What does hell smell like? At the British Library last week, I opened a small wooden door and inhaled a scent that was bitter and vegetal: a combination of sulphur and something that I didn’t dare to think about for too long so soon after breakfast. Ugh. To spend eternity breathing in this! Happily, though, a counter-stink was on hand. Before the devil had a chance to appear, I closed the door and opened another next to it. This time, my nose filled with the sweetness of honey. It wasn’t precisely heavenly; to be worldly just for a moment, I think you need Chanel or Guerlain for truly celestial perfumes. But it did make me smile. The things museum curators get up to when they’re trying to encourage time travel.
The horrible smell was inspired by the saintly Julian of Norwich’s 16th and final vision, in which she claimed to have encountered a very whiffy Old Nick, while the nicer, more sugary odour was designed to conjure the “marriage” of the mystic Margery Kempe to Christ (angels, apparently, are pleasantly fragrant). Both may be sniffed in the spiritual lives section of the exhibition Medieval Women, where they sit beside, among other things, the Cleopatra manuscript of Ancrene Wisse, an early 13th-century guide written by a priest for three sisters who wished to become anchoresses.
