Tea at Trianon: Beneath the Surface

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, September 8, 2012

Beneath the Surface

Do not look at the surface of things. To quote:

In the eyes of the casual observer and nearest neighbor, chaos and disorder seem to reign supreme. After all, there are way too many children for any family to manage and the house is just too small. The yard is messy, the grass is desperately in need of mowing and the weeds have begun to fill in all the edges and empty spaces. In the center of the yard is a large sandbox, unused, the remnants of a few broken toys remain nestled between the dandelions and the ant hill.

The large garden plot is the one glory of the property, surrounded by walls of corn…it is lush and verdant as a tropical rainforest, giving up its harvest in grateful appreciation for the care and nurturance it has received throughout the season. But…the flowers that surround the porch, so very beautiful in the early part of spring, are looking worse for wear; coleus and begonias have been trampled by the many barn cats that prowl the property.

On the front porch, there is a can filled with cigarette butts and the smell of tobacco hangs heavy in the air while the porch light still burns from the night before. In the past few weeks there have three police cars and an ambulance…surely that means something? Then there are the cars, two of them in varying states of disrepair, one missing its battery, the other an old Mercedes wagon, many years past its prime.

“Ah,” opines the observer/neighbor, “this family is a scandal. There is something seriously amiss here…just look at the state of things! I think perhaps I’ll leave a Christian tract in the mail to gently show them the error of their ways. After all, it is the charitable thing to do…”

Yet…if the neighbor were to look a little more closely, or perhaps gently inquire, the picture might alter considerably…(Read entire post.)