Tea at Trianon: Ask Sir James

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, February 20, 2013

Ask Sir James

A review by author Stephanie Cowell:

The story behind the genesis of this biography of the Victorian physician Sir James Reid who died in 1923 is almost as fascinating as the story itself. The physician’s grandson inherited Sir James’ home of Ellon Castle in Aberdeenshire. And his wife, on a cleaning spree one day, peered into a dark cupboard. Among the dusty albums was a large cash box containing forty small pocket diaries written in neat tiny handwriting which proved to be a meticulous daily account of Sir James’ life as he worked with his most famous royal patient and her family. Michaela Reid read the diaries and pored through the dusty scrap albums to write her biography ASK SIR JAMES. But she was never able to study the medical diaries and something called the Green Memo Book because they were burned for the sake of discretion by Sir James’ son. (Read entire post.)