Tea at Trianon: The Precious Individuality of Cows

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

Thursday, November 2, 2023

The Precious Individuality of Cows

From The Examined Life:

I loved watching the cows climb the tractor, but what gripped me most was the fear they might fall. Our love for animals is closely entwined with our love for humans. A biological fixture of brain processing that programs us not merely to notice but to care about all living things.
Hewn from the same heart fibers that brought us Doris Lessing's triptych of essays on the feline companions to Mary Oliver's melodies of love for her canine soulmates is Rosamund Young's genial The Secret Life of Cows. Stories sopped from the rich overflow of emotional life in a herd: love, jealousy, anger, and everything in between. Young's anecdotes "weave in and out of one another to form narratives" of friendship, family, and richly developed characters of the bovine variety. (Read more.)