Arthur Clutton-Brock on the power of scent

    In Arthur Clutton-Brock’s assessment,

Bluebells are beautiful flowers, but it is their scent even more than their beauty that evokes for us all the delight of woods in May, the songs of birds and the whisper of leaves in the wind, as well as the coloured light and shadow. And it is the faint odour of Primroses which most powerfully reminds us of the mossy places in which they grow and of the cool and fitful weather of their flowering time. In fact, scent is to sight what poetry is to painting; less definite but far wider in its power, moving us more by association than by a direct appeal, enriching the present not merely with visions but with sounds and emotions of the past, and seeming to involve all the other senses and the mind as well in one complex delight.

    (Quoted from page 260 of Studies in Gardening, by A. Clutton-Brock. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916.)
    Here is a brief biography of Arthur Clutton-Brock from the Wilson Web bibliographical database --
    CLUTTON-BROCK, ARTHUR (March 23, 1868-January 8, 1924), English critic and essayist, was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the son of John Alan Clutton-Brock, a banker, and Mary Alice (Hill) Clutton-Brock. In 1882 he entered Eton on a scholarship and then went on to New College, Oxford University, where he studied "Greats": classics and philosophy. Despite his literary inclinations, he trained for the law and worked as a barrister for ten years before becoming literary editor of the Speaker (later the Nation) in 1904. Concurrently, he began contributing to the newly launched Times Literary Supplement and in 1908 he joined the staff as art critic, book reviewer, and general essayist. This association with the TLS lasted until his death; most of the essays on which his reputation rested, and which he periodically collected under various titles, originally appeared in that publication. . . . Clutton-Brock died at Godalming, Surrey, after a lingering illness. According to B. H. Streeter, "His last conscious act was to point out to his doctor the beauty of an iris."