Tea at Trianon: Mathilde Kschessinska

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

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Mathilde Kschessinska

The Sword and the Sea has a review about a new biography about the fascinating Russian prima ballerina assoluta, Mathilde Kschessinska. Share

4 comments:

May said...: Thank you. I half hesitated to put that up, at first.; October 7, 2010 at 11:18:00 AM EDT
tubbs said...: And now we know what Madame's Halloween costume shall be.; October 7, 2010 at 3:54:00 PM EDT
tubbs said...: ...and how could a gal dance while being squeezed to death with all that whale-bone?; October 7, 2010 at 3:59:00 PM EDT
Christina said...: Who needs bodice-rippers when we can read biographies like these? I'm looking forward to this with interest. The story about how she became Nicholas' mistress is an interesting one. As I understand she was thrust at him by his father Tsar Alexander in hopes that having a mistress would "make a man" of him. It's hard to rival the Russian royals for dissolute behavior, isn't it?; October 7, 2010 at 4:24:00 PM EDT