in which I segue from science to scent
and make a perfume in Marrakech
My father had a friend by the name of Julius Sumner Miller, who though based in California also visited the University of Sydney as guest lecturer from the early 1960s to 1986. Their friendship began over a family lunch in the early 70s at our house on Mount Lofty, after the good professor had contacted my father by telephone at the university where he too was a professor and Pa’s immediate response had been “do come to lunch”.
Professor Sumner Miller had been visiting Adelaide on one of his popular physics tours where he would demonstrate the magical principles that rule the world using simple tools such as paper, milk bottles (in those days they were made of glass) eggs, potatoes and straws; filling basketball stadia with audiences eager for his wisdom and humour. He’d looked up my father on the premise that both he (Prof Sumner Miller) and my grandfather had been recipients of Carnegie Fellowships and from that had extrapolated some kind of connection between himself, grandfather and Albert Einstein. I think it was something along the lines of Julius having used his fellowship to visit Einstein at his home, and on arrival in South Australia seeing the name Schwerdtfeger in the news (my late Papa was often enlisted by the media to comment on weather phenomena) and somehow connecting that with a memory of a mention of that same name in a conversation with the Great Physicist and simply wanting to satisfy his curiosity as to whether the Schwerdtfeger in South Australia was related to the Professor Emeritus from Montreal.
The long and the short of it was that we children found ourselves utterly enchanted by this energetic bespectacled wild-haired academic (a persona he actively cultivated) who rendered my mother ashen-faced as he balanced her precious crystal glasses on the ends of forks, drew patterns on the cloth with salt and goodness only knows what else. Time has blurred the memory of many of his antics at table over the years, but a few things remain constant. I remember him talking about travel, and that as we journey to different places, breathe the air, drink of and bathe in the waters, smell the flowers, absorb dust and pollen through our skin and of course eat local food, these things all become part of us…and of course we leave something of ourselves behind in the same way. Modern travel in flying sardine cans certainly compresses things into us, some of which don’t bear thinking about.
He also expounded on a theory regarding the hemlock that Socrates drank, and it was along the lines that by now, the poison would have been equally distributed among the oceans of the world :: this isn’t making much sense to me at the moment. If anyone out there recalls what the actual story was and would care to share it with me I would be most grateful.
The other thing I remember is the gift that Alice (Mrs Brown Sumner Miller) brought for my mother. It was a small doll whose head was a shrivelled apple with cloves for eyes and tiny toothpick teeth, mounted on a stick stuck in a small bottle, with a handsewn calico dress draped around it and some raw wool for hair. My mother treasured that wee creature and it sat in pride of place on the dining room sideboard for the next ten years, until the house was consumed by a bushfire. I think Alice called those dolls her “gruesomes” and amused herself by making them on all their travels together. These days you wouldn’t dare cross a border with them as they would be considered bio-hazards.
But it’s Julius’ theories on travel and becoming part of a place that reminded me of the two of them today, as I was wandering our dusty paddocks that haven’t seen a drop of rain since the measly few drops that fell at 2am on April 18th, when I was on my way to the airport, pondering the various places my feet have wandered this past month and thinking in particular about all the different smells that I’ve breathed in and are now part of me.
One of the experiences I particularly enjoyed towards the end of my adventure in Morocco was spending time at the Perfume Museum to concoct a scented potion. I have an absolute horror of synthetic fragrances :: and vapes and fabric conditioners in particular, but a passion for natural perfumes (provided they are not overly musky or loaded with vetiver, an essential that can give you the best dreams of your life if sniffed moderately at the close of a good day and the worst nightmares ever, if sniffed after a day when everything has gone wrong).
