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Fume and Perfume: Some Eighteenth-Century Uses of Smell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Clare Brant
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 444 - 463
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2004

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References

1 Porter, Roy, “Foreword,” in Corbin, Alain, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (New York, 1986), p. vGoogle Scholar.

2 Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant, p. 4.

3 Ibid., p. 232.

4 Østermark-Johansen, Lene, “Entry Point,” in The Nose Book: Representations of the Nose in Literature and the Arts, ed. de Rijke, Victoria, Østermark-Johansen, Lene, and Thomas, Helen (Middlesex, 2000), p. 3Google Scholar.

5 Jenner, Mark, “Civilization and Deodorization? Smell in Early Modern English Culture,” Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, ed. Burke, Peter, Harrison, Brian, and Slack, Paul (Oxford, 2001), p. 144Google Scholar.

6 The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Frame, Donald (Stanford, Calif., 1965), p. 228Google Scholar.

7 Annick le Guérer argues that after seventeenth-century intellectual hostility, smell was rehabilitated by eighteenth-century philosophers. Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell, trans. Miller, Richard (London, 1993), chap. 5Google Scholar. She discusses Montaigne's interest in smell in chap. 3, passim. First published as Les Pouvoirs de L’Odeur (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar.

8 Mark Jenner argues for a history of smells within a historical study of hygiene that is culturally wide-ranging. “Early Modern Perceptions of ‘Cleanliness’ and ‘Dirt’ as Reflected in the Environmental Regulation of London, c. 1530–c. 1700” (D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1991)Google Scholar.

9 Palmer, Richard, “In Bad Odour: Smell and Its Significance in Medicine from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century,” in Medicine and the Five Senses, ed. Bynum, W. S. and Porter, Roy (Cambridge, 1993), p. 68Google Scholar.

10 Thus Reinarz, Jonathan, “Uncommon Smells in Victorian England,” (paper presented at the Sense and Scent conference, Birkbeck College, London, March 2001)Google Scholar.

11 Rindisbacher, Hans, The Smell of Books: A Cultural Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1992), pp. 9–10Google Scholar. Rindisbacher notes too that objects of smell have diverse physical and chemical properties, thus inviting classification—although one could argue every sense works on diversity.

12 Palmer, “In Bad Odour,” p. 66. On water and stagnant smells, see Jenner, Mark, “From Water Conduit to Commercial Network? Water in London, 1500–1725,” in Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London, ed. Griffiths, Paul and Jenner, Mark S. R. (Manchester, 2000), pp. 250–72Google Scholar.

13 Le Guérer, Scent, p. 215.

14 Tudor noses were at least as enthusiastic about the clove-scented carnation; Victorians could be better represented by the fern, which inspired fernomania in many wood-stripping collectors.

15 SirFloyer, John, Pharmako-Basanos; Or, The Touch-stone of Medicine, &c. (London, 1687), p. 56Google Scholar.

16 The connection had been underlined in seventeenth-century jokes about the Rump Parliament.

17 “Corruption” also subliminally invokes the stench of decaying flesh; it can be read in relation to spiritually informed notions of odor.

18 Miller, William Ian, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1998), p. 2Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 6.

20 Jenner, “Early Modern Perceptions of ‘Cleanliness’ and ‘Dirt,’” p. 159.

21 Savile, George, Lord Marquess of Halifax, The Lady's New-Year’s-Gift; Or Advice to a Daughter (London, 1700; repr. Stamford, Conn. 1934), p. 71Google Scholar.

22 Tryon, Thomas, Tryon's Letters, Upon Several Occasions (London, 1700), p. 119Google Scholar.

23 See Bindman, David, Hogarth (Norwich, 1981), p. 123Google Scholar, for image and discussion.

24 Cato, , Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon a House of Office, dedicated to the Goldfinders of Great Britain (London, 1732), p. 5Google Scholar.

25 For further discussion of the body and politics in relation to John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, see my forthcoming book on eighteenth-century letters; on Cato, see Ellison, Julie, Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.

26 Thus in Walpole, Horace, The Lessons for the Day (London, 1742)Google Scholar, and The Grumbletonians, or The Dogs Without-Doors (London, n.d.). In twentieth-century Britain, cats replace dogs: “fat cats” in the City and industry stigmatize undue self-enrichment in the same way, but losing the associated discourse of smell.

27 Trenchard, John and Gordon, Thomas, Cato's Letters, 4 vols. (London, 1724), 1:123 [mispaginated for 223]Google Scholar.

28 Jones, Mary, “Elegy, on a favourite DOG, suppos’d to be poison’d,” Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (Oxford, 1750), p. 59Google Scholar.

