The carved oval agate centre depicting King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in profile, to a rose-cut diamond line frame and similarly-set crown surmount, with ruby and emerald detailing, raised on trifurcated chased foliate shoulders and a plain hoop....Share
I’ll cut President Obama some slack. When he said that women staying at home with the kids is “not a choice we want Americans to make,” I assume he meant that it shouldn’t be a choice that women are forced to make. Even so, I have a beef with the tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation about women staying at home, as if it’s a balancing act between income and child care.Share
“What’s your schedule today?” I asked my wife a few minutes ago. Today, it starts with a trip into the nearby small city to do volunteer work for the local Literacy Council, which provides free English instruction for immigrants. That’s today. Tomorrow, it will be one of a half-dozen other civic obligations she has chosen to take on. She’s not unusual. In that crucially important reality—she’s not unusual—is something that needs to be front and center when we talk about women who “stay at home.” Better parental care is one of the benefits, but I think the effects on America’s social capital are even more important.
“Social capital” is the academicians’ term for the resource that makes American civil society work. It is organized things like teaching English to immigrants or serving on the town council. It is also the guy who shovels snow from the sidewalk of the old lady who lives alone across the street. It is parents at PTA meetings, church-goers organizing Christmas plays, candy stripers at the local hospital, and neighbors keeping an eye on each other’s houses when no one is home.
The point is that many of the important forms of social capital take more time than a person holding a full-time job can afford. Who has been the primary engine for creating America’s social capital throughout its history, making our civil society one of the sociological wonders of the world? People without full-time jobs. The overwhelming majority of those people have been wives.
Every aspect of family and community life gets an infusion of vitality and depth from wives who are not working full time. If you live in a place that you cherish because “it’s a great community,” think of the things you have in mind that make it a great community (scenery and restaurants don’t count), and then think about who bears the brunt of the load in making those things happen. If you live in a place that is not a community—it’s just a collection of unrelated people, living anonymously, without social capital—think of the reasons why it is not a community. One of the answers will be that no one has spare time for that kind of thing.
I’m not knocking the importance of stay-at-home moms for raising children. I just want us to realize that stay-at-home wives are one of the resources that have made America America. It is entirely understandable that some wives work full time, either for the fulfillment of a vocation or to make money–the same reasons men work full time. But when either partner in a marriage—and it will usually be the wife—chooses to devote full time to being a parent and neighbor instead, that choice should not just be accepted, but celebrated. (Read more.)
General Patrick Sarsfield was possibly the greatest Irish Jacobite hero in the War of English Succession. Despite the great span of time that has passed the war between the Stuart King James II and his son-in-law William of Orange the passions of the adherents to the two factions remains fierce. Yet, no matter to what side one gives his allegiance, few would doubt that Sarsfield was an admirable figure being a brilliant soldier, a loyal son of Ireland, loyal to his religion and loyal to the man who was first his King. Patrick Sarsfield was born at Lucan in County Dublin probably around 1650, the second son of Patrick Sarsfield and Anne O’Moore. Patrick came from Anglo-Norman stock but his mother was a daughter of Rory O’Moore who had organized the Rebellion of 1641 so he had solid roots of devotion to Irish freedom. As he grew older he went to school at a French Military College and in 1678 went to England to take up his appointment as a captain in the infantry regiment under Colonel Dungan.
His star was on the rise and in 1685 he transferred to Hamilton’s Dragoons and the following year was promoted to lieutenant colonel of Dover’s Horse regiment. He served in France with the regiments King Charles II sent to assist Louis XIV. In 1686 Sarsfield was promoted to full colonel, a position he held when things began to go awry for King James II. A Catholic convert, the efforts of James II to enact religious toleration met with great opposition in Parliament but it was his family life that sealed his political fate. The fateful moment came when his beautiful and devout Italian wife, Mary of Modena, gave him a son and heir in 1688. The Protestants of England were not about to allow the possibility of another Catholic monarch and called on the Dutch Prince of Orange, who was the son-in-law of James II and a Protestant, to invade England, depose James and take the throne.
