Tea at Trianon: 'Mary hath borne alone'

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, December 28, 2024

'Mary hath borne alone'

From A Clerk at Oxford:

This genre of medieval poem can be painful reading at Christmastime, but it seems more honest and clear-eyed than the sentimentality which often surrounds a modern Christmas; there is no expectation here that everyone is happy and jolly, living the perfect life which really exists only in Christmas adverts and newspaper supplements. In truth many people at Christmas do feel very much alone; this is a season which, precisely because of its expectation of pleasure, draws painful attention to absences in our lives - whether a specific person or place we are missing, or a more general sense of something we wish to have and don't. These poems offer companionship in that sorrow. Their predominant mood is compassion, in its literal sense: Christ has come into this 'weeping world' to suffer with us. This baby grieves for us, and the idea is that we should be moved by these poems to feel compassion for him and for his mother. It's almost impossible not to, just as it's hard to hear a crying baby and not respond to it. These poems seek to provoke a stirring of what Middle English poets called kynd love - the love which is innate to all creatures, a part of our essential nature, which comes ultimately from God and can be trained to lead us back to him. (Read more.)