Tea at Trianon: A Lesson in Gardening

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

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

A Lesson in Gardening

From Southern Living:

Dominique Charles knows her way around the garden. The founder of Plots & Pans is known as a garden expert, garden consultant, and even chief executive gardener, but she can't have her hands in the dirt without thinking of her grandmother, who she called by one title: Maw Maw.

"I think the biggest lesson she taught me about gardening would be to grow what you love or will actually use," says Charles. For her grandmother, that meant lots of okra and tomatoes. "She canned jars and jars of them at the end of the season," she says. "My mom used those jars of okra and tomatoes as an essential element in her gumbo." Charles stands firm in her belief that her mama's gumbo rivaled just about any other version out there, and she thinks it was the okra and tomatoes that were to thank. (Read more.)