The Sleeper Part 2

Chapter One

Beneath blue silk awnings a menagerie whirrs into life. Velvet coated leopards pad behind screens of un-wilting silver trees and do not disturb in the least the enamelled, jewel eyed peacocks who fan their feathers and dance around each other. Still the band plays on their sightless polished eyes staring at their music sheets, their instruments plucked and pressed in precise movements intended to bring nothing more than the appropriate climax. Merciless, no sooner have they finished than they return to the beginning. These are the achievements of an age of clockwork and steam (see how realistic the leopard’s moist breath is). They will certainly be a highlight of the ice fair. Every year, Montenoix holds its ice fair because every year the river through the capital and the little lake which adjoins the river freeze solid. Perhaps one day the river will fail to freeze but this seems unlikely. The Weather here obeys its own laws. No one can remember the first fair but the history books speak of a brave and enterprising pie maker who crept out onto the ice one morning and set out his stall. Nervously, slipping in their clogs, his customers came and continued to come. They were emboldened by pie and, to a far greater extent, by a barrel of good strong ale dragged out by the local bar keeper. They began to craft makeshift sleds and skates, lit braziers and talked in the dark blue hours of twilight about how they would do this again next year if the waters froze. Unfortunately, although history clings to this charming story the names have been forgotten. They vanish out of sight like pennies slipping through cracks in the ice never to be seen again. Such is the way with the lives of peasants. Someone should write a book about this. No matter, we are with Camille now and Camille’s principal concern is whether or not her clockwork menagerie will sell. There are certainly many boastful dandies who might believe such lifelike creature to be the perfect garnish to a banquet or a ball. The question is: can they be persuaded to part with real gold to make their vision a reality?

The only person she knows for certain will visit her pavilion is her brother Jon. She also knows for certain that he has not got any money. He is after all but a humble librarian. Albeit, a librarian to a noble family. Sadly, by his account not one likely to be swayed by such outré art as she has produced.

‘No one will know,’ Jon says as he helps Louis down from the cab they rented. ‘We will see my sister’s clockwork and then we shall vanish into the crowds.’

‘Yes.’ Louis said. How he longs already to vanish. How he longs for the strangest things. He longs to run away, with Jon, into the woods and grow a pelt like a fox. Freed from all convention they can sleep out the winter in a deep den underground. But he takes Jon’s arm, holds it tight as they wind their way to Camille’s pavilion. He is dazzled as they step in. Against his will, for he would rather have had an excuse to slip away, he stands entranced by a cage of flapping calling exotic birds as Jon goes to make his greetings to his sister. It seems inappropriate now for Louis to introduce himself. How would he describe their relationship to her? He should think of some clever and cunning pseudonym, the kind a romantic heroine might have, something long and elegant. He toys with the idea of sweeping in clad in a flowing black cape and silken mask. He would sweep off the mask as he takes his hostess (or indeed his hosts) hand. Showering kisses upon the fingers as he introduces himself as La Comte Mystere. The brush of a Leopard against his leg and the brief shock of such intimacy with a predator bring him back to his senses. He really must go to the theatre less often it is utterly clouding his senses but there are times when he would rather live in a world of dreams. The pavilion is filling up now. Little crowds of people knot around the birdcages; women in feather plumage which seems somehow less magnificent than its imitation and men in fur collared coats which merge with the moving animals. There is a general clamour of excitement as children dare each other to pet the big cats. Little hands fly out, little cries of delight are heard then the hands plunge back into the safety of gloves and pockets.

The sound of trumpets cuts through the air. People jump back and Louis feels Jon’s hand in his again gently tugging him back into the shadows. A leather clad finger presses to his lips and demands his silence. 

Here comes the Princess Amandine stepping down from her carriage in a fanfare of trumpets and a cloud of heady oriental perfume. Her long velvet train ripples over the ice. The colour is bright, vivid blue as dazzling as a sapphire, seeming to twinkle with as many facets. She looks as if she has been carved out of the ice. Her guards follow after her, hands poised on their glittering swords, heels clicked together. They are toy soldiers but not quite so uniform. Look a little more closely and one might see how the captain inclines more towards his Princess, how his eyes pass over her as if contemplating something truly remarkable. Look more closely at the Princess herself and one would see how little she sleeps. Her eyes are tired; her skin glistens a little less beneath them. She tries to hide this. She is here to do her duty for it is her job to open this fair officially as she does every year. One swift snick of the scissors a few words upon the beauty of the season (how closely this land is allied with winter) and how wonderful the invention of these stalls will be. Now she moves amongst them her duty done but her curiosity not yet satisfied. It would be inaccurate to say that she is only human but she is by no means immune to boredom. So she visits each pavilion in turn. She lingers when she reaches Camille’s fantastical animals. She pauses to examine, at a proximity which would make a mortal nervous, the musicians. She looks at their fingers upon the keys of their pianos, she looks at their lips upon the lips of flutes, she examines their mother of pearl fingernails and their polished glass eyes, and she touches their hair made from delicate strands of silk, finer and glossier than any head of human hair.

Their chests seem to her to move as if they conceal hearts and surely their velvet upholstered lips are made for kissing? What is a human being? Not just the tangle one sees on a surgeons table surely. Can a thing be made to be human? She has never thought of this before.  Now it seems quite possible to Amandine that she has missed something rather obvious. If fate will not bring her brother’s true love to her door then why should she not build him or her within the hall? A suitor already there, perfectly tailored to suit the specifications of her brother’s heart. Ah, but how to know those? No matter, she will cross that bridge when she comes to it.

              

‘Madam, would you come with me?’ Camille looks up from the snake she is winding and sees a Guardsman standing over her. He has thick sideburns which border upon the English fashion for mutton chops and steel coloured eyes. His tall hard hat is tucked under his arm. She lets the snake go and it writhes from her hands onto the floor, vanishing off amongst the fair goers skirts. He will give someone a shock like that.

