Tea at Trianon: Kylemore Abbey Gardens

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

Monday, March 1, 2021

Kylemore Abbey Gardens

From Country Life:

Thanks to the determination of the resident community of Benedictine nuns, the eight-acre garden at Kylemore Abbey Gardens in Connemara, Ireland, has been restored. Once lockdown lifts, visitors can once again enjoy a Victorian survival in an extraordinary setting. Mary Hackett paid a visit; photographs by Zara Napier.

The magnificent Kylemore Castle in Connemara in the west of Ireland was built by Manchester-born Mitchell Henry, a Harley Street eye surgeon and pathologist who became the Liberal MP for Co Galway and much-loved landlord. Intended as an elaborate tribute to his wife, Margaret, the castle sheltered the growing family until 1902, when it was bought by the 9th Duke of Manchester. It was turned into an abbey when a community of Benedictine nuns, shelled out of their Ypres convent in 1914, settled here in 1920. The nuns have remained to this day and, in 1995, thanks to their efforts, work started on the restoration of the original Victorian walled garden.

Still looking today much as it did when it was built, the castle has as its background the sessile oak and rhododendron that wrap Dúchruach mountain and, on a sunny day, its reflection gleams in the black water of Lough Pollacapul, exactly as Irish architect James Franklin Fuller had intended — the view the Henrys saw on honeymoon in the 1840s. (Read more.)