My fools for senses,

We had devised, as usual, to write an Overview based on the symbolic of a most famous and underrated raw material of perfumery however, the recent events have somehow forced us to reshape this Overview and look behind « into something called history ».

The history of the Plague and that of London in particular, with a perfumed point of view. For indeed, if we must fight fire with fire, let us fight the current through the analysis of the past. Without much further asay, let us sweep through Europe and look at the Perfumes and the Plague.

London, in the year of the Lord 1665. King Charles II and his court have fled to Salisbury, hoping to stay away from the rampant plague that has conquered the streets of London, when a French man named James Angier arrives with a miraculous remedy to cast away the dark spell bound to the City. For the first time since the coming of William the Conqueror, the fate of the English is now again in the hands…of a frog.

One cannot speak about perfume without mentioning the plague. As far as it has existed, perfume has always been seen as an extension of the good fragrance of the soul and a material sign of an immaterial blessing. The corollary is just as true, that foul smells bear the mark of foul behaviour – we shall get back to this. Suffice to say that in the Dark Age, people believed that a sweet fragrance could ward off the miasms that were frequently plunging Europe into a cloud of illness and of death. So much so in fact that the rich and poor alike, from Venice to London, used perfume not as a way to hide their own stench but rather…to simply stay alive.

In order to understand this, one must read again the story of the Four Thieves’ Vinegar, an elaborate elixir that enabled a bunch of brigands to rob dead bodies during the Plague without being affected by the illness. Legend has it that upon being caught, they bought their freedom by selling the recipe to their remedy, an infusion of rosemary, absinth, camphor, sage, rue and other herbs.

This fourteenth-century tale was not a mere folly. During the Renaissance, Italy saw the printing of many medical treatises to cure the plague, all of which mentioned the use of perfume as a way to prevent if not to heal the diseased. In Milan, already, Asciano Centori degli Ortensi writes the I Cinque Libri degl’avvertimenti, in which he suggests that the government perfume the houses of the sick, an advice that will resurface in Venice with Girolamo Donzenelli saying that the possessions of the infected should not be burnt, as was customary, but rather « cleansed and perfumed ». In Sicily at last, perhaps inspired by the works of Augier Ferrier –whom would rise to become the physician of Catherine de Medici- Girolamo Argenterio recommends piling up different odoriferous woods in front of the houses so as to perfume all the districts of the city.

Despite the urgency of the situation in their respective cities, be it Florence or Venice or Sienna, none of the governments will implement such measures as plague was widely considered as a divine punishment for the immoral sins of the many. Thomas Nashe, an English poet of the 16th century, will write a Litany on such matter, describing in a somewhat somber tone, the ineluctability of sickness highlighting Mankind’s fragility.

For that is precisely what most physicians cared about at the time: sin ; and they would end up their treatises with a common reflection on why plague would target the poorer classes, trying to understand which were their sins and how the elite could and should guide them to a path of holiness – thus of health.

Thus, having learnt of this and more, England started to discuss on the best way to avoid a catastrophe, which would eventually reach again their shores. As early as 1607, starch making was limited in the City as it was believed that its stench  “no small cause of the breeding and nourishing of the plague”. Later, in 1660, John Evelyn writes the Fumifugium in which he recommends that sweet-smelling herb gardens be planted all around the capital so as to purify its foul air, so full of “iron and coal” that Londoners coughed all through Sunday Mass.

His call will be followed by no public measure and it is up to the commoner to cure and protect himself of the foul and sickening air. One can even read of the Earl of Northumberland paying no less than six shillings, the equivalent of a day’s wage, for a pomander; a sort of amulet stuffed with herbs and perfumes that would protect the wearer from the so-feared miasms.

We can easily sketch the scent of these pomanders thanks to some recipes that were consigned early on. One such mentions ingredients like labdanum, styrax, myrrh, clove, musk and lemon balm.

