Tea at Trianon: When the United States Spoke French

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

Monday, July 14, 2014

When the United States Spoke French

From The Baltimore Sun:

Francois Furstenberg, an associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University, follows the exiles on their American adventures in his new book, "When the United States Spoke French."

The refugees include the future master diplomat Charles-Maurice Talleyrand; the social reformer the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; the dashing Vicomte de Noailles, Lafayette's brother-in-law and a onetime dancing partner of Marie Antoinette; the avid traveler, writer and philosopher the Comte de Volney; and the insecure bookstore owner Moreau de Saint-Mery, the only nonaristocrat of the bunch.

"They were extraordinary people," Furstenberg says in a recent phone chat. (An edited transcript appears below.)

"It's no coincidence that they left such a mark on the world. For instance, Talleyrand reshaped European borders for nearly a century.

"But this was also the Age of the Enlightenment, when people dabbled in all kinds of things. To be a philosopher was also to be a scientist and active in politics. The sense of a separation in these disciplines only emerges later in the 19th century."

Furstenberg, 41, is half French himself and spent 10 years teaching history in Montreal. This is his second stint in Baltimore: He earned his doctorate in history from Hopkins in 2003, left for a decade and returned in January as a member of the faculty.

The author's first book focused narrowly on life in the United States in the 18th century. For his second, he wanted to explore how events in Europe and the Caribbean helped to shape the country we live in today. (Read more.)