29 Smollett, Tobias, The History and Adventures of an Atom, ed. Day, R. Adams (Athens, Ga., and London, 1989), p. 126Google Scholar.

30 For further discussion of this in relation to their Cato's Letters, see my forthcoming book on eighteenth-century letters.

31 Compare Leapor, Mary, Poems upon Several Occasions (London, 1748)Google Scholar; in “The Apparition” (pp. 108–11) Mira (also used as a persona for the poet) expires from being too tightly laced.

32 Don Fartinando Puff-indorst, The Benefit of Farting Explain’d: or the Fundament—all Cause of the Distempers Incident to the FAIR—SEX: Proving, a Posteriori, most of the Dis-ordures In-tail’d upon them are owing to Flatulencies not seasonably vented (London, 1744), preface, p. 7. It includes a poem “On a Fart, let in the House of Commons,” p. 40.

33 ARSE MUSICA; or the LADY's BACK REPORT to Don Fart-in-hand-o Puff-in dorst, Professor of Bomabst in the University of CRAC-O, on the BENEFIT of FARTING … (London, 1722), title page. The predilection for puns looks back to Rabelais's joke names and spoof titles of books about farting in Gargantua and Pantagruel.

34 Don Fartinando quotes Hudibras: “As Wind in Hypochondria pent, / Is but a Fart if downward sent; / But if supprest it upwards flies, / And vents itself in Prophecies” (The Benefit of Farting, p. 7). Among his female respondents was one Philadelphia Plain-fart, a Quaker.

35 Thus Don Fartinando, Benefit of Farting, title page.

36 Dawson, Jim, Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart (Berkeley, 1999), p. 17Google Scholar. He argues, p. 24, “Euphemisms for farts also generally comment on their smell. The ‘stinker’ is what it says it is.”

37 Jeffrey Broadbottom, Serious and Cleanly Meditations, upon a House-of-Office, reprinted in Don Fartinando The Benefit of Farting, p. 27.

38 Broadbottom, Serious and Cleanly Meditations, p. 28. The same collection discusses how people who sit on tombstones absorb unwholesome vapors that make them melancholy and whether the smell of excrement puts people off having sex in bog-houses.

39 “Strephon and Chloe” (1734), discussed by Dawson, Who Cut the Cheese, pp. 70–73.

40 Originally part of a letter to Richard Pierce in 1783. Franklin's proposals, under the title The Letter to the Royal Academy, are reprinted in full in Dawson, Who Cut the Cheese, pp. 76–79.

41 See Langford, Paul, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1998)Google Scholar; Bryson, Anna, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carter, Philip, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain, 1660–1800 (London, 2001)Google Scholar.

42 Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, chap. 4, discusses fops in depth.

43 Jones, Mary, “Epistle from Fern Hill,” Miscellanies, pp. 135–36, reprinted in Women Poets of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Lonsdale, Roger (Oxford, 1982), pp. 163–64Google Scholar.

44 In part this is because women were supposed to be simultaneously natural and well-bred, like a cultivated flower. Compare the “fragrant” Lady Archer. On horticultural imagery and child management, see my forthcoming book on eighteenth-century letters, chap. 3, “Writing as a Parent.” See also the painting The Sense of Smell, by Phillippe Mercier (1689–1760) in the Mellon Collection, in which two men actively sniff fruits and flowers and two women look on.

45 The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. Dobrée, Bonamy, 6 vols., (n.p., King's Printers edition, 1932), 5:2054Google Scholar. A barbet is a medium-sized, woolly, and bearded water dog, from whom (ironically) the poodle is descended. A modern breed description stresses the barbet is a social animal, attached to its masters but able to profit from their weaknesses, hence a firm education is desirable. Perfect for Chesterfield, then.

46 Compare Pope's interest in canine soiling and nipping in relation to courtly fawning in Mack, Maynard, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1985), p. 677Google Scholar. Loyola was savage in other ways: he regularly bit Chesterfield's visitors.

47 Omai, or A Trip round the World (London, 1785), p. 8Google Scholar.

48 Le Guérer, Scent, p. 24.

49 Tryon, Letters, p. 6. He goes on to discuss the smell of foul metals, like quicksilver or lead.

50 Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D, ed. Chapman, R. W. (London, Oxford, and New York, 1970), p. 50Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., p. 173.

52 Boswell, James, Life of Johnson, ed. Chapman, R. W. (Oxford and New York, 1985), p. 86Google Scholar.

53 Smollett, Tobias, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Ross, Angus (Harmondsworth, 1980), p. 252Google Scholar.

