Tea at Trianon: Hermitess and Green Man

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, March 11, 2025

Hermitess and Green Man

From The Abbey of Misrule:

Iffley has been described as ‘one of the most spectacular Romanesque parish churches in England’. For those of you who don’t know what ‘Romanesque’ means, it’s a style of architecture associated in England with the dastardly Normans, but which was common right across Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries. You can always spot it by the shape of the windows: those semicircular arches are the giveaway. Romanesque buildings have small, arched windows, thick walls and big supporting pillars. Compared to the later Gothic style, the architecture is solid and straightforward.
Less straightforward though, very often, is some of the decoration, and in this, Iffley excels. You can see from the photo above how the architects of this church went to town on the stone carving. Iffley church was built in the 1160s, when Romanesque stone carving was at its peak, and Iffley’s west doorway, which you can see on the two photos above, is a riot of stone art. (Read more.)