Tea at Trianon: Jane Austen’s Happiness

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, December 10, 2025

Jane Austen’s Happiness

From The Conversation:

Given that happy endings in Jane Austen’s novels chiefly revolve around a love match with the desired hero, some might conclude that as Austen remained a lifelong spinster, happiness must have eluded her. But this groundbreaking writer was a woman who filled her life with meaning through interests, friendships, socialising, travel, and most of all, a purpose.
Of course Austen had her fair share of worries. This was especially true after her father died, and she, her mother and her sister Cassandra found themselves in much reduced circumstances in less salubrious lodgings in Bath and then Southampton. A life of genteel poverty was leavened by her close relationships with the women in her life, including her good friends Martha Lloyd and Anne Sharp, a fellow writer with whom Austen could discuss the business of writing.

Much like her lovelorn heroine Anne Elliot, Austen had little affection for Bath. She missed the verdant Hampshire countryside of her youth and found the city oppressive, despite its lively social whirl. After eight years she returned to her beloved county when her brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a house on his estate at Chawton.

Here the women settled into a more comfortable life, allowing Austen the space and peace to write. It was at Chawton in 1815 that she wrote her final novel, Persuasion – the story of happiness lost and regained. The world-weary Anne Elliot, whose bloom has withered and is considered past her prime at 27, is still pining for Frederick Wentworth, the man she was persuaded to give up years before, when he re-enters her life as a dashing naval captain. (Read more.)