Tea at Trianon: "To Althea, From Prison"

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

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

"To Althea, From Prison"

Richard Lovelace

When Love with unconfined wings
   Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
   To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
   And fettered in her eye,
The gods that wanton in the air
   Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
   With no allaying Thames, [water]
Our careless heads with roses bound,
   Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
   When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep
   Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
   With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
   And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
   He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
   Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
   Nor iron bars a cage:
Minds innocent and quiet take
   That for an hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
   And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
   Enjoy such liberty.

Some commentary on a poem written in the era of my Henrietta of France Trilogy. From Dr. Esolen:

Dear readers, you’ve certainly noticed by now that I’m a great admirer of the poetry of John Milton, which we’ve featured here at Word and Song several times, including in this passage in which Satan tries to pretend that Hell is a very very very fine house, and not a prison whence there is no real escape, because wherever he goes, he brings Hell with him and about him, “nor from thence / One step no more than from himself can fly / By change of place.” Yes, I admire Milton immensely, but I think if I were a young man in his time I would have taken the Royalist side, or at least that’s what I feel now; there always was something barbaric about Cromwell’s New Model Army, efficient, indomitably courageous, and destructive of anything that did not meet their pure standards — including utterly priceless art, true folk art too, the stained glass windows that had graced English churches since the Middle Ages. The discipline of a crack fighting force, and the passions of a mob: not a happy combination.
But the author of our Poem of the Week, Richard Lovelace, was a staunch supporter of the King (Charles I), and he paid for it dearly, sent twice to prison, serving as a soldier for many years, and impoverishing himself in the cause. For him it wasn’t just a matter of ideas. He was devoted to Charles, who had given him the office of “Gentleman Waiter” when he was just a 13 year old boy. Lovelace died in 1657, three years before Charles’ son (Charles II) would be restored to the throne, and some months before his fortieth birthday. He had to scramble always to make ends meet, writing to make a scanty living after he had sold his ancestral estates. Our poem “To Althea, from Prison” was probably written in 1642, when Lovelace, age 23, was sent to jail not for any crime, but for presenting Parliament with a petition, signed by thousands of the commons in Kent, beseeching them to restore to the King his royal rights as commander in chief of the army and the navy. (Read more.)