The Bees of Grasse

IT is one of the everyday marvels of nature that a bee, as if in obedience to orders, will visit but one kind of flower on any of its daily rounds. The sexual substance of a blossom has got to go where it belongs, according to its kind; and, as Mademoiselle Jonquil cannot take Monsieur Jasmine for a husband, the bee is not engaged in such futile matchmaking.

It is hardly to be supposed that the bees are aware of the import and purpose of what they are doing. They are hardly so deeply versed in the secrets of the world, knowing that this pollen or that will not do its work if stuck on the stigma of a different kind. They think they are making honey — piling up profit for themselves. And so they are; but, like other fat burghers of business, they are also serving a larger purpose than they know. They are really giving more than they take. The very vegetation looks to them for power to mature and thus increase its kind. And by what an interesting traffic are the loves of the flowers accomplished by these thwarted virgins of the hive! Here do we see an animal that is sexless ministering to flowers that are male and female.

I have been thinking of the bees of Grasse. I can see them multitudinously working. They thread the sunbeams with their golden, five-banded bodies. They hum and buzz like little bass viols as they go from flower to flower. And then, having filled their bags to the full, they let go of the nodding blossom and shove off for another paying voyage to the hive.

Since these bees work in the country of the French perfume makers, the blossoms that they work on are not without scent. They rifle the nectaries wherein are stored the odors of greatest cost, and with each homeward load of honey they take some of this perfume. They put it up in their waxen cells, a pellucid treacle imbued with rarest esters and seductive distillations. And they securely cap and seal in their little phials what might otherwise have gone to fill the perfume bottle on some fashionable lady’s dressing table.

And I have been thinking of the flowers of Grasse. They flourish on the slopes of the Maritime Alps and spread out upon the land of the perfume farmers all through the valley of Var.

Since these are perfume flowers, cherished neither for the blossom nor for the seed, they are all destined to an early death. They stand like the regiments of Napoleon’s army, ready to be cut down. ‘We who are about to die salute you ‘ — and they nod at you as you pass. And so it is all in vain that the bees clasp and hug them so closely and hide the flower children invisibly in the seed. But a bee must do its work, and the flowers of Grasse are as other flowers to them.

Oranges, roses and acacia, violets and tuberoses, heliotrope, jasmine and jonquil — these are the blooms that they grow in Grasse. And these are the crops that are gathered, all red or purple or white, according to which harvest is on; and the heaped cartloads draw up daily to the factory doors. I have said ‘ factory ’ — hardly the word for a place where odors are captured and beautiful names are given.

Now it is only from the living blossom that the true perfume of a flower can be had. There is an exhalation which comes from the act of living; it is a product of the vital forces, and it ceases as definitely as does the breath when life is over. It is this that the perfumer especially desires. It is not to be obtained from the heavier essential oils and the giving-off of flowers that are dead. Therefore the blossoms are hurried in while they are freshly cut and still going on with the processes of living; and they are laid down in ranks and rows to exhale and transpire in the presence of olive oil or animal fats. These fats have the power of taking up the odor and holding it, so that later it may be washed out and preserved in alcohol; or again the flowers may be macerated in fat and smothered like Desdemona. But, however that may be, it is only the breath of the flowers that they capture at Grasse.

I have been thinking, too, of time and change. But in spite of time and change flowers remain, from age to age, the language of love and friendship, though in the ritual of courtship we have changes of incense and other deft revisions. Our respected grandmothers knew other perfumes by uninvented names. There was Ylangylang, made from the big yellow blossoms of a tree in the Philippines; there was Patchouli, an odor given off by a shrub of East India; there was Frangipanni, named after the Roman nobleman who blended it and left it as a legacy to his ancient family. These were all heavy odors, Oriental in their mood; and they did well in furs, which were not complete without them. Their weighty molecules jostled each other about in the deep recesses of the fur and flung themselves out upon the air when that beautiful young lady, our grandmother, gave a toss to her shoulder or lifted her arm in charming gesture.

And it was then the fashion to name perfumes from the mere material facts. To-day the titles are imaginative and literarily suggestive. You open a bottle with a pretty thought or a whole romance in mind. And we should not regard this fanciful naming of odors as a backward step. It is really a marriage between two arts. Somewhere there has got to be a poet about.

I received a letter from Grasse, in a blue envelope of generous proportions and rich texture; it seemed to have borrowed its hue from the skies of the Azure Coast. As befitted a letter from that corner of the world, it was filled with nothing but friendship and cheerful allusion. As I drew it from the roadside mail box I paused awhile to gather its substance; and then I hurried in to where Emeline was eating a belated breakfast.

‘I have a letter — and where from? It is from the Otis Skinners, and they date from Juan-les-Pins. They liked the last Atlantic-, and they fancied my article so much that Otis Skinner read it twice — once aloud to his family. Cornelia Otis Skinner was there, too. Think of a finished actor like that lending his voice to one’s efforts at prose! The text must have gained much music from his intonation — and much content from their understanding! And they are going to send us something in remembrance. But they are not going to “say it with flowers.”’

‘What are they going to say it with?’

‘With honey! They are going to bring across for us some of the Miel de L’Estérel — honey of the mountains. It is that honey made from the flowers of the perfume country — orange, jasmine, acacia, and all that.’

‘Oh, how lovely! I have been wanting some comb honey. I love to crush it with my teeth.’

‘ But this will be partly crushed already,’ I answered. ‘It will be crushed honey in a jar. Those peasants do not know how to make the bees put up honey in squares as we do; they just tear down the natural comb and put in the chunks dripping with honey. But that may give us a variety of different flavors — honeys from different hives.’

‘Is n’t that wonderful! I should like it that way, too. I hope there is orange honey in it. I ate some of the honey in Southern California that the bees gather from the white orange blossoms. It tasted as if it had all been made from bridal wreaths.’

‘I should not want honey made from bridal wreaths,’ I said, flatly.

‘Well, then, there will probably be jasmine; or maybe something with more zest to it.’

‘There will probably be a variety to it,’ I said. ‘She says here, — it is Mrs. Skinner who is writing, — “As we have driven along through the mountains and seen the hives adjacent to the fields of lavender, we have thought much of your article.” So you see there must even be lavender honey. I never tasted that.’

‘How wonderful!’

‘And she says here — Well! But I can see how that might easily be. A jar of honey packed in a trunk with one’s clothes, and maybe a lot of valuable costumes, would be rather a problem. If anything happened — in crossing the ocean! She says she was figuring on it, but — ’

‘But what?’

‘Well —’

‘Well what?‘

‘She says here, “But to-day, in packing, we decided it could not be done with safety.”’