Tea at Trianon: Caryll Houselander and Our ‘Psychological Suffering’

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, April 8, 2022

Caryll Houselander and Our ‘Psychological Suffering’

From Heather King at Angelus:

Houselander suffered greatly during her own life: from poverty, from frail health, from neuroses. She had a lifelong and especially deep and tender bond with traumatized children, and loved teaching them how to draw, paint, and carve small animals out of wood.

She became a prolific and popular spiritual writer. Her most well-known works include “The Reed of God” (1944), “A Rocking-Horse Catholic” (1955), and “The Risen Christ” (1959).

She wrote another book, lesser-known and especially apropos for Lent: “Guilt” (1951).

“The most striking characteristic of the age in which we are living is psychological suffering,” she begins. “I have named this ego-neurosis. Ego-neurosis is a disease of the soul, a spiritual rather than a psychological ailment.”

Usually such people, Houselander continues, “suffer consciously merely from a vague and persistent unhappiness, an inexplicable sense of guilt about everything they do or don’t do, a shrinking from effort, especially mental effort, a certain sense of frustration and a hidden stirring of shame because they feel inadequate before life — they suffer continually from embarrassment … and always from anxiety in some form or other.”

“That’s ego-neurosis?” was my reaction. I thought everyone felt that way! (Read more.)