the hierarchy of the sensesthat renderedit so problematic and ripe for discussionin

nineteenth-century writings about the nature of art, beauty and aesthetics. Whilst

Rindisbacher accounts for the growth in olfactory aestheticsin socio-cultural terms, this

chapter will turn attention to three key alternative influences: namely synaesthesiain

French symbolist art, Japaneseincense culture and, most important of all, contemporary

psychological researchinto the recall of sensorialimpressions.

Symbolism and Synaesthesia

568On the smells of Barren Island, see `Barren Island, Odors Complaint,' New York Daily Tribune

18 July 1902: 17.

569Edwin Chadwick, `Metropolitan Sewage Committee Proceedings,' Parliamentary Papers 10

(1846): 651.
 245

As a self-claimed pioneer of Symbolism in America, Hartmann was fascinated by

synaesthesia as his Poems, of 1890, with their melancholy tendency for le reve,

demonstrate5.7°In particular, he was interestedin technologies for stimulating, controlling

or recreating cross-sensorialexperiences.An anecdotein his unpublished autobiography

(written in later life and uncompletedat his death in 1944) gives an intriguing insight into

this aspectof the artist's aestheticinterest.

Imagine, you listen to a phonographrecord, a song, perchanceMacDowell's

Wild Rose, and suddenly a perfume jumps out of the revolving disk and

ghosts of the odor of wild rosesramble through the room and cling to your

hands and hair. Or you listen to a Chopin sonata and suddenly become

consciousof a vague smell of rain on linden trees! Impossible?Not at all. A

friend of mine, an inventor, worked at the idea in 1903.It is largely a matter

571
of wavelength and combining mechanism.

From his interest in cameras and film-making, to the `patent smeller' designed for the

perfume concert, Hartmann was fascinatedwith the interplay of technology and the senses

and believed that new inventions for the delivery of sensorialmedia could spawn new art

570Sadakichi Hartmann, Poems (New York?: The author?, 1890). For more on Hartmann's poetry,

see John Harrison, Synaesthesia:The StrangestThing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
139. Hartmann's claims to be the first promoter of the Symbolist movement are substantiatedby
his essays on French Symbolism in The Art Critic in Boston in 1893. Harrison has made the
important observation that the nineteenth-centurymedical interest in this phenomenonmanifested
itself in `synaesthesia'sclose-bosomedfriend, metaphor.' He argues that artists such as Scriabin,
Wagner and Rimbaud drew upon metaphoric associations and that their works should not be

regarded as literal expressionsof their own synaesthesictendenciesbut rather as reflections of an

artistic interest in endowing works with multi-sensorial dimensions.(Ibid. 129,130.
"' Sadakichi Hartmann, White Chrysanthemums:Literary Fragments and Pronouncements ed.

Knox and Lawton (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971) 128.
 246

forms572For example, in the epilogue of his Japaneseplay Buddha (1897), addressedto

`Studentsof Colour Psychology', he outlined his vision for a `fantastic color revery' that

would accompanyBuddha's entranceinto Nirvana. He dreamt of a `new Optic Art' that

would project fantastic kaleidoscopeimagery in `new colours, like ultra red and violet, for

the enjoyment of which, new optical instrumentswould need to be invented' 5.73

His vision

was for a kaleidoscopic spectacleof colour symphoniesthat would include pyrotechnic

displays of `shattered jewel caskets', `incessant rain of luminous stellar dust,' the

interlacing and overlapping of `Alhambra arabesques'and a final burst of a `flower star,

emitting rocket-like fire lines, trills and '

radiations, the likes of which had never been seen

before. It is the perfume concert, however, with its experimentation with novel

technologies and unconventional sensorialmedia, its evocation of the visual imagination

and its fascination for Eastern culture, that should be regarded as his most significant

expressionof artistic innovation.

Symbolist engagementswith the psychology of the sensesclearly informed Hartmann's

approachto olfactory aesthetics.In the winter of 1891 1892, he had visited Paris, where,
-

as a foreign correspondent for the McClure Syndicate, he had interviewed many

prominent Symbolist artists, poets and writers of the day. An encounter with Stephane

Mallarme at one of the Symbolist theorist's famous Tuesday evening gatheringsproved

particularly influential, inspiring Hartmann to write an account of their conversationsfor

572As a regular contributor to Alfred Stieglitz's revolutionary magazines Camera Notes and

CameraWork, Hartmann was one of the first to write about photography and the moving image as

a form of artistic medium. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote Hollywood screenplaysand
even appeared in `The Thief of Baghdad' (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks. Hartmann, White
Chrysanthemums:Literary Fragmentsand Pronouncements128.
573Sadakichi Hartmann, Buddha: A Drama in Twelve Scenes(New York: 1897) 19.
 247

the Art Critic. 574With such a strong network of Symbolist correspondents, Hartmann

would undoubtedly have been aware of and very likely attended Paul Fort's mixed-media

adaptation of Paul Napoleon Roinard's Cantique des Cantiques or Song of Songs, which

was held at the le Theatre d'Art on 11`hDecember 1891.575

Fort's production can be seen as a theatrical response to contemporary

research into the

apparent interrelations of the senses and the potential, discussed in chapter two, for one

sense to stimulate another. In particular, this production was infused with ideas in popular

currency about synaesthesia, whereby one sense impression evokes another, as well as

Baudelaire's closely associated theory of reciprocal sensory correspondence 576It put into

practice the theories of Mallarme, who aspired to a Gesemtkunstwerk or `total art' that

orchestrated sound, light, movement, costume and decor, as well as speech, music and

s74The Art Critic was a Boston-based

periodical `devoted to the advancementof the interests of
American art,' edited by Hartmann. Sadakichi Hartmann, `A Tuesday Evening at Stephane
Mallarme's, ' Art Critic 1 (1893): 9- 11. Mallarme's prose poem `La Pipe' of that year used

suggestion rather than description to evoke a typical Symbolist fascination with the potency of
scentas a memory trigger.
sn Rindisbacherhas arguedthat the emergenceof olfaction as an aesthetictool was a
product of the
complex network of personal and professional relationships that existed between and among
novelists, painters and art critics at that time, rather than being attributable to any one person or
moment. Rindisbacher,The Smell of Books 161. Hartmann, is a casein point. In the early 1880she
had undertaken translation work for his close friend Walt Whitman and in 1888 he had met both
Swinburne and the Rossetti during a trip to London. The Sadakichi Hartmann Collection, an

extensive archive held at the Rivera Library at the University of California, does not reveal any
direct correspondencebetween Hartmann and Fort. However, even if Hartmann did not attend the

performance,he may well have read Paul Roinard's Les Miroirs (1908) in which the problems of
distributing scent in the Song of Songswere explained.
576Harrison, Synaesthesia.L. E. Marks, `Synaesthesiaand the Arts, ' Cognitive Processesin
the
Perceptionof Art. ed. W. R and ChapmanCrozier, A. J. (Amsterdam: Elsevier SciencePublishers,
1984). On Baudelaire and synaesthesia,seeStamelman,Perfume 106.
 248

dance,into an indivisible stageentity or `poet's theatre'S7 Fort, like Mallarme, soughtto

negate the sensory hierarchy, traditionally dominated by sight, by utilising all of the

senses,combining disparate media and crossing the boundaries of genre578As Kirsten

Shepherd-Barrhas noted, Fort's Cantique des Cantiquesinvolved readings from the eight

chapters of the Old Testament story: but the focus was on the orchestration of sights,

sounds, and smells to bring out the imagery of the script, rather than on the words

themselves.A fuller sensory experiencewas achievedby illuminating each scenewith a

different colour that was specifically chosento suggestand accentuatethe changing mood

and musicS79Scents were selected which were thought to complement the whole and

thesewere dispersedusing atomisersheld by Symbolist poets stationed at the far edgesof

the proscenium and in the balcony.580However, the role of smell was not simply to repeat

581
what was already aurally and visually available According to one reviewer, in the scene

of the Shulamite bride, the stagewas lit a bright orange, the musical symphony was in D

and the theatrewas perfumed with white violet in order to achieve the appropriatejubilant

ambience.Moreover, in the scenein which the King and Queen are first introduced, the

scenery was purple, the symphony was in C and the perfume was incense, the intention

577Alan Weiss, 'Mallarme's Nose,' Heat (Australia) 13 (1999): 108.

578Frantisek Deak, Symbolist Theater: The Formation of an Avant-Garde (Baltimore and London:

JohnsHopkins University Press,1993) 117 - 22.

579Kristen Barr-Shepherd,"`Mise En Scent": The Theatre D'art's Cantique Des Cantiques
and the
Use of Smell as a Theatrical Device,' Theatre ResearchInternational 24.2 (1999): 158. See also
Sally Banes, `Olfactory Performances,' TDR: The Drama Review 45 (2001): 69. John Stokes,
Resistable Theatres: Enterprise and Experiment in Late Nineteenth Century (London: Paul Elek
Books, 1972) 155.
580The scents used were frankincense, white violets, hyacinth, lilies, acacia, lily
of the valley,
syringia, orangeblossom andjasmine. Barr-Shepherd,"`Mise En Scent"' 158.
581Banes, `Olfactory Performances,' 68.
 249

being to create a senseof royal dignity and splendour of occasion. 82At this point in the

play, the actors stressedthe vowel sounds of `i' and `o' which were thought to have a

reciprocal correspondencewith the particular music, movement, coloured light and scent

of the scene.

Critical responsesto the performance were divided, with some theatre-goersat a loss to

fathom the role of scent and others enthusingabout the sublimity of the experience.In his

next play, Les Miroirs, Fort abandoned these sensorial devices, choosing instead to

describein words the intended scentand colour of each scene,allowing the script alone to

suggestthe intended synaesthesiceffects. Nevertheless,Song of was an important

demonstration of the way in which smell could be used in olfactory performances to

complementor contrast aural or visual signs and to illustrate words, characters,places and
583
actions It also indicated the suggestivepowers of scent to convey fantasy, ambience

and mood in artistic productions and thus to reveal connections between the material,

visual world of the stageset and the invisible, scentedrealm of the spirit.

Inspired by the revolutionary Symbolist practices he had encountered in France, Hartmann

chose to employ incense in his own creative practices as a way to invoke a mystical, even

dream-like, theatrical ambience that would convey the poetry of the universe. The art

critic Vance Thompson described Buddha, Hartmann's earliest theatrical engagement with

582In other scenes,bright yellow was married to jacinth, pale green with lilies, bright blue and

acacia, bright indigo and lily of the valley, bright violet with orange flower, very light perfume
with jasmine in order to achievethe desiredeffect.
`Live Musical Topics,' New York Times January 17th 1892: 12.
583For reviews of Song of Songssee`StageWhispers,' The Players 2 (1891): 31.
 250

the aestheticsof scent, as `strange,gaudy, fantastic -a thing all color and incense'584The

purposeof the play, Hartmann wrote, was to reveal `the psychological wealth of odors,the

possibilities of an olfactory art' 58sAccording to the script, Buddha was to feature the

mystical appearanceof Nurva, the Magus of Odors. In accordancewith the Symbolist

propensity for abstract suggestivenessrather than descriptive narrative, the significance of

Nurva's presencewas to be conveyed through gesture, costume, music and scent rather

than through dialogue. On entering the stage,bedeckedin jewels and shroudedin black

gauze,Nurva would silently assumea hieratic stancebefore commencing a mysterious,

slow, sweeping gesture with her right hand whilst using her left hand to pluck a few

chords upon her lyre. Delicate scentswould accompanythis music, changing whenever

her right hand repeatedthe mystic sign which signalled a shift in mood.586To describethe

scene,Hartmann wrote:

The melodious colors of perfume subdue the illusion of reality; and the

mind, laden with scent, soars into unknown realms of imagination, where

desire alone is law. And in everchangingsymphoniesthe odors suggestall

sensationand embraceeternity.587

By subduing the `illusion of reality' and opening up the `realms of imagination,' perfume

584Thompson quoted in Knox, George. `Sadakichi Hartmann's Life and Career', Illinois, 1999.

Modem American Poetry, Ed. Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,May 4th
2005, http://www. english.uiuc.edu/maps/Poets/gj/hartinann/life.htm, (accessed9 August 2007).
585Hartmann, Buddha 23. Nurva Powder is a mixture of various fragrant woods and country herbs

like kostom tulsi patra, kachura, kasturi, patchouli leaves,marugh, dhavana.It is used in incenseto

generatea mild-scented smoke.

586Hartmann may have been inspired by Oscar Wilde's vision for Salome, in which braziers

dispenseda new perfume for each emotion registered. Mary Fleischer, `Incense and Decadents:
Symbolist Theatre's Use of Scent,' The Sensesin Performance, eds. Sally Banes and Andre
Lepecki (New York: Routledge, 2007) 90.
587Hartmann, Buddha 19.
 251

acted as a distancing device that framed the performance as ritual and maintained a self-

conscious contemplation of art. In her article `Olfactory Performances' (2001), Sally

Banes has suggested that the olfactory effect in contemporary art has been to `engender an

impression of authenticity -a way to supply the spectator with a vivid slice of the

"real. "`588 However, in Buddha and other Symbolist plays c. 1900, perfume called

attention to itself as a theatrical contrivance, foregrounding its own operation as a semiotic

and symbolic system.

The `everchanging symphonies' of perfume that seemingly wafted from the vibrating

strings of Nurva's lyre were intendedto evoke a successionof increasingly abstractpoetic

images and moods in the imagination of the audience. At first the perfumes had a

representative function, evoking simple recognisable scenes of natural beauty: floral

for `the laughter meadowland'589 However, the

scents of youth o'er green velvety

expressive beauty of scent gradually became more accentuated with aromatic balms

evoking `the silent reveries of night: when human lights extinguish and the moon, pale as

if woven by fairy tales, mourns over dark cypress trees'590Gradually, the representative

quality of the scents receded and recognisable scenes made way for an enhanced

suggestionof forms, colours and emotions for their own expressivesake. Ambergris was

used to invoke Puvis de Chavannes's painterly impressions of a timeless arcadia, the

mysterious reverberations of which infused Buddha with its dreamy silence and

A
sereneness. vision of `the sea of multi-odorous life surges by in bold impressionistic

dreams,strewn with the rafters of despairin variations of ambergris,resembling the colors

588Banes, `Olfactory Performances,' 73.

589Hartmann, Buddha 18.
590
Ibid. 19.
 252

of '
Chavannes. 591Gradually, the perfumes were to become less visually inspiring and

more emotive in emphasis,culminating in a gradual subsidenceinto the pure suggestion

of mood and in the attainment of a state of sublime introspection: `Ebbing at last on

solitary strains of ardent unadulteratedsmells into timeless meditations over the Nothing,

boring deep holes into consciousness- stark still pauseson the wisdom of renunciation -

like the acrid, passionlesslitany of lilies. 092The emotivenessof perfume was central to

Hartmann's revelatory aestheticagenda,with the realisation of exquisite meditation as the

perfect climax. Certainly, incensehad a key role in enhancingthe spiritual nuancesof the

play, which sought to penetrateand convey the inner life of the spirit.

A Trip to Japan

French Symbolist theatre and painting, then, had a clear influence upon Hartmann's

aspirations for an olfactory aesthetic-a concept which he had first outlined in a stage

direction of Buddha and which was developed further in his preparations for A Trip to

Japan.A second influence upon his olfactory ambitions and, in particular, his interest in

the relationship between spiritual introspection and fragranceambience,stemmedfrom his

nostalgic fascination with his own heritage.

Japanese Though born in Nagasaki, Hartmann

had virtually no experience of Japan. His mother Osada died in childbirth and he was

taken to Germany, the homeland of his father, whilst still an infant. At the age of fourteen,

following disagreementswith his father, he was shipped off to America to live with an

uncle. There, he consciously constructeda cross-cultural identity for himself and revelled

591Ibid. 19.
592Ibid.
 253

in the fiction of himself as belonging to the Japanese literati. 593The influences of Japanese

art and culture dominated his creative output and in 1903, he published one of the first

books to consider the influence of Japanese art on western culture 594Throughout his life

he demonstrated an enduring fascination for cultures that placed a different value upon the

senses to the West. A Trip to Japan, with its emphasis upon the olfactory imagination,

clearly resonates with the late nineteenth-century Western fascination for Japanese

incense culture.

The influence of Japanese tastes on Western arts and theatre has been well documented. 595

However, the extent to which this influence led to a questioning of Western assumptions

about the media, purpose and permanence of art has not been fully explored. At the turn of

the twentieth century, a number of western writers, including Lacfadio Hearn, Edwin

Arnold and Francis Brinkley, were fascinated by the Zen conception of spirit to which the

transience of incense appealed. Japanese arts were concerned with the spiritual identity of

all things, by an appreciation of direct, intuitive perception. The Zen sensibility for beauty

was primarily concerned with inner form and objects that spoke directly to the heart.

Recognition of inward form required mental discipline, which was based on the ephemeral

593For a biography of Hartmann see Knox, George. 'Sadakichi Hartmann's Life and Career'.

Illinois, 1999. Modem American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. May 4th 2005. http://www. english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hartmann/life.
htm.
(accessed9 August 2007). Seealso Hartmann's autobiographyHartmann, White Chrysanthemums.
594SeeSadakichi Hartmann, `The Influence of JapaneseArt on Western Civilization, ' JapaneseArt

(Boston: Page, 1903). Seealso 'On Hartmann and JapaneseArt, ' Dial 36 (1904): 92.
595Seefor example Siegfried Wichmann, The JapaneseInfluence on Western Art in the Nineteenth

and Twentieth Centuries (New York Park Lane, 1981).

 254

transience life. 596

Japaneseaesthetic standardsstressedsubtlety, allusiveness
and the of

and restraint. Incense captured these principles and was even thought to help achieve a

stateof meditation in which an enlightenedawarenessof the unity between self and other

could be attained. The appeal of the art of incense lay in its immateriality, which

challengedWestern conceptionsof art597

Lacfadio Hearn, the celebrated aficionado of Japanese folklore and traditions, whose text

and illustration in Ghostly Japan (1905), concerning the story of the Chinese emperor

Wu's ghostly scented vision of his daughter Lady Li, was discussed in the previous

chapter, went some way towards expounding the cult of incense to a Western audience by

bringing together the vogue for Japonaiserie with a growing appreciation of olfactory

culture. Hearn's writings on Japan were influential in shaping Western perceptions of that

nation. However, he also played an important role in bringing about a change in the

596In1899, Charlotte Salwey gave a lecture for the JapanSociety, a London-basedgroup founded

in 1891 for the encouragementof all aspectsof Japaneseart and culture, in which she describedin

aestheticterms the subtlety of Japanesepast-times with their dependencyupon the most delicate
and ephemeralof materials. `The wielding of a paper fan, the floating of a miniature cup or rice
spirit on a flowing tide, ' were activities 'of a graceful, refined, and artistic nature.' Charlotte. M.
Salwey, `On Pastimes and Amusements of the Japanese, ' The Japan Society: Transactions and
Proceedings5 (1898 - 1901): 78.
597Contemporary olfactory artists Helen Paris and Leslie Hill have observed an affinity between

smell and live performance because both are defined by ephemerality. `The `unpindownable'

nature of performance is similar to the indescribable nature of smell. Just as live performance
cannot be captured and reproduced, even in writing, without the documentation changing it, so
smell and the memories it evokes are of the '
moment. Since both smell and performance reflect an
intangibility which defines their very nature, there was a natural progression between the western
fascination for incense-burningas a ritualised art form and the use of incenseand perfumes in live

performances. Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, 'On the Scent', London, 2004. Essencesof London,

com/press/ots.pdf. (accessed21 January2005).

http://www. placelessness.
 255

Western aesthetic appreciation of scent and the olfactory imagination by bringing

attention to Kodo, the Japanese art and philosophy of incense, which involves the making

and ceremonial burning of incense as a cultural pursuit. For Hearn, the importance of

Kodo lay in its character-enhancing properties, which allowed the participant to enrich the

spiritual life through the medium of aroma. One aspect of Kodo, Ko-awase, a game

involving the identification and appreciation of incense, was of particular importance in

this respect. In Ghostly Japan, Hearn observed that `since the most difficult job is to detect

the fine distinctions among burning odours and retain them in the memory, participants

must of necessity calm their minds and maintain a psychic concentration all the while. '598

With the mind cleared, the soul could be segregated from its daily trials, enabling a

sublime mental state to be entered into that was conducive for meditation upon the past,

present and future. It was this state that Hartmann attempted to emulate in Buddha.

Nineteenth-centurydiscussionsabout the statusof smell in western aestheticspersistently

made referenceto the high aestheticstatusafforded to incense culture by the Japanese.In

his article `The Neglected Sense,' published in Nineteenth Century in 1894, Edward

Dillon, who, as seen in chapter one, drew on the biological similarities between the nose

and the ear in order to indicate the potential of perfume to be an art on a par with music,

demonstratedhis fascination for cultures that raised `the olfactory senseto the level of an

599
art'. Enthusedby an assortmentof antique lacquer and metal Japanesecensers,as well

as other incense paraphernaliathat he had cataloguedfor an exhibition at the Burlington

Fine Arts Club, Dillon, who was to go on to publish The Arts of Japan(1906), marvelled

ssaLacfadio Hearn, Ghostly Japan(London: Kegan Paul, 1905) 95.

599Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' 576.
 256

at the Japanesefascination with and intellectualisation of the 600

art of perfume. Informed

by contemporaryWestern psychology researchinto olfactory recall, Dillon was fascinated

by Ko-awase as a form of social refinement or graceful accomplishment that depended

upon the ability to remember and name different kinds of incense. 01He contendedthat

this `incense arrangement game' was evidence that the Ancient Japanesehad found a

in
pleasure perfume that was simply not comparablein the 602
modem west.

During the late nineteenth century, ko-awase was frequently discussed in terms of

synaesthesiaas well as the aesthetic status of smell. For example, players were said to

`listen' for the aroma 603Dillon's own knowledge of the rules of ko-awase was, as he

conceded,limited, being largely dependentupon conjecture, based upon a study of the

collection at hand. Nevertheless, he was aware that the players had to demonstrate

recognition of the constituent scents of various kinds of unspecified incenses, burnt

together or in succession,and to indicate their decisions by means of the counters with

boa
which each participant was supplied The counterswere illustrated with an image of a

musical instrument such as a mouth organ, flageolet, lyre, lute, flute, drum or gong,

prompting Dillon to speculate that the object of the game was to make a cross-modal

600William Anderson, Catalogue of Specimensof JapaneseLacquer and Metal Work (London:

Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1894) 77.

601Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' 574.
602Ibid.
603Ibid. 576.
6" For different accounts of the rules of ko-awase, see: Edwin Arnold, East and West (London:

Longmans, Green, 1896) 17. JasonTrench, `The Land of Incense: Japanthe Country of Perfumes,
Real and Artificial, ' New York Times 3 April 1904: 11. For more recent accounts, see T.
Huratzumia, `The Ancient Art of Incense in Japan,' Soap. Perfumery and Cosmetics 38 (1965).
Silvio A. Bedini, The Trail of Time: Time Measurementwith Incense in East Asia (Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversity Press,1994) 25 - 29.
 257

between the perfumes and the sounds suggested by the images on the counters. 605
analogy

Dillon argued that familiarity with ko-awase had provided the requisite level of nasal

education for the aesthetic cultivation and appreciation of incense in Ancient Japan.

However, in his book Japan, Its History, Arts and Literature, published in 1903, Francis

Brinkley was at pains to demonstrate that the game was significant not only with regard to

the training of olfactory perception but also due to its potential to enhance the faculties of

the olfactory imagination. He described a version of the game in which participants were

invited to suggest the visual images that came to mind on smelling a particular kind of

incense (for example, plum trees or cherry blossom) and then to see how closely these

the the incense had in mind when preparing the blend 606As an
matched visions master

expert in the Japanese language and the author of one of the first English Japanese
-

dictionaries, Brinkley was also at pains to indicate the literary nature of ko-awase. He

explained how in a different version of the game, each player had to put forward a

sensual, poetic or symbolic name which seemed to capture best the essence of the aroma.

The idea was to `listen to the fragrance' and to allow mental images to suggest themselves

that could then be translated into poetic forms. Participants were judged by the erudition

and ideality displayed in their quest for words that encapsulated the qualities of the aroma.

`Kö-awase', he wrote, `was not merely a question of smelling incense: it was a literary

pursuit designed in great part for testing the players' knowledge of classical poetry and

their ability to apply the knowledge. '607What is striking about the poetic names Brinkley

proffered as typical examples `moonlight on a couch, ' or `water from a hill' - is their
-

605Dillon, `A Neglected Sense,' 576.

606F. Brinkley, Japan.Its History. Arts and Literature (Boston: 1901) 5.
607Ibid. 4.
 258

608These words were intended to capture a vision of the essenceof

descriptiveness
visual

a scent. Artists such as Hartmann were fascinated by this Japaneseemphasis on the

emotive potential of scentto physically envelop and transport spectatorsto contemplative,

poetic realms and their works reflected the contemporaryinterest in the inward gazeor the

mind's eye.

`In Perfume Lands'

I see rising out of darkness, a lotus in a vase. Most of the vase is invisible;

but I know that it is bronze, and that its glimpsing handles are bodies of

dragons. Only the lotus is fully illuminated: three pure white flowers, and

five great leaves of gold and green, - gold above, green on the up curling

under-surface, an artificial lotus. It is bathed by a slanting stream of

the darkness beneath and beyond is the dusk of a temple-

sunshine; -

chamber. I do not see the opening through which the radiance pours; but I

am aware that it is a small window shaped in the outline-form of a temple

bell. The reason that I see the lotus - one memory of my first visit to a

Buddhist sanctuary - is that there has come to me an odor of incense. Often

when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter other

sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession with almost

609
painful acuteness.

In Ghostly Japan,Hearn the

emphasised potential of incenseto inspire visual memoriesof

near hallucinogenic clarity. Colour, light and form take precedence in this
place with

608Ibid. 5.
" Hearn, Ghostly Japan19.
 259

account of a scented vision. Vibrancy of colour dominates the mental impression of the

lotus flower, with its gleaming white petals and gold and green leaves set against the black

void of the mind's eye. Sunlight has a liquid tangibility in this description: it bathes the

lotus in a slanting stream; flows around the flower and the vase to give its three

dimensional form and pours through the silhouetted bell-shaped window. The starkness of

the window tracery against the light beyond is suggestive of an image that lingers in the

mind when the eyes are closed. By evoking the concept of memory retention and

suggesting the way in which incense acts as a trigger for the revival of an image, which in

itself sparks off a chain of visual memories, Hearn grounded his writings in current

psychological research.

Indeed,the startling effect of incenseupon the imagery of the mind was a recurring theme

within Hearn's Ghostly Japan. Incense, he argued, was the very essence of Japanese

culture. It even marked the passageof time as geishawere paid by the number of incense

sticks burnt and hence the amount of time spententertaining. It was integral to his senseof

place. For Hearn, sensuousmemories of `silent shadowed avenues leading to weird old

shrines; - mossed flights of worn steps ascending to temples that moulder above the

clouds; - joyous tumult of festival nights; - sheetedfuneral-trains gliding by in a glimmer

lanterns; household in fisherman's huts on far wild coasts' were

of - murmur of prayer

both fused with and inspired by the all-pervading scentof incense.

