a scented palace by elisabeth de feydeau

That he wrote letters to his brother was mentioned, but not once did the author say where she was finding her information. I was slightly disappointed by the limited footnoting, which didn't give much information about the quotes that were footnoted! It also wasn't very clear where so much of the information about Fargeon's thoughts came from- they were written of as plain facts with no references.

Such an interesting book, especially the appendices at the back, listing Fargeon's own notes about different scent-giving ingredients and the methods of capturing their scents. Did the tuberose have a whiff of what Marie Antoinette most loathed, the destructive corruption of the soul” (p. He added just a pinch, for the Queen loved the flower in its natural state but was wary of the rapidly obsessional power of a scent that was halfway between honey and venom. “Fargeon had observed that the tuberose had the power to discourage anxiety and stimulate desire. Although it is a bit sketchy, the book provides a delightful bridge between Marie Antoinette’s story and the perfume industry. The Appendix, which contains an excerpt from Fargeon’s actual notes, describing different perfume ingredients, was interesting to read as well. There is a detailed description of the Parfum du Trianon, named after her favorite garden, a perfume which Fargeon designed specifically for her. Marie Antoinette, for example, was particularly fond of rose, violet, or tuberose scents. One of the most interesting aspects of the book to me was that it provides details about perfume formulae or simply what some of the popular fragrances were.

“Perfume was no longer simply ‘the agreeable fragrance that pleases the sense of smell,” the author points out, “It was a key to the soul.”

Perfumery was already well established in France, and even philosophers at the time acknowledged the importance of our olfactory senses. Based on Jean-Louis Fargeon’s-a perfumer for the court-biography, it offers a look at the fashion industry and the people who actually created the glamor surrounding the Queen. The book, as the title suggests, is not really an account of the historical events of this time or a detailed account of Marie Antoinette’s life (for the latter, I’d recommend Zweig’s or Frazier’s books).

A scented palace by elisabeth de feydeau