The Macaroni's ‘Ambrosial Essences’: Perfume, Identity and Public Space in Eighteenth‐Century England

Abstract

The male antitype of the macaroni and the space of the pleasure gardens in which he reputedly existed have been primarily understood in terms of vision. This article seeks to re‐integrate other senses, particularly olfaction, into our understanding of these subjects. Sounds and smells, of individuals and urban spaces, undermined the idea of the pleasure garden as an enclosed space and the cultivation of the senses it attempted to encourage. The macaroni and his perfumes were an extreme example of this, linking the pleasure garden to the perfumer's shop and disrupting understandings of bodily comportment, masculinity and the proper use of the senses.