Tea at Trianon: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Transformation

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

Friday, May 25, 2018

Frederick Douglass’s Irish Transformation

I currently live in the Maryland county where Douglass was born and so find his Irish experience to be fascinating. From The Irish Times:

This year marks the bicentenary of Douglass’s birth. To mark the occasion Solas Nua, an American arts company focusing on contemporary Irish drama, has commissioned a piece that celebrates Douglass’s connection to Ireland. In 1845, Douglass embarked on a lecture tour of Britain and Ireland, spending four months in Ireland. The episode, which is fictionally portrayed in Colum McCann’s novel TransAtlantic, was to have a profound effect on his thinking.

Standing at the edge of the pier with artistic director Rex Daugherty, he points out the house across the river in Anacostia where Douglass lived. To our right, the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge looms large on the horizon. “This area played an important role in Douglass’s own life. A few streets away is the church where he gave his final sermon, just across the river is his home, so it was important for us to create a site-specific work” explains Daugherty. “Staging the piece on the water is also deeply symbolic, given his experience working in the shipyards in Baltimore and the journey he took across the Atlantic.” (Read more.)