Tea at Trianon: A Moveable Garden

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, July 9, 2022

A Moveable Garden

From Domino:

When Cassie Winslow and her husband, Nicholas, move from one house to another, they don’t just take their furniture with them—their garden comes along for the ride, too. So far they’ve transported their outdoor greenery three times, with the latest transplant taking place last June. Looking to buy property (and be closer to Cassie’s family), they purchased a three-bedroom home in California’s Sacramento Valley, around a two-and-a-half-hour drive from their Santa Cruz rental. With help from family members, they dug up everything, put it in pots, and loaded it on trucks, trying to take as much soil with them as possible given their new yard was mostly just dead grass at the time. “We became so attached to everything we planted,” explains Cassie. (Read more.)