Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Honey, I'll Make Sure You Wear the Same Perfume Today...

Caesar: 
"He hath given his empire
Up to a whore." 
[from William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" (III, vi, 66-67)]


courtesy: Facebook page

Wikipedia:

"Soong May-ling made several tours to the United States to lobby support for the Nationalist's war effort. She drew crowds as large as 30,000 people and in 1943 made the cover of TIME magazine for a third time."  


In 2009, I read a book review of  "THE LAST EMPRESS / Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China" by Hannah Pakula by Jonathan Mirsky.

What struck me most was this:

"...Christopher Isherwood, traveling in China with W. H. Auden, met Madame Chiang in the late 1930s. He caught her aura exactly: “She could be terrible, she could be gracious, she could be businesslike, she could be ruthless. . . . Strangely enough, I have never heard anybody comment on her perfume. It is the most delicious either of us has ever smelt.”..."

And in September 2013, I saw this beautiful snap of Soong Mei-ling (1897-2003) (aka Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) in Frontline dated October 4 2013:

 

Photo:THE HINDU ARCHIVES 

courtesy: Frontline and The Hindu Archives
 
My caption to this photo would be: 

"Honey, Auden and Isherwood really liked my perfume. Now, I'll make sure you wear the same one today."


The original caption is: 

Taipei: January 3, 1950: Madame Chiang reaches for the legion of merit medal sent to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.