The Scent Trail of Anne Boleyn: From Hever Castle to The Tower of London

 anne boleyn collage

Anne of a Thousand Faces

To still be newsworthy some 500 years after your death is no mean feat. Yet something about her continues to ignite imagination across centuries:  Anne Boleyn, the woman who set in motion the Protestant Reformation in England, mother of Elizabeth I, and muse to countless composers, painters and authors, is still being talked, written, and wondered about. Howard Brenton’s drama, Anne Boleyn, premiered recently at the Globe Theatre in London, and a few weeks ago, Susan Bordo’s book-long inquiry into why Anne continues to fascinate hit the book shelves.  Despite the myriad cinematic and literary depictions – everything from a Donizetti opera to the sexed-up glamour girl of The Tudors, not a single definitive likeness of her exists. Anne Boleyn remains as elusive a quarry as the poetic deer she likely inspired in Thomas Wyatt’s great sonnet, “Whoso List to Hunt.”

Anne Boleyn by an unknown artist

Anne Boleyn the most famous "Non-Blonde" (with apologies to Gaia Fishler of The Non Blonde Perfume Blog)

What do we know for certain? The dark-eyed, raven-haired Anne Boleyn caused quite a stir across Europe when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church in Rome to marry her. But it was also the force of her personality that made her a cause célèbre.  Anne was outspoken at a time when women held their tongues, was ‘brunet’ when blonde and fair was considered the epitome of female beauty, was smart, talented and ambitious. She could, and did, think for herself.  Even her chiefest critic was forced to admit “the lady is braver than a lion.”

A painting of Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein

Anne Boleyn- This painting is attributed to Hans Holbein

Anne was visual, as evidenced by her patronage of some of the greatest painters of the day, including Hans Holbein, and her documented interests in fashion and architecture. Well-versed in the elements of allure from her Continental education, I believe Anne would have been fascinated by perfumery, as much for its potential as a political tool as for its more immediate seductive qualities.

Hever Castle Gardens

Hever Castle Gardens

 Anyone as attuned to beauty as Anne Boleyn must have had a fondness for flowers. Visit Anne’s romantic childhood home, Hever Castle, in Spring, and it is awash with roses, lavender, gillyflowers, wallflowers, violets and aromatic herbs. Tudor households made thrifty use of plants for everything from medicines to laundry detergent. Fragrant meadow rushes would be strewn across floors; lavender, marjoram and mint would be used in the laundry, and clove-studded oranges were employed as personal air fresheners. As to perfumed water and oils, those were generally reserved for the wealthy.

Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn by Arthur Hopkins

As Alison Sim points out in her history, The Tudor Housewife, “scent was an expensive luxury…and was used as a demonstration of wealth.” Anne’s family were highly successful social climbers, and perfume was a way to signify status.  By the time she arrived at the French court in her teens – then the epicenter of sophistication — Anne Boleyn may well have begun to experiment with perfume. France was where a girl came to learn the arts of attraction and Anne was a notably quick study.  Anne, who would be soon be noted as a fashion trendsetter, could very well have had a signature scent that, along with her dark coloring and veneer of French exoticism, would have set her apart from a sea of creamy Englishwomen.

anne bewitching henry  when she arrives at court the tudors prada violette

Showtime The Tudors: Jonathan Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII (note the rose motif in his necklace) and Natalie Dormer as Anne

What would Anne have worn when she took the English court by storm in 1522? Perfume would have set her apart as much as her nouvelle French fashions, wit and dancer’s bearing.  Prada Violette no. 7 from the  Exclusive line, is my olfactory reading of Anne. A sinuous, cool woody violet is undercut by smooth, polished glove leather. It smells expensive, unusual and refined, and has a pervasive, cool sensuality. It blends the Englishness of violet with French chamois. It was what I envisage as she beguiled Henry VIII. And it is anything but blonde.

tudor rose henry XIII by tartx

Henry XIII's symbol was the Tudor Rose (portion of this painting by Tartx)

But her fragrance choices would have necessarily shifted with her accession to the throne.  As Queen of England, Anne’s perfume choice would have changed dramatically: no longer designed to attract, but to make a statement of power and allegiance to the Tudor crown. In a day when symbols, emblems and heralds were used as branding, their display was a crucial show of power.  The Tudor Rose, a mythical hybrid which blended the red rose of Lancaster with the white of York, the royal houses united by Henry VII, was the ever-prominent logo of the Tudors.  In her absorbing history of perfumery, Holly Dugan points out that perfume played an important role in Tudor display. Henry VIII used not only the likeness of the rose in royal representations, but its perfume became a sort of olfactory emblem, a signifier of the king himself.

The flower closest to the Tudor rose is the damask rose, or rosa damascena. While this rose takes its name from Damascus, it also conjures the “roses damask’d red and white” of the Tudor emblem. Indeed, there are varieties of damask rose that are blends of red and white varieties.  This was the rose used in Henry VIII’s own  perfume formula. The damask rose is noted for its lush, ripe, full-bodied fragrance. Henry’s perfume – recorded in the housekeeping books from Hampton Court – consisted of rose attar, animal musk and sugar. Its character was probably not unlike The Different Company’s Rose Poivree, a powerful civet note underlying a distinctive, masculine rose.

Anne would have grasped the political importance of Henry’s queen having a rose scent of her own.  I am tempted to claim Shiseido’s White Rose as Anne’s fragrance. White rose was the symbol of the house of York, and Henry was notably close to his mother, Elizabeth of York. Such a choice would have been a characteristically clever and subtle homage.  Also, the character of Shiseido White Rose fits Anne’s feisty temperament.  A breathtakingly realistic, dewy white rose commands this scent, but is undercut by a sharp, green, uncomfortable thorny top note which lasts well into the perfume’s development. Eventually, a full blooming rose comes to rest on a soft bed of light musk.

