Garden Party at Trianon

 As has been described before on this blog, Marie-Antoinette loved gardens and nature. She wanted her domain at Petit Trianon to be like a natural landscape, albeit a fabricated one. As consort of the most powerful monarch in Europe, it was expected that the queen entertain foreign visitors in grand style. Entertaining heads of state was an expensive enterprise, however, even when they visited incognito, as did Emperor Joseph II and the Grand Duke Paul and Grand Duchess Maria of Russia. The French government was nearly bankrupt due to the help given by King Louis XVI to the American colonists in their war for independence from Britain. To save money, Marie-Antoinette would use her private gardens as the site of the entertainments by illuminating the gardens and having everyone wear white. She would have musicians playing amid the shrubbery, so that it seemed that the music was wafting through the gardens in an ethereal manner.

In May, 1782, the Russian Grand Duke and Grand Duchess visited as the "Comte and Comtesse du Nord." Madame Campan wrote of their visit in her Memoirs:

They were presented on the 20th of May, 1782. The Queen received them with grace and dignity. On the day of their arrival at Versailles they dined in private with the King and Queen.

The plain, unassuming appearance of Paul I. pleased Louis XVI. He spoke to him with more confidence and cheerfulness than he had spoken to Joseph II. The Comtesse du Nord was not at first so successful with the Queen. This lady was of a fine height, very fat for her age, with all the German stiffness, well informed, and perhaps displaying her acquirements with rather too much confidence. When the Comte and Comtesse du Nord were presented the Queen was exceedingly nervous. She withdrew into her closet before she went into the room where she was to dine with the illustrious travellers, and asked for a glass of water, confessing “she had just experienced how much more difficult it was to play the part of a queen in the presence of other sovereigns, or of princes born to become so, than before courtiers.” She soon recovered from her confusion, and reappeared with ease and confidence. The dinner was tolerably cheerful, and the conversation very animated.

Brilliant entertainments were given at Court in honour of the King of Sweden and the Comte du Nord. They were received in private by the King and Queen, but they were treated with much more ceremony than the Emperor, and their Majesties always appeared to me to be very cautious before these personages. However, the King one day asked the Russian Grand Duke if it were true that he could not rely on the fidelity of any one of those who accompanied him. The Prince answered him without hesitation, and before a considerable number of persons, that he should be very sorry to have with him even a poodle that was much attached to him, because his mother would take care to have it thrown into the Seine, with a stone round its neck, before he should leave Paris. This reply, which I myself heard, horrified me, whether it depicted the disposition of Catherine, or only expressed the Prince’s prejudice against her.

The Queen gave the Grand Duke a supper at Trianon, and had the gardens illuminated as they had been for the Emperor. The Cardinal de Rohan very indiscreetly ventured to introduce himself there without the Queen’s knowledge. Having been treated with the utmost coolness ever since his return from Vienna, he had not dared to ask her himself for permission to see the illumination; but he persuaded the porter of Trianon to admit him as soon as the Queen should have set off for Versailles, and his Eminence engaged to remain in the porter’s lodge until all the carriages should have left the chateau. He did not keep his word, and while the porter was busy in the discharge of his duty, the Cardinal, who wore his red stockings and had merely thrown on a greatcoat, went down into the garden, and, with an air of mystery, drew up in two different places to see the royal family and suite pass by.

Her Majesty was highly offended at this piece of boldness, and next day ordered the porter to be discharged. There was a general feeling of disgust at the Cardinal’s conduct, and of commiseration towards the porter for the loss of his place. Affected at the misfortune of the father of a family, I obtained his forgiveness; and since that time I have often regretted the feeling which induced me to interfere. The notoriety of the discharge of the porter of Trianon, and the odium that circumstance would have fixed upon the Cardinal, would have made the Queen’s dislike to him still more publicly known, and would probably have prevented the scandalous and notorious intrigue of the necklace.

