Tea at Trianon: Countess Annie Leary

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 13, 2016

Countess Annie Leary

From Nobility:

In early childhood Miss Leary became deeply interested in the mission work of the Roman Catholic Church and decided to devote both her time and fortune to that noble cause. Purchasing four houses on Charlton Street, she furnished them artistically as well as comfortably, called the nuns and priests of that sordid neighborhood to her assistance and opened a mission that was destined to accomplish inestimable good among the myriads of needy and sadly neglected Italian children. She clothed them when they were naked, fed them when they were hungry and taught them the doctrines of the Catholic Church, until she became well known and blessed throughout the crowded tenements of that district.

For many years Miss Leary was president and is now honorary president of the Society of the Children of Mary, attached to the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and is also president of the latter’s sewing circle, or Tabernacle Society, where women congregate to make vestments, altar-cloths and other objects for the church. She was responsible for securing through Archbishop Corrigan the society’s affiliation with the nuns of the Via Nomentana in Rome. (Read more.)