Tea at Trianon: Billy

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

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Billy

From Patti Macguire Armstrong:

Billy Lutter tumbled to the wooden floor of his home. His parents picked him up and tried again to help him walk. It was no use. Doctors had been telling the Lutters to institutionalize five-year old Billy for some time. This was 1939 and institutionalization was commonly advised for children with physical and mental disabilities.

Billy’s parents, a steelworker and a homemaker, struggled with the decision to send Billy away. "This was back in the Depression. Things were tough all around,"says Fred Lutter, Billy's older brother by two years. "I was a very tearful situation." Their hearts breaking, the Lutters drove Billy from their home outside of Chicago to a state facility 200 miles away. They visited regularly for a year. But administrators, worried that such meetings upset the residents, advised them to stop coming.

"My brother realized who his parents were. To be left like that was very traumatic," says Fred. “I felt very sad to see my parents in such turmoil."
The years rolled by. Billy's siblings got married and had their own children. Everybody thought about Billy, but his name was not spoken. Billy's parents grew old and, as they aged, grew infirm. They had done what they thought was best for Billy, but his absence had left a gaping, raw wound for the family. (Read more.)