"Fastidious women are as delicately refined in their selection of sweet odours as in every other personal appointment. A high-bred woman does not associate herself with musk or patchouli. The shadow of the clear pungent lavender may precede her but the most sensitive, refined women shrink intuitively from the odours that attract the parvenu. Some of us, in these days of musk and suffocating rose, have frequently wished the promiscuous use of these powerful odours might be restricted."
Harriet Hubbard Ayer (1849-1903)
*makes a rude gesture in Ms. Ayer`s direction*
This is the authentic tone of a society matrone at the turn of the century:) It made me laugh more than anything else. I savored every word she wrote in that passage:)
"A high-bred woman does not associate herself with musk or patchouli." Har har har
Dear Harriet would have thought I was a street walker, no less, if she ever had a misfurtune of smelling my perfumes. :-)
We hope she would have been a different woman had she been living in our age:) If she had been able to travel in time she would have been probably shell-shocked when smelling Youth-Dew or Opium. Imagine her expression if she had been able to sniff Musc Ravageur, LOL!