As much of the "long nineteenth century" as anyone can carry.

[jacktellslies]

While shopping with my friends John and Bernie, John managed to find this amazing old pipe, dark wood and bone, with a bowl covered by a little silver lid on a hinge. I held it in my hand and pondered things, longing for wildly thrashed violin strings and the contents of a Persian slipper. Before the purchase was made, Bernie explained to John the importance of the pipe: it couldn't be an understated thing. It was the one allowed element of flash for a gentleman because, and here my aforementioned love affair with colonialism rose up like a blush and I interjected, "It was your last remaining luxury." I said it in a voice not my own, a dandy prophet, and then promptly fainted. I woke up in another stall in the antique bazaar on a two-hundred year old yellow sofa which did not, alas, match my tie, and facing a remarkable old phonograph to which I proposed marriage immediately.

I've been considering this for some time: small luxuries, a bit of civilization one can carry forth into a stupid world, and hence, a fetish.

Finn sent me this collection of notes on perfume, and it nearly killed me, it was so good. Perfume, I hate to admit, is not a subject on which I'm particularly knowledgeable. I know what I like to wear, I'm even a touch fussy about it, but I lack the words to adequately discuss it. So this is, to me, an exoticism, another language entirely. I haven't the slightest clue what it means when it gets to specifics, but it sounds magnificent. There was an early entry on this topic exactly, which, I hope no one minds, I'll quote in its entirety here.

Small Luxuries
The contents of our luggage say a lot about our skill in the art of living. A
thorough customs inspection should not, for example, reveal signs of anxiety:
ventilated war-photographer vests with too many pockets, toiletry bags filled with
antibiotics. As usual, elegance consists in remaining oneself while being ready for
anything. Fitzroy Maclean, the real-life James Bond who died a few years ago,
always carried with him on his travels a tube of anchovy paste. He explained that in
his experience one could always locate some alcohol and a crust of bread: his tube
made it a party. This sort of discernment has much to do with small luxuries: too
luxurious and they cease to be fun, too small and they cease to be rare. When it
comes to perfume, the choices of the faraway traveller are few. Carrying proper
bottles is foolish. They will break when the bag is thrown from the airplane hold,
and look ridiculous in a shabby hotel. Decanting the fragrance into plastic sprays is
messy. Using a cheap perfumed deodorant sends the wrong message. No, the
solution is much simpler: all the great perfume houses make soaps. In domestic
use, they are part of a "line", as sad as excessive colour coordination. On the road,
they turn out to be surprisingly good company. Like other modestly priced
pleasures such as fat paperbacks and short taxi rides, soaps can make one feel
irrationally happy. Soap is the very stuff of progress, responsible for more saved
lives than penicillin. It is also a wonder of early nanotechnology: no visible moving
parts, just teeming billions of clever molecules that broker a peace between the dirt
on your hands and the rust-coloured water that comes out of the tap. Luxury soaps
come in neat plastic shells that shut tightly when you decide to move on. Which
one is best? If it exists, buy the soap version of whatever you're wearing. My
favorite was Guerlain's Mitsouko., Composed in 1919 by Jacques Guerlain in reply
to Coty's earlier (and now extinct) Chypre, the fragrance shimmered with the
muted glow of candied fruit, a Tiffany lamp made scent. [When experienced in a
faraway place, it would touch you like a Brahms concert heard on BBC shortwave].
Guerlain's new MBA-powered owners "rationalised" the range when they took
over, and out went the soaps. Modernising Guerlain is like rewriting La Bohème to
take into account medical progress since Puccini. It didn't work, and the soaps will
be back in time for next year's travels. Mitsouko is the true desert island soap,
about as much of the "long nineteenth century" as anyone can carry without
running into excess baggage.

From the Perfume Notes blog,
by Luca Turin,
June 5, 2005

Meredith told me of a friend who always carried good chopsticks with her, and almost never ate with anything else. What a charming insistence upon one's own tastes! As for myself, I'm on the lookout for an appropriate tin or some such thing in which I can carry emergency rations of good tea. Some ply spirits with tobacco; the ones with which I converse, I find, make slightly different demands upon my hospitality.

What, if I may ask, are your little indulgences, then? What do you need on your transcontinental excursions, or whenever you step out of your house? Have you ever heard of any other good ones? Whatever their origin, I'd love to hear of them.

Comments

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

I'll do everyone proud. Twice. And then I'll call in the butler for tea.

[swirl-girlx.livejournal.com]

Even our butler, though having seen all of our perversions and peccadilloes will raise one bushy white eyebrow upon seeing the strange and delicious things you've done to the poor man.