AnneBoleynInTheTower

Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London with a crying attendant; c. 1835 by Edouard Cibot

But there is another perfume for Anne Boleyn: the one she might have kept with her in the Tower, awaiting execution on trumped-up charges of adultery and incest. Turning her mind to less complicated times, thoughts of her childhood at Hever may have brought consoling memories: the perfume of herbs and flowers  used in the laundry and kitchen, the hay-like smell of rushes that were kept on the floors.  Cartier Les Heures Fougueuse VII  is such a fragrance: its complicated spectrum of notes complements Anne’s sophistication, but it remains a comforting scent with its earthy, country aromas of horses, hay and herbal lavender.

ROSES AT THE TOWER OF LONDON

 In her last days in the Tower, I like to think flowers grew beneath Anne’s windows, as they do today in the Tower gardens. And that in her inexorable walk to the block, she would have caught the warm scent of May roses growing along the Tower walls, their perfume reminding her she died a queen.

Lauryn Beer, Guest Contributor

Art Direction: Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief

 Lauryn holds a Master of Philosphy in "Shakespeare and Drama to 1640" from Oxford University. She has been studying Tudor England since she was a young girl.

What perfumes would you  associate with Anne Boleyn? Was Anne villainized by history?

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13 comments

  • I am going to choose a carnation fragrance for Anne Boleyn.  Maybe Oeillet Rouges by DSH or Bellodgia by Caron.  Carnation, or gillyflower, would be suitably spicy and bold like Anne.  I love the scent of carnation and think that it is undervalued.  It would be nice to know which flower was most admired by Anne.

  • Hi Martha,

    I am not aware of any references either in Anne's writings or in the palace receipts that would indicate a particular favourite. Henry VIII certainly kept many varieties of rose in his gardens at Hampton Court, along with numerous other flowers.

  • Marion Low says:

    The red rose belonged to the house of Lancaster.  Both York and Lancaster belong to the Plantagenets.  Very interesting article.  Any fragrance of Anne's should be elusive and unusual.  I like Martha's idea of carnation,  Bellodgia is cool enough for a woman who kept a King waiting so long.

  • I was only thinking of Anne Boleyn the other day. Seeing that I was wearing Dior Poison whilst reading Philippa Gregory's 'The Other Boleyn Girl', I've always associated that fragrance with Anne. Throughout history she was depicted as a strong, bold, intelligent and dark creature, so I believe Poison would suit her well.

  • This was an interesting article, Lauryn. I will have to investigate some of your perfume choices as I am not familiar with most of them. I just finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and I find this era fascinating.

  • what a great piece, lauryn! i can only imagine how much work must have gone into it — brava 🙂

    i remember loving margaret george's Henry VIII — and that's really the extent of what i know about *any* of his wives, or him, for that matter.

    but from what i *do* know about her, i'd say something with a dark civer-musk undercurrent would be fitting for anne boleyn —  like vintage joy parfum, for example (which has also rose and jasmine.)

     

  • I read this last week and just came back to read it once again –thank you. Hever Castle Gardens–I love how the scents of her childhood most likely comforted and surrounded her.. Thank you Lauryn

  • I very much enjoyed your article. However, your statement that  'not a single definitive likeness of her exists' is wrong;
    The British Museum owns The Moost Happi medal which was made during Anne's lifetime in 1534.  Eric Ives maintains that it could only have been made by royal command, and though partially damaged, it still presents a potent portrait. 

    It is tantalising to know that at New Year in 1536, Anne was given a mother-of-pearl frankincense box by William Lok, a mercer whom she often sent abroad to forage for luxurious items. (Wolsey, ed.Skinner, p.461).  Curiously, Lok is also recorded to have been hired a few months later to eject foreigners from the Tower of London, shortly before Anne's execution.

  • Lucy, I am aware of the medal and have followed the reconstruction. However, as I am sure you know, the nose of the original is badly damaged, making a perfect likeness impossible. Reconstructions can be only that — educated guesswork. I worked for the Globe theatre project in its nascent stages back in the late 1980s. Soon after, the remains of the Rose Theatre — one of the 9 original theatres of Shakespeare's time — was found under a construction site next door. Its perimiter revealed a shape vastly different from what the leading scholars had argued for many years The Rose would have looked like. A number of reconstructions of the Rose had been erected, based on sound historical estimations. But they all turned out to be wrong when the real thing was found, the world of Elizabethan scholarship was astounded. So, while the reconstructions may turn out a reasonable or even accurate likeness, because they are reconstructions, it is impossible to state with certainty they show a definitive likeness.

    Eric Ives — big Ives fangirl, here — has the most rational arguments I have read for which of the paintings claiming to be Anne is the most likely to be an accurate depiction. I find his arguments both brilliant and persuasive, which is why I chose that painting (the first image of her in the text) he believes to be the most likely representation of her for this piece.

  • My sincere apologies, Lucy, for not recalling you, in fact, did the reconstruction. It is certainly an admirable recreation.

  • Dear Lauryn,
    No apology is needed.  It was not my intention to imply that my reconstruction of the Moost Happi medal is the one true likeness, but that the lead portrait in the British Museum is agreed by historians to be the one likeness made during Anne Boleyn's lifetime.

    I was lucky to have access to the original and study it's details under magnification. The nose in my reconstruction is, as you say, 'educated guesswork'.   However all the other features are as true a record of the original as can be, recreating the details that still exist within the original medal. Many parts of the medal are as clear as the day the coin was first struck; The damage, though distracting, is actually superficial (a result of poor storage rather than vindictive damage as suspected previously by historians).

  • I have always associated Vivienne Westwodds Boudoir with Anne for some reason, sexy and dark but with a definitive rose scent.