The Lime Flower

Tilleul (tee-LOO).
Tilia vulgaris, etc.
The lime- or linden blossom.
The tisane savored by Proust’s (namesake) narrator.
Remedy for hysteria.
A spoonful of honey.
A hotel soap.

How to describe it? Fragrant. Sweet. Old-fashioned. The sort of thing I’d imagine in one of those bottles on Clarissa Dalloway’s vanity. Complicit with orange blossom, rosemary, lavender, and bergamot (and about 10 other ingredients) in Guerlain’s Eau de Cologne Impériale, created in 1853 for the Empress Eugénie. While hats go off to the much later Eau de Guerlain (1974; I would come along about a year later) for its high-octane lemony zing, there’s something about EdCI which refuses to get all worked up. It’s a cool house in the Ile-de-France on a hot summer day; a bed on which the white linens have been pulled tight; afternoon naps; the chequered shade of the garden where, in a few hours, the family will gather for lemonade and cookies.

Eau de Cologne Impériale is one of my few personal extravagances. It gets its own pocket in my summer tote, and frankly I don’t care if a person on the subway stares me down for spritzing myself. The way I look at it, he’s the one making good on his 2-buck Metrocard swipe.