It is almost ubiquitous, - this perfume of incense. It makes one element of

the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor of the Far East. My
...

many experiences of travelling in Japan - strange impressions of sound as

well as of sight, - remain associated in my own memory with that

 260

fragrance610

Hearn found a unique richness in this exotic Eastern odour, which for him embodied the

visual and auditory delights of Japan.

Odour-cued memory or the potential for smell to spur mental imagery was an important

factor in the appeal of scent as a creative medium amongst artists of the period. Though

the concept of a perfume concert was novel, Hartmann's Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes,

like other contemporary artistic engagements with the sense of smell, from Waterhouse's

The Soul of the Rose to the revival of interest in the art of Kodo, played with the capacity

of scent to stir the visual imagination. In particular, it was inspired by the ancient Japanese

fascination with the emotive potential of scent, like music, to excite impressions on the

human mind. The perfume concert reflected a deep-seated interest in the idea of the

inward gaze and was formed by a layman's understanding of scientific research into

`association, ' the idea, discussed in chapter two, that a sensory impression could trigger an

associated mental response and that in particular, a smell could prompt a related visual

memory. He regarded his art as an investigation into the perfection of `an art of odor ...

[that would] produce vague mental pictures or visions' 6'1

In order to researchpopular opinion about the peculiar evocativenessand suggestiveness

of different scents, Hartmann invited friends to participate in a number of trial perfume

sequencesin the weeks leading up to the perfume concert. His aim was to compose a

perfume melody that would inspire a relatively complex but succinct series of visions.

These experiments reflected his interest in the cultural valence of smell and the way in

610
Ibid. 20.
611Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 226 27.
-
 261

which the act of perception is both individually and culturally mediated. It was important

to strike the right balance between poetic vision and obscurity, authorial intention and

audience understanding. Considerable trial and error was therefore necessary before a

specific perfume sequence was settled upon. Finding the right series of perfumes to

convey the visions he had in mind was problematic because his own ideas about the norms

of olfactory association were rarely consistent with the audience consensus. Simple

associations such as the scent of hay with hayfields were readily made but, he claimed,

only six per cent of participants realised that the scent of Peau d'Espagne was intended to

Spain 612Attempts to convey more complex series of visual impressions were not
suggest

always successful. For example, on exposure to the scents of ribbons of Bengal, musk and

cinnamon, the audience failed to envision, as Hartmann had hoped, `some Carmen

kneeling in the darkened aisles with a red carnation in her hair'. Failing to make the

cognitive link between these smells and the rather formulaic, stereotyped and seemingly

obvious idea Hartmann had in mind, the audience was principally reminded of the twilight

heavy flower. 613

atmosphere of a church and of the odor of a tropical

Hartmann believed that odour had the potential to be revelatory in an abstractor figurative

way, evoking certain moods or ambiences, existential states and intuitive, prelingual

understandings.He perceived that olfactory meanings can be attributed in the absenceof

relevant intrinsic qualities, arguing, for example, that the `subtle, strangely aromatic yet

rather stagnantquality of neroli-oil arousesin many, vague sensationsof sadness,a desire

to dream, quite independent of Italy and the south' and the Mediterranean orange

612
Ibid. 222- 24.
613Ibid. 223.
 262

blossoms from which the scent was extracted. 614Nevertheless, in practice, his olfactory

semantics remained rather more literal than emotive in nature and his trial audiences were

generally invited to make very direct transpositions between odour and the visual memory

of the olfactory source. Unlike Buddha, in which perfumes were intended to evoke

emotional or intuitive responses, the perfume concert provoked cognitive associations that

were directly related to cultural expectations with regard to a scent's place of cultivation,

natural existence or mode of production and consumption. For example, in one

experiment he attempted to convey a very specific train of thoughts using a succession of

the scents of Juniper, Civet, Violet, Strawberry, New-mown Hay and Crab Apple, in

which interesting assumptions are made about the male gender of the subject.

The first perfume of the seriesreadily suggesteda stroll in the woods. Civet

introduced to the Western aesthetics the always absolutely necessary,

feminine element, some "soncy maid," which the author encountersin the

copses. Strolling side by side, they search for violets and the first

strawberriesbeneath the brambles, to return at last to the open fields and to

homewardsalong the apple orchardsin full bloom.615

wander

In this sequence, scents inspired a relatively complex set of specific cultural associations.

The smell of Juniper evoked imagery of a woodland walk; civet evoked the female figure

and the potential of a romantic encounter; the fragrances of violet and strawberry evoked

the wild plants that the couple pick, whilst the scents of hay and apple blossoms suggested

fields and orchards respectively. Within this narrative, the sequence of pictures that form

in the mind's eye picks up momentum as each scent-inspired image evokes its own

associations, acting, as Piet Vroon has suggested in Smell: The Secret Seducer (1997), as

614Hartmann, 'In Perfume Land,' 221.

615Ibid. 222.
 263

kind `starter motor'. 16For example, the image of the `soncy maid' is followed up
a of

with the suggestion of the male author, the image of strawberries leads to an idea of

brambles, whilst the image of open fields inspires the image of walking homewards. As in

Against Nature, scent inspires a seduction scenario, in which the male participant

imagines the presence of a sexually-available female. However, unlike Huysmans, who

described the involuntary arousal of a sequence of scent-inspired visions of highly-

sexualised women, Hartmann attempted to use scents to set the imagination in motion

617
upon a very precise, predefined path.

Nevertheless, it was the polyvalency of smell that made uniformity of interpretation

difficult for Hartmann to achieve. Anthony Synnott, in The Body Social (1993), has

argued that `just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too are aromas prone to the

idioysncratic whimsical whiff and to cultural nasal expectation.'618Indeed, as John

Whitmore has noted in Directing PostmodernTheater (1994):

The semiotics of olfaction is complicated by the knowledge that

individuals perceive odor differently in terms of their presence,strength

and meanings. It is also likely that individual spectators will have

different recollections and meanings arising out of contacts with

individual smells. There is no one-to-one denotative referent between a

616Piet Vroon, Smell: The Secret Seducer,trans. Paul Vincent (New York: Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, 1997) 103.

617Huysmans,Against Nature 85.
618Anthony Synnott, The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society (London: Routledge, 1993)

195.
 264

single odor and each spectator'sexperience619

Hartmann was acutely aware of this, noting that, for example:

Cedarwoodhas to me the mouldering smell peculiar to houseswhich have

remained uninhabited for years, but it reminded one person in the

audienceof a shipment of Oriental goods and another of a pencil factory

in Long Island.620

Nevertheless, whilst contemporary olfactory artists Leslie Hill and Helen Paris have

utilised odours in their recent performanceart as a meansof tapping into the rich veins of

personalassociationheld by their audiences,Hartmann, as we have seen,seemedintent on

maintaining an authorial control of his audience's thought processes,and to somehow

avoid the unpredictable,personaland emotive aspectof smell. 2'

As Kristen Barr-Shepherd has observed, olfactory art can offer `a powerful emotive

experience yet it can also distract, unsettle, and disturb, perhaps also threatening one's

concentration on the production by intruding intensely personal recollections, long

622
repressedand now powerfully released' This threat to authorial intention was an issue

that Hartmann acknowledged but he remained bound by the idea espousedby Kant that

the aestheticmust always appeal to universal and not individual 623

tastes He justified his

desire to somehowquell the idiosyncrasiesof personalreminiscenceby arguing that those

private effects of the olfactory imagination are `absolutely futile as far as the

619Jon Whitmore, Directing Postmodern Theater: Shaping Signification in Performance (Ann

Arbor: University of Michegan Press, 1994) 193.

620Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 224.
621Hill and Paris, `On the Scent'
622Barr-Shepherd,"`Mise En Scent"', 152 59.
-
623Hartmann, 'In Perfume Land,' 221.
 265

determination of aesthetic law is concerned'624He believed that in order to enjoy the

status of Art, the perfume concert neededto draw upon a universal olfactory semantics:

the idea that, for example, `Rosemary conjures up in every mind, acquainted with New

England scenery, an old homestead with its flower beds before the front porch.'625

Nevertheless, he was acutely conscious of the difficulty of restraining the effects of

private symbolism and the capacity for smell to evoke recollections and sentimentsat a

highly personal level. In the light of this, the very simple, literal and formulaic routines

practiced by Hartmann can be seenas an attempt to negotiate and resolve these aesthetic

tensions.Paradoxically, however, it seemsthat the resulting senseof stark representation,

as opposedto emotive revelation, ultimately prevented for the audiencethe creation of an

aura of aestheticfeeling or artistic reverence.

As his plans for the perfume concert developed,Hartmann becameincreasingly interested

in creating a series of smellscapesthat would aromatically impart the unique characterof

place. The concert was intended to inspire a sense of the sublime, appealing to the

`odoresque' as the olfactory counterpart to the picturesque and forming a kind of `nasal

to
tourism' complement the 626
romantic gaze. The routine finally settled upon was of a trip

to Japan, in which a series of eight perfumes would convey visions of the stagesof the

journey, allowing two minutes for each scentto form a `perfect sensatorypicture.962'The

perfumeswere:

White Rose to suggestthe departurefrom New York, large bunchesof roses

624mid. 224.
625Ibid. 221.
626On `Smellscapes' and `Nasal Tourism' see Graham M. S. Dann and Jens Kristian Steen

Jacobsens,`Tourism Smellscapes,' Tourism Geographies5.1 (2003): 3- 25.

627`Newest Public Amusement, ' 32.
 266

brought to the steamerto the departing tourists; Violet told of a sojourn on

the Rhine, Almond of SouthernFrance,Bergamot of Italy, Cinnamon of the

Orient, Cedarwoodof India and Carnation of the arrival in Japan628

In the light of Drobnick's article `Toposmia: Art Scent and Interrogations of Spatiality'

published in Angelaki in 2002, an account of the spatial location of odours and their

relation to particular notions of place, it is clear that the concert took inspiration from the

numerous smell-saturatedtravel accounts of the period in which, as in Ghostly Japan,

different places were seento be distinguishableby their characteristic odours629As will

be seen in the following chapter, painting, travel reportage, popular literature and dance

were frequently redolent with exotic nasal encounters,as artists and writers offered richly

evocative descriptionsof smells as spatially orderedor place-relatedthat existed alongside

and frequently intermingled 630

with sight-seeingnarratives. Hartmann's perfume concert,

in which the scentsof cinnamon, cedarwoodand carnation were designedto aromatically

capture the essenceof the Near East, India and Japanrespectively, thus suggesteda kind

of olfactory analogueto the romantic gaze.

Hartmann can be seento have set himself up in the role of `flaireur' or olfactory flaneur, a

term coined by Douglas Porteous in Landscapesof the Mind and which Drobnick has

discussedin the Smell Culture Reader(2006)631Yet Hartmann had not in fact travelled to

all of these places and did not presume that his audience had either. It was not his

intention to convey the idiosyncrasies of his own olfactory imagination. Neither did he

628Hartmann,
`In Perfume Land,' 224.
629Drobnick, `Toposmia,' 31 46.
-
630Porteous,`Smellscapes,' 359.
631Jim Drobnick, Smell Culture Reader(Oxford, New York: Berg, 2006) 163-5.
 267

seek to allow the audience free rein to recall journeys based on personal life-experiences

of the perfumes being projected. Rather than attempting to revive personal tourist

memories amongst an audience with disparate travel experiences, he sought to draw upon

a more abstract olfactory semiotics in which smells were integral to, and could even stand

for, a geographical ambience, whether of a particular locale, a specific country or region

or even a topographically imprecise, homogenised fabrication of the Orient. In much the

same way as writers such as Eleanore Tupper, author of The Scent of Heather (1895)

discussed in chapter two, used descriptions of scent in their appeals to collective memory,

Hartmann's aim was to convey a universally accessible tour itinerary, based upon a

system of culturally-acknowledged metaphorical and symbolical associations and

632Thus, in A Trip to Japan, cultural codes of olfactory signification

meanings of smells

are drawn upon, in which, for example, the scent of cinnamon acts both as an index of the

Orient and as a symbol of the Oriental, invoking or encoding a generalised idea of the

East. Moreover, since the cinnamon is synthesised and artificially disseminated into the

theatre space, this scent acts as an icon or sign resembling or standing in for the smells of

the Orient.

`Can the sameperfume be counted on to suggestthe same vision to any two persons,or

indeed to suggestanything at all? ' asked Irving Babbitt in the New Laokoon (1910), in

which artists were urged not to confuse artistic genres through the use of cross-modal

metaphors and the interchange of sensevocabularies. Referring to Hartmann's perfume

he
concert, wrote:

any attempt of this kind to arrive at a collective bower of dreams,to have a

632 Margaret Elenora Tupper, The Scent of the Heather, ed. Margaret Elenora. (London:

Leadenhall, 1895).
 268

whole audiencerespond in a similar manner to olfactory suggestivenessis

foredoomed to failure. It is likely to appeal not to the audiences' senseof

smell, but to a far more wholesome sense,its senseof humor. And this I

understandis what happenedin the New York 633

experiment.

Given Hartmann's intellectual probing into the cultural and personal associationsof smell

and his efforts to arrange scents so that they would appeal to collective memory, it is

somewhat ironic that when the concert finally came to be publicly performed, critics

pounced upon what they perceived as the disparity between authorial intention and

audienceunderstanding.In creating a seriesof simulation smellscapesthat replicated the

scents of place, Hartmann aspired to a level of fidelity that would blur the boundaries

betweenreality and its representationand endow the audiencewith a senseof presencein

an olfactory-mediated landscape of the mind. However, newspaper records suggestthat

despiteHartmann's meticulous planning, the audiencewas unable to decodethe olfactory

signifiers. In its review of the concert, The New York Times rejected any pretensionsthat

A Trip to Japanhad successfullydelivered the fantasyexcursion so boldly promised in the

original grand It
announcement. claimed, for example, to report the heckling of a couple

of particularly vociferous audience members: `Hey Professor! [it] reminds me of the

...

time the gas meter leaked' and from another `I smell it now, its Barren Island! '634The

reports in the New York Times and the New York Daily Tribune of the event's demiseon

its opening night at the New York Theatre was typical of the whimsical, goading response

of the press to Hartmann's efforts to nurture the olfactory arts, in which the gags made

about the vulgarity of odour, the cultural neglect of smell and the outlandishnessof

633Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon: An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts (Boston and New

York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910) 182.

634'Perfume Concert Fails,' 5.
 269

Hartmann's intentions were seeminglyrelentless.Yet there is an important cultural insight

to be found in the hilariously tongue-in-cheekcritical reception of the concert in the New

York papers, which can be seen to reflect arguments in circulation at that time

surroundingthe legitimacy of smell as a vehicle for artistic expression.

Scent and Psychological Aesthetics

In order to make senseof the critical responseto Hartmann's perfume concert, it is also

necessaryto consider the role of the psychology of the memory image in nineteenth-

century aesthetics. Discussions about olfaction's place in aesthetics hinged upon the

contentious issue of the ability to revive mental impressions of smell 635As Th6odule

Armand Ribot, the first professor of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne,explained

in the Psychology of the Emotions (1896 tr. 1897), `aestheticactivity is that form of play

which uses images [recollections] as its creative materials.'636Since art was dependent

upon the creativity of the imagination, only those senseswhich could be revived in the

form of mental impressions could be aesthetic in nature. In other words, if a sensory

impression could not be mentally revived, it could not be imagined and so could play no

role in artistic creation. Since, as seenin chapter two, the memory retention of odour was

63$For example, H. T. Finck argued in his article `The Aesthetic Value of the Senseof Smell' of

1880 that although the memory retention of the senseof smell was not innately found in civilised

man, it should be cultivated so as to promote its role within the artistic imagination. `After many
trials it will be found that the fragranceof flowers can be recalled almost as vividly as their forms
and colors, and that a correspondingamount of pure aestheticenjoyment can be derived from such
ideal odors.' With effort, he argued,smell can persist in the memory and thus become the 'material
for the mental laboratory of genius.' Finck, `The Aesthetic Value of the Senseof Smell,' 798.
636Theodule Armand Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions (London: Walter Scott, 1897) 351.
 270

a moot point c. 1880 - 1905,the role of smell in aestheticswas also up for debate637

Ribot, whose research paid particular attention to the physical and material nature of

mental activity, went some way towards identifying a relationship between sensorial

memory, the ability to reconstruct past memories into imaginative new forms, aesthetics

and the fine arts. Given smell's low aestheticstatus, he was keen to determine whether

smell could be recalled at all, either spontaneouslyor at will. A survey that he had

undertakenindicated that as many as sixty per cent of participants were able to recall both

olfactory and gustatory impressions. `Forty per cent claimed to revive no image; forty-

eight per cent revived some, whilst twelve per cent declared themselves capable of

reviving all, or nearly all, at will. i638Astonished that anyone should claim to be able to

recall smell sensations,he began to explore the modes by which these odours were

recalled. Of those people that claimed to be able to revive olfactory impressions,he found

that only a few were able to do so unaccompanied by any visual, tactile or other

39
representation. In the majority of cases, the mental representation of odour was

dependentupon the excitation of a correspondingvisual image such as that of a flower or

a bottle of scent. `Many have first to evoke the visual image, and in time, succeedin

exciting the olfactory one.'"0 However, whilst for some,a single visual or verbal sign was

637For a discussion of the debateson olfactory recall see JamesMcCosh, Psychology Cognitive

Powers(London: Macmillan, 1886) 103 - 06.

'3$Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions 146.
639For example, one participant who claimed to have strong olfactory recall, responded to the

question `Can you perceive, here and now, the scent of roses, and if so, of what kind? ' saying, `I
perceive it in genere; but, on further persevering, I find it to be the scent of withered roses. The
visual representationoccurs afterwards.' Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions 145.
610`Two individuals affirm that, on reading the description of a landscape, they immediately

perceive the characteristicodours.' Ibid. 156.

 271

sufficient to arouse olfactory sensations, for others, odour could only be recalled as one

part of a sequence of revived impressions and even then might be only a very faint

sensation 64' For one of Ribot's participants, odour sensations could only be reawakened

having pursued a complex chain of tactile, visual and auditory memories MZ Having thus

found the ability to recall odours to be almost entirely dependent upon other sensory cues,

Ribot argued that smell had only a minor role within the imagination. He concluded that

since odours are `called up with great difficulty in the memory, incapable of being

grouped either in simultaneities or in series ... [they] can supply neither an art in rest nor

in M3
an art movement'.

Aesthetics and the psychology of memory was also closely bound for the art historian,

aestheticianand fiction-writer, Vernon Lee, whose interest, as seenin chapter two, in the

relationship between smell, memory and ghosts informed her stories of the
644
supematural. In The Beautiful (1913), an introduction to physiological aesthetics,Lee

641Ibid. 352.
642To demonstratethis point, he cited the caseof a 28 year-old woman who, by sitting and closing

her eyes,was able to rehearsein her mind the experienceof being in a hospital waiting room, to the

extent that she could even smell the odours of the ward.
Not half a minute passes between the evocation and the clear and absolute

reconstruction of the scene. First, I feel the carpet under my feet, then I see its
pattern of red and brown roses; then the table with the books lying on it, their
colour and style of binding, then the windows and through them the branchesof the
trees of which I hear the soundsas they beat against the glass; lastly the peculiar
atmosphereof the room, its unmistakablesmell.
Ibid. 156.
64;It is not clear if Ribot is referring here to early moving image. Ibid.
6" For example in her short story, Phantom Lover of 1890, she described the haunted yellow

drawing room where Mrs Oke spends so much of her time musing upon her fateful ancestral
 272

argued that viewing art is a mental and corporeal experience and that intellectual and

emotional reactions, especially `empathy,

' are key to 5
art appreciation. She based her

aestheticjudgement of smell upon the capacity of odour to form structured compositions

and upon the degreeof vibrancy of smell within the imagination, arguing that smells and

tastes,unlike soundsand colours, could not be groupedinto `shapes,' and thus are difficult

to
to contemplateor mentally organise into 646
complex compositional arrangements Just

as odours eluded shape,form and thus also sensorialcontrol by diffusing invisibly into the

atmosphereand extending beyond formal boundaries, they also seemedentirely resistant

to intellectual processing. She argued that whilst scents could be powerfully suggestive

and have an important influence on mood, they could not be classed as aesthetic in

nature`4' Perfumes, she argued,lay beyond the remit of the beautiful.

Though many other writers took varying views on this theme, Walter Boughton Pitkin, a

psychologist at Columbia University from 1905 - 1909, was one of the few sciencewriters

of his period to offer a focused investigation into the conventional understandingthat the

to
arts appeal us overwhelmingly through visual and auditory modes. His article `Reasons

for the Slight Esthetic Value of the Lower Senses,' published in the Psychological Review

history as permeated with `a heavy atmosphere,redolent with strange scents and associations'.
Vernon Lee, The PhantomLover: A FantasticStory. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1886) 6.
645Hilary Fraser, `Women and the Ends of Art History: Vision and Corporeality in Nineteenth-

Century Critical Discourse, ' Victorian Studies 42.1 (Autumn) (1998): 77 -100.
646 Vernon Lee, The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics (Cambridge:

CambridgeManuals, 1913) 27.

6" For example in her short story, Phantom Lover of 1890, she described the haunted yellow

drawing room where Mrs Oke, spends so much of her time musing upon her fateful ancestral

history, as permeated with 'a heavy atmosphere, redolent with strange scents and associations'.

Lee, The Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story. 6.

 273

in 1906, was the most rigorous study to focus on the veracity of this contention. Pitkin

indicated a correlation between aesthetic effectiveness and the ease and vividness of sense

M8 It was not coincidental, he

recollections argued, that the high arts of painting, sculpture,

music and dance were dependent upon visual, auditory and kinaesthetic qualities -

qualities that are apt to be revived most powerfully in the memory. Perfume and cookery

were not generally included amongst the fine arts on the basis that olfactory and gustatory

stimuli are not readily brought to bear in the memory and imagination. In an extension of

this argument, he went on to pursue the idea that individual differences in aesthetic

sensibility directly corresponded to the powers of sensory recall. He cited the case of a

female student with a poor auditory memory, who `often gloated over the smell of rain in

memory' and considered scents to be more beautiful than music. 49 Smells, he argued,

could be more or less aesthetic in nature, according to the strength of their revival for

different persons. Whilst remoteness from base animal functions and the potential for

universal rather than individual appreciation were cited as key factors in determining the

aesthetic, for Pitkin, memory retention was an `esthetic a priori, whose presence makes

the esthetic attitude possible (but not necessary) and whose absence inhibits that attitude

totally' 650

Though Hartmann was less concernedwith the role of the smell in the imagination than on

the imagination, his perfume concert demonstrateda related interest in the memory image

and the associationalflow of thought. It is clear that his attempt to realise an art of odours

648 Walter B. Pitkin, 'Reasons for the Slight Esthetic Value of the Lower Senses,' The

Psychological Review 8 (1906): 372.

649Pitkin, `Reasonsfor the Slight EstheticValue of the Lower Senses,' 372.
650mid. 376.
 274

was motivated by a self-driven intellectual challenge to understand the psychology of

smell. He confessedto having been intrigued by `the persistent hints given by authors in

regard to psychological influences of odors on human emotion, and the possibility of

raising perfumery to an art of some pretension'. At the same time, he felt frustrated by

these speculative and impractical suggestions,which he found amounted to little more

than `individual impressionsderived from the enjoyment of someperfume, or vague ideas

about how this new field of aesthetic sensationsmight be 51

cultivated'. The scientific

literature on the physiology of odours did not resolve his questions,being more concerned

with the chemical compositions of odour and comparative studies of the olfactory organs

than with the psychological impact of smell. Whilst he does not seem to have been

familiar with the work of Ribot or other experimental psychologists such as Edward

Titchener, whose investigations into the supremacyof smell for inducing visual memories

were discussedin chapter two, Hartmann's engagementwith olfactory aestheticscan be

seenas evidenceof the popular disseminationof this specialist, scientific discourse.

Symphonies in Odour

The New York Times greeted Hartmann as a composer dedicated to the production of `an

to descriptive 652 Hartmann courted

artistic entity similar a melody or a piece of music'

musical analogies such as this, in order to draw attention to the aesthetic richness of

perfume and its potential to reach an equivalent status within the arts. Yet clearly, one

reason why Hartmann's attempt at orchestrating odours into an art-form was contentious

in the critical press was that it controversially suggested the potential for perfume

651Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 217.

652`NewestPublic Amusement,' 32.
 275

sequencesto inspire logical ideas and judgements. Attempts to foster an art of odours

through the creation of a parallel systemto musical notation had always been perceivedas

idiosyncratic and had never enteredthe mainstream.For example, Ribot derided what he

regardedas the `fanciful' endeavoursof the perfumer SeptimusPiesseto class scentsinto

53
music-like scales. In the Psychology of the Emotions, he argued that Piesse's attempts

to classify smells according to `pitch' was flawed becauseit assumedknowledge about the

vibration range of odours that simply did not exist. As far as scientists were aware, he

argued `odours are not associatedwith one another; they have an isolated and individual

character; they contract no relations, either of space or time, among '

themselves. He

explained that, unlike sights, which arrangethemselvesinto complex aggregatesthat make

up the componentsof a memorable view or soundswhich form sequences`every term of

'
which awakens another, odours were detached and unrelated, without shadings and

graduations into each other, and so were difficult to recall. One could not recall or

mentally create an odour composition in the way that one could hum a musical scale, or

composea tune in one's head. Unlike sights and sounds,which fostered associationsand

thus lent themselvesto sequencing,the psychological conditions of smell rendered them

unsuitable for a place in a constructive schemeor work of art654

Ideas about shape and beauty were central to nineteenth-century aesthetics.As Francis

Kovach has argued in an article on `The Role of the Sensesin Aesthetic Experience'

(1970), in Western philosophy, beauty has traditionally been limited to that which has

qualities that are not only clearly discernable from each other but
parts, components or

653Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions 158.

654Ibid. 352. On this theme, see also `Physiologic Psychology of Smells,' Journal of American

Medical Association 30 (1898): 99.

 276

that can also be arranged and organised into a whole, in terms of quantitative and

qualitative as well as spatial and or chronological relations 655Indeed, in his Teacher's

Handbook of Psychology (1886), JamesSully arguedthat aestheticgratification lay in the

mental activity of discovering the `pleasingrelations' between the sensuousmaterials that

madeup a `worthy whole'.

This element of aesthetic pleasure is realised in the appreciation of relations

of contrast and harmony among colours, of beauties of space and form as it

presents itself to the eye, including symmetry and proportion; of beauties of

time-form, or the pleasing groupings of sounds in succession, including

rhythm, meter, together with those arrangements of musical tone which we

656
call tune or melody.

