Tea at Trianon: On Memory, Betrayal, and Home Decor

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, June 8, 2022

On Memory, Betrayal, and Home Decor

From The Paris Review:

All of which raises the fundamental question here: What does it even mean to cover your sofa? What was the nature of the defamation being alleged?

The answer would seem to be fairly straightforward. Sofa-covering demonstrates a distinctly un-American variety of materialism, of accumulationism: we deride those who care too much about protecting stuff that doesn’t merit protection. If you’re wealthy enough to purchase expensive furniture, you’re wealthy enough to use it without a prophylactic; and if you can only afford cheap furniture, don’t you dare pretend it’s not cheap. A plastic-covered sofa signals a stereotype that is, on the whole, derogatory, albeit in a harmless, even cute kind of way. It’s very immigrant-ish: meek, apprehensive, out of touch, unchill, uptight.

This doesn’t not describe my grandmother. She was a Polish immigrant, a Holocaust survivor, who lived a long, full life in North America but never lost that not-from-here-ness. Her English was fine but far from perfect; she had a thick accent, and you could hear in her voice her hesitation, her bottomless anxiety, which to us was an inextricable, maybe even essential, part of her foreignness; there was about her a permanent discomfort, a palpable unease. She was exceedingly overprotective, besieged by worry and fear. She’d fret when one of her grandchildren or even one of her adult children left her house to walk the one (very safe) block home. When we’d tell her we were traveling to a country she considered unsafe—which was most countries—she’d tearfully plead for us to reconsider. She’d weep if we didn’t finish the food on our plates. She was in so many ways a heimish Jewish grandmother, a bubbe, very much the type—since we’re talking types—to cover her sofa. (Needless to say, many of her friends, also Polish immigrants, also Holocaust survivors, also very much the type, covered their sofas.) What I’m saying is that the stereotype fits. (Read more.)