Fleurs de Rocaille had been my Mother’s perfume. As a kid, my father mentioned it to me with a hint of reverence. Perhaps it was now a reminder of their romantic past, or a reminder to him of her youth and beauty, of something that had once been delicate and elegant.
Fleurs de Rocaille was created by french perfumer Ernest Daltroff, who had founded the company “Parfums Caron” in Paris back in 1903. Fleurs de Rocaille had been created in 1934, and called “the fragrance of modern femininity”.
Perfumes are described in small, fleeting, almost precious terms. Similar to fine wine, words like “hints” and “notes” suggest subtlety and sophistication. Worn in the very skin of its host, perfume becomes a part of them, part of their chemistry. It’s a personal level of fashion, class, and deportment, soaked into the pores.
Sometimes, I’d look through Mum and Dad’s bedroom closet when I could get away with it. While Mum was away in hospital and with her memory loss and anxiety, she was hard to communicate with at the best of times. Dad sometimes got mad if I asked him too many questions about the past, so that was discouraging. But I remained curious and became sneaky, searching for clues in their bedroom closets when they weren’t around.
In an old cardboard box in their bedroom, I found some little treasures belonging to Mum’s family: a small wood-framed photo of Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, and a strange brass music box about the size of a cigarette lighter. I knew right away that these were not the kinds of possessions that my Dad’s family would have tended to have. Dad was intelligent and savvy, but didn’t seem to care about art or music, and seemed resentful of folks who presented themselves as upper class. These elegant little items of art and music must have belonged to someone in my mother’s family. With no stories capable from my mother, I took the items for my own and hoped they’d yield some clues on their own.
The music box had the name “La Donna” inscribed in elegant cursive on the case, and winding the little key on the back produced a pretty little tune. It also had a little tubular brass piece that popped up out of the case. I could not figure what that was for.
The whole thing smelled like tarnished brass with a hint of old perfume. It was scratched and dulled with age, but hinted at some kind of past elegance.
I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I put it back in its box right where I’d found it. The framed Mona Lisa photo I stole right away, and put it up on my bedroom wall. On the back was written “The Louvre, Paris, 1921”. it had once belonged to one of Mum’s aunties, but Mona Lisa belonged to me now – my classy little piece of trophy art. It has remained on one or another of my walls ever since, and in the year that I write this (2021), my little Mona has become a century old.
Over forty years later, on December 2019, my nieces Meaghan and Christina presented me with some items they’d been given by their Mum (my sister Kim). Among them was that same little brass music box.
We talked about it and after a few minutes of googling, we realized that it was a perfume atomizer, probably made in Japan sometime around 1940. The little spring-loaded pop-out piece was actually the trigger for pumping out the perfume. I detected that same slight scent lingering on the metal and it took me right back to the day I’d first seen the thing. Smell is such a powerful and persistent memory trigger.
I would guess that it belonged to Mum’s mother Edna, or someone from her family – perhaps Edna’s Aunt Constance Maud Gillman, who passed away in Victoria in 1948.
My sister recently told me that she’d discovered the atomizer as a little girl, perhaps when she was in Grade 1. She said she used to wind it up all the way and fall asleep listening to its little metallic serenade.
So now, after years of singing my sister to sleep in her little bed, that scuffed and scratched old atomizer is perched up on my bookshelf, representing my mother in its own way. Standing next to it is a well-worn steel Ronson lighter that once belonged to my Dad, which I swear still has a whiff of his lighter fluid.
About House Caron:
https://scentertainer.net/en/perfume-houses-caron-history-and-fame/
About Fleurs de Rocaille:
https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Caron/Fleurs-de-Rocaille-2919.html
A vintage magazine ad from 1969:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/130973787020