In many ways, the perfume concert was important in its attempt to disprove standard

reasoning about the elusive, irregular nature of odour. By drawing a perfume-music

analogy, Hartmann attempted to negate the popular belief that smell defied order and

arrangement in terms of clearly discernible spatial and temporal arrangements. Annick Le

Guerer has argued, in `Olfaction and Cognition: A Philosophical and Psychoanalytic

View' (2002), that because `smell and taste, unlike hearing, have the great disadvantage of

not being intrinsically spatial, ' they are unable to represent nature, which can only be

accurately conceived in spatial terms. `They have not reached, moreover, the same

organisation as sounds, and therefore cannot furnish any play of subjective sensation

essKovach, `The Role of the Sensesin Aesthetic Experience,' 99.

6$6JamesSully, Teacher's Handbook of Psychology (New York: Appleton, 1886) 336.
 277

comparableto music in interest.'657What is exciting, then, about the perfume concert is

precisely this aim to arrange perfumes in such a way as to conjure the pleasures of

suggestionand imagination and to representlandscapesin the same evocative manner as

`a piece of descriptive music' 658

The minor but developing interest of the scientific community in olfaction accentuated

popular awareness of the arcane nature of the sense of smell at that time. Just as European

scientists such as Hendrik Zwaardemaker, discussed in chapter one, were turning their

attention to issues of odour classification, European writers such as Hartmann, Huysmans

and Nordau were becoming alert to the apparent neglect of osmic laws. It was at the

precise historical moment that the mutual relations of odour molecules began to receive

scientific notice that artists and writers became alert to the comparatively inchoate and

unstudied condition of smell. The German science fiction writer Kurd Lasswitz imagined

a time in which the science of osphresiology was complete, enabling olfactory art to reach

a state of perfection that surpassed that of music. Images from the Future (1875) is a story

set in 2371 about Aromasia Duftemann, a distinguished perfume performer and

659Her accomplishments on the ododium (an instrument designed in 2094 by

composer.

Naso Odorato, to replace music, which had become too perfect for the human ear), are so

remarkable that she is likened to the greatest pianist that ever lived. By touching the keys

657Amick Le Guerer, 'Olfaction and Cognition: A Philosophical and Psychoanalytic View, '

Olfaction, Taste and Co ing

tion, ed. Catherine Rouby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002) 11.
658Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 218.
659Kurk Lasswitz, `Bis Zum Nullpunkt Des Seins,' Bilder Aus Der Zunkunft (Breslau:

Schottlaender,1878). Fischer, William B. `GermanTheories of ScienceFiction: JeanPaul, Kurd

Lasswitz, and After. ' ScienceFiction Studies3 1976),www. edu/sfs/backissues/10/fischerl0art.
htm
(accessed4 August 2007).
 278

of her ododium, she could release scents into the odoratorium with exquisite effect 660In

Against Nature Des Esseintes also possesses an unparalleled understanding of odours.

Before creating his fragrant tour de force, he sets out to `study the grammar, master the

syntax of aromas [and] fully assimilate the rules that control them'. He learns to recognise

the proportions and constitution of a composite aroma and explain the psychology of their

blending. By flaunting his ability to master `the arcane of this, the most neglected of all

arts, ' he demonstrates that he is an artist fully sympathetic to the potential and the limits of

his medium. 661 In Huysmans's Against Nature, the aesthetic status of a perfume is

dependent upon the olfactory comprehension of the grand artist or olfactory genius that

composes it.

660Lasswitz's ododian resembles a description in the New York Times in September 1902 of the

'patent smeller or olfactory manipulator. ' Hartmann, the paper imagined, would be releasing scents
into the auditorium 'by a series of stops and valves very much after the manner of an automatic
...
piano player ... [and would thus play] upon the senses of his audience much as a great musician

sways the listeners with tonal melodies. ' `Newest Public Amusement, ' 32. It is also reminiscent of
the collection of liqueur casks that make up Des Esseintes's `mouth organ'. The taps are like the
keys of an organ, which rather than emitting a note of music, release drips of creme de menthe,

vespetro, rum, curaco, Benedictine etc. He combines the tastes by playing 'a drip of this or that,
playing interior symphonies to himself, and thus providing his gullet with sensations analogous to
those which music affords the ear. ' Each liqueur corresponds synaesthesically to the sound of a

particular instrument. Dry curacao is likened to the piercing, velvety note of the clarinet.
Eventually he is able to play `silent melodies on his tongue, soundless funeral marches of great

pomp and circumstance, and to hear in his mouth solos of creme de menthe and duos of vespetro

and of rum. ' He is even able to translate actual pieces of music into gustatory sensations. He
follows the composer `step by step and reorders his thoughts, his effects, and his subtleties, through

close associations or contrasts, through roughly estimated or carefully calculated blends or

liqueurs. ' Huysmans, Against Nature 39 - 40. See also the Scent Organ in Aldous Huxley's Brave

New World (1932)

661Huysmans,Against Nature 95.
 279

In his evaluative essay `In Perfume Lands' of 1913, Hartmann outlined the stepsthat he

had taken to determine the nature of human olfactory interaction. Whilst actively

promoting the music-perfume analogy, Hartmann believed that `if perfumery was ever to

be carried to a higher pitch of perfection, its poetic effectiveness must be based on the

more pronounced physiological characteristicsof smell itself and not on laws borrowed

from some other art '662For this reason,he had assumeda scientific role, undertaking a
.

number of experimentsbetween Septemberand November 1902 at the New York Theatre,

the Carnegie Lyceum and other venues. Armed with an array of perfume-drenched

spongesand giant atomisers, Hartmann had set out to unlock the physiological mysteries

of smell, the knowledge of which, he believed, would lift mankind to new aesthetic

heights.

By garnering information about the physiological action of odours, Hartmann had devised

what he regarded as principles or scientific guidelines for an effective olfactory art, from

which he was able to hone his concert idea. One experiment that he undertook involved

seating his friends in different rows of the auditorium in order to time how long it took

different odours to travel from the stage to the last row of the balcony under varied

conditions. He learnt that different perfumes diffuse into the atmosphere at different

speeds.Whilst almond reached the balcony in ten seconds,white rose took sixty-five

seconds and others as much as ninety seconds.This knowledge was factored into the

structuring of the piece. From similar tests,he discoveredthat:

in an aesthetic distribution one has to be careful to select the sweet and

delicate perfumes for the introduction, to use the intermediate ones for the

662Hartmann, `In Perfume Land,' 218.

 280

developmentof the theme, and to reservethe sharpestand heaviest tones to

the last, as they are apt to deadenthe sensibilities of the others.

It was on the basis of his discovery that most scentscould be smelt for up to two minutes

before the audiencewere hit by olfactory fatigue that he decided that a sequenceof eight

perfumesreleasedat the rate of one every two minutes would form the basis of his sixteen

minute set. Ventilation was also found to be necessaryto clear the air between scenesand

prevent olfactory fatigue as well as to dispersethe scentsthrough the theatre. In addition,

he discovered that it was essentialto choosevery distinct odours in order to ensurethat

each new scent was easily perceptible. He also concluded that the nose is incapable of

distinguishing more than one smell at once and that `an aestheticenjoyment in the realm

of smells can ... be derived only from a successionof single odors, so arrangedthat their

sequence forms an artistic unity, vaguely resembling a melody.s663Nevertheless, the

monotony of this simple arrangement could be relieved through the use of contrast,

repetition and variation of intensity. Hartmann declared each of these findings to be

important scientific breakthrough, with significant consequencesfor the arts. With this

knowledge, he was able to ascertain practical matters such as the optimum modes of

perfume dissemination and the requisite perfume concentrationsneededto scent a concert

hall. Nevertheless,for writers such as Lasswitz, the likelihood of scientists cracking the

scienceof osphresiology anytime soon seemedso remote that olfactory art belonged only

to the domain of futuristic novels.

It is significant that at the conclusion of Lasswitz's Images of the Future the aesthetic

magnitude of the ododim is undermined through the ultimate collapse of olfactory art. In

663Ibid. 218.
 281

the story, Aromasia quarrels with her scientist fiance, Oxygen, over whether the ododian

represents a triumph for art or science. In order to prove her contribution to the history and

progress of the arts, she holds a grand performance of her magnum opus, but this is

wrecked when Oxygen exploits the physics of odour, penetrating the ododian with

sternutatory gases that spontaneously combust and set the instrument 664
ablaze. The sense

of smell, which had been elevated in the novel's sensory hierarchy, makes a dramatic

symbolic descent when the concert hall is razed to the ground and chaos reins. Likewise,

Hartmann's critics destabilised the idea that olfactory art could equal the status of music

by dispelling the myth of a carefully constructed perfume symphony. For example, the

New York Times challenged the relevance of smell for the conceptualisation and

conveyance of ideas by parodying Piesse's widely discredited odophone to imply that the

concert was going to stink. Hartmann, they observed, would be using the piercing note of

burning horsehair to suggest the high F 665In addition, it was implied that due to the lack

of contractual relations between smells, the concert would present a cacophony of foul

odours rather than a melodic harmony of scent. In another article, metaphors drawing

upon the artistic handling of paint on canvas were used to describe Hartmann's

organisation and application of perfumes. Despite his efforts to achieve `fine effects of

chiaroscuro by the judicious use of light and shade in odors', the outcome, the critic said,

was one of crude blends such as `new-mown hay and patchouli or lavender and onions. '666

By implementing the poetics of disgust through imagery of pollution and nauseating

' Lasswitz, `Bis Zum Nullpunkt Des Seins.' Cited in William Mccartney, Olfaction and Odours:
An OsphresiologicalEssay(Berlin, Heidelberg,New York: Springer-Verlag, 1968) 186.
665`NewestPublic Amusement,' 32.
666'Perfume Concert Fails,' 5.
 282

stench, critics highlighted the gulf between Hartmann's noble ambition and the abject

nature of smell as an artistic media. 667As Stallybrass and White have argued in The

Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986), the `subversive power of the grotesque stems

from its ability to degrade what is `high', to draw it down to the level of the earth and the

`material lower bodily strata' of reproductive and excretory functioning. '66' As if choking

on the supposed delicacy of Hartmann's high-minded vision, several reviewers skilfully

evoked folk humour to re-appropriate the perfume concert from the realm of aesthetic

performance to low, vaudeville comedy and to render a scene of carnival mayhem. 669

Odour, it was made clear, was intrinsically and irredeemably sordid and olfactory

infiltration into the sphere of Art threatened to have a corrupting and debasing influence.

For Nordau, as seenin chaptertwo, smell had no role in the arts of the civilised world and

indeed, degenerationtheory can be seen to run through the newspaper criticisms of the

concert. In one review, for example, it was suggestedthat the concert would attract `any

nose that pays for his, her or its seat' whilst in another,audiencememberswere likened to
670The concert was presentedas elitist in nature and the argument was
sheep and pigs

667 `Comparisons Most Odorous,' 8. In `Newest Public Amusement' it was suggested that

Hartmann's concert was just a first step on the road to a new aestheticorder and that `in time some

great genius may yet appearwhose odor compositions will be strong enough to embody the breath
of the fish market or the permeating odor of the tan yard'. `Newest Public Amusement,' 32.
66$Peter Stallybrassand Allon White have discussedthe symbolic place of pigs in carnival in Peter

Stallybrass,White Allon, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression(London: Methuen, 1986) 93 -

94.
669'The word `carnival' itself advertises its interest in the flesh and the functions thereof. It is

redolent of smells: of burning meat, intestinal gas, axillary and even genital secretions.' Robert M.
Adams, 'What the Nose Knows [Review of Suskind, Perfume and Corbin, the Foul and the
Fra ant 'New York Review of Books 20 November 1986: 25.
670`Newest Public Amusement,' 32. and `PerfumeConcert Fails, ' 5.
 283

reiteratedthat the delicate effects of fine perfumescould not be appreciatedby the masses,

with their deficiency of cultural taste and olfactory sophistication. Indeed, the New York

Daily Tribune smirked that the audiencelacked the requisite level of olfactory erudition

for the `proper appreciation of the smell music' and would have derived greaterpleasure

from the smell of `corned beef and cabbage' than Hartmann's exquisite perfumes.671

Discussions about Hartmann's concept of olfactory art were particularly rich with jibes

about the perceived paucity of olfactory perceptivenessin civilised man. Echoing Finck's

urge for olfactory cultivation, the New York Times petitioned for the nasal tutelage of the

massesand feigned support for the various olfactory lobbyists, who were campaigningfor

sensorial education as a means to enrich the intellect and the imagination and to reverse

the perceived degenerative 672

trend. The clear subtext however was that attempts to

educatethe senseof smell and to establishan aestheticsof perfume were to be deploredas

ludicrous contraventionsof nature's evolutionary trajectory.

The perceived decadenceof cultivating perfume artworks invited comparison between

Hartmann and the literary character of the aesthete.For one critic, writing in the New

York Times, the harnessing of the olfactory imagination was gratuitous, a decadence

comparable to `gilding the lily' or `throwing a perfume upon the violet'. 73 Such

comments make a clear reference to Huysmans's Against Nature, in which the character

Des Esseintessets out to improve upon nature by exploring perfumery as an art in which

natural aromasare refashioned and provided `with a setting, just as a jeweller improves a

671`Ibid. 5.
672`ComparisonsMost Odorous,' 8. On nasal cultivation, see, for example, Reuben Post Halleck,

Education of the Central Nervous System(New York: Macmillan, 1886).

673'ComparisonsMost Odorous,' 8.
 284

stone's transparencyand lustre, it to

and provides with a mount reveal its beauty' 674This

comparisonof Hartmann with the fictional characterof Des Esseinteswas also drawn out

in other ways in the press675 For example, in one New York Times commentary,

Hartmann is introduced not as an establishedart critic and playwright but as `an aesthete

and odorist, or smell expert of no mean standing', a phrase that recalls Huysmans

description of Des Esseintesas an `expert in everything relating to olfactory science' 676

Such a resemblancewas loaded with negative associations,particularly given that, as seen

in chapter two, sensitivity to the aestheticsof scent is linked in Huysmans's novel to the

condition of parosmia, a disorder of the senseof smell which often resulted in unpleasant

olfactory hallucinations 67
and which was a recognised symptom of syphilis. Thus, by

inviting comparison between Hartmann and Des Esseintes, the New York Times

presentedan unmistakable characterizationof Hartmann as a `fine puss-gentleman'and a

`weakling and a 678

degenerate' His art, it was implied, was as unhealthy as his exotic,
...

mixed-race persona and appealed only to a small group of foppish perfume cognoscenti

who sat in the galleries removing their trademark monocles, which would remain

redundant for the duration of this particular `spectacle!

'679Since the olfactory imagination

was linked to mental degeneracy,for some writers the creative impetus of the olfactory

artist and his visions of a trip to Japanheld perverseconnotations.

674Huysmans,Against Nature 92.

675Ibid. 93.
676By this date, his works included the popular textbook A History of American Art, (1902),

severalcontroversial plays such as Christ: A Dramatic Poem in Three Acts (1893) and Buddha: A
Drama in Twelve Scenes (1897) as well as a number of critical essayson the photography of
Steichen,Stieglitz and others. 'Newest Public Amusement.' Huysmans, Against Nature 96.
677Ibid.
678'ComparisonsMost Odorous,' 8.
679Hartmann 'Perfume Concert Fails,' S.
 285

Conclusion

Despite the failure of the concert and its panning in the New York press, A Trip to Japan

was innovative in its endeavourto challenge standardreasoning about the unorderedand

abject nature of smell and its aestheticstatus.Conceived at a time of heightenedreflection

upon the status, definition and meaning of art, as the artistic avant-garde increasingly

theorised and engaged with new aesthetic possibilities, the perfume concert reflected

Hartmann's enduring determination to push at the frontiers of art by challenging

traditional concepts of artistic practice. ß° Undeterred by the fiasco at the New York

Theatre, he continued to test the notion of art as a tangible object for visual or auditory

contemplation, holding perfume concerts on an irregular basis in clubs and lecture halls,

after dinner entertainment and even in schools, right up to the 1940s [Fig. 41]. 681

Hartmann's commitment to pursuing an art `other than the visual' reflects ideas about

olfactory aesthetics which were to intensify over the course of the twentieth century,

ultimately finding creative release in performance, installation and conceptual art, as

increasingly expandedthe remit of art beyond 682

visual media Held in 1902, well
artists

680In 1903, Alexander Scriabin began planning Mysterium, an orchestral performance that was to

combine dance, coloured lights, projected pictures, pleasant perfumes and acrid smokes, and

sensations of touch and taste. Classen, Color of Angels 112.

EstKnox, George. `Sadakichi Hartmann's Life and Career'. Illinois, 1999. Modern American

Poe Ed. Cary Nelson. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. May 4th 2005.
.
http://www. english.uiuc.edulmaps/poets/gjAiartmann/life.htm, (accessed9 August 2007).
Indeed, a letter of August 27`s 1958 from Charles M. Niedringham suggeststhat Hartmann had
inquired after a new invention for controlling the projection of odours. Box 13, The Sadakichi
Hartmann Papers,Special Collections Library, University of California, Riverside.
682Drobnick and Fisher, `Perfumatives,' 1- 6.
 286

before the technologies of Smell-O-Vision, Odorama or Digiscents, A Trip to Japan can

be considered one of the earliest performances in a tradition destabilising the visualist

aestheticbias. 83

683For these and other olfactory technologies see Joseph Kaye, `Symbolic Olfactory Display,'

Unpublished M. A. thesis, Institute

Massachusetts of Technology, 2000.
 287

A Breath of the Orient

Introduction

`Above all its associations,' wrote Richard Le Gallienne, the East `is a sweet smell in the

mind. '684In making this observation in his history of fragrance,The Romanceof Perfume

(1928), Le Gallienne drew upon a popular and long-standing Western tradition, in which

the various nations and diverse cultures of the East were homogenisedinto an amorphous

and geographically imprecise Orient representedby a generic idea of perfume. In this

rather conservative text, the manner and content of Le Gallienne's address is highly

reminiscent of earlier works on the history of perfume use and manufacture, such as

EugeneRimmel's The Book of Perfumes(1864) and Richard Cristiani's A Comprehensive

Treatise on Perfumery (1877). Certainly, the ideas and values he expressedwould not have

been out of place had they been published during the 1890s,at a time when the author was

involved within the literary circles of London 685Warming to his theme, the
very much

perfume historian elaborated:

When we speak of the East, generally the first enveloping thought in our

minds is that of piled up roseateclouds of perfume, a rolling curtain of sweet

684Richard Le Galliene, The Romanceof Perfume (New York, Paris, Hudnut: 1928) 11.
685During the 1890sLe Gallienne was a contributor to The Yellowbook and to The Star newspaper

and was associatedwith the Rhymer's Club, a group of London-based poets founded by W. B.
Yeats and Ernest Rhys. Eugene Rimmel, The Book of Perfumes (London: Chapman and Hall,
1864). Richard S. Cristiani, A ComprehensiveTreatise on Perfumery (Philadelphia: Bairdo, 1877).
Cristiani's book garneredmuch of its content directly from Rimmel's authoritative guide.
 288

odours, through which come gleamsof far away enchantedlands of mystery

and romance,mosquesand palms and rose gardensfilled with moonlight and

nightingales 686

As the metaphorical perfume clouds disperseto reveal a glimpse of an Easternmirage of

exotic sights, it becomesapparentthat Le Gallienne's fabrication of the East exists as a

collective portrayal of a mystical and mysterious Orient, along lines that Said in

Orientalism (1876) has shown to be almost formulaic in the work of Orientalist writers

circa 1900687For Le Gallienne, aspectsof disparatecultures, (including Arabia, Egypt,

Syria, Persia, India, Morocco, Algieria, Tunisia and Spain and to a lesser extent China

and Japan) could be subsumedby the imagination into a culturally, geographically and

sociologically vague, exotic Other, best symbolisedby the abstractconcept of perfume. 88

For Le Gallienne, the Orient could be thought of in olfactory terms, with the idea of the

East formulating in the mind in a pre-pictorial form as `sweet odours.i689He imagined

these scented vapours of the mind as gradually coalescing and taking shape under the

visual imagination, triggering a mirage of mosques,palms and other exotic delights. The

passageis so arresting becauseit indicates an intimate relationship between smell and

Western constructions of the East that has tended to be obscured in scholarship on

Orientalism with its enduring focus on the lure of the visual 690

686Le Gallien, The Romanceof Perfume 382 97

-
687Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: RandomHouse, 1978).
688As Deborah Jowett has observed: `the Orient began just east of Venice: present-day Yugoslavia,

Albania and Greece were all part of an exotic Ottoman empire. Spain, with its strains of Moorish

culture and its gypsies, was as "Eastern" as Morocco and Algiers. ' Deborah Jowett, Time and the
Dancing Image (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988) 50.
689Le Galliene, The Romanceof Perfume 382 97
-
690See,for example, Roger Benjamin, `The Oriental Mirage, ' Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Exh.

Cat (Sydney: The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997) 7. See also, Roger Benjamin,
 289

Of the power of the nineteenth-centuryvisual imagination for conceptualisingthe Orient,

there is abundant evidence. Art historians have been investigating the complex field of

Orientialist imagery for more than half a century and due to its visualist imperative, the

focus has traditionally been on Orientalism's projection of the East as a kaleidoscopeof

visual delights691This ocularcentric bias was traditionally supported through the use of

extracts from nineteenth-centurytravel-writings on the picturesque visuality of the East,

which have rendered familiar such observationsas that made by the Victorian novelist,

travel writer and amateurpainter, William MakepeaceThackeray, in Notes of a Journey

from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1845), that: `I never saw such a variety of architecture,of

life, of picturesquenessof brilliant colour, of light and shade.There is a picture in every

street, and at every bazaar stall.'692It has been well documentedthat the chaos of crowds

and commodities at urban bazaars, the sumptuous colours and arabesquepatterning of

Islamic carpets and textiles, the dramatic views and harsh sunlight of desert landscapes

and the fantasy of forbidden keyhole glimpses of harem life provided just some of the

feastsencounteredor imagined by artists 693

visual

Orientalist Aesthetics (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003).
MaryAnne Stevens,The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse. The Allure of North Africa and the near
East (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art in association with Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
1984).
691See, for example, Jean Alzard, L'orient et 1La peinture francaise au xixe siecle (Paris: Plon,

1930). Donald Rosenthal, Orientalism: The near East in French Painting 1800-1880 (Rochester,
N. Y: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester,1982).
692William Makepeace Thackeray, Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (London:

Chapmanand Hall, 1846) 278 - 79.

693See, for example, Philippe Jullian, `To Pleasethe Eye,' The Orientalists: EuropeanPainters of

EasternScenes(Oxford: Phaidon, 1977) 75 - 82.

 290

The visual nature of the `idea' of the Orient is particularly striking, for example, in an

article on `Orientalism' that was published in the June 1853 issue of the popular New

York literary magazine,Knickerbocker.694In it, the Orient was defined as `a complex idea

made up of history and scenery,suffused with imagination and irradiate with revelation'

that if represented`pictorially as it first flashesupon the mind, would absorb all the colors

of the chromatic scale and break all artistic unity. 6'5 The author went on to picture the

Orient, `not as it is, but as it swims before the sensuousimagination,' explaining how on

thinking of the Orient `we frame to ourselvesa deep azure sky, and a languid, alluring

atmosphere;associateluxurious easewith the coffee-rooms and flowering gardensof the

Seraglio at Constantinople.'696This adoption of the languageof art, of framed pictures, to

describethe mental projection of the Orient onto the gallery wall of the mind's eye is just

one step removed from artistic practice and the many fantasy realisations of the Orient

painted at that time, from memory, from the imagination or on location but informed with

preconceived ideas. Given that this focus on the visual lucidity of the imagined Orient

was so prevalent in nineteenth-centuryart and literature, this chapterwill turn attention to

the important role of scent at that time, both as a trigger for such visions and as an

alternative meansof conceptualisingthe Orient 697

Having voyaged in the previous chapter through Hartmann's Orient on wafts of cinnamon,

en route to a carnation-scentedJapan, this chapter will focus on the role of odour in

Western constructions of the East, both Near and Far. Despite the fact that Hartmann

694`Orientalism,' Knickerbocker.June (1853): 480 95.

-
695Ibid. 480. Note the use of the word `flash,' with its associationswith the disturbing influence of

smell upon mental health, as discussedin chaptertwo.

696 Ibid.

697For other examplesof the visuality of the East, seefootnote 24.

 291

distinguished between the Orient and Japan, and although Said's identification of `The

Orient' with the Near and Middle East and its Islamic extension into North Africa has been

generally accepted over the last thirty years, it is often overlooked that in popular

nineteenth-century usage, the idea of the Orient could and often did encompass India as

well as distant China and Japan. Since the popular association of the Orient with odour

both reflected and influenced nineteenth-century attitudes to the East as a whole, this

chapter will adopt the broader nineteenth-century usage of the term. Whilst acknowledging

cultural integrities and without generalising about the sensory regime of the East, this

chapter is concerned with the universal themes surrounding the role of smell in Western

responses to Eastern cultures in the broadest sense. Like odour itself, these themes were

not necessarily specific to any particular geographical location, and so it is valid to pass

fluidly across the broad geographical expanse of the Eastern hemisphere. In doing so, it

will draw together and develop understanding of the cultural connotations of scent, as

outlined in chapter one and throughout this thesis, with reference to such themes as dirt

and disorder, disease and female sexuality, mental health and degeneration. Moreover,

following on from chapters two, three and four, it will incorporate case studies involving

the olfactory imagination, the visual representation of scent in painting and artistic

performances that engaged directly with the sense of smell.

Clearly, however, it is not possible to think of Le Gallienne's stereotypedvisions of the

Orient, those `gleams of faraway enchanted lands ... mosques and palms and rose

'
gardens, nor the archetypal fantasy of the Orient as described in Knickerbocker, without

reference to Said's groundbreaking study, Orientalism (1976), in which the myth of the

Orient was exposed as a derogatory and univocal Western fabrication. The Orient, Said

only as a set of cultural projections fostered by generationsof intellectuals,

argued,existed
 292

writers and scholars in order to justify the imposition of colonial governance on Eastern

lands and peoples 698 His argument was significant in its suggestion that the reservoir of

cultural assumptions about the East, including stereotypes of Arab men and women - as

violent, lazy, sexually promiscuous or irrational - were only the most explicit examples of

a broader cultural attitude that constituted the Orient as a subject of knowledge. Orientalist

discourse, Said claimed, acted on the East, rendering it visible and thus subject to the

surveillance and mastery of the West.