‘Why?’ Camille has never done what she is asked to do without first asking her own questions.

‘The Princess,’ here the Guard pauses to inhale deeply and clicks his heels together loudly, ‘would like to speak with you.’

‘What about?’ Camille asks. The guard looks utterly horrified at this. He plucks at the plume on his helmet.

‘That is not for me to know.’

‘Very well then, so who are you? I suppose that is a question you can answer?’

‘Certainly,’ he says, ‘I am Captain Albert San Valentine.’

‘What an elaborate name.’

‘It was my father’s name and his fathers and his father’s before him.’ The Captain says with a glimmer of pride.

‘And I take it that if you have a son you will also call him Albert san Valentine?’ Camille says as she puts on her coat and adjusts her fur hat on top of her elaborate coiffure.

‘I have not thought of the day I have a son.’ The Captain sighs. ‘However, were I to have a son I think it is high time that we added a new name to the family tree. It is becoming rather hard to read.’   

   

The captain of the Guard in his stiff uniform twined and buttoned with gold leads her across the ice. He offers her his arm from time to time in a stiff show of chivalry. They are heading towards a vast carriage the colour of summer violets. The coat of arms painted beneath the silk curtained window tells Camille at once whose carriage this is. A shiver runs up her back. The lives of Clockmakers and Princesses usually do not cross. Has she offended her sovereign with her wind up menagerie? The guard knocks on the window, a little too softly at first and then with flushed cheeks he knocks a little harder. The window is lowered and from the depths of the carriage the Princess leans forward. She rests her gloved hand on the sill. She smiles very briefly before the smile is dashed from her face by a strange twist of regret. Papers spill from the Princess’s lap down into the body off the carriage like autumn leaves from a tree.

‘You are the clockmaker who made the peacocks and the violinist?’ The Princess asks. ‘They tell me you are but I would have you say it yourself.’

‘Yes, I am the clockmaker.’ Camille says.

‘And do you believe that you can fashion anything out of clockwork?’

‘Most things, yes, your highness, I believe that I can.’

‘How real might they be?’ the Princess asked. ‘I saw that your automata seemed to breathe. They seemed to smile at times but still their eyes were silent. Could you make them more alive than they are now?’

‘With time.’ Camille said. She had considered the problem of thought before. She had created things which seemed to think but she had destroyed them all.

 ‘Time.’ The Princess sighed. ‘Well, I have waited long enough what is another dozen years or a dozen more on top of a hundred years.’

‘I am not sure what you are asking of me, your highness?’ Camille said.

‘I am not sure myself. Not entirely. The idea has only just entered my mind as I looked around your pavilion. I saw, I think the solution to a question which I have long asked myself.’ There is a long pause. ‘Would you accept a commission from me, madam? There will be no penalty if my hopes proof foolish. They often have before.’

How could one say no to such an offer?

‘Yes, your Highness.’ Camille said. She moved to kiss the Princesses hand but her gesture was waved away.

‘There is no need. It is a hand like any other it has done good and it has done bad but I have never known it to do those who kiss it the least good or evil either way. You should know, if you work for me, that I am not actually a stamp.’

Though Camille thought, now that she saw the Princess up close, the stamp captured a remarkable likeness but not the warmth or brightness or those eyes. It was almost as if a fever burned through them.  

‘I will send a carriage for you tomorrow. You do not need to tell me your address. I know where every one of my subjects is.’ He fingers squeeze Camille’s fingers. The gesture is strangely human and undignified but it makes her easier to like. ‘I thank you.’

 The carriage rattles off up the bank; the plumed black horses that draw it straining up the incline with foggy snorts. The Guards come jogging after the carriage to push its wheels free before they freeze to the spot.

Camille turns and makes her own way back across the ice. Skaters were beginning to cut patterns and swirls amongst the tents. Tiny female Domovoi, less often seen than their men folk, wrapped in rose printed shawls and thick felted skirts have pulled a painted sledge (its pattern matching their shawls exactly) bearing great silver samovars into the midst of the crowd . They are serving tea in cups and saucers none of which match, all of which are patterned with roses. They are charitable to those who look too poor to pay the penny price of a cup but woe betides those who can pay but hope to get something for nothing. Small hands slap and claw at them, strange curses in a tongue most do not understand rain down on them till they are forced to pay, blood staining the coins in their hands. Soon the pockets of the Domovoi’s white starched aprons are bulging with coins. Not greedy creatures themselves they do not even taste the tea they serve but from time to time, when unobserved, they take swift, ecstatic sips from the milk urn. Their tea is marvellous, lightly spiced and sweet. Camille pauses for a cup. Sits on one of the benches hewn from logs and considers the Princesses proposition. She has not yet been told what she is expected to make. She knows very little about the Princess save what everyone knows from reading the Saturday illustrated papers; she is as good a ruler as they have ever had but then, as she has ruled for a hundred years or more there is no one who can recall a time before her. She is beautiful and sophisticated but then she should be should she not when her mother was the most beautiful of the fae and her great, great grandmother was a mermaid of such renown that there are still stories told about her. There are also myths told about the Princess, that she will vanish into thin air someday as her mother did before her and what will they do then with no clear heir to take over the country? There are myths that her brother does indeed lie in a deep sleep somewhere in the palace and will wake who knows when. Though, ideally he would wake when she vanishes and then they will all be saved.

Out of the corner of her eye as she stands she thinks she sees her brother and the young man who accompanied him gliding along on skates. Their arms are twined about each other’s waists and their heads rest upon each other’s shoulders. She smiles for them. How very like Jon it is that he should forget to tell her a little thing like his being in love.

