Tea at Trianon: Sanditon

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, August 1, 2019

Sanditon

From Vogue:

Another day, another Jane Austen adaptation. Thankfully, the first images of ITV’s forthcoming Sanditon have all the classic period drama elements that made us fall for the channel's record-breaking Downton Abbey.

There’s Rose Williams as the spirited young heroine Charlotte Heywood, staring out at the ocean like a member of the Monterey 5; Theo James as her mysterious love interest Sidney Parker (in a brocade waistcoast, of course); and Anne Reid as the formidable, ageing heiress Lady Denham, who calls to mind Maggie Smith's Lady Violet. Yet another reason to get excited: Emmy and BAFTA-winning writer Andrew Davies (War & Peace, Les Misérables, Pride and Prejudice) has written the script.

This is the first-ever major television adaptation of Austen’s last – and incomplete – novel, which she was forced to abandon due to poor health months before her death in 1817. While the Sense and Sensibility author only wrote 11 chapters of the novel, the script has been fleshed out to eight hour-long installments. (Read more.)