The Problem with Gadgets

From the WSJ:

Our use of technology has fundamentally changed not just our awareness in public spaces but our sense of duty to others. Engaged with the glowing screens in front of us rather than with the people around us, we often honestly don't notice what is going on. Adding to the problem is the ease with which we can record and send images, which encourages those of us who are paying attention to document emergencies rather than deal with them. The fascination with capturing images of violence is nothing new, as anyone who has perused Weegee's photographs of bloody crime scenes from the early 20th century can attest. But the ubiquity of camera-enabled cellphones has shifted the boundaries of acceptable behavior in these situations. (Read more.)

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Was Mary Queen of Scots a Martyr?

There is a lively debate on The Elizabeth Files. My opinion is that, yes, Mary can be considered a martyr of the Catholic faith. First of all, Elizabeth should not have been holding Mary prisoner all of those years. As much as I admire Elizabeth, she had no legal right to keep Mary captive. She did so for several reasons, one of which was that Mary was a Catholic contender for the throne of England and thus a rallying point for the Catholics of the realm who were being persecuted by Elizabeth.

Secondly, Mary did not plot to kill Elizabeth; she plotted to *escape* which as the prisoner of a foreign power she had every right to do. Why is it so wrong for Mary to plot against Elizabeth when Elizabeth was holding her as a prisoner?

Thirdly, Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir demonstrate that Mary played no part in Darnley’s murder and she married Bothwell unwillingly, after he raped her. Elizabeth should have helped Mary instead of having her imprisoned.

Fourthly, Mary was told by one of the gentlemen escorting her to the scaffold that her death would mean that Protestantism would live, whereas if she lived it might mean Protestantism would die. It was THAT statement (which I paraphrase) which told Mary that she was indeed dying because she was a Catholic and a Catholic queen.

Fifthly, I will add that Elizabeth had no legal right to have Mary put on trial. English law adamantly insisted on a trial by one’s peers. Mary was an anointed Queen and had no peer but Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had no right to try a foreign head of state. Furthermore, Mary was not given counsel and she was in a foreign land where the customs and proceedings were strange to her. She was put at a distinct disadvantage during her trial, which had the air of a kangaroo court and contravened the laws of the kingdom.

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Marie-Caroline

Her Royal Highness the Duchesse de Berry.

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Victorian Decorating

My research for my new novel has brought me to some fascinating places. To quote:

Paper was rarely used on the ceiling in this period. Ceilings were generally decorated with a plaster or papier-mache center medallion from which hung a chandelier. The decoration was often based on leaves or a flower. Most critics of the period advised the use of a cornice to separate the walls and ceiling. If there was no cornice, then the wallpaper border would be used alone.

Graining and marbleizing appeared often on doors and woodwork. If you were having the house painted in oil paint, then the added cost for graining was slight. A coat of varnish was added to the decorative finish to protect it. This also made it smooth and therefore easier to dust and wash. Because of this, graining appeared often on doors, window sashes and baseboards, areas that were exposed to the most dirt....

Most American floors during the first half of the 1800’s were of softwood boards, often laid in random widths, and never stained and varnished. If they were not completely covered with some kind of floor covering, they had to be scrubbed with a stiff brush and sand, and sometimes bleached with lye. Painting floors was something the homeowners could do themselves and was a bit better than leaving them bare. This was a fairly common thing to do. Floors were often painted in patterns to simulate rugs. The next step up was a painted floor cloth. These could be rather costly, but a homeowner could make their own and save quite a bit of money, and many did. Generally they were placed in hallways and parlors. There was a varnished paper floor covering advertised for sale in the 1820’s, but it’s not known if it ever became popular. Floor tiles came into use by the 1850’s, but on the whole, those that survived tended to be the less expensive solid colored ones. One of the most universally used floor coverings was matting. The coarse ones were made from coconut fiber, straw, and corn husks. Finer ones were made from sheepskin or thick wool. Some households used it to cover woolen carpets during the summer. Others used it as their only floor covering. Still others used it under carpets as padding, or as an edging if the carpet was not wall to wall. It came in @ 3 foot wide strips, which were cut and them seamed together. (Read more.)

And HERE is a site about Victorian curtains. Share

The Black Prince and the Horrors of War

From English Historical Fiction Authors:

With these two considerations in mind—Bradbury’s explanation that if the massacre did happen the prince was far from unusual, and Barber’s contention that the massacre didn’t happen and that Froissart is all wet—reconciling the accounts of the Black Prince as the flower of chivalry and the Black Prince as a genocidal maniac became a little easier.

