Tea at Trianon: Inns and Taverns of Early America

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, November 13, 2013

Inns and Taverns of Early America

From It's About Time:

During the colonial period it was a commonly held belief, that drinking ground water in the British American colonies could possibly make one sick. To combat this real or imagined danger, colonists of every rank, age, race, & gender drank alcohol often - from fermented, homemade, aged cider to distilled liquors. Generally, families drank with every meal, while at work, and at every social & public gathering except church. Almost everyone was something of a tippler. (In the 14th century, a tippler was a seller of liquor rather than an avid consumer. It came to mean a habitual drinker 200 years later. Tipsy was used to describe the slightly intoxicated as early as 1577.)

And colonials gathered together to drink. Indoor & garden taverns became the scene for political debate, business transactions, gossip, and even romance, because women were more often allowed in garden taverns than in indoor taverns. (First appearing in print in 1286, the word tavern initially meant a wine shop. It didn’t become a proper place to drink until around 1440.) (Read more.)