Tea at Trianon: The Real Jane Grey

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, June 27, 2012

The Real Jane Grey

Author Susan Higginbotham shares her thoughts.

When I set out to write a novel about Jane Grey’s mother, Frances (Jane’s mother-in-law wormed her way into the book later), it was never with the intention of denigrating Jane Grey or of knocking her off a pedestal, but of seeing Jane through the eyes of my characters. When I did that, I saw Jane as an outspoken, even arrogant young woman, one whose intelligence might well lead her to regard more ordinary women, like her own mother, with contempt. I saw her as a young woman who was more at home corresponding with scholars than having to make small talk with her peers, and who wouldn’t have any bones about saying so. I saw a young woman who was prone to self-righteousness and to making harsh judgments about others, to seeing things in terms of black or white. I saw a young woman who might even be willing to stretch the truth at times—as when she hinted to Queen Mary that her mother-in-law had tried to poison her. (Read entire post.)