Thus, when Londoners saw a comet passing through the sky in the year 1664, they knew fate was after them and by the first hoar of 1665, Plague had reached the City and spread through it like wildfire. The death toll kept increasing despite the drastic quarantine measures imposed on the citizens, not so much as to protect them but rather to contain the propagation of the illness. By summer, the situation had become so dire that the King and the Parliament were forced to exile to Salisbury then to Oxford as the former city saw its first cases of the Plague.

London however, abandoned to its fate by the elite and physicians, who fled to the countryside in order to remain safe from harm, became the theatre of miserable scenes. Here, a father is seen passing his naked daughter to a friend through the window so she may be taken to safety out of town. Elsewhere, the remaining priests bury the bodies of the deceased and distribute a London Treacle made of aromatic herbs, wine, amber and opium as a way to heal them.

Fumigations, which had been shunned by the medical academics, became fashionable gain. William Sancroft, the Dean of Saint Paul saw that his residence be fumigated daily with a mix of frankincense, pepper and brimstone while he was away at Turnbridge Wells. Elsewhere, a post office drowns in a cloud so thick and pungent it can be smelt from downstreet. The cloud of “iron and coal” that shrouded London is replaced by one of pungent smell for there burns in every street a fire of green wood, rosemary, rue and other perfumes to chase away the Plague-infested air while the quarantined are advised to fumigate shrubs or rosemary and rue every day… to no avail.

It was at this moment, the most apocalyptic of all, that James Angier made his entrance at the exiled court. He claimed to have found a miraculous cure, a mix of brimstone, saltpetre and ambergris that, once fumigated, not only drove the Plague away but also healed those who were stricken ill. A man there was with him who supported his claim. His name was Jonas Charles, the owner of a plague-infested household sitting by Newton Street and he told the King that he and the seven other occupants of the house had been healed by the art of James Angier.

Utterly subjugated by Angier’s demonstration and Charles’ testament, the King granted the Frenchman his blessing and a hefty pouch of 86 pounds, the equivalent of three years worth of pay. He even went so far as to command that the Lord Mayor of the City financed the making and distributing of Angier’s cure. The Privy Council would soon publish a list of six apothecaries where one could buy such cure and promoted its efficiency at a great cost.

When it became clear that it was all a sham, Angier was long gone. The government would hardly take responsibility for a fraud that had in fact claimed more lives than it helped save leading John Evelyn, now Commissioner to the King, to say that he knew “none amongst our court great-ones who do naturally care for our state. For all seek theire owne”.

At the coming of autumn, wealthy Londoners returned to their homes to find a moribund city, their carts ploughing under the weight of their riches as they went past sullen houses which doors had been shut and marked with a red cross. On them they could read: “Lord, have mercy on us!” for those were the houses that had been infected. By the end of winter, the King had returned to his capital, the Parliament to Westminster and by the end of summer, Plague had left the city. A mere few weeks before the Great Fire of London…

London, owing its survival to the efforts of the few priests and apothecaries who had stayed in, will quickly draw lessons from these ordeals and the city will take the shape we know today : wide treelined streets and green squares so that a fresher air may be there breathed again. But the real victory happens to be on the moral ground as the sin viewed as the cause of such evil is no longer that of flesh but those of pride and greed ; and the guilty are no longer the poor but the mighty which lead Thomas Vincent to write in 1667 : « I am verily persuaded that God hath been more highly provoked by some that dwelt out of the city than with those which dwelt in it (…) Many in London have been proud of their fine clothes and fair faces ; of their fair shops and stately houses : pride has hung about the neck like a chain and covered them like a garment instead of the clothing and ornament of humility, which before God is of so great price »

In this dark hour, let us contemplate the beauty of life’s fragility so as to grasp its value even more. Lovers of perfume, let us learn from the fugacity of its essences, from the evanescence of the joys it creates. Let us not succomb to fear ; let us embrace our mirth. And may we do so more intensely than ever, enjoying what Tolkien called the « Gift of Men » and mostly, as Antonio de Medici said it : let us « avoid bad smells ».

And keep hope.

« Rich men, trust not in wealth, Gold cannot buy you health; Physic himself must fade. All things to end are made. Haste, therefore, each degree, To welcome destiny; Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage » - Thomas Nashe, A Litany in Times of Plague