William and his Dutch army landed on November 5 and King James II went to meet him. However, anti-Catholic riots broke out in London and even his supposedly loyal English generals, most crucially Churchill, turned against him in favor of William. Ireland, however, was a different story. Irish Catholics had seen their first glimpse of religious freedom since Protestantism became the state religion in England and they remained loyal to James and none moreso than Patrick Sarsfield. He raised a cavalry regiment of which he was made colonel and was quickly promoted to brigadier general. He assisted the Catholic Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Tyrconnel, who King James had made commander in chief, in reorganizing and training the Irish army. Sarsfield soon came to England with a body of Irish troops requested by King James to try to save the situation, but with the English army turning against him in favor of William, there was little that could be done. After seeing first to the safety of his family he was forced to go into exile in France, accompanied by his loyal Irish general Pat Sarsfield.
King James II, however, had not given up on reclaiming his throne and Ireland was chosen as the place to begin his restoration as it had a large Catholic population whose loyalty could be relied on. Of course, James II was as imperfect as all men are bound to be and he made mistakes, one of which was not making better use of General Sarsfield. Nonetheless, he knew that Ireland was his safest stronghold and the following year he returned to the Emerald Isle, declared independence for the Kingdom of Ireland and launched his bid to restore the Stuart reign.
Despite being underutilized, Sarsfield was busy in 1689, on and off the battlefield. He found the time to marry Honora De Burgo, daughter of the Earl of Clainricarde, at Portumna Castle in Galway and was elected MP for Dublin in May. However, it was the war that was to dominate his mind in these years and it was certainly to be that once William of Orange landed in Ireland with his army, only a minority of which was British, most being Dutch troops and foreign mercenaries whose loyalty could be most relied upon. Sarsfield secured Connaught for the Jacobites (those being the people loyal to James II) and guarded against a possible Orange attack. He was known during his military career as a strict disciplinarian but a commander who was much loved by the soldiers who fought under him. His devotion to Ireland was second to none and over his life he fought a number of duels over the honor of Ireland, and was once badly wounded, for Sarsfield would not suffer his homeland to be insulted. Unfortunately, it took him some time to be used to his full potential as the King and some of those around him believed that, while he was certainly brave and loyal, that he lacked the overall head for a top command because he was always so willing to jump right into the thick of the fight. Time would prove how incorrect that opinion was.
However, that was certainly not to say that the abilities of Sarsfield went unappreciated by the King himself. In fact, in 1690 King James II created him Baron Roseberry, Viscount of Tully and Earl of Lucan as well as being appointed Colonel of the Lifeguards. On two occasions in 1691 he was to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Jacobite forces in Ireland. Nonetheless, it was his misfortune to be uninvolved in the most decisive actions of the conflict while the King himself was still in Ireland. It was also the misfortune of the King himself who could certainly have used the talents of Sarsfield. This was certainly true at the battle of the Boyne, which is now viewed as the decisive battle of the entire war, though it need not have been as the Jacobite defeat was not as total or as disastrous as it is often made to seem. It did, however, break the will of King James II (whose father had been beheaded by traitors lest we forget) and afterwards he returned to exile in France. However, the war went on in Ireland in his name for some time after, thanks largely to the leadership of Sarsfield.
At the battle of Aughrim, Sarsfield was again underutilized but nonetheless earned great admiration for the way his well ordered cavalry kept a defeat from turning into a total disaster and saving the lives of a great many Irish soldiers. This was one occasion of many when the discipline he instilled in his troops paid off handsomely. It was a seemingly hopeless fight the Irish faced. They were poorly equipped, poorly supplied, poorly armed and faced by a much more numerous army of well stocked professional soldiers. Nonetheless, Sarsfield faced this challenge with his usual zeal and proved his full worth at the epic siege of Limerick. Besieged by a vastly superior enemy the city of Limerick refused to open its gates to King William III and refused to surrender. In a bold and brilliant move, General Sarsfield slipped out of the city with a few of his cavalry, rode all through the night and captured the enemy supply train, blowing up a huge quantity of Orange ammunition and gunpowder.
