London has a smell of its own, a fundamental familiar odour, which, by the way, has changed of late. Twenty years ago it was faintly acid with a background of horses and harness. To-day it is a mixture of tar and burned lubricating oil, by no means so pleasant. In addition to these, however, there is another and less prominent odour characteristic of the London atmosphere, which I confess I cannot describe.
“Once upon a time, some forty years ago, there lived at Highgate, which then still retained some of the characters of a village, a lady who declared that when a yellow fog drifted up from London she could detect the smell of tobacco smoke in it. To most people the odour is flatly that of coal smoke, which is perhaps always more or less to be perceived in London air. This at any rate would seem to have been the opinion of Edward Jenner, if we may trust a note made by Farington in his diary for 1809, which is being printed in the Morning Post. Farington’s note is as follows:
“‘Dr. Jenner observed to Lawrence that He could by smelling at His Handkerchief on going out of London ascertain when he came into an atmosphere untainted by the London air. His method was to smell at His Handkerchief occasionally, and while He continued within the London atmosphere He could never be sensible of any taint upon it; but, for instance, when He approached Blackheath and took His Handkerchief out of His pocket where it had not been exposed to the better air of that situation—His sense of smelling having become more pure he could perceive the taint. His calculation was that the air of London affected that in the vicinity to the distance of three miles’” (The Lancet).
Paris, in like manner, has its own peculiar aroma. Lord Frederick Hamilton analyses it correctly into “one-half wood-smoke, one-quarter roasting coffee, and one-quarter drains.” But for myself the Paris air always brings a curious half-suppressed feeling of excitement, part of it pleasure, part apprehension, as if something tremendous were about to happen. But here perhaps we cross the border-line between conscious sensation and subconscious stimulation.
Rome is a city of candles and incense mingled with the dry mustiness of crumbling skeletons.
In Edinburgh you encounter here and there the smell of old Scotland. Thatch enters into its make-up, why I cannot tell you. But the cold grey metropolis still preserves the soul of the thatch, a cosy sensation that is prone to bring tears to the eyes of the returning exile.
In Glasgow damp soot struggles with the smell of the Bromielaw for the mastery.
Dublin mingles the warm, rich aroma of Guinness’s Brewery with the cold smell of a corpse from the Liffey.
Those are the cities I know best myself. But I have often been told, and can quite believe it, that every city has its own particular atmosphere.
Some days, both in a city and in the country, are as rich and full of odours as a Turner picture is rich and various in colour. Other days bring us but a grey Whistlerian monotone, in which, nevertheless, the trained sense delights to distinguish an infinity of tender shades, unobserved by the casual.
I used to think that country smells were particularly dear to the country-born only, and that their charm lay in their evocation of childish memories. But that is not the whole of the story. They attract us by their own inherent beauty. I have known town-bred lads linger about a stable because the smell, I was told, was “so sweet.” And most of us are, to be sure, sufficiently horsey to enjoy that smell of straw and ammonia. We linger near it as bees haunt clover or cats valerian. And we are all horse-lovers sitting behind a smart cob on a hot day when the smell of the harness is mingling with the horse-odour. But these now old-world odours are being every day more and more ousted by the less pleasant smells of the motor-car, petrol, lubricating oil, and acetylene—a pure stink this last.