In June of 1784, King Gustav III of Sweden arrived under the alias of the "Comte de Haga." Marie-Antoinette did not care for him, because of what she had heard concerning his private life. As Madame Campan relates:

The Queen, who was much prejudiced against the King of Sweden, received him very coldly.All that was said of the private character of that sovereign, his connection with the Comte de Vergennes, from the time of the Revolution of Sweden, in 1772, the character of his favourite Armfeldt, and the prejudices of the monarch himself against the Swedes who were well received at the Court of Versailles, formed the grounds of this dislike. He came one day uninvited and unexpected, and requested to dine with the Queen. The Queen received him in the little closet, and desired me to send for her clerk of the kitchen, that she might be informed whether there was a proper dinner to set before Comte d’Haga, and add to it if necessary. The King of Sweden assured her that there would be enough for him; and I could not help smiling when I thought of the length of the menu of the dinner of the King and Queen, not half of which would have made its appearance had they dined in private. The Queen looked significantly at me, and I withdrew. In the evening she asked me why I had seemed so astonished when she ordered me to add to her dinner, saying that I ought instantly to have seen that she was giving the King of Sweden a lesson for his presumption. I owned to her that the scene had appeared to me so much in the bourgeois style, that I involuntarily thought of the cutlets on the gridiron, and the omelette, which in families in humble circumstances serve to piece out short commons. She was highly diverted with my answer, and repeated it to the King, who also laughed heartily at it.

As Baroness Oberkirch relates in her Memoirs, the Swedish king was charmed with both Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, in spite of various misunderstandings. Especially he was enchanted by the illuminated gardens of Trianon, which he thought resembled the Elysian fields. A Swedish scholar once told me that the because of Louis and Antoinette, Gustav was seriously considering becoming a Catholic; I have not yet substantiated that information myself, but it would not surprise me. He certainly did all he could to save their lives, especially through his delegate, Count Fersen. Gustav said of the French king: "Louis XVI is the best and most benevolent prince in existence. His soul radiates serenity. I am filled with admiration."

(Sources: Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette, Madame Campan's Memoirs, Nesta Webster's Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette before the Revolution, Baroness Oberkirch's Memoirs and Antonia Fraser's Marie-Antoinette:The Journey) Share

Data Centers Are Not Your Enemy

 From Tierney's Real News:

Jump on any social media site today or attend any town hall across rural or suburban America right now, and you’ll hear a terrifying script about data centers. You will be told they are monstrous energy hogs that will eat up prime farmland, drain local water supplies, blast disruptive noise, and spike your monthly utility bills. You will be told it is all a scheme by out-of-touch Big Tech elites to expand their power at your expense.

If you are already fed up with government overreach, corporate greed, and the destruction of our rural landscapes, these arguments sound completely reasonable. In fact, they sound patriotic. But there is a massive, dangerous piece of the puzzle being deliberately left out.

While we are told these facilities are just glorified warehouses hosting social media apps and streaming video, our adversaries see them for what they truly are: the foundational infrastructure of modern warfare. The hard truth is that America cannot defend the future with yesterday’s infrastructure. The debate over data centers is no longer a localized zoning dispute—it is a matter of national survival.

In fact, our enemies know just how important data centers are to our survival that they are paying digital “influencers” an average of $7,000 for every article they write bashing data centers in America, running as high as $20,000 for a single story. (Read more.)

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Little Social Etiquette Rules Everyone Should Follow

 From Country Living:

Etiquette is not just about which fork to use. It’s showing respect for yourself and everyone else in your little corner of the planet. In a world where rudeness often reigns, why not stand out for being polite and thoughtful? You don’t even have to go to charm school or binge-watch Downton Abbey to learn the rules! Here are 50 easy ways to share more kindness and less saltiness this year. (Read more.)

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Vow of Louis XVI

Here is an English translation of the Vow of Louis XVI made in the Tuileries palace in the spring of 1791:

Well dost Thou see, O my God, the great sadness that oppresses my heart, the grief that wounds it and the depth of the abyss into which I have been cast. I am assailed by countless evils from all sides. To the oppression of my soul, the horrible tragedies that have befallen me and my family add up to those that cover the whole extension of the realm. The clamoring of all the misfortunate and the moans of our oppressed religion reaches my ears, and an inner voice suggests to me that perhaps Thy justice holds me accountable for all these calamities for not having restrained, during the days of my power, their main causes, which are the people’s licentiousness and the spirit of irreligion, and for supplied heresy, now triumphant, its weapons by favoring it by laws that gave it redoubled strength and enough boldness to dare anything.
 
