Tea at Trianon: Abingdon

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

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Abingdon

Barter Theater

The pretty cowgirl on the right is my youngest sister.

A town in Virginia that everyone should visit. From Only in Your State:
As the newly named seat of Washington County, Black's Fort became a town in 1778 and was renamed Abingdon after Martha Washington's ancestral home in Oxfordshire, England. Today, Abingdon is a designated Virginia Main Street community with an historic downtown that is home to a thriving arts and culture scene.

n 1780, during the height of the Revolutionary War, 400 volunteers, known as the Overmountain Men, gathered at Abingdon's Muster Grounds to begin their journey to King's Mountain in South Carolina. With the help of other militia groups, they defeated the British at the Battle of King's Mountain and turned the tide of the war for America's independence. (Read more.)