Tea at Trianon: Bring Back Cocktail Parties

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, March 9, 2014

Bring Back Cocktail Parties

From The Huffington Post:

I remember being aghast when the price of a cocktail hit $11 -- and now we live in the era of the $15 martini. Even dives are raising their prices. Of course, I'm in the NYC region, where the cost of living has replaced pickpockets as the thing most likely to take all your money. Even still, when you think about a budget martini and the dubious ingredients mingling in the glass, wouldn't it be much better to get one bottle of really good gin, rather than spend that money on bad drinks?...

In our grandparents' day, people dressed up to go to a friends' house for cocktails. Would it kill us to raise the bar on everyday dress now and then? No. But I digress. In the comfort of home, you can comfortably dress up or dress down. No hobbling down the sidewalk in heels. No self-consciousness because you're one of those people who would rather wear flip-flops everywhere. It works for all types. (Read more.)