Tea at Trianon: The Hands of the King

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

Saturday, October 30, 2021

The Hands of the King

From Catholicism:

The White Wizard hastens to tell Aragorn of the prophecy, and Aragorn seeks the “King’s Foil,” an herb whose potency was long forgotten in Gondor, but which he knew from his Elven upbringing can cure Faramir, and all others who lie sick of the pestilence. With his “royal touch” — the phrase comes from the true legends we’ve recounted — Aragorn’s popular acclaim begins as the prophecy Ioreth recalled is fulfilled: “hands of the king are the hands of the healer.”

Tolkien, the traditionalist Catholic Englishman, was a Monarchist, and well familiar with the king-as-healer stories from Christian history. One suspects he had in mind especially Saint Edward the Confessor while crafting Aragorn’s history. It was Edward’s death in 1066 that occasioned the Norman Conquest, when England began to be ruled by those Frenchmen with Viking blood (who, by the way, enriched the English language with words like beef, cuisine, pork, and… royal!).

Why is it we have so few real statesmen today? I will not overstate the case by saying that statesmanship is not possible in a society other than a Monarchy. That is simply not true. But I will say that a society that unmoors itself from history and mocks the paradigmatic statesman — the righteous king — is doomed to be ruled by something other than a statesman. If I may be permitted a bit of humorous exegesis on a Broadway tune, I think Stephen Sondheim may have said it best:

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns
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