O Jesus-Christ! Divine Redeemer of all our iniquities, today I come to find relief for my soul in Thy Adorable Heart. I call to my aid the tender Heart of Mary, my august protectress and Mother, and the assistance of Saint Louis, my advocate and the most illustrious of my ancestors. Open Thyself, adorable Heart, through the most pure hands of my powerful intercessors, receive benignantly the vows of which confidence inspires me and that I offer Thee as the frank expression of my sentiments. If, as a consequence of Divine goodness, I were to recover my liberty, my crown and royal power, I solemnly promise:

1. To revoke at once all the laws that will be indicated to me by the Pope, or a Council, or by four of the more learned and virtuous bishops of my realm, as contrary to the purity and the integrity of the Faith, and contrary to the discipline and the special jurisdiction of the Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church; and especially to revoke the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.

2. To take, within a year, all the necessary measures to establish, with the approval of the Pope and the episcopate of my realm, and in accordance with canonical standards, a solemn feast in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to be celebrated forevermore throughout all France on the first Friday immediately after the eight days following the Feast of Corpus Christi and to be always followed by a general procession. This feast will be celebrated in reparation for the outrages and desecrations perpetrated in our holy temples by schismatics, heretics and the bad Christians in these times of so great turmoil.

3. To go in person on a Sunday or a holy day within three months of the day of my deliverance to the Church of Notre Dame of Paris, or to any other principal church in the place where I will be at that time, to pronounce a solemn act of consecration of my person, my family and my realm to the Sacred Heart of Jesus next to the main altar after the Offertory of the Mass and through the hands of the priest, promising to give to all my vassals an example of the worship and the devotion due that adorable Heart.
4. To erect and adorn within a year of my release and at my own expense, in the church that I will choose, a chapel or an altar to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart, which will stand as a lasting monument of my recognition and limitless confidence in the infinite merits and inexhaustible treasures of grace that this Divine Heart contains. 

5. Finally, to renew every year, wherever I might be on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the act of consecration stated in the third point and to participate in the general procession that will take place right after that day’s Mass.

 Now I cannot pronounce this pact except in secret, but I would sign it with my own blood if necessary; and the most beautiful day of my life will be when I will be able to proclaim it aloud in the Temple.

  O Adorable Heart of my Savior, may I neglect my right hand and my own being if I were to ignore Thy benefits these my promises, if I were to cease to love Thee and place all my trust and comfort in Thee! Amen.”
  
Louis XVI, King of France

 (Read more,)

 The original French version is HERE. In the spring of 1791, after signing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a few months earlier, King Louis XVI fell ill at the Tuileries, where the royal family were living under house arrest. His illness was undoubtedly the result of the stress of the upheavals which he had tried to prevent, as well as the fact that his conscience was troubling him about signing the Catholic Church in France over to the revolutionary government, severing the ties with Rome. Louis had signed it under duress but deeply regretted his decision immediately.

According to biographer Bernard Fay, Louis made the Vow under the guidance of his non-juring confessor, a Eudist priest Fr. Hebert. In the 1600's a Visitation nun, Saint Margaret Mary, had claimed that Jesus had requested that the King of France consecrate France to His Sacred Heart. The consecration had never been performed. So, with the help of Fr. Hebert, Louis drafted the following Vow, which he sealed in the walls of his apartments.

The Vow was not found until the palace had been partially burned by the Commune and was being torn down in 1871. It was discovered still sealed in the wall of the king's room. Louis was a locksmith and was fascinated with construction, so building a hiding place for his papers would not have been beyond him. He was known for his penchant for secrecy and his hiding of private papers from prying eyes. The fact that the Vow was not discovered until the 1870's demolishes the claim of some that it was merely a product of pious forgery during the 1814-1830 Restoration. The methodical legality of the document is typical of Louis XVI, who as an amateur cartographer was characterized by his precision and attention to detail.
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Bishops Consecrate US to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

 From The Pillar:

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, was the main celebrant at the Mass, which was held at the Basilica of Mary, Queen of the Universe.

