Tea at Trianon: The White Ship

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

Friday, November 13, 2020

The White Ship

Author Andrea Zuvich interviews Earl Charles Spencer, one of my favorite historians. To quote:

I love to find stories from the past that have been fully or partly forgotten, and then I enjoy bringing them forward, out of the shadows, for a fresh audience. In the process, I aim to shine a light on the age in which such an event occurred. It’s what I did, for instance, with Killers of the King – a look at Charles I, the first two English Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, underpinned by the energy of an international manhunt. Well, with The White Ship I found myself in an even richer pasture. There has never been a more terrible maritime tragedy, in England’s history. It soon led to a truly ghastly civil war, as you say. It has fantastically strong female characters at its heart – especially the Empress Matilda, the accomplished and remarkable heiress who was meant to succeed her father, Henry I, but who was beaten to the Crown by her cousin Stephen, the one great man not to go down on The White Ship, because he was feeling ill and disembarked the doomed vessel just before it put out to sea. As I said to my publishers (William Collins), the tale of The White Ship is essentially Titanic meets Game of Thrones, with Sliding Doors thrown in! But, more than the unimaginable tragedy of the shipwreck, there is so much more to share with the reader – the strong rule of Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son, who comes from nowhere to rule England, then beats his eldest brother in battle to scoop up Normandy, too. How Henry accommodated the Pope, in a way that largely worked for kings of England till Henry VIII tore down that structure more than 400 years later. How Henry built up royal governance with great effect – establishing the Exchequer that still dominates our finances now. How he dealt with overmighty aristocrats and meanwhile promoted men of humble birth who relied on him for their power. And Henry I led able armies, forged clever alliances, and trounced his great rival across the Channel, Louis VI – known, thanks to his generous girth, as “Louis the Fat” – in battle. The tragedy of The White Ship is the spine of a much larger story, which goes from the Vikings, through the battle of Hastings, the shipwreck and the Anarchy, through to the establishment of the Plantagenets as England’s rulers. (Read more.)

More on the books of Charles Spencer, HERE.