Tea at Trianon: Carmela's Ordeal

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

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Carmela's Ordeal

Here is a tragic story from Before Vaccines:

Carmela Carrano was born on September 2, 1912, in a six-family tenement house at 60 Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn that was gas lit and where an airless hallway bathroom was shared with another family. She was the 7^th of 11 children born to Maria Carrano between 1898-1925. The sisters – there were five at the time – all slept together in a large bed. Carmela was severely bow legged and had difficulty walking, but in spite of that difficulty and the teasing other children subjected her to, she was a sweet, kind-hearted girl.

Peter says: “She looked out for her younger sister, my grandmother, and always worried if my grandmother had her school supplies and would make sure my grandmother was ready for school. She was also devoted to her mother, even though she was small.” Peter’s grandmother was 2 years and 13 days younger than Carmela, and the two were very close. Peter’s grandmother would walk to school with Carmela every day; she was always sad when kids at school taunted Carmela over her bowed legs. The kids would tease Carmela about her “bandy legs.” But aside from her legs the kind, gentle child had no serious health problems.

“Then,” says Peter, “on August 25, 1922, she had been playing with a cousin all day, when she suddenly was stricken with high fevers and lancing headaches. The neighborhood doctor was summoned to the house, where he diagnosed her malady as viral meningitis.” (Read more.)