Tea at Trianon: What Makes Niagara Falls Such A Perfect Setting for a Murder Mystery?

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, January 6, 2023

What Makes Niagara Falls Such A Perfect Setting for a Murder Mystery?

From Crime Reads:

The manmade structures of Niagara have changed enormously since the 1890s, but the Falls themselves have remained as awe-inspiring as when Father Louis Hennepin first saw them in December of 1678. “The Waters which fall from this horrible Precipice, do foam and boyl after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the Wind blows out of the South, their dismal roaring may be heard more than Fifteen Leagues off.” (A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. French publication in 1697. English translation and publication in 1698.)

Once you’ve trained yourself to let go of the present, it’s bewitching to sink into a bygone era. There’s nothing you can do to change it. It may not be a comfortable place to linger too long, but the past is a known quantity, which makes it safe for the writer, if not for the characters with whom she peoples her not-so-imaginary world. (Read more.)