Although Said did not deal with paintings or other visual media, his book Orientalism was

very much about the `idea' of the Orient: an idea that has inaccurately been thought to

have been conceived and presented in the nineteenth century in almost exclusively visual

terms. It was no doubt because of the emphasis upon the visual nature of nineteenth-

century ideas about the Orient that art historians soon recognised the significance of his

expose and adapted its insights to the study of images. The significance of Linda

Nochlin's influential article, `The Imaginary Orient' (1983) lay in her attempt to bring

Orientalist paintings, which she regarded as presenting a fantasy unveiling of the Orient

before the Western patriarchal gaze, into the colonialist debate fuelled by Said. 99 In

particular, she argued that the illusion of realism in these paintings, achieved through

meticulous attention to detail and flawless finish, served to dissimulate the presence and

intervention of the artist, deceiving the viewer into believing that the paintings conveyed

an authentic view of the East. Having identified the ways that the stylistic elements of

French nineteenth-century paintings of the East contributed to the Orientalist discourse,

demonstrated that artists such as Gerome legitimised Western political, military and
she

698Said, Orientalism.
699Linda Nochlin, `The Imaginary Orient,' Art in America 71.May (1983): 19 31,86 91.
- -
 293

economic intervention in images of the irrational excess, uncontrolled cruelty and

violence, despotism, sensuality and languorous exoticism of a backward and decaying

East. Drawing upon Said's assertionthat the West dependedupon the myth of the Orient

in order to define itself, she suggestedthat French painters tended to portray the Near East

as timeless and unchanging, and as a screenon which to project the fantasiesand fears of

the Western imagination. 00

In more recent times, Said's and subsequently Linda Nochlin's view of the Western

misrepresentation of the East has come under considerable scrutiny, criticised on the

grounds of its homogenisation of diverse cultures into the camps of the colonising West

and the disempowered colonised East. While Said himself later revised his initial

arguments,postcolonial methodologieshave increasingly entered into dialogue with other

Within the field of art history, this has involved exploring the ways
critical approaches701

in which pictorial Orientalism was approachedin terms other than the conventional ones

of sparkling light and the languor of the 702

harem. For example, feminist scholarsbeganto

unravel the mechanisms that had assumed a male heterosexual viewer for orientalist

imagery and explored the possibility of alternative viewing positions, particularly in the

work of long-neglected female painters such as Henriette Brown. 703

Other scholars have

looNochlin, `The Imaginary Orient.'

701Edward Said, Reflections on Orientalism (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1983).

Edward Said, Power, Politics. and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said (New York: Pantheon
Books, 2001).
702See, for example ideas of the `double gaze' in Barbara Wright, Eugene Fromentin
:A Life in
Art and Letters (New York, Bern: Peter Lang, 2000).
703Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race. Femininity and Representation(London
and New
York: Routledge, 1996). Reins Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman
Harem (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,2004).
 294

begun to examine the little-known careersof indigenous artists who adoptedthe pictorial

devices and media of the coloniser but sought to present counter-narrativeimages of their

in the 704
colonial centres. By reinserting theseperipheral artists
culture to those articulated

into the critical discussion,the debatehas shifted from the univocal, homogeneousreading

of orientalism to a hybrid cross-cultural history that acknowledgesthe sophistication and

subtlety of the range of artistic responsesto the colonial presencein the East.

In recent years, Nochlin's analysis of Orientalist art as reflecting imperial ideology

through themes of decay, the subjection of women, eroticism and lawlessness has been

called into question in the light of the lively and varied debates that Said's original

has 705 Most notably, John Mackenzie has offered a considered

contention generated.

response to Nochlin's claim that Orientalist painters portrayed the East as backward,

irrational, unchanging, sexually corrupt and decadent 706

Whilst not disputing that this was

often (though not always) the case, he has offered an alternative account of these images

as the product of a desire to escape from the constraints and imperfections of the

capitalist, industrial West, rather than a attempt to denigrate the Orient and render it more

amenable to the economic, cultural and political transformations of imperialism. Whilst

704 Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics. Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts, eds., Orientalism's

Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture. Photography(Durham, N. C.: Duke University, 2002).

705Two of the best accountsof the issuesraisedby Orientalism are Fred Halliday, `On Orientalism

and its Critics, ' British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20.2 (1993): 145 - 63 and J. J. Clarke,

Oriental Enlightenment (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). For a useful summary of the
historiography of this discourse seeA. L. Macfiie, Orientalism (London: PearsonEducation, 2002).
For a critical responseto Nochlin, see Rana Kabbani, Europe's Myth of Orient: Devise and Rule
(Basingstokeand London: Macmillan, 1986).
706 John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History. Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1995).

 295

deconstructing Nochlin's argument that Orientalist art coincided precisely with imperial

involvement in the Near and Middle East, he suggests that images of prurient sensuality

might be seen as an escape from Christian Puritanism into the Sublime; the depiction of

oriental languor as an escape from the frenetic character of industrialised society; and the

feminising of the oriental male as an attempt on the part of the European male to explore

and deal with his own divided identity. However, as he admits in his conclusion, racially-

conscious attitudes and notions of moral, technical and political superiority were

undeniably prevalent in the stereotypes and caricatures of the East found in European

707
popular culture.

Despite the more nuanced approachesto Orientalist painting offered by Mackenzie and

others, in which artistic responsesto the East are shown to have a range of very different

agendas,Nochlin's argumentsremain influential. In particular, her exposureof the power

relations behind the Orientalist gazehas resulted in a shift in the way in which the visual

impact of the East upon artists has been discussedin recent years. For example, whereas

Philippe Julian, in his chapter `To Pleasethe Eye', published in his book The Orientalists

(1977), presented a straightforward celebration of the impact of Eastern vistas upon

French painters, Roger Benjamin, twenty years later, in Orientalism (1997), cited

Delacroix's observation in a letter to Meknes that `at every step one see ready made

pictures, which would bring fame and fortune to twenty generations of painters,' as a

means to forward an argument about the artist's financial exploitation of French

occupation in the East708Informed by the complexities of current debatesabout the role

707MacKenzie, Orientalism 219.

708Benjamin, Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Exh. Cat) (Sydney: The Art Gallery of New South

Wales, 1997) 8. Cites Letter of 2 April 1832, in Jean Stewart, ed., Eugene Delacroix, Selected
 296

of Orientalist art in the promotion of imperialism, this chapter will consider the extent to

which artistic responsesto the smells of the Orient affirmed and reinforced cultural

constructionsof the Orient or articulated alternativerepresentationsof racial difference.

Orientalist paintings were `devoid of sound, smell, movement and life, ' argued Sibel

Bozdogan in her article, `Journey to the East', published in the Journal of Architectural

Education (1988).709Yet this popular assumption is patently inaccurate. Just as the

Orientalist painter's repertoire was comprised of a number of different visual tropes, so

too were artists and writers inspired by a range of olfactory evocationsthat were likewise

influential in constructing Western impressionsof the East. Therefore, this chapter will

examine images by artists as diverse as Rudolph Ernst, John Singer Sargent and Henry

Siddons Mowbray, of the aroma of spice wafting from exotic dishes,the scent of incense

burning in temples and households, the perfume of attar of roses carried on balmy

breezes,the mingling aromasof coffee and hashish,the sweet-scentof exotic blooms and

of bodies dripping with oils and unguents and the stench of unwashed bodies and filthy,

muck-strewn streets.

Letters 1813 - 1863 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1971) 192. Likewise, when Lionel
Lambourne describeshow Edward Lear, on visiting his friend Lord Northbrook, Viceroy of India
in 1871, exclaimed at the `colours and costumes,& myriads of impossible picturesqueness!!,' the
implication is that this heightened senseof wonder and delight signalled the experienceof cultural
difference. Lionel Lambourne, Victorian Painting, Phaidon Press(London: 1999) 431. The citation

comes from Vivian Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer (Stroud: Sutton Publishing,
2004) 227. Noakes refers to Lear's Indian Journal, held in the Houghton Library, Harvard. The
diary entry referred to is for 22 November, 1873.
709Sibel Bozdogan, `Journey to the East: Ways of Looking at the Orient and the Question of

Representation,' Journal of Architectural Education41.4 (1998): 38.

 297

For many artists bombardedby the exotic sensationsof the Orient, the smells of the East

were just one aspect of a multisensorial experience. For example, the Australian artist

Arthur Streetonwas overwhelmed by the `lights, scentsand sensations'of Egypt, noting

that `there is an unusual brilliance in the morning air of Cairo and a distinctive pleasant

fragrance, perhaps resulting from mignonette, clover piled on camel's backs, coffee,

incenseand other flavours of the Orient,' whilst Thackeray felt compelled to capture `the

noise, the bustle, the brilliancy of the crowd.9710

Given that artists often talked of their

sensory impressions of the East as a coalescenceof light, colour, scent and sound, the

supremacy of the visual for artists cannot be assumed.Indeed, given that each of the

senseswere generally given equal status in such descriptive accounts as these, it is

possible to think of the artist's inhalation as being as politically charged as his or her gaze

and of visual representationsof Oriental smells as being loaded with cultural significance.

To some extent, degenerationtheory may help explain why the fixation of artists and

writers on the visual variety they encounteredduring their travels through the supposedly

decaying civilisations of the East becameincreasingly tempered with an emphasison the

association between odour and the Orient. The late nineteenth-century fear of and

fascination with the degenerationof the olfactory lobe and the subsequentdemise of the

senseof smell (as described in chaptersone and four of this thesis) became incorporated

into an idea of a corrupt and foul-smelling East. Given these fin-de-siecle concerns,it is

interesting to contrast the conceptualisationof the Orient presented in the mid-nineteenth

century article on `Orientalism' in Knickerbocker and that by Le Gallienne, writing in the

no Arthur Streeton `With Signora Bozzetti'. Unpublished Personal Narrative. Streeton Family

Papers.Cited in Benjamin, Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Exh. Cat) 80. Thackeray, Notes of a
Journe 279.
 298

early 1900s. In the Knickerbocker article of 1853, the author described the Orient as

forming a visual picture in the mind, albeit so richly sensuousin detail that the other

sensesultimately burst into play:

We see grave and reverend turbans sitting cross-leggedon Persian carpets

in baths and harems, under palm trees or acacias,either quaffing the cool

sherbet of roses or the aromatic Mocha coffee ... we see the smoke of the

Latakia - the mild sweet tobacco of Syria - whiffed lazily from the

bubbling water-pipe, while the devoteeof backgammonlistlessly rattles the

dice; we hear the musical periods of the story teller relating the thousand

and one tales to the over-curious crowd"'

Thus, having defined the `idea' of the Orient as a visual phenomenon, the author

attributed a multisensorial dimension to his vision, with the narrative moving from the use

of `we see,' to describe images of gustatory and olfactory pleasure, to `we hear,' to

describe the story-telling of the Arabian Nights. For Le Gallienne, however, the idea of

the Orient instinctively sparked a `sweet smell' in the mind that gradually triggered the

visual imagination. The East with its associations with archaism and cultural decay,

existed for Le Gallienne as a kind of scentedvision, with all the connotations (as outlined

in chaptertwo) of the degenerateand atrophic olfactory lobe.

The Orient has traditionally been identified with a register of smells, from the luscious

heavy-scentsof exotic flora to incense-filled temples, aromatic cooking and cities deemed

unsanitary by Western standards(to be discussedlater in this chapter). Eastern odours

have always held a strong hold upon the Western imagination. Sadakichi Hartmann's use

7h1'Orientalism, ' Knickerbocker 480.

 299

of cinnamon to suggest the Orient during his perfume concert, Lacfadio Hearn's incense-

inspired visions of Japan and the abundance of new perfumes released onto the market

with names suggestive of the Orient, such as Paul Poiret's `Alladin' and `Nuit de Chine, '

all point to a popular association of scent with the imagined Orient. The perfumed

presence of the East in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American and

European thinking is partly grounded in historic links with the perfume and spice

trades.712According to an article on the `Oriental Perfume Industry' published in the

Journal of the Socie of Arts in 1893, over two hundred fragrances were know to the

East, whilst perfume itself was generally believed to have originated in Egypt, using the

Arabian and Somalian ingredients frankincense and myrrh. Certainly, perfume had

traditionally played a key role in the religious, political, economic and social history of

the East and, thanks to Orientalist scholarship, Western awareness of these histories was

in the nineteenth century. "'

growing

There was, for example, greaterunderstandingof the works and beliefs of Islam, leading

the perfumer Rimmel to linger over his descriptions of `the perfumes of Elysium' or

`odours of paradise' and Cristiani to declare in A Treatise on Perfumery (1877) that

`Mahomet encouraged the use of perfumes among his followers, and makes frequent

mention of them as a part of the many attractions of his paradise, and musk is often

named by him. '714Richard Francis Burton's translation of The Scented Garden in 1866

712For a history of the perfume and spice trade see Kentaro Yamada, A Study of the History of

Perfumery and Spicesin the Far East (Tokyo: Chüb-Kbron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1976).
713`The Oriental Perfume Industry,' Journal of the Society of Arts 42. November (1893): 202. On

the origins of perfume see Dee Amy-Chinn, `Sex Offence: The Cultural Politics of Perfume,'
Women: A Cultural Review 12.2 (2001): 168.
714Cristiani, Treatise on Perfumery 27.
 300

also propagated the idea of the perfumed orient. In this Arabian manual of `erotology'

compiled and written between 1394- 1433 by ShaykhNefzawi, a section on `the usesof

perfumes in coition' included a short story about a man who makes a woman swoon and

succumb to his sexual advancesby intoxicating her with a heady cocktail of ambergris,

musk, rose, orange,jonquil, jasmine and hyacinth. The anecdotewas supplied to illustrate

the idea that `the uses of perfumes, by man as well as by woman, excites to the act of

copulation (sic).i715Moreover, Burton's translation of the more widely-circulated One

Thousand and One Nights (1885), with its rich evocations of perfume, lingered in the

public consciousness,prompting a writer on Tunisian perfumes, for example, to describe

in the New York Times in 1881how in making attar:

the rose is made to yield up its sweet breath, to be afterward (sic)

...

imprisoned in cunning little caskets and sparkling crystal flasks enriched

with gilding, suggesting to the wandering fancy of the Arabian nights

haunted traveller
...
the imprisoned spirit of some fairy, in eternal

subjection to the powerful genie man. 716

Though historical in its grounding, the Western idea of the East as a `sweet smell in the

mind' was entirely bound up in Western perceptions, assumptions and fantasies

concerning both odour and the Orient. Whether reference was made to the scents of

paradise,to the aphrodisiac properties of perfume or to a conceit of perfumery as a kind

of incarceration and enslavementof the floral spirit, Western fascination with the Eastern

attachmentto perfume acted as a signal of racial difference.

715 Richard Burton, ed., The Scented Garden of the Shaykh Nefzawi. Intro. Alan Hull Walton

Trans. Richard Burton (Aylesbury: Panther, 1963 [1886]) 81,85.

716'A City of Perfumes the Tunisian,' New York Times 16 October 1881: 4.
-
 301

Nineteenth-centuryperfumers frequently made the claim that `the warmer the climate, the

greater is the love of strong perfumes' and in doing so, effectively suggesteda link

betweenrace and the decadentindulgenceof perfumes717Following the model of Charles

Lillie's The British Perfumer (1822), the introductions to most perfume manualsincluded

copious examples of the importance attachedto scent in the domestic customs,religious

practices and rites of passageof Hindu and Muslim 718

societies. For example, Cristani

surveyed the uses of perfume in India: from incense at sacrificial ceremonies and

offerings to the lavish private consumptionof unguentsamongstthe rich, the colouring of

Hindu priest's faces with an ointment of saffron and the barbaric practice of burning

widows upon pyres of burning 719

aromatic wood. Indeed, the pleasure and attention

brought to scenting the body, clothes and home through complex practices, including

fumigations, ablutions, oils, ointments, distilled waters, scented pastries, beverages,

spices and aromatic leaves, was both intriguing and repelling in its `otherness,' leading

the popular sciencewriter, FernandPapillon to observein 1874 that `odors which disgust

us, like that of asafoetidaand of the valerian root, are on the contrary highly enjoyed by

the Orientals, who use these substancesfor '

condiments. 720The use of perfumes by

Oriental women, in particular, was considered alluring but also potentially lethal.

717Cristiani, Treatise on Perfumery 27.

718Charles Lillie, The British Perfumer. Snuff-Manufacturer and Colourman's Guide (London:

1822). See, for example, the perfumer Cristiani on the `many interesting details of the habits and

customs of the Orientals ... of their ... uses of cosmetics and perfumes.' Cristiani, Treatise on
Perfumery 27. See also Bimmel, The Book of Perfumes 28 - 29. A. J. Cooley, The Toilet and
Cosmetic Arts in Ancient and Modern Times (London: R. Hardwicke, 1866). 'Oriental Perfume
Industry,' 202 - 03. On the role of scent in Arab-muslim cultures, seeFrancoise Aubaile-Sallenave,
'Bodies, Odors and Perfumes in Arab-Muslim Societies,' The Smell Culture Reader, ed. Jim
Drobnick (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2006) 391.
719Cristiani, Treatise on Perfumery 27.
720FernandPapillon, 'Odors and Life, ' Popular ScienceMonthly 6 (1874): 153.
 302

Cristiani, for example, noted that Oriental ladies `use great quantities of costly perfumes

and cosmetics ... to preserve their personal charms', whilst Papillon observed that the

Oriental preference for noxious and sometimes dangerous smells,' such as musk, lily,

narcissus and tuberose, civet, patchouli, neroli and thyme, could affect `Western

to
sensibilities' so acutely as provoke `violent haemorrhage.
' 721
The use of perfume was

thus central to the construction of the Oriental `femme fatale,' whilst the stock figure of

the perfumed Easterntemptresswas, in turn, a key metaphor for the Orient 7ZZ

In chapter one, it was demonstrated that during the nineteenth century, smell was

articulated as uncontrolled, chaotic, irrational, unknowable, primitive and mysterious. It

was also perceived as sensual,sexual and alluring, though ultimately corrupt and deadly,

and was therefore irrevocably linked to popular ideas of the feminine. Almost identical

language was deployed to define the Orient, as a number of Orientalists following Said

have demonstrated.723A synergy emergedbetween the language used to describe smell,

the feminine and the East and since perfume was seen to embody so many of the

perceived traits of the Orient, it was closely and symbolically aligned to it, and from this

basis, the idea of the perfumed woman masking her corrupt odours became a popular

construction of the Orient. As the `Orientalism' article in Knickerbocker attested, the

Orient was envisagedas place of `dreamsand dirt, despotism and dignity': like a perfume

then, that is both base and elevated, it was complex and beset with paradox.724The

721Cristiani, Treatise on Perfumery 27. Papillon, `Odors and Life, ' 153.
722On perfume and the femme fatale, see ConstanceClassen, 'The Odor of the Other: Olfactory

Symbolism and Cultural Categories,' Ethos 20 (1992): 133 - 66.

723See, for example, Jane Desmond, 'Dancing out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism
and Ruth
St. Denis's 'Radha' of 1906,' Signs 17.1 (1991): 40. Seealso Nochlin, 'The Imaginary Orient,' 30.
724`Orientalism,' Knickerbocker 480.
 303

mystery of the East was a standard nineteenth-century topos and smell, as the last

remaining senseto elude scientific understanding,capturedthis senseof an unfathomable

other, resistant to order. At the same time that odour was being scrutinised under the

microscope, classified, visualised and increasingly eradicated through new hygienist

regimes, the East was being constructed as a site in need of explication, illustration,

discipline and reconstruction.725At a point in history when the Orient was frequently

(though not always) cast as speechless,unable to represent itself, odour as `the mute

sense,' that could never be satisfactorily conveyed in words or images, was a choice
726 Invisible, scientifically elusive and undefined by boundaries, perfume
metaphor.

seemedto allow for the inscrutability of the vast and unknowable lands of the Other in a

way that could capture the essenceof Oriental mystique. Yet in spite of its apparent

mysteriousness,perfume was in fact knowable: its vapours imparted messagesupon the

brain, and as a metaphor it was reductive, functioning as a form of nasal masteryby which

the cultural complexities and ideological associationsof a diverse East could be laid bare

before the Western nose. In representationsof perfume-making or application, incensed

temples and purification rituals, it was if a single inhalation of this metaphoric distillation

could yield in synthesisedform the many secretsof harems, Muslim temples and archaic

religious rites. Materialising from the perfume bottle, the genie or spirit or the Orient

would presentitself before the Western inhaler.

In the popular imagination, the spirit of the East was frequently imagined as an

excessivelypowerful, exotic perfume that captivated sensibilities but ultimately offended

72$Said, Orientalism 40,206.

726Hans Rindisbacher,The Smell of Books (Ann Arbor: The University of Michegan Press,1992).

On the silent Orient, seeSaid, Orientalism 40.

 304

standardsof moral and sexual order. The key to understanding this conflation of the

Orient with perfume lies in the knowledge of what perfume really is. Steven Connor

describesperfume as a complex amalgamation of stimulating and refreshing floral top

notes over heavy, sensual,animal base-notes.He arguesthat animal-basedperfumes `and

especially those which associate sex with excretion, seem to lie - invisibly, but

visualisably - underneathvegetableor floral smells, the dark faecal mulch, churning with

worms, beneath the pretty, odoriferous litter of leaf and blossom.'727In much the same

way, Easternnations and in particular the Ottoman Empire or `sick man of Europe,' were

frequently portrayed as masking, with their ornate, decorative, architecture and luxurious

trappings, the decay and corruption at their core. Moreover, just as the `dark faecal

mulch' within perfume was balancedby light floral fragrance, so the East was imagined

as sensual, sexual and diseased at its core, whilst being overlaid with mystical,

transcendental and spiritual finery. Like perfume, the Orient was curiously poised

between desire and repulsion, beauty and ugliness, and so was perversely fascinating.

This chapter argues that by imagining the Orient as a perfume that was sometimes

perceived as sweet and refreshing and sometimes as cloying and miasmic, artists

constructed a complex fabrication of the East as both disturbing and uplifting, in which

the desirable and the repulsive, `the foul and the fragrant,' were yoked together 128
The
.
idea that the East was feminised (rendered enticing yet weak and corrupt) in Western

representation is both familiar and contestedin post-Saidian scholarship such as James

727StevenConnor, `Aroma,' The Book of Skin (London: Reaktion, 2004) 219.

On the faecal overtones of perfume, see Mandy Aftel, `Perfumed Obsesson,' The Smell Culture
Reader,ed. Jim Drobnick (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2006) 214 - 15.
728Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination (London: Papermac,

1996 [1986]).
 305

Clifford's chapter `On Orientalism' in his book The Predicament of Culture (1988). 29

However, in this chapter it will be argued that it was, in particular, onto the site of the

perfumed Oriental female body, as a metaphor for the East as whole, that ideas of race,

orientalism, sexuality and spirituality were often mapped. Whether one thinks of Pierre

Livemont's lithographic advertisement for Rajah Tea and Coffee [Ch. 3 Fig. 34] or

Charles Courtney Currans's peri paintings [Ch. 3 Figs. 23 - 25], the perfumed Oriental

female body plied the fine line between arousal and disgust. Within the metaphorical

aromatic body of the feminised East, unlimited desires and dark passionsconvergedwith

intensespiritual ardour, orchestratinga genuineeroticism.730

Nasal Tourism

The American Impressionist and `armchair Orientalist', Henry Siddon Mowbray, executed

a number of paintings that share Curran's fascination with floral femininity and Oriental

fantasy.731In works such as The Festival of Roses (1886), Rose Harvest (1887), Attar of

Roses (1894) and Roses (c. 1900), Mowbray depicted exotically-garbed maidens

languishing amongstroses,the sheerabundanceand rich chromatic hue of which createan

732
intense suggestion of perfume. In Rose Harvest (1887), a painting inspired by a scene

729On the feminised East, see James Clifford, `On Orientalism,' The Predicament of Culture:

Twentieth-Century Ethnography Literature and Art ed. James Clifford (Cambridge, M. A.:
Harvard University Press, 1988) 255 - 76.
730The term `perfumed female body' is usedbroadly here and includes women applying, making or

smelling perfume or being situated in an intensely perfumed environment.

731Holly Edwards, Noble Dreams and Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America. 1870-1930

(Princeton: Princeton University Press,2000) 173.

732Ibid. For what little information is known about the location of these works, seeDoreen Bulger

Burke, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum
 306

from Lalla Rookh, in which women spray rose petals on the ground in preparation for the

passage of a newly-wed Indian Princess, there is a sense of leisureliness as the girls

lethargically pluck petals from the blooms or scoop them up into vessels to strew about

them [Fig. 42]. William Gerdts has described Mowbray's style in these works as `floral

narcosis' and certainly, one girl appears entirely overcome by the intoxicating scent, as she

wallows amongst the flowers: the others lounge about, their bodies half-submerged, lap-

deep, in silky, soft petals. 733Ostensibly, the painting presents a familar scene of Eastern

sensuality: the juxtaposition of the women and scented petals conveys the potential for

erotic gratification.

Over-determined, stylised metaphors of the Orient as a putrid-sweet perfume, or by

extension, as a female body perfumed with a sultry, intoxicating scent, seen in Rose

Harvest or John Singer Sargent's Fumee d'ambre gris, discussedbelow, developed out of

more generalised, descriptive accounts in which the idea of the Orient was strongly

associatedwith the olfactory and in particular with cloying perfumes with strong faecal

nuances. For example, Lacfadio Hearn, the scholar of Japanese culture discussed in

chapters three and four, wrote to his friend, the American musicologist Henry Edward

Krehbiel, that `Loti says the Orient smells like musk. The vapours are musk laden; the

breezesare musky, the turned up earth, the excrementsof the people and the animals.i734

Whilst the idea of the Orient was variously linked to musk, ambergris, incense, spice or

Art in association with Princeton University Press, 1980). See also William H. Gerdts, Down
of
GardenPaths: The Floral Environment in American Art (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1983) 79.
73 Gerdts, Down Garden Paths79.
734 Edward Larocque Tinker, 'Lacfadio Hearn and the Sense of Smell: A Mystery for

Bibliomaniacs,' The American Bookman. September(1923): 520.

 307

attar of roses amongst other pungent scents, vaguer references to a generic `odour of the

Orient' were also prevalent. For example, in a report on the Philadelphia, International Fair

of 1876, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly observed:

the Eastern courts exhaled delicious whiffs of attar of roses, scentedwoods

and clays, and that strange, sweet, stimulating perfume which must be the

breath of the Orient, for I never could identify it with any one object,

natural or manufactured,but wherever there is a heap of Turkish, Algerine,

Japaneseor Indian things, it gives forth the faint, intoxicating aroma.735

Similarly, in The Perfume of Eavnt (1911), the short ghost story by Charles Webster

Leadbeater discussed in chapter two, the `faint but very peculiar' scent that marks the

ghostly presencehaunting the scholar's lodgings is describedas `a strange,sweet Oriental

perfume' and `a most peculiar odour ... indescribablyrich and sweet- almost oppressively

so', though its `stimulating 736

Moreover, it is a priceless and
effects are and exhilarating.

`sacredperfume, used only in certain incantations', the manufacture of which 'was a secret

handed down from the remotest ages and known only to a chosen few. '737Whilst the

protagonist of the story eventually makes a scientific analysis of some grains of the

substanceand discovers it to be `a Persianlöbhän - mixed with belladonna, Indian hemp

and other vegetable materials', for the main, it is simply referred to with nondescript

phrasessuch as `devil scent', `this mysterious aroma - faint, but quite unmistakeable,' `the

strangesubtle perfume of ancient easternmagic' or simply 'the perfume of Egypt.)738

735`Characteristicsof the International Fair,' The Atlantic Monthly 38.230 (1876): 732. Note that

here the term Orient includes India and Japan.

