Tea at Trianon: Mary Lincoln and Marie-Antoinette

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

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Mary Lincoln and Marie-Antoinette

Two tragic ladies. To quote:

Lincoln signs her copy of theLife of Marie Antoinette, a marvelous association piece Her signature, "Mary Lincoln," accomplished on the half-title page of Charles Duke Younge, The Life of Marie Antoinette Queen of France (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1877) xvi, 432 pages, 8vo., bound in tooled purple cloth boards with titled spine....Although Mary Lincoln did not meet the same fate as Marie Antoinette, she likely identified with the French queen's plight. Like the guillotined French monarch, her words (whether true or not) and intentions were frequent targets of abuse in the press. Both were viewed as spendthrifts, and while Marie Antoinette's commitment to the welfare of the French people was questioned in her own time ("let them eat cake"), Mary Lincoln's loyalty to the Union (in light of her southern familial ties) was frequently cast into doubt by a hostile press.(Read more.)