What Did They Smell Like?

An excerpt of historical fragrances used by the more famous of our ancestors.

ALEXANDER - Used frankincense and myrrh in incense. Violets. Had tunics soaked in saffron
AMYTES - Wife of Nebuchanezzer. Favourite spot in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was a bower of roses and lilies
APOLLONIUS OF HEROPHILIA - Best buys of ancient Greece. 'The iris is best at Elis and at Cyzicus: the perfume made from roses is most excellent at Pharselis and that made in Naples and Capua is also very fine. That made from crocus is most perfect from Soli in Cilicia and at Rhodes. The essence of spikenard is best at Tarsus and of vine leaves at Cyprus and Adramyttium.
The best perfume from marjoram and from apples comes from Cos.'
MADAME DU BARRY - Farina's eau de Cologne
CHARLES V OF FRANCE - Had lavender planted in the Louvre so that he could have lavender water made whenever he wanted. Eau de beaute...1370, first alcohol perfume. 4x30 oz brandy and 30oz rosemary flowers. Put in closed vat for 50 hours, distil in a boiler and give as oily bath for face every morning.
CHARLES VI OF FRANCE - Also loved lavender water. Had baskets of lavender hung in all his palaces to sweeten the air
CLEOPATRA - Anointed her hands with kyphi which contained 16 ingredients including oil of roses, crocus, violets. Scented her feet with aegyptium...a lotion of almond oil, honey, cinnamon, orange blossoms and henna. Ship made of cedarwood. One and a half feet depth of roses on her floors.
ALEISTER CROWLEY - The Beast - Perfume of Immortality...3 parts civet, 2 parts musk, 1 part ambergris
DIOGENES - Scented feet and legs only. Above would benefit the birds
EDWARD IV OF ENGLAND - Orris root. Several roots tied to string and dipped in boiling water to wash linen. Swete cloth
ELIZABETH I OF ENGLAND - Rose and musk. Gloves, cloak, shoes soaked in ambergris. 1. Rose and Musk perfume.....'Take 8 grains of musk and put in rosewater 8 spoonfuls, 3 spoonfuls of damask water and quarter of an ounce of sugar. Boil for 5 hours and strain it.' 2. 'Take 8 spoonfuls of compound water, the weight of two pence in fine powder of sugar and boil it on hot ember s and coals softly, add half oz of sweet marjoram dried in the sun and the weight of two pence of the powder of benjamin' Ralph Rabbards, her perfumer recommended water of violets and gillyflower water.
ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY - Hungary Water - 1370. Lavender and rosemary
ESTHER - As ordained by Jewish law, she was purified for one year. Oil of myrrh for 1st 6 months, other oils for next
EMPRESS EUGENIE - Wife of Napoleon III. Guerlain made toilet water for her with a lavender base. Named eau de Cologne Imperiale because she loved it so much
HENRY III OF FRANCE - Covered himself head to foot in amber. Also loved violet powder
HENRY IV OF FRANCE - Didn't use scent. Said to have smelt like a rotting corpse
EMPRESS JOSEPHINE - Loved rose, patchouli, musk. Violet. Napoleon hated musk - after divorce she saturated his apartments in it! Napoleon would only let her wear orange water, lavender water and eau de Cologne. She liked mignotte, reminded her of violets. He sent her mignonette seeds from Egypt.
JULIUIS CAESAR - Hated scent. Said 'I'd rather smell of garlic'
LILY LANGTRY - Pears soap
LISELOTTE OF FRANCE - Hated scent. When found husbands love letters to his boyfriends, so strongly scented that she fainted
LOUIS XIV - Perfumed his rooms with marjoram and rosewater. Washed shirts in stew of cloves, nutmeg, aloe, jasmine, orange water and musk for 24 hours. (or with storax, benzoin, rosewater and musk)
MARIE ANTOINETTE - Rosewater, violet water. Hated spicy eastern perfumes and animal scents
NAPOLEON - Used Windsor soap(bergamot, clove, lavender) Rose or violet lotions. Eau de Cologne
MADAME DE POMPADOUR - Powder for hair....orris root and odour of violets. Gloves perfumed with neroli, lavender soap. Pomade for hair...jasmine, violet, carnation, or hyacinth or orange blossom macerated in hot fat. Always had hyacinth flowers in rooms winter and spring. Pot pourris of rose, lavender, clove, nutmeg, silvery oakmoss and powdered orris root.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH - drank mix of wild strawberry leaves. Placed pot pourri of orris root powder and roses in his rooms. Used strawberry scent
SOCRATES - disapproved of scent
MADAME TALLIEN - Marie Antoinette's lady. Bathed in crushed strawberry and perfumed milk
HENRIETTA MARIA - white lavender. lavender water

17th Century Collage

I've found a new toy. Picasa 3.

It has made lovely collages of my 17th century pictures!

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Addendum to the Post below.....

If you'll forgive me for quoting myself - in the previous post I asked...

"Now - I often wonder if any of the Real People she (Elizabeth Chadwick) has had access to (via the Akashic Record) have ever turned round and said ‘Go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to be remembered.’???"

Marie de Rohan spent her last years in a Benedictine abbey a few miles from Paris. For the previous 70 odd years she had whirled through life - her's and other people's - with glorious energy and passion. But, towards the end, she wrote in her will that she wanted her burial to take place without pomp. Only her name and the following inscription were allowed on her tomb...

'As humility has long since replaced in her heart a taste for the world's glamour and for the greatness of her time, she has forbidden that at her death any sign of that greatness should reappear, for she wishes to take it with her into the simplicity of this grave.'