736Charles Webster Leadbeater,The Perfume of Egypt and Other Weird Stories (Adyas, Madras,

India: The TheosophistOffice, 1911) 4,5.

737Ibid. 5.
738Ibid. 45,7,8.
 308

The increasedattention in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century literature to toposmia

(place + smell) or the spatial location of odours and their relation to particular notions of

place, can be seen as one aspect of the rise in interest in olfactory aesthetics,describedin

four.739
Many forms of cultural expression, from the visual arts to literature and
chapter

performance, offered spatially-ordered descriptions of smell, providing an alternative to

the familiar of the East as an Aladdin's cave of visual delights.740

In paintings
narrative

such as Ludwig Deutsch's Le Fumeur (1903) or Rudolph Ernst's In the Alhambra (1888),

two pictures of generic Near Eastern settings in which tobacco and incense smoke drifts

from hookah pipes and ornate censers,olfactory evocations were an important means of

capturing the genius loci or distinctive atmosphere of place, be that imaginary or as

[Figs. 43 44].741
As
encounteredthrough the mediating grid of memory and association and

in
suggested chapter four, a new genre of `nasal tourism', to borrow Dann and Jacobsen's

term (2003), emergedin this period, in which the characteristicodours of place were richly

in travel accounts.42In articles such as `Indian Smells and Sounds,

' published in
evoked

Temple Bar in 1882, the olfactory and auditory profile of India was described in sensuous
743
detail and given precedence over the visual panorama. From this perspective,

Hartmann's perfume concert, in which the scentsof cinnamon, cedarwood and carnation

ideas of the Near East, India and Japan, can be seen as the product of a
conveyed

739Jim Drobniclc, `Toposmia: Art, Scentand Interrogationsof Spatiality, ' Angelaki 7.1 (2002): 31
-
46.
TaoDouglas Porteous, `Smellscapes,' Progressin Human Geography9.3 (1985): 359.
74'Leadbeater,The Perfume of Egypt 6,7.
742Graham M. S. Dann and Jens Kristian Steen Jacobsens,'Tourism Smellscapes,' Tourism

Geographies5.1 (2003): 4.
743S. M. G., `Indian Smells and Sounds,' Temple Bar 65.May - Aug (1882): 401 05.
-
 309

contemporary interest in the `polysensual nature of tourism. '744Smells were integral to and

could even stand for a geographical ambience whether of a particular locale, a specific

country or region or typically, a topographically imprecise, homogenised fabrication of the

East.

Though, as Frederick Burbridge noted in The Book of the Scented Garden (1905), `all

exotic towns have a peculiar odour or fragranceof their own, ' the odours thought best to

impart the idea of a place did not necessarilycorrespondwith the smells most likely to be

encounteredthere745For example, in the introduction to `Indian Smells and Sounds,' the

author, writing under the initials S. M. G., suggestedthat most English people `connect

the idea of India with certain perfumes,' such as attar of roses, camphor, calico or the

sweet scent that exhales from inlaid ebony and sandalwood 746
boxes. In the main body of

the article, however, the author exposedthe fabrication of this idealised India, contrasting

such discrete olfactory symbols as the scent of wooden boxes with the potent fog of

noxious odours that constituted `the real smell of India' and which, on arrival, `comes

upon you with a distinctivenessalmost startling', so that you `feel at once, "This is indeed

a part of the country."u47 The atmosphereof Bombay, it was observed,was comprised of

burning wood, charcoal and horse manure; the smell of dust and dust storms, which gave

`their share of flavour to the smell of India'; the oppressive,heavy perfumes of mango,

orange blossom, lilac and rose and `above all ... the great and indescribable smell of

744Dann and Jacobsen, 'Tourism Smellscapes,' 3.

las F. W. Burbridge, The Book of the ScentedGarden (London and New York: Lane. The Bodley

Head, 1905) 22.

746S.M. G., `Indian Smells and Sounds,' 400.
747Ibid.
 310

heat'.748Mingled with this was the `rank, coarse' smell of tobacco, steepedin molasses

and smoked from hookahs and the `nastinessof rancid ghee', used in cooking and as body

oil, as well as the smell of unwashed garments belonging to the lower castes.It was

hopeless,the writer observed, to attempt to convey in words such a complex fusion of

body odour, oil, smoke,dust, excrementand luscious floral sweetness.One can infer from

this article that the powerlessnessof languageto evoke adequatelythe olfactory, and the

inadequacyof the brain for the voluntary recollection of a complex synthesis of odours,

encouragedthe reduction and simplification of India into a fantasy space, more easily

conceptualisedand masteredunder the direct symbol of a distinct and alluring fragrance

such as sandalwoodor spice, as in Hartmann's perfume concert.

The olfactory geography of India, evoked in `Indian Smells and Sounds, ' exists as the

recollection of a smellscape, being the complex emotional encounter of the reminiscing

author. In the article, S. M. G. notes that no visitor to India can `recall vividly his

experiences, or relate them to his friends, without remembering at the same time, the

in which he lived in India, ' endorsing Paul Rodaway's

atmosphere of smells and sounds

in Sensuous Geographies (1994) that odours do, indeed, pass `through time as
observation

Moreover,
2749 his frustration that the powers of the author for descriptive
well as space.

can never adequately convey `the faintest notion of this characteristic smell'
expression ...

demonstrates the dependency of olfactory geographers upon the reader's own memories
If
750Smellscapesare assimilated by both author and reader according to
imaginations.
and

748Ibid. 402.
749Ibid. 408. Paul Rodaway, SensuousGeographies:Body, Sense and Place (London and New

York: Routledge, 1994) 72.

711S.M. G., `Indian Smells and Sounds,' 400. Paul Rodaway makes this point. Rodaway, Sensuous
 311

their unique experiencesand expectations.Indeed,just as many artists who travelled to the

East continued to fashion spectacularcompositionswith sphinxesand minarets that appear

more influenced by the Western fantasy of an enchanted elsewhere than on actual

encounter,so the hold of the Arabian Nights fantasy of a perfumed Oriental mystique was

so powerful that Western travellers in the East were often reluctant to relinquish the fiction

of the one-fragrancesymbol they were preconditioned to perceive, even when confronted

with pungent olfactory melanges, such as those described by S.M. G. For example, in

`Winter in Cairo', an article published in the Scotsman newspaper in 1886, a female

traveller in Egypt acknowledged that the `sickening stench that obliges you to hold your

nose' at the muddy Cairo bazaars,was `better describedthan experienced'. The foul smell

of `pulverised filth offal and unclean '

garbage, that registered before she could pinch
...
her nostrils shut, was so pervasive, sheclaimed, that `not all the cunning compoundsof the

scent bazaar itself could sweetenthe air ... after rain. ' Though the fetid stink eclipsed
...

all other scents,it was, the

nevertheless, perfumes sold at the attarin that signified for her

`the very odours of Araby. '75'

Olfactory geography first emergedin the mid eighteenthcentury although it has only been

labelled as such in the works of recent `sensuousgeographers'such as Douglas Porteousor

Paul Rodaway, who has defined it as `the perception of an odour in or acrossa given space

and the association of odours with particular things, organisms, situations and emotions
...

which all contribute to a senseof space and the character of '752

places. Indeed, as Alain

Geographies71.
751`Winter in Cairo,' The ScotsmanFebruary 10 1886: 7.
752Rodaway, SensuousGeographies 68. See also Graham M. S. Dann and Jens Kristen Steen

Jacobsen,`Leading the Tourist by the Nose,' Tourism as a Metaphor of the Social World, ed.
 312

Corbin has noted, the hygienist Jean-Noel Halle meticulously recorded the odours

encounteredalong the banks of the Seinein Paris in 1790,whilst the English agriculturalist

and traveller, Arthur Young, turned to to

cartography chart the smells of 753
France. By

1828, ideas (explored in chapter one) about tracing and recording the path of invisible

odour had entered the public consciousness,as seen in Coleridge's poetic account of the

`two and seventy stenches'of the city of Cologne.754However, it was not until the Indian

cholera outbreaksof the late 1890sthat smellscapestook on a new urgency in the writings

of Rudyard Kipling. Couchedin terms that imply a fascination for the `dreadful,' Kipling's

rich evocations of India's heat, stench, perfumes, oils and spices foster a senseof the

intimate relationship between smell and civilisation and insinuate an associationbetween

dirt, lust and cruelty.

It was in The City of Dreadful Night (1891) that Kipling, whilst registering his disapproval

of native participation on Municipal Boards demanded, `has anyone thoroughly

investigated the Big Calcutta Stink?' The stench, he claimed, was entirely peculiar to

Calcutta and was the result of Indian neglect and mismanagement:

Benares is fouler in point of concentrated,pent-up muck, and there are local

stenchesin Peshawarwhich are strongerthan the B. C.S.; but, for diffused, soul-

sickening expansiveness,the reek of Calcutta beatsboth Benaresand Peshawar.

Bombay cloaks her stencheswith a veneer of asafoetidaand tobacco; Calcutta

GrahamM. S. Dann (2002: CABI Publishing, 2002) 211.

753Corbin, Foul and the Fragrant 1,27.
AsaFor an olfactory tour of cities, see `How It Strikes a Stranger,' Scotsman 11 March 1867: S. On

the poor sanitary conditions of Easterncities, see for example: C. C. James,Oriental Drainage_A
Guide to the Collection, Removal and Disposal of Sewage in Eastern Cities (Bombay: Times of
India Press, 1902). Seealso `How It Strikes a Stranger,' 5.
 313

is above pretence. It is faint, it is sickly, and it is indescribable. It

... ...
resembles the essenceof corruption that has rotted for the second time - the

clammy odour of blue slime. 55

Tracing the path of the malevolent odour of Indian corruption as it puffed up through

cracks and vents or swirled up in `lazy eddies' from latrines and through the `obscureside

gullies' and narrow alleyways of the city, he continued:

There is no escapefrom it. It blows acrossthe maidän; it comesin gustsinto the

corridors of the Great EasternHotel; what they are pleasedto call the `Palaces

of Chowringhi' carries it; it swirls round the Bengal Club; it pours out of by-

streetswith sickening intensity, and the breeze of the morning is laden with it.

It is found, in spite of the fume of the engines,in Howrah Station. It seemsto

be worst in the little lanes at the back of Lal Bazar where the drinking shops

are, but it is nearly as bad opposite Government House and in the Public

Offices.756

Calcutta's olfactory geography, as describedby Kipling, related only tangentially to the

visual landscape for as Porteous has noted, with regard to smellscapes, the more

subjective and indeterminate qualities of intensity, complexity and effect replace

757
distance. This topography of miasma-like odours
considerationsof perspective,scale or

in
was menacing nature since smell, as Eleanor Margolies has observedin her map of the

odours of New York City, does not remain attached to its source and does not respect

boundaries.758Whilst the secretsof the city could be located and exposedvia traditional

755Rudyard Kipling, `The City of Dreadful Night, ' From Seato Sea,vol. 2 (1899) 65.
756Ibid.
757Porteous,'Smellscapes,' 67.
758Eleanor Margolies, 'Vagueness Gridlocked: A Map of the Smells of New York, ' The Smell
 314

maps marking permanent, visual landmarks, olfactory geographies were transitory and

evanescent. The smells were intermittent and unpredictable: `six moderately pure

mouthfuls of air may be drawn without offence. Then comes the seventh wave and the

queasiness of an uncultured stomach. 9759Moreover, they are discerned in discrete

episodes: they appear or fade, linger or infiltrate in various degrees of intensity or are

carried by the wind to new locations. 760Such shifting, vague, spatial structures, in which

odours appear in random succession or as inchoate mixtures, confused the sense of

direction, creating a sense of unease, of something sinister that could never be fully

761
comprehended.

Accounts of the olfactory geographiesof the Orient charterednot only sensoryterrainsbut

also emotional relationships to place, from attraction and attachment to repulsion and

alienation. Think, for example, of Hearn's description of the integral role of incensewithin

his personalmemories and associationsof his beloved Japan,discussedin chapter four. As

Douglas Porteoushas explained in Landscapesof the Mind (1990), smellscapesare almost

always created by outsiders since olfactory fatigue and habituation render smells

imperceptible over time and there is a strong tendency to judge unfamiliar smells as

762
unpleasant. Typically, smellscapesoffered a bewildering catalogue of odours, as listed

in `Indian Smells and Sounds which suggested a threatening sense of chaos and confusion

Culture Reader,ed. Jim Drobnick (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2006) 112.
759Kipling, `The City of Dreadful Night, ' 65.
760Rodaway, SensuousGeographies64.
761On smell and spatial organisation, see Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of

Experience(London: Arnold, 1977) 11 - 13.

762Douglas Porteous, Landscapesof the Mind (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University
of Toronto
Press, 1990) 23 - 24.
 315

reinforced by the tumultuous hullabaloo of unruly crowds. Descriptions of bazaars, in

particular, read as inventories of the smells encountered: for example, Burbridge's account

of a market at Marrakesh describes how the `smell of spices, mingled with horse-dung,

hung in the air and from the shops the bags of asafoetida,bundles of cinnamon, attar-of-

roses, tamar-el-hindi, and the like gave out their various scents to mingle with the acrid

odours of the crowd', whilst in Backsheeshor Life and Adventures in the Orient (1875),

Thomas Knox was struck by `a thousandpeculiar odors' that salutedhis nostrils at a drugs

bazaar in Constantinople.763The novelty of the exotic smells was also recreated at a

number of world fairs in the nineteenth century. For example, in his Recollections of the

Paris Exhibition of 1867 (1868), Rimmel describedthe aromas of coffee, spicy foods and

in the displays representing various Eastern 764

countries. Moreover, Paul
perfumes

Morand's reminiscence of the sensorial overload experienced on a childhood visit to the

Easternpavilions of the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris conveys a senseof excitement

mingled with disorientation.

The entire hill was nothing but perfumes,incense,vanilla, the aromatic fumes

of the seraglio; one could hear the scraping of the Chinese violins, the sounds

of the castanets,the wailing flutes of the Arab bands, the mystical howlings

of the Assawas the cries of the Ouled Nail with their mobile bellies; I
...
followed this opiate mixture, this perfume of Javanesedancing girls, sherbets

far Dahomean 765

and rahat-lakoum, as as the village.

763 Burbridge, Book of the Scented Garden 22. Thomas W. Knox, Backsheesh or Life and

Adventures in the Orient (Hartford, Connecticut Worthington, 1875) 24.

764Eugene Rimmel, Recollections of the Paris Exhibition of 1867 (London: Chapman and Hall,

1868) 60 - 62.
765Philippe Jullian, The Triumph of Art Nouveau: Paris Exhibition 1900 (London: Phaidon, 1974)

159.
 316

By imagining the spectacle of a procession of bellydancers as an `opiate mixture,' a

fragrance trail wafting its narcotic scent through the exhibition, Morand apportioned an

odour to the Oriental peoples on display and in doing so, completed the olfactory

characterisationof place.

In smellscapes such as this, odour functions as a social medium for the formulation of

for judgements. 766

constructions of race, class and gender as well as concomitant moral

As Mark M. Smith has shown in his book on the sensory dynamics of constructions of

race, entitled How Race is Made: Slavery. Segregation and the Senses (2006), the

visceral, irrational and highly emotional response of people to the smell of other races has

signified difference, promoted racial stereotyping and perpetuated inequality. In the

Southern States of America, he argues, invented ideas about the foul odour of black skin

led to the formal segregation of whites and blacks in the late nineteenth century. 767

Likewise, in Western travel-writings on the Orient, native people were defined,

categorised, differentiated and frequently reviled through commentary on the smells of

their skin, breath and hair, as well as of their food, perfumes and clothes. For example, in

his survey of `Indian Smells and Sounds, ' S.M. G. promoted the maintenance of distance

between races, through the observation that `a brown skin contains naturally more oil than

a white one, and the sun's action upon this, especially if it has been further anointed with

is far from Europeans'. 68Foul body odour was also often equated
mustard oil, pleasant to

with negative personality traits. For example, an article on `Ladies maids of the East, ' in

766Kelvin E. Y. Low, `Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon,' Current Sociology

53.3 (2005): 405.

767Mark M. Smith, How Race Is Made: Slavery. Segregation and the Senses (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press,2006).
769S.M. G., 'Indian Smells and Sounds,' 402.
 317

Girl's Own Paper (1901), describedhow a dishonestPersian employee, dismissedon the

grounds of theft, carelessnessand negligence,was said to leave `a most noxious odour of

tobacco-smokeand garlic behind her. 769The following section will consider in more

detail the connotations of the odorous Eastern female body through a reading of John

Singer Sargent'sFumee d'Ambre Gris (1880).

Fumee d'Ambre Gris

Sargent's Fumee d'Ambre Gris is a fascinating example of an Orientalist painting in

which the visualisation of smell and the female body reveals and reworks nineteenth-

century perceptions of the sensualand spiritual East [Fig. 1]. In this painting, the East is

presented in terms not only of the foreignness of its sights (including architecture,

costume, customs and exotic but

accoutrements) also of olfactory difference. Inspired by

a trip to North Africa during the winter of 1879 - 80, it was conceived in the Moroccan

town of Tetuan and finished in the painter's Paris studio. As described in chapter one, it

depicts an Easternwoman in the midst of a perfume inhalation ritual, in which sheinfuses

her robes and her senseswith the exquisite, musky scent of ambergris, a fragrance

describedby the New York Times in 1895 as `like the blending of new mown hay, the

damp woodsy fragrance of a fern-copse, and the faintest possible perfume of the

violet. 9770

The painting has a quiescentquality, the only suggestionof motion coming from the furls

of scent that coil slowly upwards to the nose of the entranced figure, and this has led

769`Ladies'-Maids of the East,' Girl's Own Paper 161.4(1901): 806.

770`Ambergris, the Whale Fisher's Prize,' New York Times 6 December 1895: 16.
 318

critics to focus on the lack of narrative in the painting. The painting offers no clarification

of why the female figure performs this most subtle of actions, the breathing in of scent;

and comprehension is entirely dependent upon the viewer's knowledge of the

composition, usesand social connotationsof ambergris.For this reason,most critics, both

past and present, have preferred to focus solely upon the chromatic schemeof the picture

rather than its obscuresubjectmatter. Henry James,on the other hand, relished the aura of

mystery that shrouded the painting, confessing `I know not who this Stately

Mohammedan may be, nor in what mysterious domestic or religious rite she may be

but
engaged, in her muffled contemplation and her pearl-colored robes she is exquisite
...
'"'
and memorable. However, whilst a full interpretation may have eluded most of the

Salon-goersof 1880, it becomesclear, when armed with just a few facts about ambergris,

such as were readily available in popular handbooks on perfume, that this is a complex

painting in which the base connotations of inhaling animal scent vie with the dignified

beauty of a cleansingritual.

The visual elision of Orient, Woman and perfume in the painting is intriguing given that

ambergris had no particular associationwith the East. Supplies of this organic, whale-

derived substancewere entirely dependentupon sporadicfinds by providential sailors and

beachcomberschancing upon it floating in the ocean or washed up on the beach and by

up a dead whale for its blubber only to discover a small fortune packed
whalers opening

the carcass 772

intestines. Such finds were as likely to be made off the shoresof
within

America, Australasia or Asia and the Eastern world did not hold a monopoly on the

Henry James,`John S. Sargent,' Harper's New Monthly Magazine 15 (1887): 688.

772It retailed at fifteen American dollars an ounce in 1880 and thirty dollars by 1903 and was

known in the perfume trade as `floating gold.'

 319

refinement and manufacture of this scent. It is evident that its identification with the East

lay more in its associations: with exotic rarity, mystery (its source being very much

debated),the mystical (due to its consumptionin ritual practice) and disease(being found

in dead whales). Known to be the product of a rare pathological condition of the Sperm

Whale, the preciseidentity of this decomposingyet sweet-smellingmatter was a sourceof

continual controversy throughout the nineteenth century. Numerous conjectures were

made, including excrement, vomit, a morbid growth caused by genital cysts and (as is

generally believed today), a pathological, intestinal secretion caused by the irritation of

the sharp, indigestible beaks upon which the whale "'

feeds. Although
of cuttlefish,

Longman's Magazine announcedin 1885 that `ambergris has now been robbed of its

mysteries and is known to be unprosaically (sic) formed by a morbid condition of the

intestine,' over a decade later the Scientific American Supplement continued to report

that `the trustworthy facts relating to this most interesting and singularly valued product

are few and far between.

s774
As an unknown quantity and an exquisite perfume that belied

its corrupt and filthy origins, ambergris seemedto capture something of the ambiguity of

the East and in particular, the Easternwomen that wore it.

The association of the East with dirt and decay implicit in Fumee d'ambre gris is

heightenedfurther due to the faecalundertonesof the scent of ambergris, which generated

morbid bodily fluids and decay. The perfumer Septimus

associations with excrement,

Piessedescribedfresh ambergris as black, viscous and mixed with blood and feces and as

773Karl H. Dannenfeldt, 'Ambergris: The Searchfor Its Origin, ' Isis 73.3 (1982): 382 - 97.Leonard

Stoller, `Ambergris and the Whale: Factsand Fables,' Givaudanian (1957): 3-7.
774`Ambergris (from Longman's Magazine), ' New York Times 8 March 1885: 9. 'Ambergris, '

Scientific American Supplement 1090 (1896): 1427 - 28.

 320

emitting an overpowering, nauseating stench when freshly released from decomposing

775 It was well-documented in

whale carcasses perfume guides and articles on fragrance

that the sweet-musky scent so prized by perfumers developed only after prolonged

exposure to air and sun. Floating on the ocean waves, it oxidised, lost volatility and

became dry, grey and hard, releasing a much subtler, sweeter scent, which Piesse likened

to `dried 776However, even in this state, as the New York Times noted, the
cow-dung'.

smell was considered `too intense and powerful to be tolerated. '777When greatly diluted it

was highly prized in the Western world as the exquisite base note in the highest quality

perfumes but was deemed foul and oppressive when inhaled (as seen in Sargent's

in its `raw' or concentrated 778

state. As Classen, citing Edward Sagarin, has
painting)

noted, for Western sensitivities it was necessaryfor the perfumer to work his alchemy to

transform the crude, natural animal substanceinto a beautiful 77'

cultural product. By

alluding to the perceived Eastern taste for the reek of unprocessed reality and the

forbidden views of decomposingblood, shit and raw flesh, on one level Fumee d'ambre

775He reported that a scientist named Homberg had discovered that human faeces acquired the

`perfume (odor!)' of ambergris when digested artificially in a vessel for a long period of time.
GeorgeWilliam SeptimusPiesse,The Art of Perfumery (London: Piesseand Lubin, 1855) 151.
776Piesse, The Art of Perfumery 151.

n7 'Ambergris (from Longman's Magazine),' 9.

778Even when attenuatedto an infinitesimal degree,many Western women eschewedit, preferring

lighter, floral scents, such as English lavender. See for example, Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady
Ludlow (Stroud: Sutton, 1985) 43. Easternwomen, on the other hand, it was said, had a taste for
heavy and penetrating perfumes. Henry Havelock Ellis, `Sexual Selection in Man, ' Studies in the
Psychology of Sex (Philadelphia: Davis, 1905) 102.
79 Classen, `Odor of the Other,' 147. Classen cites Edward Sagarin, The Science and Art of

Perfumery (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945). To obtain the scent prized by perfumers such as
Piesse,it was necessaryfor three ouncesof the raw material to be mixed with one gallon of pure

even then this pure tincture was consideredfar too concentrated,being always diluted
alcohol, and
further the basenote in a bouquet of other scents.
with alcohols and applied as
 321

gds can be seen to impart an extremely powerful social statement about Eastern

backwardness,in which smell acts as a pivotal index of moral, racial, ethnic and cultural

difference and marginality.780

`Smells have no place in the constitutive triad of civilisation: hygiene, order and beauty'

arguesDominique Laporte in History of Shit of 2000. `In the empire of hygiene and order,

odor will always be suspect. Even when exquisite, it will hint at filth submerged in

excessive perfume, its very sweetnessredolent of intoxication and vice. '781In Singer

Sargent's painting, the representationof ambergris conveyed more than a hint of filth,

suggestingthe dark delights of the Easternwomen who took perversepleasure in this smell

and who, in so doing, became corrupted by and hence akin to the putrid matter that

the
generated odour. By depicting the female figure in the act of marking herself with this

intense, faecal-like, animal odour, Sargent promoted what Mark Jenner has described as

one of the grand (and contestable)narratives of smell and civilisation: that smell has been

regarded as more central to earlier, simpler or less literate cultures than that of the modem

West 782The painting rehearsesfamiliar nineteenth-centuryideas about the backwardness

and disordered nature of Oriental culture. As Zygmunt Bauman in `The Sweet Scents of

7800nforbidden sights and smells, see Zygmunt Bauman, `The Sweet Scent of Decomposition,'

Forget Baudrillard?, eds. Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner (London and New York: Routledge,
1993) 27.
781Dominique Laport, History of Shit (Cambridge,M. A.: MIT Press,2000) 84.
782Mark Jenner, 'Civilization and Deodorization? Smell in Early Modem English Culture,' Civil

Histories: EssaysPresentedto Sir Keith Thomas, eds. Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 129. For example, Robert Mandrou has argued that
`whereastoday, smell and taste are relatively unimportant, by comparison with the other senses,the

men of the sixteenth century were extremely susceptibleto scentsand perfumes.' Robert Mandrou,
Introduction to Modem France: 1500 - 1600: An Essayin Historical Psychology (London: Edward
Arnold, 1975) 54. Seealso Norbert Elias, The Civilising Process(Oxford: Blackwells, 1978).
 322

Decomposition' (1993) has argued:

Smells were cast as the vestige of animality in the human; as the emblem of

savagery that defeated the drill of civilisation; as the vivid testimony, and

surest and least mistakable of signs, of the limits of rational control - and

indeed, of socially administeredorder. Smells were to be disciplined. That

means, not allowed to appear on their own initiative, in places of their

choice, in their native, raw form. Naturalness in smells, like in everything

else, was anothername for barbarity, since artificiality - the designerreality

had become the trademark of civilisation. 783

-
By representingthe wilful inhalation of an intense, raw, animal odour that was not easily

arrestedor confined, as opposedto the more controlled experienceof smelling an artfully

concocted perfume or an artificial fragrance, Sargent would seem to contribute to a

nineteenth-century narrative about the seemingly ungovernable and barbaric nature of

Easternsociety.

In the painting, scent acts as a marker of social identity, indicating the `Otherness' of the

Eastern female. In this depiction of a woman steeping herself in the exotic scent of

ambergris, olfactory symbolism is employed as a means to express ideas of cultural

identity and difference.784As ConstanceClassennotes in `Odor of the Other,' virgins are

generally associatedwith floral fragrance,while `seductresses

are associatedwith heavily

sweet and spicy odours; the sweetnessof the scent signifying their beauty and attraction,

'$' Bauman, `The Sweet Scentof Decomposition,' 25.

