Tea at Trianon: Family in Exile

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, January 1, 2017

Family in Exile

From Mary Victrix:

In Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, we find at one end the spectrum, Ebenezer Scrooge, the cold, isolated curmudgeon, who gave up on love long ago, who is a man without a family. And on the other, there is Bob Cratchit, who suffers, not so much because his family is in want at Christmas time, but because he and his wife face the prospect of a Christmas without their son, Tiny Tim, who was sick and dying.

For Dickens, Scrooge is a two-dimensional figure for all that is wrong with heartless, industrialized, 19th century Britain, which devours its citizens, like the Cratchits. For Waugh, Sebastian stands in for all those estranged from God and men, and who struggle to find God because of their own frailty and because of the failures of those they depend upon most.

In Waugh’s story, Brideshead is the luxurious estate of the wealthy noble Flyte family. Nevertheless, Sebastian calls it not a home but the place where his family lives—a family for whom he largely has contempt. In Dicken’s story, the Cratchits have virtually nothing, but they have each other and their biggest worry is the potential loss of someone loved within that communion of persons.

And this brings us to the exile of the Holy Family in Egypt. Jesus, Mary and Joseph had virtually nothing. They did not even flee from their home in Nazareth. They were destitute travelers in Bethlehem, which was not their home, and where there was literally no room for them in the inn. They fled from destitution in Bethlehem to destitution plus exile in Egypt. But St. Joseph took up his family and fled to Egypt in order to protect the Child and His Mother—to keep the family together. They had nothing, but they had each other. And at the center of this family was the Word made flesh. (Read more.)