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, the first Catholic diocese in the United States, delivered the homily at the Mass.

“As we approach this great anniversary of our nation, we may be tempted towards nostalgia for the past or anxiety about the future,” he said.

“Today we choose something better: trust. Today we place the Church in the United States, and this nation we love, into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Not because we have everything figured out, but because we know the One whose love endures forever. In his Heart, we find gratitude for the past, strength for the present, and hope for the future.”

He called for a recognition of both the successes and shortcomings of the past 250 years.

“There have been moments of extraordinary witness and holiness. But there have also been moments of failure, division, and sin,” he said.

“Consecration requires the humility to acknowledge both. We cannot come to the Heart of Christ while pretending we have no need of His mercy. To consecrate ourselves and our nation is to place our wounds, our shortcomings, and our sins before the One whose love is greater than all of them.”

The consecration of the nation is also a time for hope in the future, he said.

“It is a declaration that the future does not belong merely to political movements, economic forces, or human plans. The future belongs to God. And so we place into His Heart, not only ourselves but generations yet unborn, and all those who will inherit the Church and the nation we leave behind. Remaining in the Love of Christ in a culture that prizes independence and self-reliance, we gather publicly to acknowledge that our deepest identity and our truest hope come, not from ourselves but from the Lord.”

Lori emphasized that all Catholics must work together for the renewal of the Church.

“We consecrate our nation, not because it is perfect, but because it is beloved by God,” the archbishop said.

“We entrust to the Heart of Christ our achievements and failures, our hopes and anxiety, our present challenges and our future aspirations. We ask him to heal what is wounded, strengthen what is good, and guide us towards a future marked by justice, peace, freedom, and respect for the dignity of every human person.” (Read more.)

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Roger Scruton: Philosophical Christian and Scourge of Nihilism Par Excellence

 From The Public Discourse:

Carl R. Trueman has written yet another lucid and penetrating book that gets to the heart of our present cultural and spiritual discontent. Published earlier this year to critical acclaim, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity persuasively argues that the death of man is a necessary byproduct of the rejection of God, and that no decent or morally serious society can long survive the absence of Christian faith and theistic affirmation. Divorced from the truth that human beings are created “in the image and likeness of God,” human dignity cannot be credibly upheld. So far, so good.  

Trueman, however, goes further. He is convinced that anything less than a robust recognition of the imago dei is nihilistic, a rejection of man that flows from a “refusal of God-given obligations, the transgression of God-given limits, and the rejection of God-given ends.” We must therefore choose between the truth of Christ’s Gospel and nihilism tout court—there is, Trueman insists, no “middle path” available to us. This leads him to define nihilism in such a broad and capacious  way that many who self-consciously fight against, and indeed reject, the nihilist temptation nonetheless are, or would be, relegated to the camp of Nietzsche’s “Madman” (who thunderously declared that “God is dead,” modern man having killed him).   

There is something unjust and peremptory about Trueman’s all-or-nothing approach. For example, despite his own obvious indebtedness to the English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton (drawing freely as he does on Scruton’s accounts of desecration and pornography as “moral pollution” and his Goethe-inspired identification of Satanic evil with “the spirit that forever negates”), Trueman ultimately consigns his intellectual “hero,” as he once called him, to the camp of nihilism. Too many reviewers, moreover, have uncritically followed Trueman in this judgment. Here, I hope to set the record straight.   

For Trueman, Scruton’s evident sympathy for the Christian religion is reduced to an “instrumental” appreciation of it “as a profound source of cultural good.” Trueman thus reduces Scruton’s remarkably rich reflections on religion and the “sacred” to the rather crude view that neither of them is true, but they “are good things for the organization of society.” Even here one has to note: tertium non datur. That is, there are more options than these binaries. Indeed, one has to say that Trueman presents a caricature of the late English philosopher and man of letters as a defender of the “spiritual residue” of Christianity rather than the Christian faith itself. Because, in Trueman’s view, Scruton is insufficiently dogmatic (which one can acknowledge), he turns out to be a mere aesthete, a defender of “exalted and beautiful thoughts about truth, goodness, and beauty.” By pigeonholing Scruton as nothing but a Kantian philosopher, Trueman makes him appear nothing more than “a cultural Christian” who appeals to “the language of truth … to justify taste.”  

