Tea at Trianon: Jane Austen's Brother's Lost Memoir

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, May 12, 2024

Jane Austen's Brother's Lost Memoir

From Country Life:

A recently acquired memoir by Jane Austen's brother might reveal more about the famous author, but there's a problem — his handwriting is very difficult to read. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single museum in possession of a good book, must be in want of people to read it. Only 24 hours after launching a plea to the public for help in deciphering the ‘spidery’ scrawl of a certain celebrated novelist’s brother, the Jane Austen’s House museum in Chawton, Hampshire, had to halt its campaign after some 2,000 people volunteered. Such is the fervour of the Janeite.

Admiral Sir Francis William Austen (known to his family as Frank), was a year older than his sister Jane and outlived her by almost 50 years. Last year, the museum acquired his 78-page memoir, written towards the end of his life when his handwriting was affected by arthritis and which has ‘never before been seen outside of family ownership’.

Jane Austen died in 1817, aged 41, and, despite her novels’ posthumous fame and 161 surviving letters, very little is known about her life. This memoir could shed some light, if only it can be read. ‘We don’t have anything detailed from her so we have to look to the family to see what they were writing and recording,’ explains Sophie Reynolds, the museum’s head of collections. (Read more.)