These last days of October the Sun may still be shining, but the rains are coming more and more often, the wind is stronger and chillier, the shadows are longer and darker, and since the Equinox we’ve lost more than an hour of daylight. Halloween has just passed, and as if those long and dark shadows weren’t scary enough, these are the days when I reach out for the selections of scary short stories from my bookshelves and for some comforting perfumes from my perfume cabinet. My favorites from the bookshelves are Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and out of the perfume cabinet I am pulling spices, ambers, and vanillas.  But not every amber or every vanilla can work for me these days. Still far away from Winter holiday season, I won’t want a vanilla that is boozy, sweet, and redolent of scraping out a vanilla pod for my holiday baking. I won’t want a bright woody salty marine vanilla of the Summer (adieu, Vanille Insensee!). I need something different – something that be a match for my autumnal feeling of cuddly comfort punctuated by a fleeting chilling fear that passes even sooner than it comes along. A Perfect Vanilla for a Fall day that would somehow remind me of a scary story which ended well.

Thomas-Blinks-English-Setter (1892)

When Sarah Horowitz-Thran decided to create her Perfect Vanilla, she said:

Vanilla is a scent that, for many, evokes a sense of home and comfort. Due to its popularity in perfumery, our challenge was to create a vanilla fragrance that is unique. This was achieved through the use of such unusual complementary notes as blood orange and tobacco.

Home and comfort sounded just right for my search, and so did tobacco. I have high hopes for fragrances with the combination of vanilla and tobacco listed, so all I needed to do was to sniff, close my eyes, and drift away to see what images would come to my mind.

 

Frederic Leighton – The Garden of the Hesperides (1892)

I know a gorgeous blood orange note opens the Lioness, and the one in Perfect Vanilla is different. An orange note that has the trueness of orange juice with none of its tartness, the joy of a good orange soda with no sugar added. It is not quite as boozy and sweet as Quantro and not in-your-face-obviously orange as is orange peel. Yet this orange note combines these all in an idea of a delicious juicy orange drink, not from concentrate for sure, not too tart and not too sweet – just perfect for the Californian Autumn sunshine.

Vanilla comes in tiptoes, much like the Fall shadows do. First it is like a light cloud of smell that comes from the bottom of the orange drink, rises above and infuses the entire thing. At this stage Perfect Vanilla may suggest an orange cheesecake… but it never really goes there because of the tobacco coming in and darkening the fragrance even more. On different days the tobacco waits longer or shows up soon, but the end result is always the same – a high quality vanilla pipe tobacco. The fragrance darkens, but it never gets as dark as a stormy night is dark, neither is it a thunder cloud, black gown or even a little black dress. It envelops you in a soft smoky grey shawl, taking the chill away, bringing an incredible sense of comfort.  What a Perfect Vanilla for my Fall.

John Colier- Lilith (1892)

But did it scare me at all? I have to admit, there is nothing scary in this comforting fragrance itself, but it did remind me of a scary story – in fact, I swear that no other story had scared me as much. For nights and nights I could not sleep identifying with the heroine of the story and trembling from her fears. This story was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was published by the Strand magazine exactly 120 years ago, in 1892. In The Speckled Band a fine lady in her thirties with her hair already half grey comes in to Sherlock Holmes’ waiting room and confesses a mortal terror that she is facing in the home of her stepfather. Two years ago her twin sister died a strange and horrible death, perhaps, out of fear, shouting out “Ellen… Ellen… the speckled band!” as her last words.  But now bereft Ellen seems to be retracing her sister’s steps exactly, by the orders of her stepfather sleeping in her sister’s very room and even on the very bed. Moreover, Ellen hears the same strange sounds that she used to regard as her sister’s hallucinations. But she is hearing them now herself and unless these are just the symptoms of her nervous exhaustion, does all this mean that she is on the same road as her sister and the end she is nearing toward is the same end?

Gaughin- Dead Spirit Watching (1892)

It does not make the suspense any lighter for the reader when observant Sherlock Holmes immediately points out the bruises on her arm – which she brushes off because she got used to violence from her stepfather. She does not see in his desire to stop her from coming to see Mr. Holmes anything unusual or sinister. But things are dire indeed. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are spending a night in Ellen’s room, hear the mysterious noises that neither Ellen nor her poor sister could explain, and in the end Holmes throws himself toward the rope on which a poisonous snake crawls toward the bed. The snake disappears to where it came from… and it is all over but the shriek of the stepfather who had been sending the snake into his stepdaughters’ room for many nights. He took one life, but he did not take the life of Ellen.

Ms. Marina Solomina as Ellen from the first Speckled Band movie I’ve seen

So now because of Sarah’s artistry when I take a whiff of Perfect Vanilla I am imagining Ellen on a dreary Fall morning gulping down a glass of orange juice (she is too excited to eat anything substantial anyway and she cannot afford wasting any time before she leaves). As she rides toward London, the day becomes brighter; the leaves are floating in the breeze and sticking to the road. The Sun starts to warm up, but it is still a chilly day.  There’s some sweetness in the air and the promise of good life ahead of her, but she cannot be completely comforted until she steps into the cluttered waiting room, unstopped and ready to share her fears. As I sniff my wrist, I think of Ellen inhaling the eccentric detective’s fine pipe tobacco the smell of which permeated the room, discerning the lightest smell of pastries baked by Mrs. Hudson downstairs for a long-passed breakfast, meeting Sherlock Holmes’s’ eye and knowing for sure that she has now arrived, unstopped, into the place where all her fears will be dispelled and all her mysteries solved.

Note: All art is from 1892, the year The Adventures of the Speckled Band was published.

Thanks to Sarah Horowitz Parfums we have a roll-on of Pure Vanilla in its pure oil form to giveaway. To be eligible please leave a comment naming your favorite scary mystery or your favorite actor who played Sherlock Holmes. We will draw one winner on November 5, 2012.

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.

-Olga Rowe, Contributor