As I mentioned above, my novel I Serve ends ten years prior to Limoges, but my understanding of the events of that siege still helped me construct the character of the prince in his younger days. Thus, in my novel, when the prince observes his own father Edward III threatening to massacre the citizens of Calais, he does not react with shocked modern sensibilities but acknowledges that the king would have the right to do so—for the siege had been a year in length and cost him much time and many men. But at the same time, he also throws in his plea with the remonstrations of the nobles and the implorations of his mother for the king to grant the citizens of Calais clemency.

And, if Barber is right, then despite all the rape, pillage, and slaughter we see splashed about the pages of the medieval chronicles, maybe clemency was the case more often than not. Maybe sieges were a bloodier affair on paper than in person. Maybe the Black Prince was not the butcher of Limoges. One can always hope….(Read more.)

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"Autumn Twilight"

"Autumn Twilight" by Emil Nolde

From Peter Kurth. Share

A Fallen Idol

A reassessment of Napoleon Bonaparte. To quote:

Seventy years ago, interned by the Germans in Buchenwald concentration camp, the Dutch professor Peter Geyl tried out on the inmates his view that the place of Napoleon in history should be reconsidered in the light of Hitler’s tyranny. Although Napoleon was not the author of genocide and was wedded to equality and the rights of man, Geyl nevertheless thought that Napoleon was responsible for murder and massacre on a grand scale. These ideas were subsequently developed in Napoleon For and Against (1949), in which he demonstrated how French historians were divided over what the great man stood for. For some, he was the saviour of the Revolution against the forces of reaction and the architect of French greatness, while for others he was a Corsican arriviste who used France as a platform for his ambitions as usurper, tyrant and warmonger.

This division of opinion not only affected historians. During his life Napoleon’s French and foreign enemies called him ‘Buonaparte’, suggesting that he was not French, and spun a black legend about him as an ogre, worse than Genghis Khan. Against this was elaborated the Napoleonic legend. The ex-emperor’s own dictation of the Memorial of Saint-Helena, published in 1823, soon after his death, presented himself as a saviour of France, a friend of liberty and builder of a European Confederation. His imprisonment by the British contributed to a story of his martyrdom and rumours of a Second Coming. He inspired a political ideology and movement – Bonapartism – that promised a strong leader carried by the popular will, which was variously incarnated by Napoleon III and Charles de Gaulle. His charisma inspired Romantic heroes of fiction, such as Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov and Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, while his brooding presence overshadows Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862), Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) and Thomas Hardy’s Dynasts (1904-8).

Film directors have struggled to reduce the Napoleonic epic to the screen. Abel Gance’s brilliant silent movie of 1927 reached only the Italian campaign of 1796 and five further episodes were abandoned. Bondarchuk’s 1970 film, Waterloo, mobilised 16,000 Red Army extras and Orson Welles as Louis XVIII, but its financial challenges persuaded Kubrick to abandon his own projected Napoleon in favour of A Clockwork Orange. Less direct, more playful depictions have often proved more successful, as in Woody Allen’s Love and Death (1975), Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) and novellas such as Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion (1987). (Read more.)

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The Duchesse d'Angoulême on Pilgrimage

This picture is based upon a stained-glass window showing Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte's visit to Notre Dame de Liesse. It is one of the many pilgrimages the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette made during the Restoration. (Via Anna Gibson.)

Notre Dame de Liesse in 1787

Statue of Our Lady of Joy

More on Notre Dame de Liesse, HERE and HERE. Share

Morality and Public Order

From Crisis:

Experience has made it obvious that the abolition of traditional rules and roles doesn’t deliver the dignity, respect, happiness, or effective freedom that was promised. Instead, it’s given us hooking up, slutwalks, failure to bond, epidemics of STDs, complaints about rape culture, and a great deal of resentment. The problem is that sex is profoundly expressive and interpersonal, and it can’t mean what it naturally means when it’s disconnected from other considerations. If you get rid of the natural function of sex as a guide, and therefore the natural ordering of the relation between man and woman, that relation becomes a matter of shifting and conflicting desires, and we end up in the crude and manipulative world that has grown up around us.

We should also point out that self-interest is a big reason our ruling elites support social liberalism. The age of liberation from sexual roles and standards has also been an age of ever greater inequality. Traditional standards restrict what the so-called 1% can do, and functional families diffuse authority to all levels of society. With that in mind it’s hard to see why people concerned about inequality should enlist on the side chosen by Hollywood propagandists and billionaire foundations. (Read more.)

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