Grandma’s Arsenal

I used to think that no one would ever again smell like my grandmother: that is to say, of naphthalene mothballs. She had them even in her handbag in case a moth was lurking there; the odor preceded her like a cold front on a weather map. I adored the smell and was fascinated by it.

There were other things she had that fascinated me as a small child but have since disappeared from general circulation. Her hat pin, for example, was several inches long with a round shiny bauble on the end, and I loved to play with it; these days she would probably [amazon asin=B000RLT3L4&template=*lrc ad (left)]have been charged with possession of an offensive weapon if she went out with it. Liza Doolittle in Shaw’s Pygmalion said that her relatives would be prepared to kill for a hat pin, let alone a hat, but my grandmother could have gone one better and killed with a hat pin. I wielded it as a sword until my parents put an end to my game.

My grandmother also never went anywhere without her smelling salts. She regarded them as a panacea, equal to anything that might befall a human being, from accident to heart attack. She was born at a time and in a place where doctors, even if available, could do[amazon asin=B001M5N086&template=*lrc ad (right)] nothing; it was understandable that she should place her faith in such a remedy.

The salts were in a little curved bottle of brown glass with a cloth pad at the top. You waved them in front of a person’s nose when he collapsed and then he revived. My grandmother never collapsed but it was as well to be prepared, for in her philosophy you never knew. I tried the salts, with their ammoniacal fumes that made my eyes water and my nose itch; I tried to keep them under my nose as [amazon asin=1571986367&template=*lrc ad (left)]long as I could as a test of character and determination, but could never manage it for very long. No one carries such salts nowadays; it is my impression that people no longer faint in the way they were expected to back then.

There was also my grandmother’s fox-fur stole, the product of a hecatomb of foxes. The stuffed foxes’ heads were connected to tails by a thin body of fur wrapped around her neck, the heads hanging down one side of her chest and the tails the other.

I loved the heads, with their hard black noses made of I know not what, and I was fascinated by their little glass amber-colored eyes. The stole smelled of mothballs, because I was not alone in my admiration for the stole: moths liked it too and had to be kept at bay. I also liked very much the cool, smooth feel of the fur as I stroked it with the back of my hand, but this is a pleasure that few British children will ever experience again, because furs of all kinds have disappeared: attacks on women wearing them by animal lovers have taken their toll.

Read the rest of the article