784Critics noted the female figure's heavy application of cosmetics that marked her as overtly

Henry James noted her `painted eyes and brows' whilst J.J.R noted her `curiously-tinted
sensual.
finger-nails.' James,`John S. Sargent,' 688. J.J.R., `Our Monthly Gossip: The Paris Salon of 1880,'
Lippincott's Magazine 26.153 (1880): 384.
 323

and the spiciness and heaviness, their exotic status and overwhelming powers of

fascination.' 785In the late nineteenth century, a penchantfor civet, musk or ambergriswas

perceived as uncivil, pertaining to evolutionary backwardnessand as a sign of an animal-

like, sexual aggressiveness.Whilst western women of medieval society had sought to

accentuatetheir sensuality through the use of heavy animal perfumes, modem women in

to
polite society aimed mask or deodorisetheir 786
vaginal odours. Therefore, the proclivity

of Easternwomen for heavy, animal-basedperfumes was regardedin the West as evidence

of a less refined olfactory sensibility, on a par with those of Western women several

centuries earlier. Moreover, as Corbin has observed,the animal scents of musk, a honey-

like secretionproduced in an abdominal gland of the male musk deer, and civet, a strong-

smelling excretion of butter-like consistencyscrapedfrom the perianeal glands of male and

female civet cats, were associatedin Western culture with bodily shame because they

from glands near both 87

the genitalia and anus. Ambergris shared this
originated

connotation becauseof the musky nature of its scent but was also firmly associatedwith

the erotic owing to its powerful sexual potency, being best known for its aphrodisiac

properties. By representingthe female figure immersed in an atmosphereimpregnatedwith

this heavy, sweet odour, Sargent, on one level at least, emphasisedthe figure's barbaric

carnality, imbuing the work with an erotic chargein which desire and disgust were fused.

Nevertheless,the visual representationof a substanceknown for its potency as a sexual

stimulant points as much towards the titillation of the Western viewer as towards a

785Classen,`Odor of the Other,' 143.

786Corbin, Foul and the Fragrant 74. Corbin cites Albert Hagen, Die Sexuelle Osphresiologie

(Charlottenburg:Barsdorf, 1901) 226.

797Ibid. Despite their cat-like appearance,civets belong to the mongoose family. See also Anon,

`Animal Perfumes,' The Scotsman24 March 1884: 6.

 324

vilification of the sensuality of the East. In the catalogue of the 2000 exhibition, Noble

Dreams, Wicked Pleasures,Holly Edwards raises, but leaves unanswered,the question of

the erotic appealof the painting, noting that this would have dependedto someextent upon

the viewer's own associationswith ambergris788However, on reading the French reviews

of the painting during its exhibition in 1880, it is clear that the erotic implications of the

perfume were first and foremost in the Salon-goer'smind. Indeed, one critic writing for Le

Musee Artistique et Litteraire noted that `the canvasis the more intriguing if one is au fait

with these refinements of exquisite delight' noting that ambergris `revives fervour' and

that Casanova added it to his chocolate. `It is a canvas for the secret boudoir of an

epicureanbeauty', the reviewer claimed, whilst pondering with salacioushumour whether

Sargent might have the glory of introducing ambergris consumption as an aphrodisiac

amongst Salon 789

society. It is interesting to note that rather than eliciting social

commentary about Oriental women, Sargent's representation of an Eastern woman

inhaling a sexually stimulating scenttriggered remarksupon Western boudoir behaviour.

Of course,Fumee d'ambre gris doesnot offer an unambiguously imperialistic perspective

in which the exciting profanities of the East are exposedfor the voyeuristic titillation of an

entranced Western audience. The female figure is well-shrouded and there is no direct

rendering of naked flesh, though her red lips and nails suggest a degree of impropriety.

Rather, the familiar contemporary association of ambergris with filth and depravity,

outlined above, creates a second layer of meaning, that lurks behind the calm, dignified

788Edwards,Noble Dreams 135.

789A.Genevay, `Salon De 1880,' Le Musee Artistique et Litteraire 4 (1880): 14.

My translation. For critical citations on Fumee d'ambre eris see Marc Simpson, Uncann
Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1997).
 325

beauty and monumental splendour that the painting projects through the monotonal

handling of the whitewashedcolumn and walls and the cream-colouredrobes. Indeed,the

overwhelming whiteness of the painting servesas a reminder that this is a depiction of a

purification ritual and, indeed, that besides its baser connotations, ambergris was also

believed by many to have a wholesome, reinvigorating effect as a general stimulant.790

The painting has an air of quiet, spiritual dignity and the female protagonist, or `stately

Mohammedan' has a somewhat statuesque,almost sculptural quality, as she gravely

concentrateson drawing in the physical, sexual and spiritual powers impregnated within

the fumes. 91 In this way, the painting itself embodies a familiar nineteenth-century

construction of Orient as perfume, as something spiritual and mystical and yet with

corruption at its core.

The moral ambiguity that lies at the core of nineteenth-century understandings of both

smell and the Orient is implicit within the painting, through the theme of sensorial

intoxication. 792In chapter one, it was shown that the intensity of Eastern sunlight in Fumee

d'ambre grin mingles and fuses with the pungent scent of ambergris, suggesting an

encounter with the East that is at once visual and olfactory. Having already described the

790It was said to be invaluable as an antispasmodicand for enhancing bone marrow and semen

production. `The Physical Action of Scents: Some Are Bracing as a Frosty Morning, Others Are

Enervating,' New York Times 17 July 1894: 18.

791James,`John S. Sargent,' 688. One critic noted that John S. Sargent causesall the tones of the

to around on oriental woman, veiled in quite a sculpturesque style.' Frederic de

silvery scale play
Syene,`The Salon of 1880,' American Art Review 40 (1880): 543.
792On the physiology of `sensorial intoxication' and an account of how the inhalation of odours

to heighten visual acuity and general bodily excitation, see Ch. 10 of Charles Fero,
was proven
Sensationet mouvement: etudes experimentalesde psycho-mecaniaue (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1887)
240.
 326

visual prospect of this sun-drenched, perfume-saturated atmosphere, it will now be

suggestedthat the effect of this dazzling illusion, of seeing scentparticles shift and diffuse

within a light that is almost hallucinatory in its lucidity, is a sense of giddiness and

intoxication. The representation of the rising fumes has a mesmerising effect upon the

viewer and we can imagine how, drug-like, this ethereal scent enters the female body and
93
muddles the senses. Its sweetnessmight be viewed in Laporte's terms as `redolent of

intoxication and vice' but also of a spiritual exaltation and of a blissful rejoicing of the

soul. Indeed, one Salon critic for L'Art described Sargent's painting as a depiction of a

`voluptuous Moorish woman intoxicated like a nun at the altar.094In Fumee d'ambre
...

grin, the hypnotic effect of blazing sunlight and the specific connotations of a perfume said

by the New York Times to clear the brain and drive `away those evil spirits known as the

blues' enhancethis senseof bodily and spiritual invigoration.795

The concept of bodily and spiritual rejuvenation through olfactory therapeutics is at odds

with the familiar, if now contested, reading of Eastern inertia and idleness that Rana

"' Citing Piesse. `Animal Perfumes,' 6. Fere, Sensationet mouvement 240. During the 1880sand

1890s,there was a certain fascination with the stimulating effects of odour, and, for example, the
New York Times reported on `Parisiennesseekingdainty sensations'by injecting perfumes such as
into the blood stream in order to calm agitated nerves. Fumee d'ambre ris, however, has
patchouli
this unnatural decadence. See Anon, `Perfumed Ladies (from the London St
none of sense of
James's Gazette)' New York Times 18 August 1890: 5.
794Ph. Burty, `Le salon de 1880: Les 6trangers,' Lart 6.21 (1880): 299. My translation. Another
in this is Albert-Emile Artigue's Enivrement (Intoxication) of 0.1890, a painting in
work vein
Oriental woman fumigates herself in scented smoke. The rights for this work are held by
which an
Roger-Viollet agency but further details are unknown. Sargent's employment of scent
the
intoxication as a theme for Orientalist painting is not unique in this period. See also J. W.

Waterhouse's The Magic Circle, 1886, Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 127 cm, Tate, London.
795`Physical Action of Scents,' 18.
 327

Kabbani in Europe's Myth of Orient (1988) claimed to be prevalent in Orientalist painting,

with its scenes of `decadent languishers who do not exert themselves as do the energetic

English. 796One might argue that there is an unresolved tension in the work, for despite the

revitalising properties of ambergris, the painting as a whole is imbued with a sense of quiet

stillness and timelessness unhurried by the imperatives of work and productivity, a quality

that it shares with a number of olfactory-oriented paintings of the East, such Deutsch's Le

Fumeur (1903) or Ernst's The Pipe Dreamer (1888), two works (mentioned above)

featuring Arab males in a state of tobacco-induced torpor, meditatively smoking from

hookah pipes [Fig. 43 and 44]. 797 Certainly, for the viewer, there is something very

leisurely about tracing the elevation of the scent as it spirals out of the burner in Fumee

d'ambre gris. Rimmel argued that the Eastern proclivity for intoxicating perfume was

annexed to ideas about industrial and economic backwardness. In The Book of Perfumes,

he observed that oriental women `love to be in an atmosphere redolent with fragrant

odours that keep them in a state of dreamy languor which is for them the nearest approach

to happiness. ' He believed that in the Orient, perfume consumption was `principally

cultivated among ladies, who, caring little or nothing for mental acquirements and

debarred from the pleasures of society, are driven to resort to such sensual enjoyments as

their secluded mode of life will afford. '798An accompanying illustration depicted a demure

harem beauty whiling away her days by inhaling the scent from a rose, her perfume flagons

796Kabbani, Europe's Myth of Orient 17.

797See also Conley, Paige A. `FumeuseDe Haschisch,' Nineteenth-Centuy Art Worldwide 5.2

(2006), www. 19th-C-artworldwide.org/autumn-06/articles.conl.html, (accessed 14 August 2007).

Ivan Davidson Kalmar, `The Houkah in the Harem: On Smoking and Orientalist Art, ' Smoking,
SanderL. Gilman and Zhou Xun (London: Reaktion Press,2004) 218 - 19.
eds.
798Rimmel, The Book of Perfumes 132.
 328

and decantersat her side [Fig. 45]. 799

Given this popular association with perfume and idleness, one should note that if

ambergris were thought to invigorate, such strong perfumes were also thought to induce

drowsiness,lassitude and fatigue. Ideas about the depressiveeffect of inhaling smells that

were excessively pungent, and thus thought to be vitiated, persisted long after the demise

of miasma theory, and were frequently rehearsed in late nineteenth-century hygiene

manuals, domestic encyclopaedias and family 800

medical guides. For example, in his

Essays on Health Culture (trans. 1884), discussedin chapter one, the German naturalist

and hygienist Gustav Jaegerexplained that just as light, fresh and wholesome floral scents

were said to have a stimulating, invigorating and arousing affect upon the body and mind,

heavy and oppressive odours were thought to make the heart-beat sluggish, causing

lethargy and listlessness.

the limbs feel heavy, as if fatigued; the breathing is more difficult ... the flesh

becomessoft; the body is distended;the heart beat more quickly (sic) and less

regularly; the mood is depressed.In other words, such concentrated matters

induce feelings of weariness, weakness,languor and depression; and if the

degreeof concentrationbe intensified to a certain point death will result 801

Sargent,then, presentsan ambiguousimage, in which it is not clear whether the ambergris

has promoted a beneficial state of meditation, from which the figure will emerge

invigorated and refreshed,or a depressive,strength-sappingstate of inertia.

799Bimmel, The Book of Perfumes 12.

80° Christina Bradstreet, `Aesthetics of Cleanliness: Bathers in the Art Collection and Soap

Advertising of the First Viscount Leverhulme,' unpublished masters dissertation, University of

London, 2003.
so' Gustav Jaeger,Dr Jaeger'sEssayson Health-Culture (London: Waterloo, 1887) 268.
 329

This reading of Fumee d'ambre gris demonstratesthe way in which an understandingof

olfactory symbolism can enrich visual comprehension.It offers new interpretative insights

into a work that has suffered from the neglect of its cultural significance. Hitherto, art

historians have persistently focussedtheir energiesupon entirely formal observations,such

as the work's `preoccupationwith the handling of white on white, ' whilst failing to engage

the theme of ambergris inhalation.802

It was Sargent himself who insisted
with painting's

upon the painting's `primacy of form over '

content, stating in a letter to Vernon Lee, that

the `subject is of very little importance.'803This comment, as well as the assertionmadeby

Lee, in a subsequentletter to her mother, that Sargent`goesin for art's own sake' and that

`the subject of a picture is not always in the way, ' prompted Elaine Kilmurray and Richard

Ormand to stressthe artist's `disinterestin the subject matter.'804Subsequentart historians

have tended to continue in the same vein. The intrinsic mysteriousnessof the scent of

ambergrishas helped to promote the idea of a narrative-free painting and it's interesting to

recall that in Hartmann's play Buddha, the scent of ambergris was employed to contribute

to a certain aestheticmood or emotional ambiencerather than to suggestspecific ideas or

805
associations However, it can be argued that Sargent's claim of indifference to the

subject matter does not make that content any less interesting or valid for discussion. As

Elizabeth Prettejohn has suggestedin Interpreting Sargent (1998), `the myth of Sargent's

superficiality has tended to produce superficial answers to the major questions about

Sargent's art. But we should not permit his technical facility to dictate facile interpretations

$02Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormand, John Singer Sargent (London and Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1998) 61.

803Ibid. Letter from Sargentto Lee, dated9 July 1880, in collection of Richard Ormand.
804Ibid.
805Ibid. Letter from Lee to her mother, dated21 June 1881, in collection of Ormand.
 330

of his painting. '806

Sargent's artistic virtuosity, his interest in the rendering of light and his attention to

ethnographic detail have led art historians to discuss Fumee d'Ambre Gris as a painterly

feat in naturalistic effect. 07 This, combined with the absence of voyeurism due to the

heavy-draping of the female body, has been sufficient to persuade commentators that this

work provides an innocuous alternative to the more lascivious representations of Oriental

women typified in the work of Gerome or Delacroix and that it can be situated outside of

the mainstream repertoire of Orientalist 808

art. Yet this painting, with its representation of

incense diffusing into an intense Eastern light, is by no means a self-contained experiment

in artistic verisimilitude or a challenge of colour and form. In short, it should not be seen

as transcending its historical context. Indeed, as Roger Benjamin has observed in Oriental

Aesthetics (2003), the preoccupation of travel artists with the accurate representation of

climate and atmosphere was `at the heart of the colonising aesthetic [being] a way to
...

address colonised places without referring to the situation of the inhabitants, to the political

actuality that has made possible the observer's or artist's presence. i809As a vision in which

the vibrant sunlight seemingly palpitates with ambergris particles, Fumee d'ambre gris

resonates with cultural significance. The painting sits centrally within the American

Orientalist tradition, which, as Edwards has argued in Noble Dreams, was more benign

806Elizabeth Prettejohn, Interpreting Sargent(London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998) 7.

807Margaret C. Conradshas identified the style of the robe with the Hlot tribe of Northern Morocco

the triangular pins with the Berberish or Southernpart of the country.

and
Margaret C. Conrads, American Paintings and Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art

Institute (New York: Hudson Hills, 1990) 174. Edwards, Noble Dreams 137.
808Kilmurray and Ormand, John Singer Sargent61.
809Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics 49.
 331

than its French counterpart,since American artists were influenced by the cultural attitudes

Europe towards the Orient, without sharing its vested colonial interest 810
Though more
of

subtle and more ambiguous than the well-known scenes of lustful Turks and indolent

natives that have traditionally been associatedwith European Orientalism, the painting

draws upon, in Prettejohn's words, `stereotypes of oriental sensibility' through its

Muslim 811
woman. Thus, the associationsof
representationof the ritualist perfuming of a

ambergris consumption are highly relevant to a discussion of the wider cultural

constructionsof Eastern female sexuality and the Orient. It is for this reasonthat a casehas

been put forward in this chapterfor Fumeed'ambre gris not simply as an a-historical `tone

poem demonstrating Sargent's outstandingtechnical skills and his aestheticsensibility' but

also as a fascinating contribution to a body of nineteenth-century work in which Eastern

culture, and in particular the Eastern woman, is marked out and differentiated by its

odours812

That ambergris was continually posited as both exquisite and base, foul and fragrant,

spiritual and sensual, rendered it particularly appropriate for the conveyance and

reinforcement of the traditional paradox of the Orient as a complex construct of `noble

dreams and wicked pleasures'; a site of beauty, the sublime and sensual gratification g'3

That such an exquisite scent `should be found in the heart of such decay, ' being formed

`in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale' was a constant source of amazement for such

810Edwards, Noble Dreams 12. Sargent was exposed to the Orientalism of Gerome and his
during his training at the etalier of Carolus-Duran from 1874 - 1878.
contemporaries
811Prettejohn, Interpreting Sargent 12.
812Kilmurray and Ormand, John Singer Sargent61.
813To borrow the title of the 2001 exhibition organised by the Clark (Sterling and Francine) Art

Institute and held at the Mint Museum of Art.

 332

nineteenth-century writers as Hermann Melville, in his novel Mobv Dick of 1851.81'

Ambergris exposed the fragile boundary separating the `foul and the fragrant' and served

as a reminder that, as Laporte has argued, `all smell is tendentially the smell of shit. '"' It

is due to the ambiguity surrounding this scent that its representation in Sargent's painting

creates such a powerful metaphor for the sensual and the spiritual, the exquisite and the

corrupt.

Ruth St. Denis and Incense

The power of scent to evoke an Oriental union of the sensual and the sacred was also

central to Ruth St. Denis's solo dance Incense,which was performed as part of her series

of East-Indian themed dances that toured theatres, vaudeville houses, concert stagesand

private soirees in America, Europe and Britain from 1906 - 1911.816St. Denis was

eclectically inspired by the exotic dancing performed both by the Egyptian belly dancers,

Turkish dervishes and hoochie-kooch dancersof the Paris Exposition of 1900, which she

visited whilst touring Europe with David Belasco's production of Zaza, and by the dancers

814Herman Melville, Moby Dick (New York: Putnam, 1892) 386. Seealso `Ambergris,' 16.
gisLaport, History of Shit 103 04. Corbin, Foul and the Fra ant.
-
816Jowett, Time and the Dancing Image
mage 147. Not all the dances were performed each night and
some were introduced later than others. Incense was first performed at the Hudson Theater, New
York on 26' March 1906 but she continued to perform it at intervals throughout her life, right up

until the age of 91. The complete public tour programme can be found in ChristenaL. Schlundt, The
ProfessionalAppearancesof Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn: A Chronology and an Index of Dances
1906 - 1932 (New York: New York Public Library, 1962). See also Jane Sherman,The Drama of
Denishawn Dance (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1979). In 1911,
Roshanaraalso performed an Incense Dance in London, inspired by St. Denis's performance. On
Oriental-inspired popular dances,seeRobert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness. Burlesque and American
Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991).
 333

that she observed at the Indian village on Coney Island in 1906. She consolidated her

knowledge through extensivelibrary-basedresearchbut had no aspirations of authenticity.

Instead she set out to capturein her choreographythe spirit of Indian danceand invocation

rituals! 7 Through the physical and spiritual act of dancing, that prompted one reviewer to

comment, after a performance in Boston in 1906, that `there is no atmosphereof sex about

her and yet her beauty is not a sexlessbeauty'; and by drawing on the feminine, sensual
...

and sacred connotations of smell; she presented an idea of the East that was mired in

paradox$'$

`A heavy smell of incense greeted the visitor to the Scala Theatre last night, ' reported the

Daily Telegraph in October 1908, in its review of the London premiere of St. Denis's

temple dances, at which censers were placed in the theatre foyer. Impressed by the

programme, which comprised The Incense, The Cobra, Nautch, Yogi and Radha.

reviewers applauded the ability of St. Denis to capture in these pioneering dances `a series

of bizarre Eastern scenes' that included a high-caste East Indian woman bearing a tray of

incense as she pays puja to her gods; street life, replete with jugglers, merchants, water

pirouetting before the stately throne of a rajah; a

carriers and snake charmer; a nautch girl

Hindu saint or yogi renouncing the sins of the flesh; and for the finale, a goddess's dance

the five 819 Her status as a pioneer of modern expressive dance in America was
of senses

in the article. With her repertoire of gliding two-steps, rippling arm

acknowledged

decisive movements and vigorous backbends, this `lithe and sinuous Hindoo
muscles, slow

817Jowett,Time and the Dancing Image 90.

818Philip Hale, Sunday Herald, Boston, 1907, cited in Ruth St. Denis, An Unfinished Life: An

Autobiography (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1939) 136.
819Special Correspondence,`Really Oriental Is Ruth St. Denis, ' New York Times 18 October 1908:

C4. The New York Times article was sourceddirectly from The Dail Telegraph.
 334

princess from the Himalayas of new Jersey' was admired for her ability to convey the

`languorouspassion and sentimentof the Indian peninsula' and for drawing upon Eastern-

inspired music and stage-sets,coloured lighting and a Hindu support cast to createa sense

of `oriental mystery.s820Indeed, the reviewer was enthralled by the overall effect of a

performancemarked by a `keen esoteric flavour of barbaric crudity and '

sensuousness,the

exotic ambienceof which was most aptly symbolisedby the `acrid smell of those fumes of

incense which cling to the walls of the theatre like a strange and penetrating atmosphere

Whilst for the Daily Telegraph reviewer, the aroma of

from beyond the Suez Canal.s821

incense conveyed a senseof Eastern `barbarity,' `sensuality' and the dark delights of the

Orient, for St. Denis, it had a highly spiritual and mystical significance. As both an `acrid

smell' symbolising the lascivious lure of the East and a heavenly scent standing for Eastern

mysticism and incense

transcendentalism, implied the sacredin the sensualand the sensual

in the sacred.

The danceof Incensebegan with a darkenedand desertedstage,bare except for two large

incense burners that billowed fragrant fumes from the left and right of the stage."'

620Correspondence,'Really Oriental,' C4. 'Olfactory Hallucinations Associated with Subconscious

Visual Perceptions,' Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 12 (1906): 11.
Walter Terry, The Dance in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) 53.
sei Correspondence,'Really Oriental,' C4. The New York Times article was sourced directly from

The Daily Telegraph.

822To my knowledge there is no film footage of the dance dating from the original performance

1906 1911. My descriptions of the dance are based upon Liz Lea's reconstructive
period, -
Incense at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury on 19`hNovember 2006 as part of
performance of
her 'Blue Tour' and from viewing Phillip Baribault's five minute colour film of Ruth St. Denis
the dance in 1953. I also draw upon the collection of photographs of the original
performing
the New York Public Library, from descriptions of the dancesmade in the various
performancesat
descriptive writings cited in this session. In particular see the description and
reviews and other
 335

Gradually the audiencebecameaware of St. Denis stealing like a wraith of scentedsmoke

thorough the cashmerestage-curtains:the distinct moment of her arrival was indistinct 823

Vague and impalpable, her ghostly form loomed silently and slowly closer. Draped in a

gauzy, soft smoke-greysari, the transparent,filmy layers of which twisted over her body to

suggest swirling smoke fumes, she appeared insubstantial and airy as she swayed in

harmony with the fragrant smoke. An uncredited photograph of 1908 reveals how, aided

by effects of coloured lighting engineeredby her brother Buzz, her wisp-like body seemed

to fuse into the smoky haze, echoing the manner in which the fumes rising from the burner

dissolved into the wider atmosphere[Fig. 46]. Over the course of this five to six minute

dance, the female body appeared to metamorphoseinto incense, at the same time as

swirling clouds of incensesmoke were identified with the female form. Like the flickering

form of Lady Li that took shape within the trembling incense smoke in The Magical

Incense [Fig. 36], she appearedas a scent-inspiredvision of the female form that will fade

in the audience'simagination once the smokehas cleared.

In this performance of the domestic ritual of puja, in which a Hindu housewife offered

incenseto the deity, St. Denis used flowing movementsto become, in her own words, `the

very spirit of the i824

smoke. As Caroline and Charles Coffin observed in Dancing and

dance scenario in Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet. Being a History of Her Cycle

of Oriental Dances(San Francisco: John Howell, 1920).

823In the 1908 production an oriental carpet provides the backdrop for her dance.Interestingly, the

London performances of October - November 1908 were subtitled `Purdah', meaning the curtain

which sometimes separatesthe women's quarters from the rest of an East Indian household. St.
Denis was painted in the smoke-greysari by Wilhelm von Kaulbach and a figurine of Incensewas

sculptedby Gaston Lechaise.Denis, An Unfinished Life 72.

824SuzanneShelton, Divine Dancer: A Biography of Ruth St. Denis (New York: Double Day,

1981).
 336

Dancers of Today (1912), `the dancer herself ceases to have a personality. She is but an

emanation, a shadow only a little more substantial than the smoke spirals which curl

upward from the vessels before her. '$ZSHaving crumbled incense onto an offering dish,

which was at times raised above her head to suggest an invocation to the deity, her trailing

arm traced the path of the spirals of smoke, providing a kinaesthetic echo of the rising

scent that became the rhythmic theme of the dance. Whilst artists such as Mucha visually

conveyed odours through depictions of arabesque fragrance trails, St. Denis produced what

Suzanne Shelton has described as `art nouveau in dance, ' tracing the curves of the coiling

fumes in every gesture and pose 826 This visual interaction between the rising puffs of

smoke and the female dancer as a sensuous container for the spiritual was also made

apparent in an earlier photograph of c. 1906-7, in which body and burner are juxtaposed

[Fig. 47]. The incense burners created a spatial symmetry, framed the dance and provided

stasis in marked visual contrast to St. Denis's writhing form. 827With their hour-glass

curves that echoed the shapeliness of the female body (which was emphasised by her

contraposto stance and her adoption, in repose, of the serpentine line), these exotic,

decorative censers functioned as silent and stationary 'bodies' at her side, accentuating the

between femininity Easternness828

association smell, and

Denis, An Unfinished Life 69.

825Caroline Coffin and Charles H. Coffin, Dancing and Dancers of Today (New York: Dodd, Mead

and Co, 1912) 92.

826 Shelton,Divine Dancer 56.
927According to Drake-Boyt, the positioning of the burners to her left and right bears direct visual

correlation to the staging of her friend Edmund Russell's adaptation of Light of Asia. Elizabeth
Drake-Boyt, `Dance as a Project of the Early Modem Avantgarde,' PhD, Florida State University,
2005,81.
828She stands`with one hip settling over the supporting foot and the rib cage
counterbalancingthis
the head inclining toward the out-curved hip'. Jowett, Time and the Dancing Imame
position and
 337

Ultimately however, it was upon the moving female body, with its slow sensualmotions

and languorous simulation of scentedsmoke,that ideas about India were superimposed.In

an interview for the New York Times, St. Denis recounted how, inspired by the slow

rhythmic dancing of India as well as successivemovement exercises such as Genevieve

Stebbin's arm drill, `The SerpentineSeries,' she had produced a `successionof graduated

movements ... that melt into each other by easy transition and that impress one with an

almost listless easerather than by any suggestionof effort. '829Just as the fragrant smokeof

burning incense slowly ascendsand shifts, suspendedinto the air without abrupt beginning

or end, each posture grew out of the one preceding it and dissolved gradually and almost

imperceptibly into the next.

