Tea at Trianon: Tennyson's 'Guinevere'

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

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Tennyson's 'Guinevere'

Ah my God,
What might I not have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here? ~ Tennyson's "Guinevere" in Idylls of the King

From Dr. Esolen at Word and Song:

The Queen has betrayed her husband King Arthur, and in the worst way — in her adulterous love for his closest friend and bravest knight, Sir Lancelot. Arthur’s treacherous nephew, or supposed nephew, Modred, has played the betrayal for all it is worth, and now the whole kingdom is in civil war, and it appears that everything Arthur fought for will fall. Arthur, you may know, is a legendary Christian king, a Welshman, for the Christians in Britain had been driven into the mountains of Wales by Hengest and his hordes, when the Saxons swept into the land. Why, the very word for “English” in Welsh is “Saesneg,” and if you ever sing “Men of Harlech” in Welsh, you’re quite aware that the enemies are those same Saxons. And now all seems to be slouching backward into the beast.
So Guenevere flees to a convent, incognito, and is admitted, which certainly is a case of bending the rule, because, after all, nuns do abide by a written rule of life. Yet Guenevere asks only that she be left incognito and that she be permitted to join the nuns in their penances, though not in their joyful feasts, and to do the same work they do. We see then that she might be on the verge of vision, because she does know she has done wrong. What she does not know is how very wrong she has been, both in her sin’s effect on other people, and in her mistaking the king her husband. Her main companion at the convent is an innocent little novice whose chatter, quite free of all malice, makes her feel guilty, especially when the girl praises the king and criticizes the queen, who she does not know is sitting right beside her. And then Arthur himself shows up, to take his leave from his wife forever. He tells her what he had hoped from her, and how she has dashed his hopes; but he also tells her that he loves her still. His and not Lancelot’s is the most human heart. (Read more.)