Tea at Trianon: "New information!"

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

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

"New information!"

From an Audible customer on Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars:

This book had tons of new tidbits I previously didn’t know about Marie Antoinette as well as corrections to facts I THOUGHT I knew. As it turns out much of the “common knowledge” about this remarkable woman lacks context or according to this author is flat out false. It was really very interesting and the whole book just flew by. The narrator was smooth and unobtrusive, had a very pleasant cultured voice, and did a fantastic job with a LOT of French to pronounce. I’m easy bumped by narrators that mispronounce words or try accents they can’t pull off - not a problem with this book and narrator. Definitely worth the credit.

And another:

By now, most savvy audiobook and physical book buyers know you must discern who wrote a biography or history and what is their ideological and methodological slant. I've read almost all of the biographies of Marie Antoinette and as a professional historian, I know that Elena Maria Vidal got it right with "Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars." Instead of the prevalent views portrayed in recent fluff-piece movies and popular books, Vidal has captured her essential qualities and authoritative historiography in an accessible, entertaining, and what is essentially a Christian view of a devout Catholic queen. Readers of any religious confession can be informed and edified by this much-needed correction of the "let them eat cake" myths that surround this martyr of the French Revolution. One small example is Vidal's clearing up what the French word dissipation actually means —love of distraction, not the love of fast living — which only a scholar of all things French would understand to be faux amis. The secularists have taken it and run with it!

This biography is of great interest to Catholic readers who'd appreciate the devotional quality of this historical - not ahistorical - view of the Queen's life and French history which is greatly tainted by modern prejudices and secular blather.