Tea at Trianon: 100 Years of Paris Bookshop Shakespeare and Company

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 25, 2019

100 Years of Paris Bookshop Shakespeare and Company

From The Guardian:

There’s the fact that the shop itself is beautiful: the dark wood, creaking like a ship, low-hanging absinthe-coloured lanterns giving off a dim, gold light. Its slight disorderliness – books stacked on the floor, wedged in too-small gaps on shelves, rested in the rungs of ladders – is undeniably attractive in a world where the majority of our novels are bought on the recommendation of an algorithm on a clean, white website. And its location is perfect too, allowing it to claim some of the long-dissipated bohemian charm left over by the artists and intellectuals of the old Rive Gauche, while being a quick walk from tourist favourites. And there is the much vaunted novelty that aspiring writers can stay in the shop for free; called “Tumbleweeds”, the travellers must help out with a few hours’ work, read a book a day and write a short autobiography. (Read more.)

More HERE. Share