Tea at Trianon: Defending Camelot

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

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Defending Camelot

From Charles Coulombe at The European Conservative:

The most gripping element of the Arthurian Legend—a corpus filled to brimming with gripping elements—is undoubtedly the Holy Grail. This Sacred Vessel, containing Christ’s Blood, was intimately connected with all sorts of Catholic devotions: the Eucharist and the Passion, of course, but also the Five Wounds, the Precious Blood, and latterly the Sacred Heart. Just as the Arthurian Legend in toto would animate the Stuarts and their supporters, the Catholic opponents of Henry VIII took to the field under the banner of the Five Wounds during the Pilgrimage of Grace. The Sacred Heart would rally the Counter-Revolutionaries of the Vendee, the Tyrolians under Andreas Hofer, the Spanish Carlists, and the Papal Zouaves, to mention just a few groups who pitted themselves against Protestantism, Jacobinism, Liberalism, or whatever would-be avatar of “Modernity” appeared during their time.

Alas, for those who stand with Arthur and the Grail, it has been a long defeat—sometimes fast and dramatic, as in the two world wars and revolutions from the French to the Russian; sometimes long and debilitatingly slow, as with the transformation since the 1960s of Western Society into a madhouse dedicated to infanticide, sterility, and death. Nevertheless, as Geoffrey Ashe reminded us in his work, the ancient realities remain. Even as the star shone over Mordor, St. Michael’s Tower reigns over Glastonbury Tor. Despite the transformation of Glastonbury into a New Age fun fayre, the Abbey ruins continue to give their mute witness to the holiness of those who built and sustained the Faith there for so many centuries. Every Christmas, the Glastonbury Thorn—a remote descendant of the staff implanted at Wearyall Hill by St. Joseph of Arimathaea—blooms in the bleak midwinter, and a few blossoms are sent to the Queen. The abortive return of the monks to Glastonbury is surely a presage of the prophesied restoration of the Abbey by its last surviving member, Austin Ringwode (and quoted to me by Geoffrey in his letter): “The Abbey will one day be restored and rebuilt for the like worship which has ceased, and peace and plenty will for a long time abound.” And not in Glastonbury alone. (Read more.)