Tea at Trianon: 'My Father Was a Spy'

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

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

'My Father Was a Spy'

From Lit Hub:

My father worked for the CIA at the height of the Cold War, from 1951 to 1983. As a case officer, his main task was to secretly recruit people who might be willing to provide valuable information to the United States. To do this work, he frequently traveled abroad, maintaining various cover identities and “safe houses” where he could conduct spy work.

His primary foreign language was German, so he spent most of his time in Europe. He was stationed in Berlin when the wall went up, and there he met and married my mother, who’d been hired by the CIA fresh out of college to be a secretary.

My family did regular tours of duty stationed in European cities, and during the in-between years, we lived in our suburban Washington, DC house, not far from CIA headquarters. When I was seven, we were stationed in Rome, Italy, and it was there that I began to see the cracks in my parents’ lives. (Read more.)