Take the invisible motions of the clouds at sunset; one form melts into

another, while one is almost unconscious of a change. It is just these

imperceptible progressionsof movement that I try to catch in suggestingthe

$'o
wreaths of ascendingsmoke.

Flowing in and out of iconic pose in a manner influenced by Delsarteanexercises(such as

the tableau vivant, in which women posed as Greco-Roman statuary), her gestureswere

slow and meditative, invoking gentle "'

introspection. Her locomotion across the stage

was accomplished in fluid undulation and her movements- standing, walking, kneeling,

folding the hands in salutation to the deity, lifting and resetting the offering tray or

scatteringincenseinto the fire - were few, simple, deliberate and purposeful. The stillness

90.
$29`Olfactory Hallucinations Associatedwith SubconsciousVisual Perceptions,' X2.
830'Bringing Temple Dances from the Orient to Broadway,' New York Times 25 March 1906: X2.
$31On the influence of Delsearteanexercises,seeDrake-Boyt, `Dance
as a Project,' 73.
 338

of the piece and the suggestion and smell of `ancient' incense created a sense of

timelessness,depicting India as a place of atemporal customs and rituals, untouchedby

the changesand acceleratedpace of the post-industrial West 832

As the New York Times reviewer noted, this languorousrhythm was in marked contrastto

the `energetic exhibition of clever gymnastics' that characterisedAmerican popular stage

dancing at that time. Whilst `high kicks, complicated steps and lightning changes' were

the commonestelementsof vaudeville dance,the typical Oriental, it was said, cared `little

for this kind of thing, ' preferring the sensual motions, slow unfolding patterns and

twisting arabesquesthat St. Denis adopted in her work. 833It would be misleading,

however, to interpret St. Denis's slow sensuality - in the manner of Linda Nochlin's

reading of French Orientalist painting - as an attempt to evoke the sleepy stagnationof an

Orient resistant to the nineteenth-century work ethic or as a justification for Western

in
intervention the East in 834
the name of progress. Indeed, as John Mackenzie has argued

in Orientalism (1995),

We should be sceptical of the idea that when Orientalists depict Eastern

coffee shops, smoking, languor even, they are constantly making moral

statements about Arab laziness. It is just as likely they are making

statements about the uniform and frenetic character of western urban

835
existence.

Indeed, for this particular writer for the New York Times, Incense seems to have

832On timelessnessin Orientalist painting, seeNochlin, `The Imaginary Orient, ' 122.
833Henry Tyrell, `Yes, Society Did Gasp When Radha in Incense-Laden Air Threw Off the

Bondageof the Earthly Senses,' The World 25 March 1906:X2.

834Nochlin, `The Imaginary Orient,' 122.
835MacKenzie, Orientalism 62 - 63.
 339

represented a simpler, calmer and more meditative approach to life, as exemplified in

Indian dance. In Dance as Project (2005), Elizabeth Drake-Boyt has suggested that by

placing the dancer in a rarefied condition of emotional transport, St. Denis intended

Incense to offer an alternative to American society, with its obsession with consumerism

technological advancement. 836Certainly, the leisurely unfurling smoke fumes did not
and

simply evoke Eastern irrationality or `barbaric crudity and sensuousness', to borrow the

Daily Telegraph's terms. Instead it suggested a spiritualised response that played upon the

association of smell in general with instinct, introspection, rudimentary pleasure and deep-

laid, involuntary emotions and of incense in particular with devotion, meditation, prayer

divine intercession 837

and

The solemn, holy nuancesof incensehelped to maintain a reverential balance in the dance

between the uplifting messageof spiritual transformation and the exotic Indian theme.

Like Hartmann before her, St. Denis found herself performing before challenging

audiencesat vaudeville concerts in the New York Theater, where she was heckled with

taunts such as `Who wants de Waitah?' whilst carrying the incense tray.s38In the main,

however, the deep spiritual theme of Incensesubduedeven the most rowdy of spectators,

and whilst some reviewers focussed on the shocking sight of a young girl dancing

barefoot, her performances, unlike Hartmann's A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes, did

not attract taunts relating to the crude connotations of smell. Indeed, it was in order to

prepareher audiencesfor the privileged observanceof a private ritual within a temple-like

atmosphere of reverence and sanctity that audiences were greeted with the scent of

936Drake-Boyt, `Dance as a Project,' 81.

837MacKenzie, Orientalism 46.
839`Bringing Temple Dances,' X2.
 340

incenseburning in the foyer of La Scala.Likewise, it was for the purpose of capturing the

appropriatemood of attentive respectfor seriousart that St. Denis routinely openedher set

with the Incense 839

adagio. Subdued lighting and the introspective, nostalgic musical

accompaniment `Oriental Tone Pictures', written by Harvey Worthington Loomis, also

contributed to this sombre atmosphere of timeless 840

ritual and mystic ambiguity. In

addition, the referencesto Western classical statuary made through her poses createdan

air of austeredignity and aestheticseriousness.Primarily however, it was the use of and

visual evocation of incense that led the audienceto encounter,in Drake-Boyt's words, a

`suspensionof ordinary, mundane public life, in favour of an individualised and private

desire for divine union'

ga'

For St. Denis's husband, Ted Shawn, the first sighting of his future bride on stageat the

Broadway Theater in Denver in 1911 marked his spiritual and artistic awakening: `I date

my own artistic birth from that night' he wrote in Prophet and Pioneer (1920), his study of

St. Denis's oriental dances.842Incense moved him intensely, and he wrote that `never

before or since have I known so true a religious experienceor so poignantly a revelation of

perfect beauty.'843

How can I describe the dance?Can another ever bring to you - unless you

yourself have had such experience the beauty of a sunset, or of a

-

symphony, or make you feel the impressiveness

of a cathedral service?To

me, The Incense was all of these. Like some crystal tone from a great

839Correspondence,`Really Oriental,' C4. Terry, Dance in America 53.

940Tyrell, `Yes, Society Did Gasp,' 11.
841Drake-Boyt, `Dance as a Project,' 98.
842Terry, Dance in America 84. Ted and Ruth were to set up the Denishawn dance company.
843Shawn,Pioneer and Prophet 46 - 61.
 341

singer's throat, each movement was flawless, perfect `something of

God.%844

For Shawn, St. Denis's attempt to express the visual properties of incense vapours

captured the spiritual `essence'of the odour. Moreover, as her body appearedto dissolve

into the heavy-scentedatmosphere,this representationof incense involuntarily elicited an

intensely physical and spiritual response.In much the samemanner as an actual aroma,the

dance had a powerful, visceral effect on Shawn. `And when, having put incense on the

flames, shebecamethe personification of the smoke- with rippling arms rising higher and

higher - then it seemedas if the soul rose out of my body, and I found myself sobbing.'845

The surrenderof the physical self into ephemeralspirit was suggestedin the dancein two

ways: firstly, through the burning of incense powder that transformed into perfumed

smoke and secondly, as Shawn noted, through the enactmentof the metamorphosisof the

female body into scent. Having fed incenseinto the braziers, St. Denis placed the tray on

the ground before her and commencedraising and lowering her arms with a subtle rippling

movement which began at the shoulder blades and extended, seemingly, through and

beyond the fingertips 846In contrast to the weighty, immobile and `grounded' tray that

metaphorically suggestedthe tension betweenpermanentmateriality and the impermanent,

ephemeral qualities of the dance, these undulations conveyed a sense of release from

earthly confines [Fig. 48]. Whether at La Scala,where she performed before audiencesthat

included Rodin and George Bernard Shaw, or in the private home of Alma-Tadema,

844Ibid. 46 61.
-
845Ibid.
846Denis, An Unfinished Life 96.
 342

847 For example, an arts commentator for the New York Times
audiences were stunned

marvelled at the long undulating ripples than ran down the dancer's hand and arm and

noted how `by slow, lithe movements of the arms and body and soft shuffling steps ... [she

the melting spirals of green and purple smoke that rise from the braziers. 84' The
suggested]

story was even told that a group of German doctors asked to examine her after seeing her

they that her arms were boneless 849 `The music seemed to
on stage, so convinced were

course through her body' wrote Suzanne Shelton (1981), a former dancer in the Denishawn

Company, which was formed in 1915 to bring together the choreography of St. Denis and

Shawn.

Leaning into one hip, her head inclined demurely, she lifted her arms in

ever-rising ripples. She seemed to grow taller as she surrendered herself.

Up and up her arms flowed, boneless, mesmeric, the dissembled essence of

itself. [Fig. 49] 850

smoke

Indeed, as the dance built to a climax, her body was progressively possessedby these

sequential, flowing currents that gradually and irresistibly extended from the arms into

full-bodied rippling that, as St. Denis herself noted, signified `the surrenderof the self and

the ecstasyof release.'851

The theme of the soul's liberation from the bondageof the sensualbody was further

"' In Washington, she performed at the home of Alice Barney, who also patronised Hartmann's

perfume concert.
848Tyrell, `Yes, Society Did Gasp,' X2.
849Denis, An Unfinished Life 96.
850Shelton, Divine Dancer 57. In her autobiography, St. Denis notes that some German physicians

came to examine her one evening after a performance, becausethey were convinced that her arms
possessedno bones! Denis, An Unfinished Life 69.
851Ibid.
 343

developedin Radha,which was usually performed as the final piece in St. Denis's set of

Indian-inspired temple dances.852The piece beganwith St. Denis seatedcross-legged,as a

bronze statueof Radha,a Buddhist goddesswho shunnedearthly attachments.In the

earliestperformances,the stagewas lit by soft amber lighting and drapedwith an ornate

tapestry background but this was subsequently replaced by a stage set representing a

generic Eastern temple. [Compare Fig. 50 and Fig. 51]. All around her, wisps of incense

wove their way upwards, casting, as the dance historian Walter Terry noted, `fragile

shadows upon the image of the goddess, the threads of smoke breaking apart at brief

intervals and permitting the light to catch the glow and the flash of jewels. '853Gradually,

he explained, the music became more poignant, fresh spires of smoke wreathed up before

her, her limbs became animate and `the throb of life crept into her face. '

at first only the eyelids move, then the bosom slowly rises as the breath

of living pours in, spreadingto the trunk and limbs. The body seemsto

shimmer with subcutaneousaction, with visceral activity, and soon the

inner movement extendsto surfacemuscles and the goddessstepsdown

from her dais. 54

To read such spellbound descriptions is to get a senseof how the scent and the music

to
seemed stir the statue into life, triggering the metamorphosis of bronze into living,

pulsing flesh.

As the music picked up pace, St. Denis as Radha rose and, rejoicing in the sensationsof

952My descriptions of this dance are basedupon the photographsin the collection of the New York

Public Library and the various descriptive accountscited in this chapter.

853Terry, Dance in America 48.
954Ibid.
 344

being alive, glided into a danceof the five senses.Each sensewas celebratedin turn and

the dance clearly referenced traditional western paintings of the five senses,in which

object-related signifiers (such as flowers) or bodily gestures(such as smelling) relayed

sensory meaning. Indeed, the symbolism of pictorial representation was seamlessly

transposedinto the physical mode of danceso that a reviewer from The World newspaper

was able to confidently observethat:

Sight [was] typified by a glitter of jewels, hearing by the tinkle of golden

bells smell, by garlands of roses; taste by the wine-cup, very

...
dramatically quaffed and then broken and finally touch, by an acted kiss -

a solo affair. 855

In the Dance of Smell, executedthrough a series of simple waltzing steps and poses,the

garlands of flowers created the impression of smell through metonymic association.The

roses were pressedclose to her face in inflated gesturesof inhalation which, according to

Walter Terry, illustrated in "exaggeratedpantomime-like gestures the workings of the

sense,before crushing them against her body, as if to release the flower's heady scent

[Fig.
ig" 52]. 9856
Photographsby Otto Sarony of a 1908 performance of Radha record how a

garland of roses, swung in an arc about her moving body, created the visual suggestionof

a swirling trail of fragrancethat seemedto envelop the performer in scent [Fig. 53]. At the

the section, the rope of rosestrailed acrossthe front of her body and as shearched
close of

her back into an almost impossible backwards stretch whilst smothering her mouth and

blossoms, the extremity of her deep back-bend revealed an esoteric religious

nose with

sssTyrell, `Yes, Society Did Gasp,' 2.

856Terry, Dance in America 49. Terry described garlands of marigolds but in the various

photographsheld at the New York Picture Library rosesare clearly visible.

 345

fervour in the act of smelling [Fig. 54] 857

As the danceapproachedits delirious climax, the goddessbegan to spin, faster and faster,

her arms shuddering in ecstasy,her body writhing in self-delight.858Finally, she flung

herself dramatically to the floor and on rising again, calmly resumed her role as a statue

in the temple niche, invulnerable once more to the desires of the flesh859The dance

illustrated a Buddhistic subjugation of the sensesin order to transcendthe bodily and to

move from a material to a spiritual plane of existence.Whilst the representationof smell

in incense and the performance of smelling in Radha placed the dancesin a tradition of

erotic art that, as SuzanneShelton has claimed, `allied the dangerous female, luxury and

the life of the sensesin a powerful allegory', the voluptuous Orient was presented as

liberated from its binds.

sensuous 60
ultimately

Conclusion

From the ambrosial scent of angelsthat swept through Victorian seancesto the loathsome

breath of Dracula that clung to his lair, (see chapterstwo and one), the categoriesof the

foul and the fragrant have often been used to express the concept of `otherness,' from

is set 861
apart. As Kelvin Low has in his
which the self, perceived as odourless, argued

957Desmond, 'Dancing out the Difference,' 28 - 49. Jowett, Time and the Dancing Image 133.
858Terry, Dance in America 49.
859Sally Banes, Dancing,Women Female Bodies on the Stage(London and New York: Routledge,

1998) 92.
860Shelton, Divine Dancer 65.
161On this theme see Low, `Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon,' 401. Also, Uri

Almagor, `Some Thoughts on Common '

Scents, Journal for the Theo of Social Behaviour 20.3
 346

article `Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon' published in Current

Sociology (2005), racial categorisationtranspiresnot only through visible / visual features

such as skin colour and physiognomy but also via the olfactory, for by perceiving the

odour of another, an individual defines the self through a difference in smell, and, based

on a difference of odours, `negatesthe other as not - I. ' 862

`Smell', Low argues,`functions

as a social medium employed by social actors towards formulating

constructions/judgements of race-d, class-ed and gender-ed others, operating on

polemic/categorical constructions (and also, other nuancesbetween polarities) which may

involve a processof othering.'863As Anthony Synnott explains in The Body Social (1991)

`the good is fragrant and the fragrant is good [whereas]what smells bad is bad and what is

bad smells bad.'864

Yet, to consider the construction of the Orient as perfume is to make a shift from this

structuralist dichotomy applied so famously by Alain Corbin in The Foul and the Fragrant,

and indeed by most subsequent scholars studying smell in the various fields of history,

anthropology, religion and geography. As a fusion of floral purity and gross organic

matter (animal fats and secretions) masking the foul and the corrupt, perfume was a fitting

metaphor for the complexities of Western perceptions of Oriental civilisation. Regardless

of whether the Orient was conflated with ambergris, attar, incense or the mysterious

`perfume of Egypt, ' the metaphor of Orient as perfume suggested fascination tinged with

(1990): 189.
862Low, 'Ruminations on Smell as a Sociocultural Phenomenon,' 411.
863Ibid.
864Anthony Synnott, The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society (London: Routledge, 1993)

445.
 347

65
suspicion. On one hand, it captured the high regard held for Oriental culture, since as

Rimmel noted, perfume belonged to the `arts of peace,' and signalled cultural

sophistication, being `studied and cherishedby all the various nations which in turn held

the sceptre of civilisation. '866On the other hand, it signalled that, as in Burton's raunchy

translation of The Scented Garden, the Orient could breakdown a person's resistance,

trigger the surrenderof rational control and stimulate dormant desires.967Half corrupt, half

aromatic, a mixture of dung, sweat, heat, dust, rotting vegetation, scent and spices, the

Orient in representation,was a heady fantasiaof the erotic and the sublime.

965On perfume as a veneer over the disgusting see William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust

(Cambridge,M. A. and London: Harvard University Press, 1997) 247.

866Rimmel, The Book of Perfumes3. Seealso John H. Snively, `The Art of Perfumery,' Harper's

New Monthly Magazine 49.June - Nov (1874): 570.

867Jim Drobnick, `Inhaling Passions:Art, Sex and Scent,' Sexuality and Culture 4.3 (2000): 40.
 348

Conclusion

George Frederick Watts's painting Choosing of 1864 embodies a number of themes

central to this study. A girl is depicted in the process of choosing between the luscious,

showy blooms of the cultivated but unscentedcamellia pressedto her face and the humble

sweet-smelling wild violets clutched to her heart. When considered in the context of the

nineteenth-century interest in olfactory aesthetics,it is evident that this is a work that

resonates strongly with contemporary ideas about the intrinsic ambiguity of smell as

elevated and base, sensuousand sublime: and that is defined by the cultural affinity of

smell to models of female sexualmorality.

Choosing demonstratesthe interrelationship of sight and smell and the respective statusof

these two sensesin terms of their aestheticvalue and cultural nuances.Like this thesis, it

embraces and draws out the implications of the interplay between the visual and the

olfactory and in doing so it offers a fresh artistic approach. The visual and olfactory

determinates of the choice presented in the painting would have been apparent to the

Victorian viewer, for whom the juxtaposition of camellias and violets presenteda familiar

set of ideas within the domain of gardening and the symbolic language of flowers. The

issues to be considered when choosing between these two particular flowers were

certainly familiar to Victorian horticulturalists. For example, in A Lady's Guide to Her

Own Greenhouse(1851), the competition for display space is discussed in terms of an

appraisal of colour versus scent.

 349

The Violet has nothing grand in its appearancebut its perfume amply

compensatesfor its deficiency of show; on the other hand ... the Camellia,

is
which most beautiful, is destitute of fragrance 868
altogether.

The choice presents a dilemma, a conflict between the visual and the olfactory, which

shifts easily from an appraisal of the blooms to that of moral values. To some extent, the

problem is resolved by the anonymous author who advises that `we may always be

forego little beauty for the fragrance, but to 869

permitted to a sake of not any great extent.

By making the presumption that beauty is a visual phenomenon, from which the olfactory

is disqualified, the author upholds the traditional hierarchy of the senses, in which, as seen

in the introduction of this thesis, the aesthetic status of sight is more highly esteemed than

smell. However, in terms of the ideal ratio of visual beauty to fragrance, this piece of

counsel is somewhat ambiguous and even suggests the potential for deliberation, which is

so central to Watts's painting. In this way, both this passage from A Lady's Guide to the

Greenhouse and Choosing can be seen to reflect the spectrum of arguments both for and

against the aesthetics of smell. As in

seen chapter four, these ranged from lambastations of

olfactory sensibility as symptomatic of degeneracy to suggestions that scent held the

potential to rise to the realms of high art in some future golden age.

In Watts's painting, the picture's composition is carefully designed to suggestthe theme

of choosing. The hand that pushesthe red camellia against the figure's nose in the top left

of the painting is diametrically opposedby the palm that cups the violets in the bottom

right of the scene.With one hand held high and the other low, the figure's action might be

seenas simulating that of a pair of weighing scales;the merits of the flowers in eachhand

1968
Every Lady's Guide to Her Own Greenhouse,(London: Orr, 1851) 54.
869Ibid.
 350

being carefully evaluated against one another. In this way, she might even be seen to

emulate the figure of Justice, who is traditionally depicted holding a beam balance upon

which she measures the respective strengths of the opposing sides of an argument.

Moreover, there are several artistic devices in the painting which promote the movement

of the eye between the camellias and the violets, sustainingthe viewer's contemplationof

the choice presented.For example, the figure's side-on stancecausesher right arm to be

foreshortenedand the hand holding the violets to appear closer to the viewer's plane of

vision than the hand holding the camellias. This device draws the eye `in and out' of the

painting and thus back and forth from hand to hand in a manner that imitates the process

of deliberation. Furthermore, the painting provides ocular direction from point to point.

For example, the downward slant of the figure's lip-line, nostril and eyebrow and the fall

of her hair directly influence the eye's descentthrough the painting. The eye is forced

away from the locus of the visual narrative, the point of intersection between camellia and

nose, down through the painting to the lower parts of the canvas, where, on settling upon

the image of the hand holding the violets, a raised index finger points the eye upwards

again. At the same time, the string of pearls about the girl's neck creates a powerful

diagonal thrust in the other direction forcing an upward movement of the eye from bottom

left to upper right. This action emphasisesthe division of the painting into two domains;

the upper presided over by the camellia blossoms and the lower by the violets and is

reinforced by the upward slant of the inner fold of the petals of the central camellia, the

major veins of several of its leaves and the tilt of the figure's jaw-line and upper facial

profile. This reading of the picture demonstratesthat the girl's attention is not static but

from flower to flower. Although her attention appears absorbed by the

prevaricates

camellia blossoms dominating the pictorial space,the viewer infers that the violets are not

far from her mind. In this manner,the two floral speciesare defined as oppositesand seem
 351

to suggest a bipolar pattern of moral thinking. In recognising the theme of `choice' as

representinga moral dilemma, we understandthat one flower will representvirtue and one

vice. One interpretation of the painting, therefore, is that the spectacle of the camellias,

located high in the painting, represents vision, the most noble of the senses while

conversely, the violets, with their specific association with fragrance signify the lowly

senseof smell. In this way, Choosing can be seento conform to the traditional model of

the hierarchy of the senses.

Yet, like so many of the artworks discussed in this thesis, this painting reflects the

intricacy of contemporary attitudes to smell and its shifting aesthetic status, and thus

suggestsa more complex interpretation. It is important to realise that popular symbolism

often prized sweetnessof odour rather than visual display as indicative of intrinsic moral

value. As the essenceof the flower, scentwas often associatedwith the spirit, as has been

demonstratedin chapter three with referenceto John William Waterhouse's The Soul of

the Rose [fig. 22] and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale's The Lovers World [fig. 37].

However, whilst scent could stand for spiritual finery and true inner beauty, petals were a

recurrent symbol for the superficial beauty of the body's facade. This metaphor was

particularly pertinent in the nineteenth century, when many writers, including the

gardenereReginald Bloomfield and the artist and designer William Morris, decried the

soullessnessof modem, regimental or patterned gardens, in which brilliantly-coloured,

showy and pretentious bedding flowers, such as marigolds, had displaced old-fashioned

scentedblooms.870

870Gardeners such as William Robinson espouseda revival of `cottage' gardens as a reaction

againstthe High Victorian bedded style promoted by Blomfield, in which flowers cultivated in the
greenhousewere planted out into decorative borders. For Morris, the demise of the rambling
 352

Since, as seen in chapter three, flowers were laden with moral symbolism in Victorian

literature and art, the floral iconography of the painting has a strong bearing upon the

ethical interpretation of this work. In the Victorian language of flowers, violets were

familiar symbols for modesty and Christian humility, and, as such, played an important

role in religious teachings871For example, in The Use of the Senseswhen Engagedin

Contemplating the External World (1848), a tract for the promotion of female moral

educationby Catherine Lake, two female companionstake a walk in the country and muse

upon spiritual matters along the way. The violet, they observe, with its `charming

simplicity ... [and] humble and comely array' can be personified as the perfect role model

for the virtuous young lady. Women should strive to be sincere and unpretending, avoid

earthly gain and `seek to attain true simplicity': they should emulate the `modest' violet,

imitating the humility of a flower that `retreats from the gaze and hides its pure beauty

from view. ' Though the visual `charms' of the violet were perceived to be `hid from many

' its known by it

the sweetodour regaled.872
an eye, presencewas made

cottage garden, with its connotationsof rural England, was symbolically aligned with the spiritual
void of the post-industrial, capitalist age. For him, scientific rationalism, materialist tendenciesand
bourgeois worldliness could not compensatefor the loss of traditional values. For more on this
theme see Michael Waters, The Garden in Victorian Literature (Aldershot: Scolar, 1988) and
ConstanceClassen,`The Odour of the Rose,' Worlds of Sense:Exploring the Sensesin History and

across Cultures (London: Routledge, 1993). William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art: Five
Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London and Nottingham (London: Reeves and Turner, 1889)
124 - 25.
871See for example, Anna Christian Burke, The Language of Flowers (London: Warne and

Routledge, 1864) 61.

872Catherine Lake, The Use of the SensesWhen Engaged in Contemplating the External World

(London: Nisbet, 1848) 29.

 353

Yes, unlike the gaudy tulip, that is gaily dressed,this retiring flower gives

out a fragrancethat gratifies the senseand affords a pleasureto the mind. If

we spiritualise a companion, there are those who, like the gay tulip, possess

beauty, yet never send forth the odour of piety; on the contrary, many of

God's dear children, who are poor in this world's goods, and having little

outwardly to attract the eye, are content to blossom in obscurity, and there

in works of holiness and love emit sweetfragrance.873

Watts's painting, like Lake's preaching, draws on the olfactory and visual symbolism of

flowers. Whilst the Art Journal describedthe painting as `nothing more than the head of a

girl leaning forward in the act of smelling and choosing a flower', 874the basic

iconographical interpretation offered in most of the reviews of 1864 was of a young

woman torn between worldly vanities and a more modest, spiritually rewarding way of

life. Her choice is between the materiality and pretentiousnessof visual display and the

unseen qualities - the scent - of the virtuous soul. In this context, the brilliant camellias

can be seen to lack moral substance,are `light on the scales' and hence higher in the

picture, whilst the lowly violets, despite their diminutive appearance,are shown as in

some respect weightier and more substantial. The objective superficiality of sight,

representedby the large, luscious and brilliantly-coloured camellias, is pitted against the

true emotions and virtues of smell, invoked by the humble, sweet-scentedviolets. Indeed,

the Victorian moral code referencedin this particular floral juxtaposition was deciphered

by the critic of the Spectator,who, without further explanation, noted that `the "moral" of

it seemsto be that she prefers the violet which she holds in her hand to the more showy

973Lake, Use of the Senses29 30.

-
974"The Royal Academy," Art Journal (1864): 166.
 354

of the scentless camellia' 875The reviewer may have held in mind the
attractions .

association of scent with prayer and divine communication which has been discussedin

chapter three with reference to Fortescue-Brickdale's The Lovers World amongst other

works.

It is also interesting to consider the painting in terms of its personal significance to the

artist, given that although the identity of the model was not acknowledged in the first

reviews, she is known to have been his first wife, Ellen Terry. Watts, aged forty-six, had

married the young actress on 20`hFebruary 1864, apparently considering it his duty to

`remove her from the temptations and abominationsof the stage' and to guide her towards

76Since Terry is depicted wearing the brown silk wedding dressdesigned

moral elevation.

for her by William Holman Hunt, the picture is generally believed to have been painted

held before her birthday.877

shortly after the marriage, which was one week seventeenth

When consideredin this context, one might read the painting as a private referenceto the

choice, so recently undertaken by Terry, between a flamboyant life on the stage and a

domestic life with Watts878By presenting Ellen as smelling the

comparatively sheltered

in
scentlesscamellia vain, her husbandportrayed a naive and somewhat superficial girl in

need of urgent moral guidanceand purpose.

