Tea at Trianon: A True Work of Art

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

Saturday, September 26, 2020

A True Work of Art

From The Imaginative Conservative:

Like so many of the great epics before her, Mitchell uses the backdrop of a real war—as Tolstoy used the Napoleonic Wars—to heighten the sense of striving to win love. The war upends everyone’s life. Ashley is away. Charles dies ignominiously from measles. Scarlett gives birth to the affectionately adorable but awkward Wade. And Rhett Butler becomes a heroic blockader and begins his pursuit of Scarlett, bringing a complex love triangle into the story. Though Rhett wants and even loves Scarlett, she just treats him as an empty dummy whom she tolerates simply because he brings her gifts and asks her to dance.

Scarlett’s intensity for Ashley grows as the war lingers on. When Ashley returns to Twelve Oaks on furlough, Scarlett wants to upstage Melanie, who has sewn him a grey officer’s coat. Scarlett sews him a golden sash to complete the uniform. She concocts plans to wrest Ashley away from Melanie, and even begins wishing Melanie would just die, as divorce was unthinkable at the time. As the psychological tumult continues, it is clear that Scarlett will “sacrifice anything for Ashley.” This is, as mentioned above, one of the hallmarks of a classic. (Read more.)