Tea at Trianon: Parisian Street Life

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, November 30, 2015

Parisian Street Life

The Bataclan Theater a Century Ago

From The New York Times:

Although the top of its Chinese-style pagoda no longer remains — it was destroyed in a fire in the 1930s — the building still functions more or less as it once did. From vaudeville shows to films, punk-rock shows, tango dancing and comedy acts, the Bataclan has evolved again and again to adapt to contemporary Parisian tastes.

These images attest to the fact that there is something essential to the experience of living in Paris that involves spending time outside on its streets, whether to shop, observe, drink, eat, dance, talk or listen. Despite all of the technological innovations since the end of the nineteenth century that give Parisians incentives to stay at home — televisions, computers, refrigerators, washing machines and even toilets — people still go out because going out is something that Paris invites us to do. And when people go out, it is to the same places — quite literally inside the same walls — as generations of Parisians before them.

As I walked along the canal on the way to work this morning, three days after the attacks, the cafe terraces were busy as usual, despite the sadness permeating the air. Paris is lucky to have a built environment that is resilient against change, as it only makes the rhythms and practices of urban life harder to change. You are almost obliged, by going out into the city, to perform your daily rituals: grabbing a coffee at the bar, buying a newspaper. Its architecture invites people to continue to explore, to take wrong turns, to fall in love, to protest and simply to have a drink in the same places, streets and buildings that countless others have in the past. Life within them has survived ill-fated laws prohibiting public drinking, years of German occupation and terrorist attacks from anarchists, anti-colonialists and others. After all these years, people continue to roll up their sleeves, eat and drink on the same corners. In the long shadow of the horse-drawn carriage, it is unlikely that will change. (Read more.)