873"Fine Arts: The Royal Academy," Spectator(1864): 593.

876Letter to Mrs ConstanceLeslie. n.d. Leslie PapersK/6/1, Typescript in Watts Gallery, Compton.

Cited in Veronica Franklin Gould, G. F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004) 66. Gould notes that it was reported that his `first thought was to adopt
her.'
877David Loshak, `G. F. Watts and Ellen Terry, ' The Burlington Magazine 105.728(1963): 483.
878SeeEllen Terry, The Story of My Life (London: Hutchinson, 1908) 89.
 355

The painting belongs to a genre of Victorian narrative painting that includes Alfred

Elmore's On the Brink (1865), in which a white lily symbolising purity and a purple

passion flower symbolising lustful temptation arejuxtaposed, suggestingthe choice faced

by a female gambler. Should the woman earn the money to repay her debts in the arms of

the man lingering in the shadowsor take a more virtuous route by facing up to a life of

poverty? The question is left unresolvedand her very life is `on the brink'. As an entry in

Punch magazineput it: `E's [for] Mr. Elmore. She's tempted to sin; / She's fair. Will the

lily or the passion flower win? '879Lynda Nead has argued that financial and sexual

temptation are linked in conventional Victorian ideology and that having lost the

protection of her domestic role and placed herself in a position of financial vulnerability,

the female figure in Elmore's painting is in danger of being 880

sexually compromised In

Choosing, however, the painting might be seento portray Ellen's decision to leave, what

Watts regarded as `the abominations of the stage' and to enter the safe boundaries of

domestic life. "' The painting conveys Watts's optimism that by relinquishing fame,

adulation and the degradationsof the stage,Ellen, under his guidance, would be free to

embark upon a nobler course of life. 82Neverthelessit was to prove unendurablefor Ellen

to `blossom in obscurity': the union lasted ten months and despite Watts's disapproval,

she soon after resumedher theatrical 883

career.

879Alfred Elmore's On the Brink, 1865,Oil on canvas,114.3 x 83.2 cm, Fitzwilliam Museum.

`Academy Alphabet,' Punch 13 May 1865: 9.

880See Lynda Nead, `Seduction, Prostitution, Suicide. "On the Brink" by Robert Elmore,' Art

History 5.3 (1982): 310 - 22.

881Gould, G. F. Watts 66.
882 Ibid.

883The deed of separationwas signed on 25`hJanuary 1865 and they divorced in 1876. For more on

the relationship between Watts and Terry, seeLoshak, 'Watts and Terry, ' 476 - 87.
 356

By suggesting the virtues of fragrance over colour, Watts's Choosing raises questions

about the integrity of the visual. Indeed, the theme of ocular deception is integral to the

picture's meaning.The central paradox of the picture - the action of smelling an unscented

flower - was acknowledged in the Spectatorby the italicisation of the word 'smelling 484

and in the Illustrated London News with the phrase `smells in vain.'88SAdept at decoding

visual puns, viewers at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1864 would have appreciatedthe

suggestionof the double entendreof `vanity' implicit in the picture. The depiction of the

camellia with its opulent but scentlessblooms, juxtaposed with the futility of the girl's

nasal gesture, suggests that if she makes the wrong choice, she is at risk of being

identified as superficial, pretentiousand materialistic. Despite its rich surfeit of colour, the

flower is not all it pretendsto be, being odourlessand therefore lacking in soul. The idea

of beauty as a mask that conceals an inner void is suggestedin a number of nineteenth-

century literary contexts, including a French tale cited by Constance Classen, in which

flowers metamorphose into women. In the story, the female personification of the

camellia is told `you are beautiful Madam, but you have none of the true perfume of

beauty which is known as love. 886By making reference to this current cultural thought,

884'Fine Arts: The Royal Academy,' 593.

885`Fine Arts Exhibition of the Royal Academy,' Illustrated London News (1864): 494.
886Constance Classen, `The Odor of the Other: Olfactory Symbolism and Cultural Categories,'

Ethos 20.2 (1992): 148. The artist, dealer and collector Graham Robertson seemsto have seenthe

painting as a reflection, not of Ellen's superficiality, but of her disappointing relationships with
others,writing in Apollo in 1938 that:
the lovely young girl, here shown trying to smell a scentless flower, was ever to
sniff hopefully at camellias, feeling sure that some day one of the beautiful things
would reward her trust with a marvellous and nameless perfume, and to be

comforted in her disappointment by the sweetnessof hidden violets held close to

her heart.
GrahamRobertson, `A Note of Watts's Picture "Choosing", ' Anollo 28 (1938): 318.
 357

Watts, like a number of artists of the period, from Charles Courtney Curran to Sadakichi

Hartmann, can be seen to have challenged the nobility of the visual and to have

consideredthe role of smell in art and aesthetics.

Despite the loftier connotations of smell in this painting, the element of pretence about the

model's pose, as if in the act of smelling, can be seen to point to an association between

the olfactory and female mental illness. As discussed in chapter two, for example, with

reference to Miss Goddard's hallucinatory experiences, there was much clinical concern

about the degenerative state of the olfactory lobe and its relation to hysteria. The painting

recalls an article on olfactory pathology in the Lancet of 1880, in which Julius Althaus, a

physiologist specialising in the sensory organs, gave an account of a woman who was

often seen smelling flowers but who possessed no olfactory nerves at all:

Her habit of putting flowers to the nose was merely a pantomime devoid of

special meaning. Indeed, one often notices women, especially those of a

lively temperamentcarrying flowers to the nosewhich are devoid of smell."'

Since Watts is known to have held strong views about the insincerity of acting as a career

and even of its moral impact upon the female temperament, the charade of voracious

scent-inhalationpresentedin Choosing might be read as indicative of his moral standpoint

on these matters888Ellen was known for her vibrant personality and natural exuberance

it
and seemsthat Watts interpreted this as mental instability, for example writing of Ellen

in an undated letter, that `no excitement of any kind must be allowed when there is a

887Julius Althaus, `A Lecture on the Physiology and Pathology of the Olfactory Nerve,' Lancet 1

(1881): 722.
888For example, in a letter to Mrs Senior, he outlined his wish for Ellen to pursue 'a profession less

to taste.' Cited in Gould, G. F. Watts 74.

repugnant my
 358

common habit of hysteria, and a pulse of 108!i889Moreover, by juxtaposing the cultivated

camellia with the lively-tempered female, Watts drew upon a familiar Victorian

iconography in which women of a certain unstable temperament were compared to

beautiful but fragile, hot-house flowers - the kind of `soulless' flowers to which both

Robinson and Morris most strongly objected890

In The Garden in Victorian Literature (1988), Michael Waters arguesthat `throughout the

poetry and fiction of the age, fragrance - or the lack of it - serves as an extraordinary

reliable index of general merit. '89' However, the iconography of camellias in the

nineteenth century complicates this reading of Choosing and indicates greater ambiguity

within the symbolic system than Waters allows for. Although the pose of smelling an

unscentedflower suggestspretence,in the Victorian language of flowers the red camellia

represented `unpretending excellence' and `inner warmth', the precise opposite to what

has hitherto been suggested.892As Phyllis Floyd has noted in her recent re-examination of

Manet's Olympia, the camellia was a symbol for the converted courtesan,transformedby

the power of love into a loyal mistress, most notably in Alexandre Dumas's novel La

Dame aux Camellias of 1848.893She also cites Ces Dames of 1860 by Auguste-Jean-

Marie Vermorel. In this guide to the various stock types of ' filles de joie', the camelia is

identified as a woman distinguished by her devotion and fidelity to a single partner.

Whilst the `sincerity and disinterestedness'of such women was often questioned, they

889Cited in Gould, G. F. Watts 74. In the deed of separation, Watts cited `incompatibility of

temper.' SeeTerry, The Story of My Life 64.

890Seefootnote 870.
891Waters,The Garden in Victorian Literature 37.
892Burke, The Languageof Flowers 13.
993 Floyd, Phylis A. `The Puzzle of Olympia'. March 2005, http://l9thc-
html, (accessed14 September2007).
artworldwide.org/spring_04/articles/floy_print.
 359

were in fact `models of tenderness and fidelity, ' `capable of every sacrifice and

devotion.494Nevertheless,their sexualhistories preventedthesereformed courtesansfrom

ever being truly pure, and thus their moral transformation could only ever be surface-deep.

Imbued with the potential for faithfulness and inner warmth, `the Camellia' is not as

superficial as it first seems.Given Watt's self-proclaimedrole as Ellen's moral champion,

the model of the camellia as a redeemed figure seems a fitting metaphor for Ellen's

salvation from the stage.Though Ellen would never be a shrinking violet, Watts presents

her as capableof faithfulness and of great devotion, and the pearls around her neck evoke

the purity of her heart. The ambiguity of the camellia, representing both loving and

unpretending qualities and superficiality and pretentiousness, brilliantly suggests the

unresolved nature of the girl's choice, whilst once again destabilising the ever-shifting

hierarchy of the senses.

Paradoxically, like the camellia, the painting is itself a kind of sham. Despite its luminous

jewel-like colours and almost Pre-Raphaeliteattention to detail, it can only simulate the

visual beauty of the flower and can only suggestthe perfume of the violets by association.

The painting is but an illusion, so the theme of the futility of smelling an unscentedflower

might suggestthe artist's yearning for an unattainable perfection, in which the sensuous

world is perfectly realised in paint. If Charles Courtney Curran believed, as seen in

chapter three, that such fidelity to nature could arouse an olfactory illusion in the viewer,

for Watts this was an impossible dream.

Like Watts's Choosing, The Perfect Scent (1898) by the Romanian born artist Viktor

Schramm also engageswith the complexity of cultural attitudes towards both smell and

894 Auguste-Jean-Marie Vermorel, Ces dames, vhf omies oarisiennes, (Paris: Tous les
Librairies, 1860) 99 -101.
 360

femininity. The painting depicts a beautiful red-haired woman, gracefully leaning over to

inhale the scent of a rose. However, if in Choosing the female figure is presentedmaking

a moral choice between material superficialities and spiritual values, in The Perfect Scent,

the woman is shown to embody the sensuousand the spiritual, the exotic and the pure

[56] 895As is the case with Curran's The Perfume of Roses [ch. 3, fig. 24] the title, The

Perfect Scentrefers as much to the female figure as to the scentof the rose that shesmells.

As in a number of examples discussedin this thesis, the female figure is once again a

visual embodiment of perfume, and since scent and soul are metaphorically aligned (as

in
seen works such as Waterhouse'sThe Soul of the Rose and Fortescue-Brickdale's The

Lovers World), the painting offers a commentaryupon the seemingly unblemished moral

purity of the female figure. It depicts an opulent drawing room and the woman appearsas

the epitome of the `angel of the house,' whilst the fluidity and transparencyof the thinly-

applied oil paints create a hazy ethereality that combined with the pastel tones of the

furnishings, works to suggestthe fragrant ambienceof her dwelling. 896It is significant that

she is depicted wearing a brilliant, plush blue dress that is reminiscent of the colour of

lapis lazuli, traditionally associatedwith ideas of purity, health, eleganceand nobility. 197

Indeed, by wearing a shade of blue matching that whieh was traditionally used in

ecclesiasticalrepresentationsof the Madonna, ideas of female purity and perfection are

evoked.

.. s This conjunction of ideas is made explicit in an oil sketch for the painting in which the rose

pattern on the dress is more defined, reinforcing the motif of woman as flower, whilst the sofa
behind her is patternedwith a wildly exotic floral decor, symbolising untamed passions.
896 Carol Christ, `A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women,' Victorian

Masculinity and the Angel in the House ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press,1977) 142 - 62.
897By the nineteenth century a different techniquewas used to produce this colour, so it is unlikely

that lapis lazuli was actually employed here.

 361

Nevertheless,two facets of womanhood are presentedwithin The Perfect Scent.Demure,

tender femininity, representedby the delicate act of inhaling the scent of a cultivated rose,

is contrasted with the suggestion of a carnal and aggressivemodel of female sexuality,

representedthrough the inclusion of a feral referent - the leopard fur upon which she

kneels. The painting might be likened to Whistler's Symphony in White No. 1 (1862), in

which the ambiguous conjunction of the girl dressed in virginal white and the animal

presence,the bear skin upon which she standsstrongly suggeststhe conflicting nature of

female sexuality that exercisedVictorian society.898The Perfect Scent clearly refers to the

idea of the fallen woman but her baser instincts are depicted as tamed: the wild beast has

been skinned and is metaphorically subjugated under the trample of her feet. If one

imagines her as a perfume, she could be said to consist of a light, pure top note as

suggestedby her blue dress and the delicate demeanour,combined with the crude animal

basenote of the animal rug beneathher. Together, these contrasting pictorial components

suggesta dichotomy of the fragrant and the foul, of pure floral fragrance and crude yet

sensuousanimal smells, which combine to form the perfect scent and the essenceof

Just as perfume, with its rotting faecal basenotes and pure, refreshing top
womanhood.

notes, was an apt metaphor for the sensuousyet sublime Orient in nineteenth-century

cultural thought (as seen in chapter five), so perfume captured the complex nature of

of both virgin and whore.

woman as simultaneously embodying attributes

898Whistler, Symphony in White. No. 1: The White Girl, 1862, Oil on canvas, 214.6 x 108 cm,

National Gallery of Art, Washington. SeeRobin Spencer,'Whistler's "The White Girl": Painting,
Poetry and Meaning, ' The Burlington Magazine 140.1142 (1998): 310. Lynda Nead, M hs of

Sexuality: Representationsof Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) 59 62.
-
 362

Both Watts's Choosing and Schramm's The Perfect Scent draw upon the conflicting

connotations implicit in nineteenth-centuryideas about both smell and femininity. In so

doing, they demonstratethe extent to which the moral and aestheticdebatesfought over

the concepts of sight versus smell, the odorate versus the inodorate and the foul and the

fragrant were beset with contradictions. Moreover, they reveal the manner in which these

contradictions contributed to a rise in the aestheticinterest in and appeal of smell, in the

late nineteenth century. As both paintings suggest, it was the perceived contradictory

nature of smell as both sensuousand spiritual that fascinatedartists, and which generated

debate within the sphere of aesthetics. In Perfume (2006), Richard Stamelman has

observedthat:

the determination of modesty, the. definition of obscenity, the

understanding of transgression, the recognition of what is considered

shocking, the protocols of flirtation and seduction, the practice of sexual

intercourse - have their own history which subtly, silently and

the history of smell899

unconsciously mergeswith

With its broad spectrum of connotations,smell, both in artistic representationand through

direct presencein performance art, became an important mode of communicating ideas

about the multifaceted nature of femininity.

From the paintings of women smelling flowers by Curran, Schramm, Waterhouse and

Watts, to John Singer Sargent's depiction of an Eastern woman inhaling the cloying scent

of ambergris [fig. 1], this thesis has demonstrated that in the nineteenth century, the

history of scent and female sexuality was itself integral to the history of aesthetics
merged

899Richard Stamelman, Perfume Joy. Obsession.Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History

of Fra r
from 1750 to the Present(New York: Rizzoli, 2006) 28.
 363

and to smell's shifting role within the hierarchy of the senses. Scented Visions has thus

unblocked `the period nose', engendering a greater understanding of culturally-determined

`ways of smelling. '900It has demonstrated how an awareness of ideas about smell and its

relation to themes such as purity and corruption, spirituality and sexuality can alter our

understanding not only of individual art works, but also of nineteenth-century ideas of the

nature of Art and Beauty. This project has also probed the parameters of visual culture

through study of the visualization of the invisible, including scientific and artistic

representations of odour and the scent-inspired visions of the mind's eye. From its starting

point with Helen Keller's reflections on the emotive power of scent to arouse the

imagination, it has worked to expand the field of visual culture to include the rigorous

scholarship of visions: the dreams, memories, hallucinations and imaginings, of the

mind's eye. This thesis has demonstrated how fresh interpretative insights might be

reached through a study of the cultural history of the senses and their relations, and offers

a model for further projects on the role of the non-visual senses in art history and visual,

culture as well as the wider arts, from literature to music. Such projects might move from

the study of the relationships of sight and smell, to an exploration of the interplay between

an entirely different set of sensory combinations or might consider the connotations of

those senses in a different historical and cultural framework to that of the modern west.

Finally, this thesis has shown that smell is indeed, as Rousseau claimed `the sense of the

imagination' 901

900I allude here to Michael Baxandall's term the `period eye' from Painting and Experience in

Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) and to John Berger's Ways of Seeing
(London: Penguin, 1972).
901Jean-JacquesRousseau,Emile: On Education [First Published Paris. 17621,vol. II (London: J.

M. Dent, 1911) 90.

 364

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Tuke, Daniel Hack. `Smell, Hallucination. ' A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine. Ed.

Henry George Savage.Vol. II. London: Churchill, 1892.

Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body in Health and Disease

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Tupper, Margaret Elenora. The Scent of the Heather. Ed. Margaret Elenora. London:

Leadenhall, 1895.

Tyrell, Henry. `Yes, Society Did GaspWhen `Radhain Incense-LadenAir' Threw Off the

Bondage of the Earthly Senses.' The World 25 March 1906, sec. The Metropolitan:

2.

Ullman, Jennifer. Philippe Mercier and the Five Senses.Paintings in Focus. New Haven:

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 401

`Victorian and Traditionalist Pictures.' Christie's SaleCatalogueJune 7 2007: 142.

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physiquesde 1'odorat.' Comptesrendus 129.26(1899): 1285 - 87.

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librairies, 1860.

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and Giroux, 1997.

`Winter in Cairo.' The ScotsmanFebruary 10 1886: 7.

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 402

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Reconsidered.' SouthernHistory 5 (1983): 122 - 53.

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and Hallucination. ' London Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and

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 403

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Fig. 1. John Singer Sargent, Fumee d'Ambre Gris, 1880, oil on canvas, 139.1 x 90.8

cm, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

 404

Fig. 2. Pierre Bonnard, Nu A Contre-Jour, Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 109 cm, c. 1908.
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium.
 405

Fig. 3. Rene Lalique, perfume bottle, L'Effleurt for Francois

Coty, c. 1908, clear and frosted glass with sepia patina, 11 cm,

private collection.

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Fig. 4. Piesse's Odorphone in G. W. S. Piesse. The Art of

Perfumery. London: Piesse and Lubin, 1855.

Fig. 5. Edison's Odorscope
in Dickson, William Kennedy Laurie,
and Antonia Dickson. The Life and
Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1894,87.
Fig. 2. Apparatus for Measuring the
Intensity of Perfumes
in `The Action of Light Upon
Perfumes. ' Scientific American
Supplement. 1085 (1896): 17338.
406
Fig. 6. Apparatus for Comparing
Odors in `The Action of Light Upon
Perfumes. ' Scientific American
Supplement. 1085 (1896): 17338.
Fig. 8. Zwaardemaker's
Olfactometer, 1888.
Illustration from Hendrik
Zwaardemaker, `The
Olfactometer', Lancet,
London, 1889, i, 1300.
 407

11n_vuu: V 1rO.
utD II! IIL+i. III III %ri. vc. 1117-fi I:.1.1iS /.IXI (i! rut1L4
.

Fig. 9. Seymour, Robert. `A London Board of Health Hunting after Cases like Cholera, a
Caricature of the Medical Profession. ' McLean's Monthly Sheet of Caricatures March 1,1832.
Colour lithograph, 15 x 24 cm, US National Library of Medicine.
 408

Fig. 10. The Wonders of a London Water Drop', Punch 461,18,11 May 1850:
198 - 189.

0 July
16-M: 13 /.
 409

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Fig. 12. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Pandora, 1878, coloured chalks on paper, 100.8 x
66.7 cm, National Museums Liverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
 410

Fig. 13. Leona Marcelle Beaussart, Papiers d'Armenie, c. 1890, lithograph, 136 x 98 cm, Musee
Internationale de la parfumerie, Grasse, France.
 411

Fig. 14. Rend Lalique, perfume bottle, Cyclamen for Francois Coty, c. 1912, clear and
frosted glass with green patina, 14cm, private collection

Fig. 15. A Rene Lalique, perfume bottle, Flacon Rosace Figurines, for Francois Coty, c.
1912, clear glass with blue patina, 11 cm, private collection.
 412

Fig. 16. H. S. Melville, wood engraving in James Greenwood, Curiosities

of Savage Life, 2nd Series, vol 1, (London: Beeton, 1863), 81.

a. Roman nose
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b. Snub nose and turned-up nose

Jewish nose

Fig. 17 Nasal shapes from Eden Warwick, Nasology: or Hints towards a Classification of
Noses (London: Richard Bentley, 1848).
 413

OUR NASAL BENEFACTORS.

Fig. 18. `Our Nasal Benefactors', Punch, 35,887,10 July 1858: 12

Fig. 19. Sampson and Mordan and Co., Perfume and Smelling Salt Bottle in the style of opera

glasses, c. 1879, Enamel and Silver gilt with mirrors, Private Collection.
 414

Fig. 20. John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1856,

oil and varnish on canvas,
104 x 74 cm, Manchester Art Gallery.
 415

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Fig. 22. John William Waterhouse, The Soul of the Rose 1908, oil

on Canvas, 88.3 x 59.1 cm, Pre-Raphaelite Inc, Julian Hartnoll.

 417

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 418

Fig. 24. Charles Courtney Curran, The Perfume

of Roses, 1902, oil on canvas,
74.3 x 59.4 cm, National Museum
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
 419

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Fig. 25. Charles Courtney Curran, The Cobweb Dance, 1904. Oil
on
canvas. 76 x 51 cm, Cragsmoor, New York, Blake Benton, Fine Art.
 420

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Fig. 26. John William Waterhouse, Summer, c. 1882, oil on

canvas, 31 x 25 cm, private collection.

 421

Fig. 27. John William Waterhouse, The shrine, 1895,

Oil on Canvas, 88 x 42 cm, Private Collection.

 422

Fig. 28. Luigi Russolo, Profumo, 1910, Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 64.5cm, H. L Winston of
Birmingham, USA.
 423

Fig. 29. Unknown artist, Incense, (details unknown) Reproduction printed by

Gilchrist Bros, Leeds reproduced in Penrose's Pictorial Album, 16, (1910): 112.
 424

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The Three Perfumes, 1912, Watercolour

Fig. 30. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh,
50.2 47.6 Cranbrook Art Museum.
and pencil on vellum, cm x cm,
 425

Fig. 31. Jan Toorop, Two Women, 1893, Pencil and Coloured Crayons and watercolour
heightened with white on brownish paper, in a contemporary carved frame designed by the artist,
24.5 x 37.5 cm, private collection.
 426

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Fig. 33. Alphonse, Mucha, Chocolat Ideal, 1897, print, 778 x 117 cm.
 428

Fig. 34. Privat Livemont, Rajah, 1899, Colour lithograph, 78 43.5

x cm.
 429

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Fig. 35. Fig. 35. `Lundborg's Heather of the Links. ' McClure's Magazine 6 (1898): 153.
 430

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Fig. 36. The Magical Incense in Lacfadio Hearn, Ghostly Japan. London:
Kegan Paul, 1905,90.
 431

Fig. 37. Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, The Lovers World, 1901, Watercolour

and bodycolour on paper, 111,6 x 66 cm, Bristol Museums and Art Gallery.
 432
kX1 Su4 II(. III Amelia Summerville, Bi
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Fig. 38. Programme for Rice's Sunday `Pops' at the New York Theatre, November 30th 1902.
Box 11, The Sadakichi Hartmann Papers, Special Collections Library, University
of
California, Riverside.
 433

Fig. 39. A line of people queuing at the Great Exhibition to dip their handkerchiefs
into Rimmel's perfume fountain. Front cover of Rimmel's 1861 Perfumed
Almanac. John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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Fig. 40. J. Defies and Son, 1870,Domestic Perfume Fountain, Glass bulbs with metal base.
 434

By Courtesy of ALICE P. BARNEY

A DREAM-JOURNEY
AN D
-AESEPERFUMESYMPHONY

IN NIPPONE.SE RHYTHMS,
FRAGRANCE:AND POJ.TRY
By SADAKICHIHARTMANN
Music by FEOD0R K0LIN

at the bfrs. ALICE P. BARNEY'S

Residence 1635 Ogden Ave. Los kngelos

FRIDAY 28th Mi+Y, 8: 15 p. m. sharp

ADMISSION TWO DOLL. RS

For Tickets by Subscription only apply to:

Feodor Kolin, 647 S. New Hampshire (WA 3691)
or Sndakichi He:rtmcnn, 4683-1/2 Hollywood Blvd.

Floral Tributos by Rofroshmonts

Sadyo Nrthan at Ten

Fig. 41. Ticket for a Perfume concert, Box 11, The Sadakichi
Hartmann
Papers, Special Collections Library, University
of California, Riverside.
 435

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 436

Fig. 43 Ludwig Deutsch, Le Fumeur, 1903, Oil on canvas, 58 x 41 cm, Private Collection.

Fig. 44 Rudolph Ernst, In the Alhambra, 1888,Oil on panel,61.3 x 49.2 cm, PrivateCollection.
 437

Fig. 45 Detail from an illustration of a harem girl smelling a rose in Rimmel, Eugene. The Book

of Perfumes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1864. p.91.

 438

wl,
-

Fig. 46 Photographer Unknown, Ruth St. Denis, without usual black wig,
in Incense, photographic print by 1908,19 x 11 cm, mounted on paper 41 x

36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn collection no. 151.

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 439

Fig. 47 Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense, photographic print, 1906-7,15 x
10 cm, mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection no. 153.

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ir-

Fig. 48 Notman, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense, photographic print, 1908,24 x 18 cm, mounted

on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn collection no 153.

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 440

Fig. 49 Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis in The Incense, 1908, photographic print, 24 x 17

cm, mounted on paper 41 x 36 cm, New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection no. 162.

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 441

Fig. 50 Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis with native Hindus in first costume for Radha,
1904,21 x 26 cm, photographic print, mounted on paper 40 x 34 cm, New York Public Library,
Denishawn Collection no. 9.

Fig. 51 White Studio, New York, Ruth St. Denis with native Hindus in first costume for Radha,
1906, photographic print 28 x 36 cm, mounted on paper 34 x 40 cm, The New York Public
Library, Denishawn Collection no. 22.
 442

Fig. 52 Photographer unknown, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1906, photographic postcard,
14 x 10 cm., mounted on paper 40 x 34 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn
Collection, no. 43.

Fig. 53 Otto Sarony, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1908, Photographic print, 18 x 13 cm, mounted on

paper 41 x 36 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection, no. 74.
 443

Fig. 54 Aura Hartwig, Ruth St. Denis in Radha, 1906, photographic print, 19 x 15 cm, mounted

on paper 32 x 27 cm, The New York Public Library, Denishawn Collection no. 42.
 444

Fig. 55. George Frederick Watts, Choosing, 1864, Oil on strawboard, 47.2 x
35.4 cm, National Portrait Gallery.

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 445

Fig. 56. Viktor Schramm, Perfect Scent, 1898, Oil on wood, 61 55

x cm,
Private Collection.

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