However, Scruton’s intellectual debts went well beyond the German philosopher of the noumenal and phenomenal distinction and were remarkably wide ranging. He drew on Plato’s as well as Jan Patočka’s rich conception of the “care of the soul”; Aristotle’s articulation of the cardinal virtues; Burke’s eloquent defense of tradition, prudence, and ordered liberty against ideological fanaticism; and Hegel’s account of the necessarily “situated” character of ethical community. To these, he added careful attention to the moral witness of those who struggled in the east of Europe against the totalitarian lie in the second half of the twentieth century, and, not least, the New Testament’s affirmation and highlighting of forgiveness and neighbor love in lives lived well, lives truly open to the manifold intimations of “eternity” in time. Moreover, one could argue that Scruton was more indebted to Kant’s refusal to reduce human persons to impersonal objects bereft of souls and lacking in moral responsibility or “mutual accountability.” None of this is remotely the thought of a nihilist. (Read more.)

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Coronation Robes

June 11, 1775. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in their coronation robes in an allegorical setting. Notice the monogram "LA" for "Louis and Antoinette." Via Vive la Reine.

 Vive la Reine quotes a contemporary account:

His Majesty entered the metropolitan church, where he was greeted by the Archbishop-Duke of Reims—who was at the head of his Chapter—and listened to the Te Deum. After the Benediction, the King withdrew to the archbishop’s palace where all the Nobles complimented Him. The next day, the King listened to the first Vespers in the Cathedral, and on Sunday, June 11th, around seven o’clock, His Majesty—with the greatest pomp—went back to the same Church and was crowned in the usual ways. (Read entire post.)

A post on the music for the coronation mass and the religious devotions that followed, HERE.

From Vive la Reine: "Detail from The Coronation of Louis XVI by Jean-Michel Moreau, 1775."

 

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Meet The Press

 From Tierney's Real News:

President Trump just did what millions of Americans have been dreaming of seeing for years. President Trump stood up, dropped his microphone and crushed it under his feet and then walked out of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker.

He told her that “elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS and CNN.” He was livid, Welker was befuddled and it was glorious!

Excellent! Many people don’t understand why Trump even gives interviews to NBC, and specifically Kristin Welker. Well, first of all NBC News has the highest ratings of all the networks. They reach more people than Fox, Newsmax, CNN and MSNBC combined. That’s reason number one.

Second, Trump worked with NBC for 12 years when he ran the Apprentice so I think he has a soft spot for NBC. I also think Trump believed that he might be able to use Kristin Welker to turn NBC around into the light. I think Trump sincerely liked Kristin Welker because she got married late in life and tried to have a baby late (44) and was infertile and struggling with having a child so she and her husband tried IVF for months and eventually had children using surrogates. She was very open about that and I think Trump cared about her journey.

I’m not saying this to defend her - I’m just telling you that her story pulled at the heartstrings of many Americans - including Trump - and he tried to help her. In return, she screwed him! (Read more.)

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Lost Remains of Maryland’s Second Governor

 From Maryland Matters:

Using a groundbreaking method, researchers have likely identified the lost remains of the second governor of the colony of Maryland.

They’ve also found 1.3 million genetic relatives of Maryland’s first colonists who are alive today.

“Then we have 9,000 people who are close enough that they’re very likely direct descendants or very close relatives,” Éadaoin Harney, a senior scientist at 23andMe Research Institute, told WTOP.

She is the lead author of a study published last month in the journal Current Biology. In addition to the genetic testing company 23andMe, the study involved scientists from the Smithsonian, Harvard University and St. Mary’s City.

Their work was built on previous studies and the discovery over decades of dozens of bodies in a graveyard in St. Mary’s City. Established in 1634 in what is now St. Mary’s County, it’s recognized as the first permanent English settlement in Maryland.

In 2016, through genetic testing, it was revealed that remains found in three lead coffins in the city’s Chapel Field cemetery belonged to the colony’s fifth governor Philip Calvert, his first wife and a son he had with his second wife.

The latest study was aimed at identifying the remains of 49 other people buried in the graveyard. (Read more.)

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