Hasu-no-Hana Grossmith 1888 Eau de Parfum

Of course he wouldn't dance with her.
She stood a little away from the hustle and bustle, her eyes fixed on the light of the low sun, although she could only make out his fading silhouette. Shimmering like gold dust, tiny insects tumbled in the light. He must have flushed them out on his way through the tall grass of the meadow, while cheerful music was still playing on the dance floor and the girls in their white dresses were giggling as they spun in circles.
Her dress was also bright white and the delicate flowers in the bouquet in her hand had been picked with just as much care as the others. She was also the only one who had braided a ribbon into her brown hair that was as red as her lips - and yet she would always be the girl whose bawling father on the carriage had disturbed the dance, even if she had defended him from the others as a matter of course.
Of course he hadn't danced with her.
She would not notice that the hem of her dress had turned a damp greenish color from the moss and the wet earth at the edge of the meadow until the next morning. And she didn't see him turn around again in the backlight.

Was there a very slight expression of reproach in her serious gaze? In the sunlight, her face, framed by warm brown hair, shimmered almost like mother-of-pearl, while the other white figures were already whirling obliviously across the green square and no longer seemed to be thinking about the strange dancer. With this one exception.
It gave him a little pang to see her standing there, apart from the others in her thin white dress, full of gentleness and modesty and yet ... hurt? He wished he hadn't overlooked her in the hustle and bustle, that he hadn't blushed embarrassedly and asked her to dance, spoken to her, asked her name. He could no longer shake off the nagging feeling that he had behaved stupidly, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He turned to the gravel country road and walked on quickly.

***

"A mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience." This is how Thomas Hardy describes his young protagonist at the beginning of his novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which was published in 1891 and is only three years younger than Hasu-No-Hana. I don't want to judge whether the scent is "free of any experience", but for me it is definitely a "vessel that contains nothing but feelings".
Around a base of bitter orange and iris over a base of amber, patchouli and oakmoss, which a few decades after its release would probably have been described as chypre with an oriental twist, the fragrance shimmers pearlescent in all the bright facets that colors can take on before they cease to be colors and turn white. Iris is hardly powdery here, but as velvety as the flowers of Iris Florentina, which shimmer in the same white-pearl-light blue as the fragrance. There are other floral notes that I can't name, a touchingly old-fashioned garden carnation (not listed - it was clear that my nose would do what it wants again) and citric notes that lay on the delicate petals like the finest gold dust. As the fragrance progresses, it retains its filigree delicacy and brightness, but becomes spicier due to the (imaginary) garden carnation, takes on a subliminal fruity note (perhaps from ylang-ylang?) and is finally framed by light woods, rather greenish patchouli and gently smoky vetiver and gently cushioned by oodles of oakmoss.

How groundbreaking this fragrance, which seems so nostalgic today, must have been in its day! Or was it even ahead of its time? Like Thomas Hardy's novel?

I don't really want to dwell on the thought, I don't want to philosophize about what Hasu-No-Hana could be or have been for others, I just want to enjoy the heartbreaking beauty of this fragrance. Next to the majestic power and perfection of her sisters Phũl-Nãnã and Shem-el-Nessim from Grossmith's Classic Collection, Hasu-No-Hana may seem almost a little unassuming. It is not a fragrance that feels the need to push itself to the fore, and yet it strikes a chord in me that the other, reverently but distantly admired beauties were unable to touch.
Hasu-No-Hana's bright lightness seems as innocent to me as the young Tess Durbeyfield, who does not yet suspect the sad fate with which the future will punish her beauty and her tender, loyal nature. And yet a melancholy full of longing resonates from the very beginning. Almost like the scene at the very beginning of the novel, which I read again and again, in which Tess Durbeyfields and Angel Clare come within a hair's breadth of not meeting and in which this bitter-sweet what-if resonates.

Many thanks for the sample, dear Floyd. You've started something again ;-)