Tea at Trianon: Ella Logan: Angel of the Stage

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, June 10, 2022

Ella Logan: Angel of the Stage

From Church Militant:

One night in Naples, the theater was packed. Many of the men attending had just returned from the front line. They were so fresh from battle that they were on edge, dirty and, in some cases, even bloody.

After Ella made her usual little speech at the end of her act, a tall GI with a Gary Cooper–like persona walked up to her on the stage. Pointing at the microphone, he asked, "Can I talk into that thing?" The soldier still had his helmet on and looked exhausted.

Ella was apprehensive because a man in that GI's condition might say or do anything. Looking up at him, she stood beside him at the microphone. He put his hand on her shoulder and began to speak to her before the absolutely silent 5,000 men present in the auditorium.

"Miss Logan," he said into the microphone, "you don't remind me of my wife or sister. You don't even remind me of my mother. Do you know what you remind me of?" Ella trembled as she waited for the soldier to answer his own question. He said, "You remind me of an angel."

He bent over and kissed Ella on the forehead. Then the lanky soldier walked down the steps, up the aisle and into the darkness. While he walked away, no one in the crowd broke the silence. Ella ran into her dressing room and cried tears of joy. (Read more.)