Tea at Trianon: A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

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, April 22, 2023

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

I enjoy true spy stories and this one is about a Maryland girl from Baltimore. From War History Online:

Virginia Hall was born into a privileged family in Baltimore in 1906. During WWII, she kept the Gestapo at bay and coordinated both Jedburgh teams and Resistance cells behind enemy lines in France, knowing that her life could end at any moment. If the Gestapo had broken into where she was working, it was highly unlikely that Hall could have gotten away – she had a wooden leg. Hall didn’t have to do this type of work. At the time she was born, not much was expected from upper-class women. They might go into teaching of some kind or organize local charities. Perhaps, if she were a loner, she might become a poet or locally known artist. (Read more.)

More HERE.