Tea at Trianon: All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, the Legendary Irish Famine Ship

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

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, the Legendary Irish Famine Ship

All Standing by Kathryn Miles tells of one of the greatest human rights atrocities of all time, the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, in which millions of people starved to death due to government ineptitude. Based upon thorough scholarship, this work of non-fiction reads like a novel, bringing to life the Reilly family as they try to escape the famine for the New World. The Reillys are fortunate to be among the first passengers of the Jeanie Johnston, which unlike other famine ships made a priority of keeping passengers alive. The reader is introduced to the men behind the Jeanie, the shipwright who designed and built her, the captain who was resolved to bring the ship and passengers safely to port, and the doctor who risked his life in order to keep his clients healthy. The heroism of a few shines brightly when surrounded by the greed, cowardice and indifference with which most of the world watched the Irish people suffer and die. All Standing invades the reader’s comfort zone with grim images of the not too distant past while showing how a little courage and common sense preserved thousands.

(This review was originally published in the May 2013 edition of the Historical Novels Review.)

(*NOTE: This book was sent to me by the Historical Novel Society in exchange for my honest opinion.)

Here is an interview with Kathryn Miles about the Irish Potato Famine from NPR.

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1 comment:

julygirl said...: Yes, I have read how the Irish, in the millions, were systematically starved to death by the English, and how they were not welcome on this continent. The ones who got in were relegated to slave labor, but were not valued as much as slaves because no cash was expended in purchasing them. I once lived in an area near the remains of the C&O Canal where there is a mass grave of Irish workers who contracted Yellow Fever during the building of the Canal....that was their final resting place....their names known only to God.; May 7, 2013 at 10:02:00 AM EDT