Tea at Trianon: Lost Interview with Truman Capote’s Aunt

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, September 9, 2023

Lost Interview with Truman Capote’s Aunt

[ Trigger Warning!] From The Bitter Southener:

All demure and gracious, she’d probably put out biscuits, butter, fig preserves. We’d sip coffee out of heirloom china, and she’d prattle on about what an adorable and precocious little boy Truman was. She’d explain how he based his classic fruitcake odyssey, “A Christmas Memory,” on their distant spinster-cousin Nanny Rumbley Faulk — or “Sook,” as they called her — with whom they’d both lived in Monroeville, Ala. Over a second cup, we’d reflect on Rudisill’s own collection of recipes, “Sook’s Cookbook: Memories and Traditional Receipts From the Deep South.” I’d return to Atlanta, file a sweet little feature, whip up a batch of Rudisill’s Real Plantation Eggnog and congratulate myself on writing an authentic Yuletide heart-warmer.

This is not how it turned out. (Read more.)