Yes, sorry I haven't been doing more to counterbalance it. If I had had more of the French texts excerpted the whole would have looked less bad. That said, at least I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any worse than this... And take confidence in the fact that it went out of print almost as soon as it was published and is now pretty impossible to find (I copied the extracts I have from the copy at the New York Public Library--there isn't even a library-copy in my state!)
You know, I wouldn't really put it past Danton to try to do that. But Éléonore would have slapped him in real life, I have no doubt about that.
As for that line... well, I have a bit of a rant about that (which you probably already know, but I just need to get it out of my system):
Basically, there was not really any time during the entirety of the ancien régime when it was acceptable for a respectable woman to go around with her shoulders uncovered (and this is going all the way back to the Middle Ages). Even when dresses appear to be off-the-shoulder, a chemise would be worn underneath, so the shoulders were not actually visible. (This is, by the way, why the costumes in "La Reine Margot" are wrong.)
More to the point, there was no style of dress cut that way in the 18th century, so where on earth Éléonore would find one is beyond me. Furthermore, fichus were far from a new invention, though starting in the 1780s it did become fashionable for them to cover more.
This was a change that happened before the Revolution, and I'm fairly certain that Maxime was perfectly indifferent to the fact. (I say "fairly" certain, because, Maxime not having been a "eunuch" as was often claimed, if he had looked up from whatever he was doing or from his thoughts long enough to notice, he might have been faintly sorry. Obviously, he wouldn't have had any particular interest in encouraging such a fashion, even if he had ever been in a position to do so.)
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regna
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Date: Tuesday, 13 November 2007 20:12 (UTC)You know, I wouldn't really put it past Danton to try to do that. But Éléonore would have slapped him in real life, I have no doubt about that.
As for that line... well, I have a bit of a rant about that (which you probably already know, but I just need to get it out of my system):
Basically, there was not really any time during the entirety of the ancien régime when it was acceptable for a respectable woman to go around with her shoulders uncovered (and this is going all the way back to the Middle Ages). Even when dresses appear to be off-the-shoulder, a chemise would be worn underneath, so the shoulders were not actually visible. (This is, by the way, why the costumes in "La Reine Margot" are wrong.)
More to the point, there was no style of dress cut that way in the 18th century, so where on earth Éléonore would find one is beyond me. Furthermore, fichus were far from a new invention, though starting in the 1780s it did become fashionable for them to cover more.
This was a change that happened before the Revolution, and I'm fairly certain that Maxime was perfectly indifferent to the fact. (I say "fairly" certain, because, Maxime not having been a "eunuch" as was often claimed, if he had looked up from whatever he was doing or from his thoughts long enough to notice, he might have been faintly sorry. Obviously, he wouldn't have had any particular interest in encouraging such a fashion, even if he had ever been in a position to do so.)