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Category Archives: Bruce Ware Allen
Count Alfred D’Orsay and the Elusiveness of…..
The one difficulty in Brideshead Revisited (okay, there are a lot of difficulties in Brideshead Revisited, but I’m only interested in one of them) is the question Sebastian Flyte’s charm. We are assured that he has it, repeatedly, but somehow … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Perfume
Tagged Byron, Count Alfred D’Orsay, Countess of Blessington, L’Eau to Bouquet
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Strange Invisible Perfume
“From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs.” “Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love sick with them” The quote is Shakespeare. of course, from Anthony and Cleopatra, she whom … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Perfume
Tagged Athenaeus, Cleopatra, Cyprinum, Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, Pliny, Rhodinon, Strang Invisible Perfume, Tocca
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Rice Flowers
Funny thing, although rice is a mainstay of the Italian diet, you tend not to think about it in that light. We hear: Italian, we think: Pasta. But in fact, in northern Italy pastascuita is less frequent than some very … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen
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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
The churchmen knew their business when they brought scent into the worship of God. Elemental stuff, you see. Like Proust’s madeleine. The origin of the word perfume relates to it. Per fumen – through smoke. Some words are so ingrained … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Perfume
Tagged Carnaby Street, Casanova, Delphi, Homer, profumigatio horribilis, smudging, Tobit
6 Comments
Smounds! Gadzooks!
The history of science has from time to time turned up a number of – to us – strange lines of inquiry that run the gamut from crackpot to fraud. The academy tends to keep out the former better than … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Perfume
Tagged Bruna Calheiros, Daniel Wesson PhD, Donald Wilson PhD, odophone
10 Comments
Mithridates, He Died Old
“Come, my Friends, Let’s meet these Romans, and my Rebel Son; Let’s kill till we are weary, then lie down And rest forever.” “Mithridates King of Pontus” by Nathaniel Lee (1653 – 6 May 1692)* Mithridates (134 BC – 63 … Continue reading
Strange Brew
If it is true, as Mike Myers suggests, that most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare, what are we to make of the foundations of perfumery? We are, after all, talking some pretty rank stuff – extrusions from the … Continue reading
Not Tonight, The King Has a Headache
As noted in a previous post, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Case in point, Louis XIV, the Sun King, one of the great over-indulgers of history. This is the same man who built Versailles, and … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Perfume
Tagged "La Voisin", Abbé Étienne Guibourg, Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, Filles de Saint-Joseph, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Françoise d'Aubigné, Gabriel-Nicolas de la Reynie, Louis the XIV, Magdelaine de La Grange, Marquise de Maintenon, Marquise of Montespan, Martial, the Sun King
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(Rose 11) – Rose Trivia
In the beginning, all roses were white. It took Aphrodite’s pricking herself on a thorn and bleeding to put a touch of pink into the bloom. (There’s a Christian story to the same effect, the rose bush in question being … Continue reading
Posted in Bruce Ware Allen, People, Plants
2 Comments
Real Men Don’t Wear Scent, Part II
So much for the the ancients and ocean travellers. It happened that post-renaissance landlubbers, no less confident in their machismo, could also be comfortable with perfume. We’re talking Louis XIV and Louis XV, who, despite the wigs, were no shrinking … Continue reading
