Tea at Trianon: Happy Birthday, Mom!

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

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Actually, her birthday is tomorrow, the feast of Elias the prophet. (Almost every member of my family was born on a Carmelite feast day. It is uncanny.) It is hard to believe that my feisty and beautiful mother is one year short of seventy. The descendant of Spanish conquistadors, Chinese pirates, and Alabama Confederates is more energetic than ever, still driving like a bat out of hell. I will never forget clutching my rosary while riding with her on the Baltimore beltway during a driving rain storm, as the "Love-Death" from Tristan and Isolde resounded from the stereo. The Four Last Things flashed before me as she speedily but deftly wove in and out of traffic.

The above picture is forty years old; she always read aloud to us. It is definitely from my mother that I received a love of books, poetry, opera, painting and traditional liturgy. Share