Tea at Trianon: Romantic Poetry and Lamb Chops

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

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Romantic Poetry and Lamb Chops

From History.com:

After that first turbulent year with Mary—during which they ran off in the night to France, walked most of the way to Switzerland and returned broke to England a few months later—he found himself in the countryside north of London, feeling just a bit the worse for wear. Mary suspected that he was merely malnourished, subsisting as he was on a diet that consisted primarily of bread, butter and lemonade. “Lemonade” in this case being a bit of a code word for a widely used and commercially prepared medicinal concoction of opium and ipecac.

In short, it is hardly surprising that the poor boy was wasting away. While his vegetarianism as such was hardly to blame, the opium and ipecac were surely not helping the matter.

Into this scene strides the brisk, practical figure of Thomas Peacock, a novelist and poet who had met and befriended Shelley just a few years earlier. Peacock was a few years older than Shelley—just senior enough to be able to get away with ordering the younger man about, it seems—and it’s pretty clear that he had his feet set rather more firmly on the ground. After assessing the situation of his pale, wan friend, Peacock apparently convinced Shelley to expand his diet and experience some good, old-fashioned British cooking. (Read entire post.)