Tea at Trianon: The Lost Realm of Logres

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

Monday, August 4, 2025

The Lost Realm of Logres

From The Saxon Cross:

I spent my last night in Logres on the top of Glastonbury Tor, watching a golden Sun set down in the West over the fields of Somerset while light rain fell down on our heads.
They say Glastonbury is the legendary Isle of Avalon. They say Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury after the resurrection of Christ and planted a church there, the first church of England. Upon its ruins was built the Lady Chapel of Glastonbury Abbey.
You can still drink from the sacred white and red springs said to have sprung from the sweat and blood of Christ, brought to England by St. Joseph.
Some legends even say that Christ himself walked here as a young man, on a voyage with his uncle Joseph who was then only a merchant.
I have never been in such a serene place as I was that night under St. Michael’s Tower on the Tor. There you could still see and feel the beauty and soul of Logres, and of Old England, and the state of things did not seem so grim.
I felt that same untarnished spirit walking the River Thames in Oxford, the countryside that inspired so much in Tolkien. I felt it in the Cathedrals at Westminster, Salisbury, and Winchester. I felt it walking over hill-forts and barrows in Wiltshire. I felt it walking the Roman city of Bath, and in the small church of St. John I attended there. In the green hills of Cornwall, in the little villages of the Cotswolds, in the stone rings of Avebury, on the moors of the Peak District, there was something powerful still alive. (Read more.)