Alyssa Antoci, the niece of the owners of the luxury grocery store, went viral on TikTok after sharing her review of the berry from the Japanese vendor Elly Amai.
In most respects, most of us probably have a considerably higher standard of living than Marie Antoniette, simply because of what technological advancement has provided us with.
Versailles stank. Not just the bodily tang one might expect 200 years before the invention of deodorant (that was 1888: a paste applied to the underarms), but a rank stench that permeated every room, every corridor, and wafted over the gardens.
‘‘I shall never get over the dirt of this country,’’ sniffed Horace Walpole on a visit to France.
Versailles, the centre of French political power from 1682, had more than 700 rooms but no functioning loos until 1768. By the time of the revolution, there were still only nine bathrooms, all in the private royal apartments. The contents of chamber pots were often simply flung out of the windows.
The royal dogs were not housetrained but nor were the courtiers and their servants who crammed into the building. The result was a lavatorial free-for-all, from which no corner of the palace was spared.
‘‘Versailles was a vast cesspool,’’ wrote one historian. ‘‘The odour clung to clothes, wigs, even undergarments. Beggars, servants, and aristocratic visitors alike used the stairs, the corridors, any out-of-the-way place, to relieve themselves.’’
For Louis XIV and his later imitators, architecture was politics, a way to overawe rivals for power - nobility, princes and lawyers - and focus attention exclusively on the ruler. But while Versailles looked magnificent from the outside, on the inside it was overcrowded, smelly and infested with vermin.
Most of us probably wouldn’t readily tolerate living like that.
French royalty could, no doubt, have live musicians or actors performing works that they want. But on the other hand, we have a vast digital library of video and audio of such scope and content…they could only comprehend them as dreams brought to life, created with resources well beyond what they could afford, because we have spread the costs over many and provided the output to many.
We can eat food from around the world in any season.
If I want the air in my living space to be chilly in summer, I can do so.
There are definitely some services that I’m sure that French royalty could avail themselves of that we cannot. But I think that it’s easy to lose perspective of how staggering the increases of standard-of-living have been over a couple of centuries.
In most respects, most of us probably have a considerably higher standard of living than Marie Antoniette, simply because of what technological advancement has provided us with.
e.g.
https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-timaru-herald/20160530/281784218342032
Most of us probably wouldn’t readily tolerate living like that.
French royalty could, no doubt, have live musicians or actors performing works that they want. But on the other hand, we have a vast digital library of video and audio of such scope and content…they could only comprehend them as dreams brought to life, created with resources well beyond what they could afford, because we have spread the costs over many and provided the output to many.
We can eat food from around the world in any season.
If I want the air in my living space to be chilly in summer, I can do so.
There are definitely some services that I’m sure that French royalty could avail themselves of that we cannot. But I think that it’s easy to lose perspective of how staggering the increases of standard-of-living have been over a couple of centuries.
Gross. But thanks, I appreciate knowing this.
It’s a metaphor, my dude, as in, “Let them eat cake.” Thanks for the “akshually,” though.