The Sleeper. Part One

Prologue

Silver snowflakes graze the gilded curves of the old Baroque palace where the Prince still slumbers, dreaming a century of dreams whilst his sister rules in his place. She is twice the Prince, so the people say, than any Prince who came before her. Still she has an unquiet mind. Even now in the dead of night, she walks the halls and galleries trying discover, amidst her sea of thoughts, the secret which will wake her brother for it is she who set him sleeping. Oh, but for the best of reasons. She is possessed of magic more instinctive than skilled. The books she has read and the witches she consulted are in complete agreement; he will only be awakened by a true lovers kiss. Sadly she has found that his true love is slow in coming.

She pauses at the long windows of the hall of glass now and draws the furs she wears high around her golden neck. Her dark hair tumbles like a waterfall and merges with the furs in one great breathing swathe of silken spears.

Still the snow falls. No longer just a few dancing flakes the snow grows thicker all the time. In the house of the Duc Du Murelle, the Duc’s brother Louis creeps from his bed. He shivers in his light silk night robe but he does not pause to wrap himself against the cold. His heart beats like a bird at his ribs as he tiptoes down the passageway, down the great spiral staircase. He is spurred on by feelings which transcend the momentary discomforts of cold. A few mice that have clawed their way through the rotten skirting boards of the kitchen seeking sanctuary from the snow scatter as he approaches. From the shadow of the clock, they watch him with their dark bead eyes. It is just striking midnight. Although it should be noted that this clock may not be accurate as it is wound so irregularly.  Nevertheless, midnight or not it is a magical hour. Louis finds his way through the labyrinth of the library without light, just by the touch of the volumes against his fingers. He sees a flicker of golden candlelight ahead. His lover, the librarian Jon, is waiting for him. He has scattered rose petals on the pillows of his bed. Who knows where he found rose petals on a night like this. The cold has chilled so many roses; frozen them like elaborate glass ornaments. One brush of the finger and they will shatter and fall in a shower of confetti knives.

How warmly these two lovers’ lips touch sharing the flavours of wine and coffee and sleep. Louis knows that, as the Duc’s younger brother, should his love be discovered he will be disowned, and dishonoured. A lowly librarian people will say, can you imagine it? Louis does not care. Love holds his heart more strongly than can be imagined and his only thought as his hands embrace the scarred flesh of his love is contentment.

Still the snow falls. As it does so it wraps conspiratorial fingers of silence around the library.

Still the snow falls and fills the streets of the old town. Wood frames sag and lunge out over stalls and shop fronts in alleyways built to accommodate butchers and bakers amidst a labyrinth of red brick and faded play bills. Where the snow is thickest the only markers of a street lying beneath come in the form of bottle necks and battered hats pushed hard against the wall. Does the snow hide some drunken tragedy? Only the thaw will tell. Until then people will conspire not to see as they hurry past. For now the winter provokes that strange reaction, eat, drink and be very merry. Hold back the cold and the darkness with cheer. Fissures of golden light spill out onto the snow here and there. Shadows dance and sway behind the drawn shades of bar rooms. Notes of music come and go like dream snatches.

 Snow falls at the doorstep of the clock makers shop and greys a little from the sooty footprints which have accumulated there. The wind blows and the lantern above the doorway swings on its chain giving out a strange funereal creaking.

The clockmaker, Camille, still works. Though it is late, she sits by the fire. Tiny cogs spread glinting on the dark blue of her skirts. It is not a clock upon which she works now. All the clocks are finished and set on their shelves. They all tick at once, in one voice they cry out the hours with a thousand chimes. Once, twice, again, again, twelve times they cry. It is definitely midnight now for the clockmakers clocks are, without doubt, accurate; that is why they sell so well. The witching hour truly has arrived; the hour when spirits creep and tug the corners of the night. In the far off sea a silvery tail lashes the waves and laughter cries out, unseen and unheard. Translucent figures pass each other in the streets and cellars dancing ancient minuets around the dust laden barrels and the forgotten trunks. The dancers are still as nimble as ever and always will be so long as they glide back to their tombs before dawn cracks the horizon.

The clockmaker pauses in her work. The tiny tools of her trade in her hands, oil stains on her fingers. Is that a mouse she hears tiptoeing behind the wall, bedding down in the darkness? No doubt it is. The mice are not afraid of the ghosts. They are used to them. They are no longer disturbed by their revels. She should go to bed herself. She makes one last alteration so slight another might not even notice it but she is a magician of her trade. Besides precision is wanted here for this is not a clock. This project is her dream, her life. She has worked on it every evening since the idea first came to her as a girl. She was already in love with clockwork then. She fashioned toys that ran about the house on little metal wheels or ground out tinny tunes. Marvellous things which never seemed to wind down (ah the magic of a child’s memories where time is not itself at all). Now her great work is nearing completion. Ready, in fact, to be unveiled to a paying public. It is worth considering that the mouse behind the skirting board may not be a thing of flesh and blood at all but one of her first creations. Is this a wind up mouse that went tearing off into the darkest recesses of her workroom? Did it escape into the mechanical wild? In a few months it may have picked up the quirks of its living fellows along with their scent. Now accepted and indistinguishable from its fellows (for they have conspired to ignore the key which sticks from its back) it has begun a new life with a new family. Its brood of infants only differentiated from the others by a curious clicking noise when they turn their heads or stretch their legs and a tendency to choke hungry cats to death.  What would such a creature survive and thrive upon? Scraps of iron and shavings of steel perhaps?

The snow is still falling as the clock maker climbs the stairs. For a few minutes she watches from the window which looks out over the courtyard between shops. Everything is so still. A slender fire bright cat pads across the snow leaving tiny heart shaped marks.

Tomorrow, the world will be unrecognizable; a dream world beneath which the familiar will slumber.  At least, it will be fitting weather for an ice fair.

