Tea at Trianon: "This is Wild Country"

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

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

"This is Wild Country"

Enbrethiliel found the above picture of the Castle of Foix in her review of my novel. It is closer to what Mirambel may have looked like in The Night's Dark Shade than the present castle at Lourdes upon which Mirambel is based. Share

3 comments:

Julygirl said...: It defies the imagination when one sees structures like that built upon a rocky pinnacle.; April 21, 2010 at 9:49:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: I know! Even with bulldozers and cranes it would have been a feat! They had nothing but ropes and pulleys.; April 21, 2010 at 9:53:00 AM EDT
The North Coast said...: I echo the thoughts of both of you. I'm staggered by the incredible structures built by people using only hand tools and muscle power were able to construct.. though I wonder at the human toll that they extracted. The only thing more incredible than their size and solidity and daunting sites, is their beauty.

And we who have these unbelievable power tools at our disposal- cranes, bulldozers, AutoCad, the ability to ship parts by air or rail - build buildings that are so utterly disposable. Somebody remarked that instead of using our power tools to augment our skills, we've REPLACED skill with them, which is why the more power tools we use, the worse our buildings are.; December 9, 2010 at 7:42:00 AM EST