Tea at Trianon: Dying Young

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, July 28, 2011

Dying Young

If Londoners were able to make it to age twenty-four they felt very lucky. (Via Hermes.)

The data from parish files shows how London was among the most dangerous and unhealthy places on the planet only 200 years ago. Ancestry.co.uk said the capital's records will cover a period from 1539 to 1980, including information on many of the 100,000 Londoners who died of Bubonic Plague between 1665 and 1666. (Read entire article.)

Violet said...: Poor people, the world is so unfair. Once i was in the city and i saw so many poor people.

It is so terrible to see human beings suffer like that.; July 30, 2011 at 5:01:00 AM EDT