Tea at Trianon: Thomas Moore: Ireland's Minstrel Boy

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, March 11, 2023

Thomas Moore: Ireland's Minstrel Boy

The songs of Thomas Moore are quoted in The Paradise Tree. From English Historical Fiction Authors:

Thomas Moore was born in 16 Aungier Street in Dublin on May 28th 1779, eldest son of grocer and wine merchant John Moore, a native Irish speaker from Kerry, and Anastasia Codd from Wexford. By the standards of the times, the Moores were a well off family. As Catholics, they were reasonably well positioned to benefit from the relaxation of the so called Penal Laws which had for more than eighty years, excluded Catholics from many professions and civil rights. This allowed young Thomas to be given a relatively good education in Trinity College Dublin where he was befriended by Robert Emmett and Arthur O’Connor, both of whom espoused the principles inspiring the wave of liberalism washing across Europe. (Read more.)