Perfume du jour: Zoologist's Beaver

The best way I can describe this post is to say that it is a perfume review and a small essay on writing rolled into one, hopefully harmonious piece.
Perfume has strange and wonderful powers, this week I un-stoppered a vial of perfume whose deep, sharp notes inspired me to write not only a review but a little literary musing. It just so happened that when I sniffed this particular perfume for the first time I was writing a historical short story and treading carefully to avoid that great pitfall in writing the past: failing to imagine how different the past really was. I do not mean only the physical difference between horse drawn carriages and motorized cars, washing your clothes in a creak or having a washing machine to hand. What I was thinking of was the mental landscape of living within the past. The opening lines of Hartley’s "The Go Between" may have become a cliche but a note of truth rings there:  the past is a strange place to imagine let alone to visit, It’s customs are not our own, it’s conventions are not our own and for every familiarity there lie in wait a thousand mysteries.
From our vantage point in the twenty first century, however, the behaviors of the past can seem baffling. Not only the broad sweeps of politics and policy but the tiny details. We now know that most people in Medieval times woke during the night. Very probably they woke due to the extreme cold but gradually they came to see safety in these nocturnal interruptions; the midnight hour was the witching hour and a wakeful household was also a vigilant household when witches danced.
These days, the fortunate majority of us sleep through the night, insulated from such biting cold by walls stronger than wattle and daub and witches have become just another Halloween costume slipped on to provide a vicarious thrill. However, if you want to write about the medieval world you need to take these facts into account just as you will need to give the fantastical figures on the margins of maps more than a cursory glance. Omnipods, sea serpents and wolf heads are more than mere decoration they were genuine fears lying just beyond the horizon. The skies were full of ships too, their inhabitants unable to breath earth’s rich air whilst their anchors occasionally caught against the impediments of barns and church towers.
Marina Warner points out in her book, ‘From the Beast to the Blond’ that 17th century fairy tales of wolves and bears were far more terrifying to their original audiences, no matter how regal, because they truly inhabited a world where one wrong turn in the woods could lead you into the jaws of a waiting wolf. Now, the wolves are long gone and so has the visceral fear of them. If we wish to recreate the fear, we often end up re-imagining what it means to encounter a “wolf”.
This is not to say that there was not amusement to be found in fairy tales from their first readings onward, but historical methods for mitigating the fear factor might prove unpalatable to a modern writer. At one court performance for Louis XIV scripted my Moliere, Warner tells how dancing bears from the court menagerie were used, a practice we shiver at now for it’s savage mistreatment of animals but which never gave those audiences a second thought.
The art of historical imagination can be just as difficult when one turns to perfumes.
When we think of the odours of the past we immediately conjour the odours we find most displeasing now, the fecal scents of open drains and unwashed bodies and we wonder how they could bear not only to be around these but how they could possibly hope to cover them with perfumes. How, we wonder, could they even smell the perfumes they wore?  Alas we imagine some light floral akin to the delicate fragrances that fill up our own well lit department stores forgetting how powerful and rich the perfumes of choice a few hundred years ago would have been.
There was as much of the animal on the dressing tables of histories great beauties as there was on their dining tables. Castoreum, civet and musk. The animal kingdoms scent glands of display and seduction were being put to use by Casanova’s and Du Barrys with similar results. Ambergris, the pungent sea washed product of Whales stomach discomforts was sprinkled liberally on bodies and into food (Charles II liked to use a little Ambergris as a breakfast garnish) There are certainly methods for olfactory archaeology  since so many of the great perfume houses (Floris, Penhaligons and Guerlain for instance) started in the nineteenth century. You could start with a few classics like Penhaligon’s Hammam Bouquet (used to such perfect effect in Essie Fox’s The Somnambulist) or Guerlain’s Jicky. However, reformulation has changed these perfumes a great deal over the intervening centuries. Oscar Wilde’s beloved Malmaison by Floris returned briefly a few years ago but is far removed from the volatile natural oriental he would have dabbed on in the mornings.
In any case, it was a powerful sensory experience of luxury that I was struggling to convey when I un-stoppered Zoologist perfumes beautiful, Beaver.
For a second after the first spritz, the scent of this perfume is arresting. It’s warm and bitter, animal and unashamed. However, after a few seconds of olfactory adjustment, a sniff of my wrist bought a smile to my lips.
This was the perfumed key I had been seeking into the boudoir of my protagonist. This is the bitter post hunt perfume, the scent wafting up from a courtiers jabot as you lean in to whisper a few words of gossip. It’s pungent but whilst that could prove overwhelming I found that I liked the smell.
It may not be for the faint hearted but who wants to be fainted hearted when it comes to perfume?
It’s sharp, clear notes of fresh air and citrus serve beautifully to strengthen and refine the powerful hits of musk and castoreum (what else in a perfume called Beaver?) whilst the smoke and undergrowth create a rich imagined backdrop to the perfume story playing out around them. The cold winter air has just been shut out of the party as the fire rises in the hearth and the seduction begins.
Everything I wanted to convey fell into place when I breathed in this perfume, it’s very style of perfume story telling as utterly modern as it’s notes were refreshingly historical. I recommend it, to those trying to recapture the past or find something a little different.

The perfumed costume...

All Hallows eve is upon us.
Tread not at crossroads tonight but remember to leave out milk for the spirits (and the witches cats).  Scry your fortune in a looking glass but beware what the future may hold!
Remember too that the most important decision of Halloween is: what to wear.
I don’t mean costumes; although, feel free to indulge yourselves as much as you like in the revelry of masking and disguise.
Personally, I favour a costume of velvet and black lace for myself; Vampirella turned up to maximum, Morticia Adams and Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love” going all Miss Haversham in her wedding dress and sunglasses.
No, I digress, I mean perfumes. Those olfactory statements written in molecules that say so much about us, or about the character we’re acting out on any given day. Whatever your Halloween costumes is, it's just begging to be taken to new heights by the addition of the right perfumes. So, I thought I'd take a little look at a few of the options.
Today, my perfume poison of choice is an old favourite: Ambre Fétiche perfume by Annick Goutal. I’ve raved about this perfume often on Facebook but only because I love it so.

