Mauve
By Simon Garfield
Reviewed by
Kenny Brechner
That a book might easily have had a different name is neither unusual nor disgraceful. Eiji Yoshikawa’s masterful epic of feudal Japan, Taiko, for example, would have been just as happy to have been named Nobunaga, since Hideyoshi and Nobunaga are equally central to the story. In the case of Simon Garfield’s new book Mauve: How One Man Invented A Color That Changed The World, the reader is drawn to reflecting that the book might as easily been titled Coal Tar: How one Chemically Potent Substance Changed the World, or The Rise and Mildly Interesting Genesis of the Dye Industry, or Tincture and Trade: The Development of Commercialism In The Chemical Sciences 1856-2001.
Mauve is a very short book, but not even a skilled writer such as Garfield could have stretched and pulled the story of William Perkin, the eighteen year old English Chemist who invented the color Mauve, across its pages. Perkins retired wealthy at 36 and kept mostly to himself. Nor do any of the adjacent strands of the dye story particularly stand out as being the central theme for a book.
The Mauve fad, initiated by Queen Victoria wearing Mauve to a Royal Wedding and The Empress Eugenie deciding "that Mauve was a color that matched her eyes," is an interesting historical anecdote. Also interesting are the tales of the scientific and mercantile communities’ awakening to the commercial and medical potentialities of chemistry, the industrial genesis of the dye industry, and even the laymen’s overview of the abstraction of chemical substances from coal tar.
The Problem with Mauve is that the composite sum of these mauve connected themes is a good dinner party conversation topic, not a good book. Mauve, ultimately, is a vibrant color, not the glue to hold a narrative together. Garfield’s exhaustive exhumation of everything mauve in word and deed has an almost desperate quality to it, as though lots of research and dramatic chapter heading will somehow bring his disjointed narrative to life.
Chapter headings such as The Terrible Glare, Self Destruction, Mauve Measles, and Poisoning the Clientele, all advertise a dramatic tone that is nowhere evident. Chapters begin with a mauve related quote or quotes, whether from O.J. Simpson Attorney Johnny Cochrane, who "insisted his suit was blue. ‘Just don’t call it mauve,’ he said." or from Oscar Wilde who advised that one should "never trust a woman who wears mauve,". These quotes, while succeeding in demonstrating the changing social attitudes to mauve, are laughable in their hyper dramatic role of chapter heading quotations.
This is not to say that the residue of history, like the residue of coal, does not yield, when properly manipulated, a useful abstract. Yet when the time comes for Garfield to elicit a sentimental outpouring from the reader regarding the forgotten fame of William Perkin, and the derogatory connotation of Mauve in contemporary English usage, the reader is not prepared to cooperate. And indeed, no injustice has been done.
