Tea at Trianon: Jane Austen and the Seaside

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, June 7, 2018

Jane Austen and the Seaside

From Regency History:

I originally wrote this post in 2012 after rereading Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last novel, completed by ‘another lady’. The description of Sanditon was of particularly interest to me as I have been researching sea bathing in the Georgian era and this gave me a contemporary, albeit fictional, description of the seaside. The words that Jane Austen put into Mr Parker’s mouth represented the fashionable view of the seaside at the time and she must have been consciously echoing the words of such sea bathing enthusiasts as Dr Crane of Weymouth who wrote Cursory Observations on Sea-bathing.

Mr Parker

held it indeed as certain that no person could be really well, no person (however upheld for the present by fortuitous aids of exercise and spirits in a semblance of health) could be really in a state of secure and permanent health without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year. The sea air and sea bathing together were nearly infallible, one or the other of them being a match for every disorder of the stomach, the lungs or the blood. They were anti-spasmodic, anti-pulmonary, anti-septic, anti-bilious and anti-rheumatic. Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing – fortifying and bracing – seemingly just as was wanted – sometimes one, sometimes the other.1

Was Jane Austen really convinced of the infallibility of the seaside as a cure for all ills? I think not! Rather she was laughing at the current fashion by creating the indefatigable Mr Parker who is both likeable and somewhat ridiculous in his extreme enthusiasm for Sanditon. (Read more.)