Tea at Trianon: Triple Fugue

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

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Triple Fugue

From Reid's Reader:

Serendipity is always a major part of one’s reading experience. One evening some years back, seeking general diversion, I took from the shelf a battered Pan paperback published in 1947, called Alive – Alive Oh! It consisted of five long short stories by Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969). I began by reading the title one, and thoroughly enjoyed it, partly for its bitchy, fashionable-1920s tone. However, Sitwell’s introduction told me that these five stories were in fact what he regarded as the best from his two short story collections Triple Fugue (1924) and Dumb-Animal and other stories (1930). So I sought both volumes out. The former I also had on my shelves in an old orange-and-white Penguin edition. The latter was retrieved for me from the stacks of the university library. It was a first edition and I was interested to discover that the pages of its longest story (“Happy Endings”) were uncut. I cut them, reflecting on how many books there must be on library shelves and in library stacks which nobody has ever actually read. Here’s a copy of a book printed over eighty years ago; and I’m the first person to crack it. (Read more.)