Ambre Fétiche is all the rich, sensual and dark scents of winter and antiquity. No one ever loved antiquity more than the immortal. In his notes for a stage version of Dracula reproduced in Christopher Frayling’s book, “Vampyres” Stoker suggests these creatures of the night can only be moved by artifacts which pre-date them whilst the gramophone and telephone leave them cold.
It's also an intensely seductive perfume with it's notes of incense, amber, benzoin and deep heart of leather and patchouli.  In pure perfume form it's a heavy veil of fragrance with (appropriately) impressive longevity.
If you want to amp up the intensity and the seduction then you could add a light spray of Demeter’s Musk over the top although I confess to finding their musk a little coy when it could be wicked. Then again, what could be more appropriate than than a spritz from a perfume house which shares it’s name with the very ship which bought Dracula to Whitby?
If you’re looking for a Vampiric perfume to finish off your costume then don’t forget too that The Clarimond Project (into whose archives I’ve only recently, and with great pleasure, begun to dip) has given us all sorts of olfactory evocations of that beautiful Vamps story.
As for that most famous of Transylvania Vampires, I have a feeling that the Count (especially Gary Oldman’s tormented, lovesick hero)  would probably wear Blood Concept O Cruel Incense with all it’s delicious connotations.
Of course Blood Concept might work for those hoping to emulate Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein too although not if you’re taking inspiration from the Dr’s creation as I fancy Adam, with his refined taste in literature, would reach for a seriously refined and literary perfume. Perhaps De Profundis from Serge Lutens would appeal to Adam? If unsure, he could always split a bottle with Dorian Gray who I’m sure would lap it up.
But then, I can imagine Dorian that great lover of perfume experimenting with all manner of modern perfumes. Etat Libre d’Orange’s new release Attaquer la Soliel Marquise De Sade might have arrived on his dressing table as a gift from Lord Henry Wooton the one man in London who knows Dorian and his sins so well.  There may even be a few bottles of more innocent perfumes like Penhaligon’s Elizabethan Rose pushed to the back of that same dressing table, gifts from poor Basil Haywood whose tragedy was to see the best in Dorian. Do those bottles still prompt the odd tear to fall from painted eyes I wonder?
I'm afraid my attempts to scent Jekyll and Hyde have failed, they simply cannot, would not agree on a perfume or even a genre of perfume. But that's the danger of having two people share one body I suppose...
However, I can suggest one dark, intense perfume for every fiend and friend alike (especially those on a budget): Brocard's Queen of Spades Modern, it's licorice and Cherry and jet black juice are perfect and what a pretty bottle.

Well, I shall leave you now, for me and for many others, Halloween is but the prelude for something far more terrifying: NaNoWriMo. Yes, for only the second year I’ll be endeavouring to turn out the first draft of a novel in just 30 days…

Capturing a mood...

Once again this week I am wrestling with the short story. No specific short story but rather the genre as a whole. I love reading short stories, don't get me wrong, they are utterly beautiful works of economy which should be more widely available (it's a tragedy how few magazines and newspapers outside of the literary sphere publish short stories these days and an equal tragedy that so many genre magazines which do have to reach out for crowdfunding).

No, my specific problem with short stories is with writing them. I want to, I love to but they seem to either stick firmly on the page and work or swell hopelessly towards a less than satisfactory conclusion before I stick them in the drawer (often metaphorically since so much writing takes place on computers these days) to return to when I am ready. Well, this week, I decided to pull out a few and rework them, clearing the desk before NaNoWriMo begins in November (yes, I do do NaNo but we'll come to that in a later post). I had ideas for endings and plans drawn up. All I had to do now was get myself into the right mood for rewriting, which meant getting myself into the crisp Autumnal mood which pervades so many of my stories, no matter what time of year I write them in. This seasonal repetition may have something to do with the fairy tale influence I spoke of a few weeks ago for in the land of fairy tale it is almost always Autumn or Winter, the leaves or the snow are always falling, the land is in the midst of a perpetual transformation.

Conjuring a mood for writing is not dissimilar to conjuring the mood of a character, after all, when one writes, one writes from within the world ones characters inhabit. The autumn leaves which crunch beneath their feet are leaves from your own memory, the hot spiced tea they drink you drank once; for those elements which one cannot experience first hand, a visit to the Great Exhibition or life in Stuart England one must plunge into research and imagination until you feel confident enough to imagine the scent of smoggy air, the exhilaration of seeing new inventions, the feel of velvet doublet and hose.

Tea is always a good place to start when getting into a warm writing mood, Assam, Chai, English Breakfast: whichever you pick you are bound to need a boundless supply beside you as you write (unless you favour coffee), scent is just as important: but I would say that, with my love of perfume. When I spoke of Gothic writing I said I could well imagine my character's wearing YSL Opium or L'Artisan's Fou d'Absinth because they fitted with their personalities, but the perfume of autumn may be even more subjective, heavy and rich, crisp and spicy, the scent holds the memories of the season or of the season as you've fictionalised it. So, I plucked one story from the pile and tried to imagine what that setting would smell like: a small European village at the end of the 19th Century. A village trying to carve out a place for itself as a desirable holiday destination with a twist.
The perfumes I came up with were: Etat Libre d'Orange's Like This, a perfume of Pumpkin, musk, and Spice inspired by the beautiful Tilda Swinton and designed to capture "a magic potion of home"  . It's a beautiful scent which one can easily imagine wafting through cottage windows, out of inns and from bonfires where sweet treats were roasted and toasted.  The orange spiciness of Chanel's Coco, the incense of Caron's Parfum Sacre and the woody warmth of Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet added the intense and ancient aroma of the castle overlooking the village. All those centuries of cedar wood fires and ladies arriving for dinner parties in the latest fashionable blend must have sunk into the tapestries on the walls and lingers in the smooth wood floors. Even when abandoned the castle, I imagined, would have been busy accumulating scents, indolic jasmine, lavender from the gardens; all waiting to flood into the nostrils of anyone who opened the door and stepped inside.

