Archduchess Marie-Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755 in the Hofburg Palace of Vienna, Austria. “Just a year earlier, an overeager American colonial had exceeded his orders and opened fire on a sleeping French reconnaissance unit, rekindling hostilities between England and France. The crisis had driven Maria Theresa into a treaty with Louis XV, arranged surreptitiously through Madame de Pompadour. Thus, it could be argued that … it was George Washington who put Marie Antoinette on the throne of France.” [a] At age 14 she married Louis XVI and became the last Queen of France. During the French Revolution she and her husband were put on trial and condemned to die at the guillotine.
Supposedly she said, “Let them eat cake”. Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette’s obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people. Britannica.com
She never actually said those words, and her final recorded words were in apology for stepping on the executioner’s shoe as she went to the scaffold to have her head removed. In her honor I am reprinting a post I wrote about cakes. -Jadi
If you grow up with the name Jadi, it will be mispronounced. Jodi. Judy. Janie. Right when a community had it figured out, we would move. One after the other, a parade of grade school and high school teachers and college professors stumbled reading roll call.
When the second Star Wars film came out, everyone at the firm where I worked treated me to (insert uproarious laughter here) “Hey! It’s The Return of the Jadi!”
Perhaps it was inevitable that I married a German named Uwe.
Uwe is a common name in Germanic countries, but just about impossible to pronounce correctly for anyone else. “Ova?” my mother suggested. “Ewe-y,” grinned Dad. I know he did it on purpose.
We had a quiet wedding in Germany and a party Stateside a few months later. A restaurant catered the reception and a local bakery made the wedding cake(s).
I’ve written elsewhere about the awesomeness of German bakeries. For our party, rather than do a tiered and tired yum-where’d-you-get-this-cake-that-tastes-like-sugar-covered-cardboard, I wanted to honor the country I was marrying along with meinen Mann. I went to the best bakery in town and made a proposal:
I ordered six sheet cakes, all different. Yellow cake. Coconut cake. Carrot cake. Chocolate cake. Spice cake. And, yes, one white cake. Turns out I’m a sucker for tradition after all. The bakery manager dutifully wrote everything down.
“And,” I continued with the order, “I want you to write our names wrong on all of the cakes. Except for one of them. Here’s a list of names for each cake.” I handed him a page of phonetics.
When we went to pick up those cakes before the party, the bakery let us know how much fun they’d had filling the order!
More than thirty years later I recall those cakes with a smile – and wonder where the time went.
JayDee and Oyvay 4Ever!
In memory of Marie-Antoinette, 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793
NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2016 & 2021. Previously published as You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too. [a] In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone [1] New Morning Bakery in Corvallis, Oregon still prepares their own baked goods and meals. I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My award-listed books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book,
I love that you had a sense of humor about the names!