Here’s What Annabel Lee from Poe’s Legendary Poem Smells Like
I was discussing bringing out some of my older Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Fragrances for Fall 2021 and I realized a bottle of Annabel Lee that I had stashed away is quite rare. Who knew? Annabel Lee was introduced with A Demon in my View Collection that ran for several months on the Lab’s website back in 2005. The collection was a tribute to the late, great Edgar Allan Poe and obviously, no collection would be complete without a fragrance called Annabel Lee right?
Someone is selling a bottle of Annabel Lee on eBay for $150. What?! My head about exploded when I saw this. I’d personally never sell my bottle as I do cherish it but wow, talk about greed.
Since the start of Spooky Season is upon us (FIGHT ME! It’s September 1st! Let the Halloween festivities begin!) my thoughts came to Annabel Lee and I scanned my laptop and brought up a picture of her bottle that I had stashed away. I closed my eyes and I thought of how she smelled and this article came to be at 4:50 AM as I listened to the gentle breathing of my boyfriend at rest, as a cloud engulfed our hotel room and surrounded us with an eerie fog so far above the city of Seattle, as images of spooky things entered my head….!
Annabel Lee does in fact hold a special place in my fragrance collection. Ah, Annabel Lee! We can spend many hours studying Poe’s fetish of death and beautiful women. The loss of his mother, adoptive mother, and wife are all tragic events that may have influenced many of his writings that touch on the topic of love, death, and beautiful women. Or maybe Poe was just a tragic individual with a dark personality that was fighting off demons we knew nothing about.
I read the poem in the 7th grade. I remember it well because our English Lit class was led by a teacher who was quite young, fresh out of college, and had a romantic love of literature. Thinking back on that class I remember well how loved all the books and poems were by that teacher and how she introduced everything we read with such gusto and passion. It was a grand year in my bookworm life to be in a class where every book and every poem was as loved by a teacher as it was by me.
One of the lines that always stuck out for me was:
“Of my darling � my darling � my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
In my young mind, I thought of Annabel Lee encased in her tomb and buried beneath the sea she lived by. Her tomb wrapped lovingly in tangles of seaweed with Starfish clinging to the sides and sunk into the soft bed of ocean sand as the waves gently rocked Annabel Lee and ensured she remained at rest in death forever. I dunno where that image came from but I always saw it in my mind’s eye as such. I thought of her Love staring out at the ocean and yearning for her to return, woefully sad at her loss, forever starting at the sea and hoping she’d rise up from the ocean floor and return to his arms.
It’s quite fun to romanticize every little thing Poe wrote and think of it as him yearning for his beloved wife whom he lost to consumption aka tuberculosis. For all accounts, Poe loved her dearly. I always loved him quoted as saying, “I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife.” Poe wasn’t a terribly tall man at 5’8 but it makes me smile when I hear him call her his little wife. I’m quite short and my boyfriend always calls me his little lover. TMI but whenever I am NOT feeling terribly confident he’ll sing to me “Hey Lover” and all feels right with the world again!
You may wonder what Annabel Lee smelled like. Was she salty like the sea? Was she aquatic with ozone notes giving her a fresh, soothing spa-like fragrance? She is not. Hers is perhaps the scent of a funeral parlor or maybe, just maybe a lady’s hair after a good shampoo day.
The Lab portrayed Annabel Lee as a soft, innocent blend, touched with a funereal, gloom-filled air aka notes of wild peony, sweet pea, cucumber, and white sage with sea lilies and moss. I guess we know where I got that idea of a funeral parlor from but it makes sense to some extent. When I smell Annabel Lee she comes across heavy on the floral notes which does in fact remind you of mourning and the odd need we have to celebrate death with flowers. The scent of flowers at a funeral can cloy at you and induce a migraine. It’s not enough to be sad but about someone’s passing but you’ll also have to fight off the overpowering stench of lilies, roses, and carnations as you do!
Annabel Lee likes to toe the line at being dark and morbid yet light, soft, pretty, and innocent. She’s harsh at first with a burst of hard lily but as she settles and dries down the sweet pea and peony dominate and take over the lily and she goes from mourning the death of a dear one to happiness about how they may be in a better place that may be hell, heaven, or somewhere between the two. She’s a rebirth fragrance one that reminds me of Spring. If I close my eyes tightly enough and take her all in she smells like a really great shampoo dare I say Herbal Essence circa 1995. She becomes very shampoo-like as her wear progresses from minutes to hours.
I dislike florals intensely unless they are sweet and Annabel Lee is all feminine floral! But she’s a very light feminine fragrance. One I could see Poe’s wife smelling like. Delicate and pretty and tiny and lady-like. There’s a bit of sweetness to her which means she isn’t a heavy, cloying floral. She’s fresh and pretty. Cucumber, moss, and even the white sage here just fail to make an appearance. All that remains of our beloved Annabel Lee are the sweetest peonies and the light innocence of sweet pea.
This my fellow fragrance fans is Annabel Lee.
I feel sadness you may never experience her. But perhaps one day Beth, Brian, and Ted might revive the Demon in my View Collection and perhaps Annabel Lee will make her return. For now, she rests in eternal sleep and waits for the day the Lab will wake her again from the dead.
What Fall fragrances are you hauling out?
Do share them with me, please!