A spray of each, a little tea, a moment to absorb the mood and...

The scented spell woven by the perfumes worked and I was soon typing away, weaving new scenes and sharpening others. At the end of all of this, the short stories I was working on are nearly completed and there are ideas for two or three more maturing in my notebooks. Colder winter short stories which will require their own perfumes.

Fragrance Friday becomes Scented Saturday...

Bonjour, I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend as I welcome you to a scented Saturday on the blog. Usually my perfume posts appear on a Friday, but this week a combination of a hectic Friday and having lots of samples I wanted to get through meant I pushed my perfume post back a day but kept the alliteration.

Why so many samples; well, it's a combination of samples ordered from Les Senteurs which I've been trying one by one since they arrived at the start of the week and a charming, generous charity idea on the part pf my local department store. So, this week I ended up with a box of samples and decided to combine them into one post. 

Let us begin then with something rather stunning: Etat Libre d'Orange's Hermann A Mes Cotes. This sample was ordered after I saw The Candy Perfume Boy's recommendation on Facebook and his fabulous review (Candy Perfume Boy's Review). Oh, this perfume is so gorgeous! I'm not even really going to try to review it, I'll leave that to the maestro, what I am going to say is this: if you have not tried Hermann yet then do! It's the deepest red rose with a truffle heart and wonderful longevity. It's dark, mysterious and ideal for winter. I'd also like to add how much Etat Libre has impressed me lately. I have loved a number of their perfumes and I never thought that was going to happen back in the days when I started getting into perfume and their brand was known primarily for the scandalous and highly unsuitable as a Christmas gift, Secretions Magnifique (just an interesting note, I recently chatted with a lady who loves it by the way, described it so beautifully too). 

But let us move on, my second perfume sample was La Religieuse by Serge Lutens. If anything this perfume is the opposite of Hermann, whilst H warms you up, La Religieuse is the chill snowstorm raging outside with only the comforting scent of incense from a local church breaking through the ice to  remind you that the cold of winter will soon pass. Again, this one is beautiful. It captures the story it sets out to convey in a few divine notes of musk, incense and jasmine and lingers beautifully on skin (less so on a blotter but perfume was meant to be worn against the skin, against the pulse). I suppose it was always going to work for me as I adore incense perfumes. Comme des Garcon's intense and beautiful Avignon is one of my all time favourite perfumes, an acknowledged instant classic. 

 However, I think the time has come to explain my other samples of the week a little more. So, I popped into afore mentioned department store last weekend to have a sniff of Anais Anais by Cacharel and noticed they were selling bundles of four samples for £1.00 for breastcancernow.org I have no intention of going into detail here but it's a charity I have good reason to support and obviously I love perfume samples so perfect match. So, I bought £10.00 worth of samples and have found some real gems amongst them: Million by Paco Rabanne turns out to be far nicer than I had expected, Pop by Stella McCartney is a lovely heavy tuberose but my absolute favourite so far has to be: Givenchy's Gentlemen Only Absolute. 

I am a firm believer that there's no such thing as a gendered perfume so the fact that this is marketed as a men's perfume does not up me off in the slightest. Would Marlene Dietrich have walked away from such a perfume? Non.

Gentlemen Only Absolute is a heavy, spicy Oriental with a heart rich in cinnamon, saffron and nutmeg. The cinnamon comes through strongly on my skin entwined with the base notes of vanilla and sandalwood whilst the bergamot top note proves fleeting (fine with me, it's the spices I love most about this composition). It's certainly not a tweeds and brogues fragrance, more of a velvet tuxedo and brocade waistcoat perfume.

I've fallen in love with it! In fact I'm wearing it right now

Finally, my last perfume sample, La Fille De Berlin.

Simple, spicy, rose and pepper that conjures a snowy rose out of simplicity and presents it in a rose jam red juice. I think I may be as in love with the colour of this perfume as I am with it's smell! I'll be wearing this again at the close of the month when the chill of winter begins to bite and a sharp red rose is called for. 

Okay, I'm all perfume sampled out now! I shall be off to a cup of tea and my writing, have a wonderful weekend, a wonderful week and I'll see you all again on Wednesday for Writing Wednesday unless that becomes Literary Thursday? 

Writing Wednesday... Immortal words (hopefully)...

October is upon us, the air has turned chill, the leaves are falling and Halloween beckons to us from months end. 

What better time then to whisper of the Gothic?

I mentioned once before that, although my most recent book was more in the genre of fairy tale it's predecessors were Gothic novels, so let me add a little more detail on that.

Three or so years ago when I was still studying for my degree in English Literature, and taking modules in Creative Writing, I happened to watch a film which will remain nameless in which saccharine creatures of the night emoted boldly. I'd  read Dorian Gray and Dracula by this stage and was beginning to immerse myself in the works of Gautier and his fellow flaneurs of the Parisian dusk. This may help to explain why I emerged from that viewing experience with a rueful shake of the head, certain that these were not my creatures of the night. In the morning I plucked one of my notebooks from the teetering to be written in pile (like a TBR pile but blank) and put pen to paper. I wrote the first four chapters in one day before being pulled away by the task of writing an essay, then of revising. For a few months the novel slept until the years exams were over and I could return myself to it's pages in earnest. 

The rest just flowed after that, as it turned out a large cast of flamboyant immortals living in my head who wanted to make their presence felt. 

