Tea at Trianon: The Elusive 'Good Marriage' in Crime Fiction

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, June 9, 2020

The Elusive 'Good Marriage' in Crime Fiction

From Crime Reads:

In Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, former detective Nick Charles and his heiress wife Nora are drawn into helping the young, beautiful Dorothy Wynant find her father. Soon the quick-witted but hard-partying couple is entangled in the dark web of Dorothy’s family.

Nick focuses on solving the mystery, while being boldly pursued by more than one woman during the course of his investigation—sometimes in front of Nora. Somehow, Nora’s faith in Nick isn’t undermined, though. She never has a moment of doubt and doesn’t express even a hint of jealousy. So blind is Nora’s faith that I did find myself thinking on more than one occasion: “Wake up, lady, there’s a fox in your hen house!” (Both Nick and Nora are very intoxicated, a lot of the time.) But in the end, Nora is right to trust Nick—he notices the beautiful women in a human way, but never really contemplates straying. And it seems, in part, Nora’s faith that inspires Nick to be so trustworthy. (Read more.)