Tea at Trianon: Revisiting "Ghosts on the Roof"

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

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Revisiting "Ghosts on the Roof"

Whittaker Chambers and the Romanovs. (This is meant to be a commentary on Stalinist oppression and is not to be seen as reflecting the true thoughts of any Romanovs, living or deceased.) To quote:

TIME’s March 5, 1945, edition carried something unusual in its pages: a “political fairy story” called “The Ghosts on the Roof” — most recently cited as a top piece in Time: 85 Years of Great Writing (2008).

Seven ghosts settle on the roof of the Livadia Palace at Yalta, where they are accosted by Clio, Muse of History. “Madam, I am Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias…” “Nicholas—how nice to see you again! …Wherever have you been?” Once they catch up, however, History learns to her great surprise of the Tsar’s new political stripes…

As shockingly prescient and as wickedly funny now as it was nearly 70 years ago, please plunge pleasantly into “The Ghosts on the Roof.” (Read entire article.)