Tea at Trianon: Tessa Dahl at Regina Laudis

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

She is the daughter of Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl. (Via Fr. Ray Blake)

It has been a colourful life packed with drama, emotion and surprising twists, but few would imagine Tessa Dahl as a Bride of Christ.

But she has been living at Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, for more than a month now. Despite an exotic past, Tessa is already following the Benedictine strictures, or some of them at least.

She is learning to make butter, spin yarn and is generally preparing herself for what she describes as a complete commitment to God.

There are sceptics, naturally – they recall the years Tessa spent at the feet of an Indian guru, accompanied by her young daughter.

But today, as Tessa explains why she wishes to enter a closed community of nuns, there is a different, more compelling logic than mere attention-seeking.
There is, for example, her estrangement from Sophie, apparently caused when Tessa made some unguarded comments to the Press.

More pertinently, Tessa’s mother, the actress Patricia Neal, to whom she was so close, has recently died, leaving her bereft.

A woman who has spent her adult life struggling with herself and those around her seems finally to have found the one place ready to embrace her confusing world – Regina Laudis, the very institution that cared for her late mother as she entered her declining years.