Language Follies 26 (Marie Antoinette Edition)

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, has been historically depicted as dressing down as a shepherdess. It is with her in mind that we introduce more modern examples of (if not royal) upper class society types who profess to be “just folks.”

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Thankfully, the government eventually got around to banishing tobacco advertising. But before it did, tobacco companies tried appealing to the masses by co-opting baseball players, movie stars, and society page women to promote their products. “Men, you can be like Joltin’ Joe or Bob Hope. Women, you can be as renowned as a Boston matron or as glamorous as a Main Line deb.”

But strangely enough, some of the society types in the advertisements claimed to be following in Marie Antoinette’s footsteps:

From 1938—“Miss Beatrice Gray, popularly known as Milo, is a typical member of the modern-minded younger generation. Although her family and connections are v-e-r-y prominent socially in New York and Boston, Milo is simple and un-affected-charmingly democratic in outlook. When she made her debut last fall, she was well-known to Newport and New York society. Milo finds time to indulge her fondness for sports. She swims, plays tennis and golf, and loves to hunt.

‘But my favorite sport,’ Milo says, ‘is figure skating!’ She has made four trips abroad, paying visits to world-famous skating centers-Innsbruck, Gstaad, and Krynica.”

From 1939—“Young Mrs. Curtenius Gillette Jr. is known as ‘Tania’ among her friends in New York and Nassau society. She speaks five languages . . . excels in housekeeping . . .”

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I bring up the past to show that the “simple and un-affected-charmingly democratic” outlook is still with us.

 

Here is Bettina Anderson, Donald Trump, Jr.’s latest fiancee:  “I’m just your typical stay at home mom…only I don’t do household chores…or have a husband…or have kids.” (1)

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But maybe you’re more interested in divorce. In a piece for “The Cut,” that qualifies for the anti-climax award of the month, 

 

Monica Corcoran Harel laid out quiet divorce as a potentially positive move.

Really? Sure! She spoke to one woman who absolutely loved “going zombie” in her marriage. “I lowered my overall expectations, which lowered my disappointment in my husband — and in myself,” the woman said, adding that checking out of her relationship “freed me up to learn how to make jewellery too.” (2)

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Martha Stewart didn’t quite go full Marie Antoinette when she and her husband moved to Connecticut. 

Stewart regarded her social scene as less fussy than that of the “fancy Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue matrons,” she told me over the phone. “I was a little bit more casual. I liked antiques and I loved beautiful things, but I was not a fanatic about butlers.” (3)

I don’t know if Marie Antoinette had her poultry under control but Martha claimed she herself did.

One of the events that first got her noticed as a caterer was a reception for an American-folk-art exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, to which she brought her own live chickens, their cages perched on mounds of hay. When I asked if the room had smelled like a coop, Stewart seemed to recoil. “Oh, no! No, no,” she assured me. “My chickens—they don’t poop in public.” 

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(1) https://slate.com/life/2025/12/donald-trump-jr-girlfriend-kimberly-guilfoyle-engaged.html 

(2) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/nov/26/quiet-divorce-why-people-are-checking-out-of-their-marriage-emotionally-without-telling-their-partner

(3) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/10/the-surprising-endurance-of-martha-stewarts-entertaining

The Greenhouse Effect

During our COVID-19 lockdown we have been offered tons of advice on how to survive our isolation. Lists have been offered of books, TV shows and movies, exercise regimens, and music to fill our time indoors. The offerings of advice that I most welcome—seeing that I have books, music, and movies overflowing the living room (notice I didn’t say anything about exercise)—are the lists of recipes to be attacked in my kitchen. 

The other day the ever-helpful New York Times offered up an article entitled, 

A Mediterranean-Inspired Menu to Keep You Going All Day
Savory spiced oats, chicken salad pita and spicy meatballs: These recipes offer a trip abroad, via your pantry.

I don’t know about those oats, but I love chicken salad and meatballs, and so I dug into the article, especially enticed by the author’s talk about finding the ingredients in my pantry (i.e., kitchen shelves, for us peasants) during the self-isolation.

Anyway, since I have a box of oatmeal lying around I did take a look at the recipe. To the oats, the author, David Tanis, adds “a fried egg, a bit of roasted pepper, a generous sprinkling of za’atar . . . .” Wait a minute; I’m supposed to have za’atar hidden away in my pantry behind the sardines and Oreos? I don’t even know what the hell za’atar is—a Persian god, perhaps? a Viennese musical instrument? 

Well, forget the oats.

On to the meatballs—“Spicy Meatballs With Chickpeas.” Turns out the meat in the meatballs is ground lamb, which I imagine I could harvest from one of the furry creatures munching on the grass outside my New Jersey window. I do have a can or two of chickpeas, but Mr. Tanis advises,

If you have the time, cook your chickpeas from scratch.

I wouldn’t know what a scratch chickpea looks like, and even if I did find a stray one hunkered down in my (ahem) pantry, I don’t have the temperament to “soak them for a few hours or overnight.” Cooking is now or never with me. Generously, Tanis allows us, if we prefer, to “serve the meatballs with couscous.” Right! substitute non-available couscous for the missing chickpeas.

One more recipe to go, and maybe for that one I can just pull stuff off the shelves.

Sorry, no. It’s for “Grilled Chicken Pita With Yogurt Sauce and Arugula.” Now, I sometimes have some leftover chicken cowering in the fridge, and if I’m careful I might be able to separate the yogurt from the fruit on the bottom in my breakfast yogurt cups, but arugula? Who has arugula? I could come up with some wilted lettuce leaves. Would that do?

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A number of years ago, while I was at my car dealer’s waiting for an oil change one morning, I glanced over to the TV set where a chef was cutting something up with a big knife, with a fairly attractive woman observing him. After a commercial break, the chef had disappeared into the ether, and the woman was outside a house with an expanse of lawn behind her. She gestured with her arm and said, 

I like to have two greenhouses, one for something-or-other and another for this-and-that.

(Please excuse me for not implanting the real words in my brain.) By a leap of intuition I said to myself, “That must be Martha Stewart.” (I had heard about her, but didn’t know her.) I was right. 

Martha Stewart extolling the joys of having two greenhouses, and I didn’t have even one!

Now that I think about it, maybe I could get Martha to rummage in the something-or-other or the this-and-that greenhouse and fetch me some arugula.