Tea at Trianon: Gracious Plenty

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

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Gracious Plenty

From InsideChic:

For most of the 1980s and ’90s, our grandmother, Elizabeth Maxwell, rented a tiny brick house hidden behind a grander home on Meeting Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Her stocky dwelling had served in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the separate kitchen house for the large stucco mansion directly in front of it—detached, so that the occasional hearth or chimney fire wouldn’t engulf the entire property. The place was perfectly suited to our Gran, partly because of its size—she’d been widowed since 1971—but more so because she was a passionate cook and an ardent recipe collector and she loved to entertain.

In 1997, Gran’s landlady and friend, Elizabeth Young, who lived in the big house, became a widow too, and for several years the two of them were very much in demand on the South-of-Broad reception, wedding, and cocktail circuit, attending a party—if not two, and often three—most nights. Heels clacking, pocketbooks swinging, they’d set out around 6 p.m. in Mrs. Young’s black Taurus, always parked in front of the wrought-iron gate, for a leisurely evening of open bars, cheese bites, finger sandwiches, and shrimp every which way.

People would casually remark—We don’t know where they get the energy! At their age!
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