54 Smollett, Tobias, The History and Adventures of an Atom (1769), ed. Day, Robert Adams (Athens, Ga., 1989), p. 231, n. 300Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., p. 120.

56 Ibid., p. 38. Taycho is Pitt and Mura-Clami is William Murray, earl of Mansfield.

57 Siebert, Donald T., Jr., “The Role of the Senses in Humphry Clinker,” Studies in the Novel, 6, no. 1 (1974): 17–26, quote on 25Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., p. 25.

59 Smollett, Tobias, Travels through France and Italy (Oxford, 1981), pp. 243–44Google Scholar.

60 Bowers, Terence, “Reconstituting the National Body in Smollett's Travels through France and Italy,” Eighteenth-Century Life 21 (February 1997): 1–25Google Scholar.

61 Journals of Captain Cook, ed. Edwards, Philip (Harmondsworth, 1999), p. 101Google Scholar.

62 The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, ed. Flannery, Tim (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 83Google Scholar.

63 The pleasantness of smells like wood smoke, coffee, and baking seems to me to turn partly on the way they waft, as if surprise was part of their pleasure. On the importance of circulation, see Arndt, Ava Lee, “Pennies, Pounds and Peregrinations” (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1999)Google Scholar (my thanks to Alison Stenton for this reference). See also Jenner, “Early Modern Perceptions of ‘Cleanliness’ and ‘Dirt,’” pp. 382–95, on the early modern association between circulation and health, both somatic and spiritual.

64 Journals of Captain Cook, p. 101. As an analogue for the bad smell left by colonialism, compare the stink of dead hippo that haunts Marlowe in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

65 Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Short Residence in Sweden [sic] (Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 87Google Scholar. Elsewhere she is sensitive to pleasant smells, like the “wild perfume” of the forest.

66 “Albert,” and “Tour of the Isle of Man,” in Universal Magazine (London) 92 (January 1785): 85.

67 Modern Manners: in a Series of Familiar Epistles (London, 1781), p. 102Google Scholar.

68 The Man in the Moon [Thompson, William], Mammuth; or Human Nature Displayed on a Grand Scale: in a Tour with the Tinkers, into Inland Parts of Africa, 2 vols. (London, 1789), 1:215, ffGoogle Scholar.

69 Ibid., 2:16.

70 Freud has little to say about smell but proposes that the nose loses out to the genitals: man lost his sense of smell when he walked upright; it made his nose further from the ground; female genitals then became visible, so that sight displaced smell as the primary sexual sense. For a critique of this theory, and a reading of Freud's nose in relation to Jewish sensitivities, see David Howes, “Freud's Nose: The Repression of Nasality and the Origin of Psychoanalytic Theory,” in Rijke et al., eds., The Nose Book, pp. 265–81. Charles Lock, “Ignoring the Nose: Making Faces,” in ibid., pp. 169–181, argues “We prefer not to notice the nose, and even when we are invited to do so, we prefer to overlook it, by turning up or looking down our own” (p. 179).

71 Hugo de Rijke, “The Point of Long Noses: Tristram Shandy and Cyrano de Bergerac,” in Rijke et al., eds., The Nose Book, pp. 55–75.

72 [William Thompson], Mammuth, 1:284.

73 Ibid., 1:11.

74 Morton, Tim, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic (Cambridge 2000), pp. 220–21Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 229.

76 Ibid. p. 25, asks how eighteenth century notions of comfort fit into luxury. On professional farters, particularly Joseph Pujol, Le Petomane, see Dawson, Who Cut the Cheese, chap. 4. The whoopee cushion and other farting devices simulates an ability to fart at will but, ironically, without smell.

77 Morton, Poetics of Spice, p. 227.

78 Ritson, Joseph, An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food, as a Moral Duty (1802), reprinted in Morton, Tim, ed., Radical Food: The Culture and Politics of Eating and Drinking, 1790–1820, 3 vols. (London, 2000), 1:171–273Google Scholar; see also John Oswald, in the same volume, p. 147.

79 Darwin, Erasmus, The Temple of Nature (1803), Canto II, lines 405–10, Scolar Press Facsimile (London and Yorkshire, 1973), p. 75Google Scholar.

80 Thus Knox, Vicesimus, Essays Moral and Literary, 6th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1785)Google Scholar, argued that the odor of flowers and other pleasures of nature could not be appreciated by those who are uneasy of conscience. Compare Wordsworth later: “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.” “The Tables Turned,” in Lyrical Ballads (London, 1798)Google Scholar.

81 Boswell, 30 July 1763, Life of Johnson, p. 326.

82 Mary Jones, Miscellanies, p. 338.