My new colour

Contusions and confusions. Half-mourning and melancholia. Twilight and adolescence, home decorators and homosexuals. Drag queen hair, cheap swag, braggadocio. Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley (that "monstrous orchid," said Wilde). Orchids, especially Cattleya labiata. All things orchidaceous, including the word "orchidaceous". Prose just shy of purple. According to Nabokov, time itself.

A young chemist tinkering with coal tar, hoping to find a way to synthesize quinine to treat the malaria felling British soldiers stationed in India, discovers, instead, a color. Mauve, the color of disappointment.

But, "strangely beautiful," thinks the chemist, and dips some silk in it, finds the colour takes. He sends a sample to a Scottish dyer, who sees possibilities. The colour lasts like no natural purple. And the ladies seem to like it.

Mauve, the colour of opportunity.

....more....