Tea at Trianon: Training for Divorce

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 5, 2007

Training for Divorce

Yes, I know that cohabitation outside of marriage is often decried on this blog. If you are bored, sorry. Living together is rampant; somebody has to say something..... Share

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: All those statistics are probably true....but if the people in those statistics had married would things have turned out differently? One must not look at the CONDITION of living together, but the behavioral characteristics of people who CHOOSE to live together rather than choose marriage.; October 5, 2007 at 10:58:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Yes, but if the social mores were not so lax, people with disordered lifestyles might be bit more pressured to get their lives together.; October 8, 2007 at 11:22:00 AM EDT