Tea at Trianon: The Paris of Latin America

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 6, 2017

The Paris of Latin America

From The Week:

Spend a week in Buenos Aires and you may feel like you've seen half of Europe, said Dina Mishev at The Washington Post. Home to "gorgeous architecture, a rich café culture, wide avenues to stroll, and narrow cobblestone streets to bike," the Argentine capital is for good reason known as the Paris of Latin America, though that may be selling its cosmopolitan charms short. An acquaintance once quipped that the residents of Buenos Aires are "Italians who think they're French and speak Spanish." In December, a friend and I decided that visiting a Paris that was sunny and warm beat flying that month to the darker and colder original. Walking into the Alvear Palace, our Belle Époque hotel, we knew we would be treated like European aristocracy — "at least for several days."

To get ourselves in the right frame of mind, we decide to walk to our bike-rental shop, a stroll that takes us from one of the city's "most European-feeling" neighborhoods to San Telmo, one of its oldest. Naturally, we run behind schedule — "because I can't stop taking pictures of the architecture." At one cobblestoned intersection, the buildings' styles range from Edwardian to brutalist, Beaux Arts, and art deco. Once we meet our guide, we spend the day pedaling along leafy avenues and one-way stone streets. Lezama Park, with its sculptures and large esplanade, feels "decidedly" French, though its jacaranda and rosewood trees "pull me back to South America." In La Boca, an Italian neighborhood, "the air smells like southern Italy — anchovies and olive oil." (Read more.)