Tea at Trianon: The Writing Life

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, October 16, 2014

The Writing Life

At Long Point Farm (My grandmother, Norah O'Connor, is the small girl on the left.)

I am honored to be interviewed by blogger Caroline Wilson about the writing life. To quote:

CW: Tell us why you choose to write.

EMV: I have been writing since I learned to put two sentences together. I started keeping a diary at age seven. Writing has always been such an integral part of my life; it hardly seems like a choice. It is just something I must do.

CW: “The Paradise Tree” has a very unusual setting. Tell us why you were drawn to Ontario.

EMV: I spent many glorious summer vacations in Ontario in the vicinity where the novel is set. It is a place of beauty and mystery as well as family memories and deep ancestral roots.

CW: Your website mentioned that you took a lot of pains to be authentic. What kind of research did that entail?

EMV: It entailed finding long lost fourth cousins who had family heirlooms and documents that would provide me with the detailed information. It is the little things that make a novel authentic. I spent time at the Brockville Historical Society searching through deeds and records that mentioned family members and their property. It meant interviewing some of my older relatives (now deceased) who had memories of the children of Daniel and Brigit O’Connor. I studied old photographs and old maps and read lots of rare, out-of-print history books.