Tea at Trianon: Interview with Alison Weir

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

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Interview with Alison Weir

Alison Weir discusses Queen Jane Seymour. From the Queen Anne Boleyn blog:

We don’t know a lot about Jane’s mother. After being an admired beauty in youth, commemorated in verse by the poet John Skelton, she took to a life of domesticity and child-rearing after marrying Sir John Seymour. It’s likely that being of gentle birth, she wanted to see her children achieve success and good marriages. Much of my portrayal of her is, of necessity, fictional.

In his poem, ‘The Garland of the Laurel’ (originally written around 1495), Skelton describes a visit he made to Sheriff Hutton Castle as the guest of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. The Countess of Surrey, Elizabeth Tylney, was so impressed with Skelton’s poetry that, at her behest, her daughters, Lady Elizabeth and Lady Muriel, with some other ladies – among them Margery Wentworth (later Lady Seymour) – made for him a laureate’s garland of silk, gold and pearls in honour of his talent. No one could then have dreamed that these two young ladies would give birth to future queens of England – Jane Seymour and Anne Boleyn. (Read more.)