The London Lounge

I am trying but I don't get the fragrance and perfume talking. I've been taught that men don't use these things. Grooming, yes, fine linen, yes, but men shouldn't use anything that contains perfume. I take comfort in Brummell's "No perfumes, but very fine linen, plenty of it, and country washing", but it is not enough. I still feel a little excluded, not quite clubbable I am curiouse: Do any LL members feel the same about perfumes and fragrances?

I suppose Brummel would have also eschewed chalkstripes, pinstripes, tweeds, and windowpanes along with the perfumes of his day that were probably heady potions.

Like most things, fragrances are useful to a man to the extent that he knows how to wear them well. Perfumes per se are not the problem except that the vast majority of them are unusable for anything other than killing termites.

A fragrance should be, as Luca Turin instructed, apparent at the “distance of a kiss.” He did not mean blowing a kiss so choose and wear discretely. “A perfume should not exit an elevator before you do”, warned Turin who judged sillage inelegant even for women.

An amateur cook, wine collector and olive oil producer (born with an all too sensitive nose), I enjoy the olfactive. And frankly there are few experiences in life as wonderful as having a lovely young creature, in a seeming attempt to consume you like a morsel of steak tartare, purring at your neck, “Oh you smell so damn good!”

Cheers

M Alden

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
- Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

(Correspondences, Charles Baudelaire)
(translations: http://fleursdumal.org/poem/103)

It can be regarded as a matter of style syntax. Why leave "the inaudible poetry a man recites to the world" ( :)MA) elliptic in the department of such a paramount sense? Would we enjoy a walk in the woods as much if we were deprived of the subtle perfumes of nature? A (well-chosen) fragrance can change all the meaning of how we are perceived. For better or for worse - true!...
So... not a matter in itself, perfumes; rather, a matter of context, of putting together - of correspondences. Only they carry us from the world of senses and perceptions to that of spirit and ideas. And if you think a bit about the third stanza, the synesthetic trigger is "perfume"! Fresh like baby skin, soft as oboes (wow!...), green like prairies - take your pick. I don't want to miss out on that!

Michael, it's not "sillage", it is "l'expansion des choses infinies", "Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit"... when the elevator goes up, of course!

Gruto, In his most interesting volume "History of Men's Fashion" fellow LL member, NJS, points out that this maxim is nearly always quoted out of context. Brummell did not mean that men should not use perfume, for he did. Rather he meant that linen should not be scented, just washed perfectly clean. Of course, it should be fine and plentiful in a gentleman's wardrobe. Makes good sense IMO.

Thank you, it sounds as if "no perfume" is a quirk of mine. I was just wondering, if others felt the same. I have also stopped wearing a watch

Gruto wrote:Thank you, it sounds as if "no perfume" is a quirk of mine. I was just wondering, if others felt the same. I have also stopped wearing a watch

Hm, A quirk? You mean ANOTHER quirk...
I haven't worn a watch in more than 10 years - it bothers me to have something around my wrist and I prefer to ask the time I feel more free without it - physically, as well as psychologically... Are we both deluding ourselves that if we don't see Time, it won't see us, either?

rodes wrote:Gruto, In his most interesting volume "History of Men's Fashion" fellow LL member, NJS, points out that this maxim is nearly always quoted out of context. Brummell did not mean that men should not use perfume, for he did. Rather he meant that linen should not be scented, just washed perfectly clean. Of course, it should be fine and plentiful in a gentleman's wardrobe. Makes good sense IMO.

By coincidence, the chairman of Floris is even now looking out Brummell's accounts with them for me to see. I'll let you know what I find. His snuff accounts with Fribourg & Treyer are fascinating and I was intrigued to learn, from microfiche held at the Royal Bank of Scotland (which subsumed Drummonds), that Brummell's account remained open and in use after his exile.
NJS

My compliments, NJS, on the true scholarly spirit. The thrill of the chase is positively contagious. I look forward to your results from Floris (and am likewise surprised and intrigued by the Drummonds/RBS news; there must be more backstory there). I'm still taken aback, sometimes, by the frequency with which the documentary record remains unbroken in England when one might assume it to have been interrupted. Handling the weight books and reading the entries for Byron and Brummell at Berry Bros. & Rudd was an eerie, if deeply satisfying, experience--I'm not used to consulting such things outside research libraries (or the odd rare book & MS dealer) so encountering them at a very-much-flourishing retail establishment engendered a certain amount of cognitive dissonance (not to say anxiety about preservation and theft)!

Few things more satisfying than debunking with evidence a popular canard such as this one about Brummell and scent; I wish you all joy of it.

Thank you, Couch. There are many records that are intact, as you say, but the paper records of Drummonds Bank were reduced to microfiche and the paper recycled as part of the War Effort and, sadly, there are some ledgers missing. I was hoping to find the record of the transaction showing the payment to Brummell, by George Harley Drummond, of the sum that Brummell broke him for in an evening's high stakes cards (Drummond had to resign from the bank) - but - alas! it is not there. The most awe inspiring record that I have ever held was Sir Isaac Newton's own annotated copy of Principa Mathematica, in the custody of the bursar of an Oxford College.
NJS

I think that I can top that NJS. At university I was given Latin tutorials by the keeper of the Rare Books Room in the Cambridge University Library. When the time came for a bit of Virgil he produced Milton's own text (with the poet's annotations in the margins) for us to work from.