Tea at Trianon: Can the 'Good Life' Be Bought?

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, September 4, 2025

Can the 'Good Life' Be Bought?

From Matriarch Goals:

New Money has the income to signal to their old class cohort that they “have it all,” but their definition of what “having it all” looks like remains firmly rooted in their lower-class mindset. The difference between New Money and UMC is, therefore, not so much income as reflection and leisure: the requisite time and attention to distinguish between things that are valuable because they were scarce in our impoverished youth vs. things that are valuable because they are truly difficult to obtain, no matter where or how we grew up.
New Money buys a 6,000 square foot McMansion in a depressed or unproven neighborhood, because they had so little space growing up, and more = more. Old money is more likely to trade in total square footage for location and prestige property. New Money upgrades the same old middle-class cruise or vacation package, while old money vacations in an entirely different place altogether. New Money spends ostentatiously, in order to signal excess cash. Old money hides wealth. To the discerning, this showy display of wealth is gross because it often throws good money after bad, i.e., spending income on more, or fancier, versions of low-class aspirations. (Read more.)