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Death can't erase a great life. Historical fiction will see to that - thank goodness!

Historical Fiction....one POV amongst many

You write historical fiction because....
You read historical fiction because....

There are as many reasons to write and read as there are writers and readers. We all have our own preferences, our own opinions, our own interpretations.

There seems to be a spiralling debate in the HF world about historical accuracy in fiction and whether it is better to write and read about real people or purely ‘made-up’ people.

I’m feeling a little giddy here.

One of the first things you learn as a researcher of any field is that the more you research, the bigger the differences. First, second, third hand sources – it doesn’t matter. No one has the definitive answer. All is cloaked in bias and propaganda and the changes that time will bring to everything.

So, you write a novel set in the 17th century... for example. You choose to tell a story about Real People. And then you find it suggested that this is not a very good idea. How dare you presume to give a Real Person those thoughts, actions, motivations when you have no earthly way of verifying a single one of them?

A story is a series of actions and reactions. The human condition is universal. You can’t plot a life but you can plot a novel. Applying absolute certainty to that most ambiguous of creatures – mankind – is surely asking for trouble.

And being 100% ‘right’ in every way, shape and form? Good grief, how boring!

Personal opinion here but –I think I’d be rather flattered to be remembered in print, perfectly or even imperfectly, 400 years from now. The odds of that happening to any of us here today are long but...what a compliment.

Elizabeth Chadwick, author of The Greatest Knight and many other works of Historical Fiction has a fascinating method of research. She uses the Akashic Record.

Now - I often wonder if any of the Real People she has had access to have ever turned round and said ‘Go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to be remembered.’???

The above is a serious question. One that boggles my head.

The point of view is - Historical Fiction is about people. It's written by people and read by people and people are imperfect. End of....!

Louis XIII

I'm intrigued.

Love the World Wide web. Hate the World Wide Web.

A Google images search has just thrown me this image of Louis XIII via La Tribune de l'Art

In many years of research this is the first time I've seen this picture of Louis XIII and a quick search for the painter René de Poitiers, duc de Tresne gave only one resource - this one.

I'm very intrigued.

There is no date for the portrait but it is obviously of an older man and curiosity made me search for other pictures of Louis.








This one was painted by Peter Paul Rubens in 1625 when Louis was 24 years old.












I don't know but.... the first picture doesn't quite ring true. I could be very wrong. But there is no Bourbon lip or jaw.

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, ambassador to France in the early 1620's described Louis as having a double row of teeth which made it difficult for him to close his mouth properly.

In Weave a Garland the younger Louis is called a 'beardless boy' as it was well known that, even well into his twenties, the king could not grow a beard. Maybe this is why he played barber to his guards and shaved off all their beards and moustaches.

It' s also known that Louis started wearing a peruke at quite a young age. Cavaliers... chevaliers... were well known for their long, curling hair and Louis seems to have suffered from premature balding.

Even though the first painting has the artist's name and that of Louis XIII - I'm not 100%convinced.

As if historical research was not hard enough. Sigh.....!!

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Close Hapsburg Relations

This beautiful little girl is the Infanta Margarita of Spain, (August 12 1651 to March 12 1673) neice of Anne of Austria, Queen of France.

Anne commissioned this picture by Deigo Velazquez and kept it in her bathing chamber in the Louvre along with many other portraits of the family she left in 1615 and was never to see again.

In Spain, it was traditional for women of the Spanish court to pose for portraits with their hand on the back of the chair but the delightful child opposite was only three years old when the picture was painted and she could not reach beyond the seat of the chair.

Little Margarita was the daughter of Philip IV of Spain - Anne's adored brother - and his second wife Mariana of Austria - the daughter of both Anne and Philip's sister Maria.

At one time Margarita's mother, the Infanta Maria, was expected to marry Charles, Prince of Wales, later King Charles I of England. Instead she married Ferdinand III, the titular king of Hungary and became the Holy Roman Empress.

Philip IV, King of Spain favoured this daughter and called her 'my joy.' She was an ethereal child with blond hair, blue eyes and none of the genetic defects that haunted many of the Hapsburgs.

Velazquez painted her several times. His most famous picture of the Infanta being Las Meninas


Margarita married Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, her cousin and uncle, and has come down to us in history as the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs.

She gave birth to six children, suffered numerous miscarriages and sadly died in Austria at the age of twenty-one.

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Some days.....

....You just feel like pulling a face

A Clever Duchess

A CLEVER DUCHESS; Maria de Rohan as Pictured by H. Noel Williams

New York Times - January 18, 1914, Sunday

MARIE DE ROHAN, Duchesse de Chevreuse -- there is magic in every syllable of the stately, melodious name, as though she who bore it could send down through the centuries something of that potent fascination which was hers during her life....

I was absolutely delighted to find the above article by chance today.

It was written in January 1914 to coincide with the publication of Hugh Noel William's biography of Marie de Rohan ~ A Fair Conspirator.

In the days before I had a computer and a photocopier, I borrowed this book from the library and copied virtually every word of it out by hand. It took weeks...and more than one overdue fine!

Mr Williams did not seem to like his 'Fair Conspirator' very much. The biography has moments of high judgment and low opinion, but he tells her story with great passion.

Word of the Day

LOBLOLLY

"thick gruel," 1597, probably from lob, onomatopoeic of bubbling and boiling + lolly, obs. Devonshire dial. for "broth, soup, food boiled in a pot."

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Quote of the Week

I make no apologies for quoting Ninon de Lenclos again.

Her wisdom was pithy and timeless.

“Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.”

Maybe we could change that quote slightly....

“Fictional characters ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them in books too.”