“a custome loathsome to the Eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the Braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.”
But, in fact, regarding the influence of the tobacco-habit on the sense there is a conflict of opinion. Some say it dulls olfaction; others, it has no deleterious effect. My own experience would lead me to agree with the former opinion.
We now proceed with our memories.
Who does not become a boy again when the fragrance of a gardener’s bonfire fills the air? In my own case when I smell it my eyes begin to smart and to water, and I hear the laughter and shouts of my brothers as, daring the wrath of Olympus, we leap over the blaze and land on the white powdery ash that rises in clouds around us to the ruination of boots and clothing. It is always evening, “’twixt the gloamin’ and the mirk.” The moon, still golden, is hung low in the sky; the wind is sharp with a touch of frost, but the glare and the glow of the embers reddens and warms us—at least that part of us we turn to the fire. (Have you ever felt the fierce pleasure of being at once scorched and frozen?)
In those few country places in Scotland where the old Beltane fires of midsummer or midwinter are still kindled, children are encouraged to pass through the smoke, that being good for their health. The custom, frankly pagan, is probably the maimed rite of a sacrifice of children to the old gods. That may be quite true, and yet I concur in believing the practice to be beneficial. At all events, the bonfires of so many years ago have left with me a memory that has often recurred since, and always with healing on its wings.
Again, the fainter, keener odour of burning pine-wood combined with the fanning sensation on the face of the cold wind of the dawn always brings back to me a summer morning at the Swiss frontier station of Pontarlier after an evening when vin ordinaire had induced effects extraordinaire upon a youth unaccustomed to that fiery beverage. Those, no doubt, were the days when nothing mattered much. Nevertheless the fragrant coolness of that morning after touches my aching brow to this day with the soothing gentleness of a hand fraught with understanding and forgiveness.
Then what sea-lover is there but responds to the salt pungency of seaweed on an empty beach?
It is an interesting fact that the smell of the sea may travel inland for miles on a favouring breeze. With the south-west wind blowing moist, I have in the heart of Lanarkshire repeatedly been stirred out of everyday hebetude by the smell of the sea on the Ayrshire coast, some thirty miles away. And Réné Bazin (in “Les Oberlé”) says you can even smell it sometimes in Alsace, 250 miles from the Mediterranean.
Once, indeed, at King’s Cross, London, I beheld monstrous railway-stations and muddy streets, with their motor-’buses, dingy wayfarers, yelling newsboys and all, melting away into the glimmer and space of the sea in a sort of magical transformation, just as mist low-lying in Russell Square will turn at times those garish hotels into sea-girt palaces.... Only this time there was no mist. There was, indeed, no need of mist. For the spell of power was a sudden whiff of the sea from far across the bricks, slates, and sooty chimneys.
But there is another sea-smell, equally powerful and much less romantic. Can you endure the breath of hot oil and metal from the engines of a steamer without a qualm?