Tea at Trianon: “I Don’t Look Cuddly…”

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, November 1, 2023

“I Don’t Look Cuddly…”

From British Vogue:

“It’s to do with looks, isn’t it? I don’t look cuddly. I don’t look sweet and nice.” Harriet Walter is reflecting, in that inimitable aristocratic-sounding voice of hers, on why she has, of late, made a name as being one of the very best at playing some of the very worst mothers.
Consider the distinctly unsympathetic Nicole De Carrouges in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021). Or perhaps you’ve seen her double Emmy-nominated turn as the emotionally distant Deborah in Ted Lasso. Neither, though, are a match for Lady Caroline Collingwood, a mother so aloof she’s practically floating, who helped raise (or not, as the case may be) three of the most dysfunctional children in recent TV history: Succession’s Roy siblings.
Now, the 73-year-old is readying herself to take on one of the most tyrannical matriarchs in the canon when she arrives at the National Theatre next month to star in Federico García Lorca’s 1936 tragedy The House of Bernarda Alba. Set in the stifling Spanish heat, the all-women play opens on the funeral of Alba’s husband and the new widow’s decision to enforce a period of mourning on her daughters so strict they’re forbidden to leave their claustrophobic casa for eight years. And so they sit inside and sew and stew, growing increasingly frustrated by the promise of men, sex and life that sits just beyond their front door.
“The patriarchy is, occasionally, very well run by matriarchs,” says Walter of the play, which, written just before the start of the Spanish Civil War and Lorca’s own violent death at the hands of Nationalists, is often read as a critique of the country’s then fascist forces. “Bernarda is sort of a lieutenant of the patriarchy. And so the house itself is a model of a society that is run on repression and fear.”
“I think, basically, fear is the root of all evil,” Walter continues. “And I think when I have to play somebody unpleasant I usually deal with what’s making them frightened. And she’s frightened of chaos, of sexuality.”
She doesn’t look fearful today, with hair the colour of thunder clouds, elegant in a simple sleeveless tank dress, even on an unusually sweltering morning for Chiswick in the early autumn. We have convened close to the home Walter shares with her husband of 12 years, the American actor Guy Paul, at the universally acknowledged meeting point of the middle classes (Gail’s), from where we walk to Walter’s favoured café for a couple of iced coffees. It is apparent she is nowhere near as stern nor cynical as her characters might have you believe. She has a mischievous wit, is warm, direct, generous with her thoughts and opinions. “I do look more angry than I feel,” she admits, sucking on a straw, but promises that “inside, I’m smiling”.(Read more.)