Their home was the 19th century, their habits not dependent on the moon and their lust for life and love quite extravagant. Theirs was a Gothic existence complete with stone arches and peacock feathers.

The research was as pleasurable as the writing, books on the Exposition Universal of 1889, the art of the Baroque, the English Civil War, Oscar Wilde and Victorian fashion were greedily devoured. Museums were visited and notes were taken. At the risk of sounding pretentious (always a danger for me) I wanted to immerse myself as deeply as possible in as atmospheric a world as possible.

Spending time reading anything and everything Gothic was no hardship to me. Every book was a delight and the Gustave Dore prints pinned to my notice board for inspiration were (and still are) a pleasure to look at. 

Even my perfume choices took on a Gothic edge with plenty of heavy, musky and alluring scents taking up space on my dressing table; my scent of the day today is Yves Saint Laurent's delicious Opium. Heavy folds of sensual amber, myrrh and vanilla sharpened by  by mandarin orange. It's not a perfume easily overlooked, it announces itself with a seductive fanfare and keeps on radiating. It wants, above all, not to be forgotten. What could be more appropriate for immortals?

The characters I wrote would also admire the scandalous idea of a perfume inspired by the 19th Centuries most mythologized vice: opium itself. I suspect they would also have adored my current favourite: Fou d'Absinthe by L'Artisan Parfumer too, such a sharp tribute to their green tipple of choice (they have a reverse colour wheel thing going on in their drinks cabinets). 

  Unlike other immortals I'm afraid my creations could never make it in the 21st Century, the harsh brightness of electric light has none of the glamour of gas and candle, the car can never be a sensitive or easy to talk to as the horse. They would admire the great steps forward humanity has made, yes. By necessity they long ago abandoned the default prejudices of their own eras and are sublimely glad to see that such shadows are fading, slowly, but fading. However, the 1980's with their plastic fantastic show glamour were their Waterloo. Not for them white powder with red braces; no, they would far rather be sipping Absinthe with Wilde and since that is not an option they have faded back into the shadows. You might see them occasionally, on a winters evening, wrapped in velvet as they scurry from a museum or stroll along the banks of the Seine. The hat of a hipster might make them shake their heads and smile because they remember when such things were new and bold. In many ways my creature are not so different from myself. But that's the nature of the Gothic, it should possess our dreams and our inner selves. 

The book I began three years ago is now the first of a series and currently out looking for an agent to represent them whilst i keep writing and, of course, I'm still reading gothically. 

Fragrance Friday... Balenciaga's Quadrille.

It's no secret that I love 1950's fashion (well it may be if we have never met before and you are new to this blog and to my writing, in which case I shall let you in on my secret now). Wherever I go I go in swing skirts or pencil skirts, faux astrakhan jackets, little clip top handbags and tiny hats. Naturally, being a perfume lover as well I am always on the look out for a perfect perfume to compliment my clothing obsession. This is a harder quest than you might think now that the heady vintages of the mid 20th Century have been swept aside beneath a barrage of sweetly floral and fruity fragrances. The perfumes of the 1950's and 1960's like a roll on girdle or the perfect court shoe screamed maturity and responsibility along with femininity. Their successors in the late 1960's whispered of inviting exoticism and mysticism with wisps of patchouli and honey. Now, however, the emphasis is  firmly fixed on the ever youthful appeal of peaches and strawberries, spring flowers and spring showers. The plastic surgeons glossy leaflet as portable, spritzable promise. 

I'm afraid that strawberries are my limit, I don't want to smell like dessert any more than I want to wear nude lipstick and I really don't want to wear nude lipstick (not sure I own any shade paler than the classic Revlon: Cherries in the Snow).

Don't get me wrong, some of these fragrances are beautiful, I was rather impressed by Chanel No.5 L'eau even though I feared for it's staying power and know in my heart that, whilst classic No.5 has enough silage that fellow shoppers have chased after me to ask what that perfume is and where they too can obtain a bottle, L'eau may prove sadly fleeting. 

However, they are not quite what I would want in a perfume and so one sometimes has to turn to vintage juices for special occasions and when I'm feeling rather 50's (full outfit, black eyeliner wings, red lipstick) one perfume stands out head and shoulders above it's competition: Balenciaga's Quadrille.

Like Balenciaga's dresses of the 1950's this perfume has volume and quirkiness in abundance. It's a powerhouse of amber and musk where the heart and top notes are, fittingly enough for a perfume named after a 19th century square dance, like coy ballerinas just hovering round the edges. After the first dab, one is aware of a rich scent of plum, peach and the crispness of lemon before the cloves and cardamon jump up sharply from the heart and beckon you in to the real party going on deep down in the musk and amber heart of the composition. 

It may have been an invitation to a quadrille but those tame 19th century dances have no place down here in the depths. Someones dropped a jazz LP down on the record player, there's a hint of smokiness in the air and the bar is serving only whiskey and gin. You want to slip into a little black jumper with shoulder pads and a frilly tulle petticoat. The world is on the cusp of a new era, things will be bright up ahead, your rocket cocktail shaker promised you so. 

That's the beauty of Quadrille to me. It's all the things you want from a vintage perfume, depth, complexity, musk and smokiness. It elbows it's way in and demands to be smelt the same way a black high heel demands that you look. 

