Tea at Trianon: How Honest is Too Honest?

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, January 27, 2021

How Honest is Too Honest?

There is always room for tact. From Literary Hub:

I grew up in a family I refer to as “our little honesty cult” in which being liked wasn’t nearly as important as being “authentic.” In fact, being liked wasn’t important at all. My parents were rebelling against their own upbringings in which they were discouraged from expressing themselves and pushed to be “normal,” to fit into society, and pretend to be whoever others wanted them to be. Dad called it “following the script.” My parents led by example, by being themselves, and I inherited their lie-colored glasses, their vision of most common social practices as dishonest. I spent my childhood as an expert lie-spotter.

When I say I was off-puttingly truthful for decades, many assume that I used honesty as an excuse to insult people; I’m aware that there are many “just being honest” people who do that. My honesty did occasionally offend, like when I’d admit I’d forgotten someone’s name or if I didn’t feign interest when bored. But my honesty mostly just made people uncomfortable. I’d ask inappropriate questions, cry in public, gush to someone about how much I liked them, tell overly personal stories to any stranger. I suspect most would have preferred to have been insulted.

My honesty poisoned almost anything that involved other people. I couldn’t get or keep a job. Whenever I managed a friendship or romance, it was turbulent. Eventually, my candor had caused enough chaos that I decided to retrain my brain to lie.

For my Dad, one of the worst things you could say about a book was that it was “pandering.” It wasn’t uncommon to hear him mock a book for being a transparent ploy to gain attention and prestige, inspired not by a need to express but by desperation to be liked. So, growing up, I was always evaluating whether the books I read were “honest,” according to my family’s bizarre and extreme definition. I’ve spent the last ten years trying get away from my family’s tragic love affair with honesty, but I thought it would be fun to compile a list of the books that read to me as especially honest. (Read more.)