Tea at Trianon: When Literary Legends Meet

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

Sunday, April 30, 2023

When Literary Legends Meet

From CrimeReads:

As you may have guessed, in attendance was Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, then a correspondent who reported on the appearance of Dickens for a San Francisco newspaper. He described the set.

“Dickens stood in front of a huge red screen … Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on and on it he also had a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen – a bulkhead – a sounding board, I took it to be – and overhead in front was suspended a long board which threw down a glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects of great paintings. Style! – There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings.”

But, as Matt Seybold writes, Twain considered Dickens a bad reader because he “did not cut the syllables cleanly.” His “husky voice” and “monotonous” delivery didn’t do justice to “the beautiful pathos of his language.” Still, Twain, “the aspiring novelist,” was a fan of the legend before him, admiring “that queer old head” with “the wonderful mechanisms within it,” Seybold writes.

Some twenty years later, in 1888, Twain’s fame clearly established, he met with Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson, who gave the world, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. (Read more.)