Writing Wednesday... The land of Fairy Tale

I have always been fascinated by Fairy Tales. Something about them sings to the blood. That might be a strange way to describe it but Fairy Tales deal in the elements of existence, blood, water, snow, woods and shadows. They make our dreams flesh and our fears manifest. When I think of fairy tales, I think of a low hanging apple, bright red and crisp but perhaps when one bites into the flesh one will find a pale little worm writhing away from your sharp toothed kiss.
Strange truth, it has been many years since I last found a worm in an apple. Sometimes I find the thin paths they make. Perhaps the worms have begun to tell fairy tales about people and know to run away in fright.
Like many children of the 20th Century my first introduction to fairy tales was through the bright, wide eyed fantasies of Disney. Like many children of the 1990’s my first princess was Belle, heroine of “Beauty and the Beast”. How I wanted to be her!
Strangely, if I try to recall Belle now, almost twenty years after our first encounter I can call to mind only the rose and the bell jar of the film. A few notes of songs linger but it’s the rose I can see clearly. Year by year, the image becomes a little more steampunk, darker and more Victorian.
Interesting, since my relationship with fairy tales did not end with those flickering cinematic images.
I moved on from Disney to my Mothers collection of Arthur Rackham’s Grimm and Angela Barrett’s Snow White, to a world where Queen’s expressions shift imperceptibly like sweet glaciers as they lean out from their windows and marvel at the contrast of a drop of blood on the snow.
From Rackham and Barrett I moved on to Angela Carter and the reinvention of fairy tales, tracked down editions of Grimm’s fairy tales which included those tales which they included in their notebooks and not in their finished editions for the fear of upsetting the children.
Now, I have moved on to Marina Warner and her marvellous analysis of Fairy Tales: “From The Beast to The Blond”. Since this beautiful tome arrived in the post, my second hand edition from 1994 even came with the delightful bonus of newspaper reviews clipped out and tucked in by it’s first owner, I have been fixed to the page absorbing detail after detail.

 From Anne of Austria and Louis XIV’s adulation of St. Anne and childlike spontaneous spirituality influencing the emergence of Fairy Tale culture in 17th Century France (not to mention womens writing and the Frond) to the symbolism of hair in fairy tale, every page one turns overflows with gems a little like a brush through enchanted hair.
The path into the land of fairy is a strange one, as much in the shadows of the woods as in the clearings and who knows where it will finally lead you.
In my case, it has led me back to my own writing. Whilst my first books were very much the product of Victorian Gothic, Stoker and Wilde ran in their blood, my most recent novel and the ideas in my notebooks have been rather more fairy tale than hansom cab in the fog (of course, some have been a little bit of both).
When I write I often begin with an image I know has drifted down from the vast library of fairy tale knowledge. I begin writing with falling snow, a crisp apple, a fat red rose, a monstrous key or a glass coffin dancing in my head. I have developed a slight obsession with a version of “Beauty and the Beast” recorded by the Grimm's called “The Winter Rose” and find it’s themes dropping like snowflakes into my paragraphs. Perhaps that is only natural, after all we now know that audiences have been delighted by that particular story for over 5,000 years just as Cinderella and her lost slipper have struck a note with thousands of generations and across continents. Something old stirs in these tales, maybe we don’t yet know how old? But I’ve played with that idea before, asked if stories so strange might have roots of truth
Once you begin to pursue fairy tales you risk toppling over and falling headlong, like Alice, down a rabbit hole of imagery and allegory, see I am doing it now. I don’t expect to ever be an Angela Carter, to her alone was left some rare knowledge of the human heart. But I cannot help but follow the thread of fairy tales and ask my own questions: what would have happened if Cinderella saved herself, if Sleeping Beauty were a man, if Little Red Riding Hood had not gone into the woods?
Such exploration can take strange paths but they can pay off well, Terry Gilliam’s Brothers Grimm is far from a conventional retelling of fairy tales or of the lives of the brothers themselves but I adore it’s playful inventions and the way it conjures old imagery into fabulous new forms. Authors as disparate as Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman and Helen Oyeyemi have all done remarkable things with fairy tale building blocks Nothing is set in stone, the fairy tales are not exhausted as a source of inspiration, please do pick them up and have fun, from ancient lips to our modern ears they are still singing.

Bal a Versailles.

I was trying to decide which perfume to choose for my first review and then the answer came to me: with only one more sleep to the American premier of my adored "Versailles la Serie" it made sense to review the equally beautiful Bal a Versailles. So, this morning I grabbed my gorgeous vintage mini of the EDT from my dressing table and dabbed it on.

(The bottle poses atop one of my Paperblanks notebooks)

I know you may be thinking, 'but EDT's are so light, shouldn't you use something a little stronger for a review?' Well, not when it comes to vintage Bal a Versailles, a delightfully musky floral perfume first released in 1962. Eight hours after the first application and this juice is still going strong and projecting very nicely. I'm not sure I could handle anything stronger for fear of headaches and as the wonderful review on Perfume Posse suggests the pure perfume might be a little too umm...feral for my tastes.
Not that the EDT is low on animalic notes, no. As strongly as the fresh wafts of orange blossom, Jasmin, Neroli and Bergamot come through in the top notes, once we get down to the heart and base the leather, resin, musk and civet start to come through pretty strongly. Nothing wrong with that, if anything it helps to enhance that evocative "Versailles" feeling to the perfume because, lets be honest for all the silks and jewels at the court of The Sun King personal hygiene was a largely ignored idea and unwashed courtiers drowned their own body odours beneath layers of heady perfumes including, paradoxically, civet.
The perfect thing then to wear if you are going to indulge in "Versaille la Serie", making the series a full on sensory experience, or it would if the courtiers and royals in this T.V series were not suspiciously (if deliciously) well bathed and the perfume references were not so thin on the ground. A great shame given that Louis XIV's minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a great supporter of the perfume industry and, until a later life aversion, Louis was a pretty heavy perfume user himself (for more details on this see Denyse Beaulieu's wonderful book, "The Perfume Lover").

Hello, Everyone.
First post on The Mauve Notebook.
I'm a writer and perfume lover so basically, this blog will be about two things: Writing Wednesday and Fragrance Friday.
On Wednesdays I'll post about my writing and writing research and on Fridays I'll post reviews of perfumes I'm wearing or trying right now.