Soon thereafter, 10,000 Dutch and British soldiers launched an assault on the city of Limerick. William brought up huge siege guns to blast a breach in the city walls and sent his men charging in. For three desperate hours the Irish infantry fought them off before being pushed back. As the Orange forces pushed their way into the city the Irish troops fought them in hand to hand combat. Orange losses were heavy but they pressed on through the streets where they were met by a hostile population. As the soldiers fought on Irish civilians, men and women alike, hurled rocks and bottles down at the attackers. With casualties mounting ever higher in this slow, painful advance, the Irish cavalry then rode around and attacked the Orange forces from the rear. This proved to be the last straw and William III ordered a retreat. The city of Limerick was saved and they had inflicted 3,000 casualties on their enemies while sustaining less than 500 of their own. It was a great victory for the Irish Jacobites and a demoralizing blow for William who then decided that he had had enough of Ireland and went home, leaving the English General John Churchill in command to subdue the island.
Like Sarsfield, the skill and courage of King William and John Churchill after him, could not be doubted and there were other victories for the Orange forces and soon the war settled down to a stalemate typical of Irish history. The British were too powerful to defeat entirely, but the Irish resistance was so effective that they could never be decisively defeated either. Churchill, however, had every material advantage. It became clear to General Sarsfield that while he could continue the war he also could not win it with his exhausted army and to try to do so would only be to waste the lives of his beloved soldiers. In October of 1691 he agreed to discuss terms of peace with William of Orange. To his surprise the British offered a generous peace. Irish Catholics would be free to practice their religion, have full, equal rights like all other citizens and were guaranteed protection from all persecution and harassment. It was more than many Irish leaders had dreamed possible and Sarsfield willingly signed it on the Treaty Stone at Limerick.
This might have been the start of a new and better relationship between Protestant Britain and Catholic Ireland, but it was not. The Treaty Stone still sits in the town square of Limerick but as a reminder of deception rather than goodwill. Once the war was over the Parliament in London passed the Penal Laws which made things worse for Irish Catholics than they had ever been. While religious freedom for all Protestant dissenters was upheld (that is those Protestants outside the Church of England) Irish Catholics were forbidden to practice their religion, not allowed to be educated, not allowed to hold office, not allowed to conduct business or commerce of any kind, they were not allowed to purchase land, not allowed to rent land worth more than 30 shillings a year nor were they allowed to profit from any land already held. (Read more.)
Dunham is not satisfied with the manipulation of fantasy alone: She seeks to curate, narrate, and direct the real world as though it were an episode of her television show. The worrisome thing is that she is not alone in her apparent inability to tell the representation from the thing being represented. Hers is an endlessly mediated generation, for whose members life is increasingly lived as a performance on the stages of Instagram and Twitter.
Still, to dismiss Lena Dunham as an insulated and spoiled child of Manhattan’s ruling class is to misunderstand her story entirely. If there is such a thing as actually abusing a child through excessive generosity and overindulgence, then Lena Dunham’s parents are child abusers. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries. And they were, in their daughter’s telling, enablers of some very disturbing behavior that would be considered child abuse in many jurisdictions — Lena Dunham’s sexual abuse, specifically, of her younger sister, Grace, the sort of thing that gets children taken away from non-millionaire families without Andover pedigrees and Manhattanite social connections. (Read more.)
In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost … I submit in all things to the will of Providence. I do not fear death; and, lacking merit of my own, I place all my trust in the mercy of God, praying of him for time and grace to receive the sacraments of the Church with fervent piety …
I die in the Roman Catholic and Apostolic religion, in which I have lived as faithfully as I had power, and to which I owe all the consolations of my life.
… After the example of my parents, I pardon, with my entire soul, and without exception, all those who have injured or offended me; sincerely praying God to extend to them His mercy, and to me also, for the pardon of my sins. To all the faithful French who have remained attached to my family and to myself, I leave thanks for the devotedness, the sufferings, and the penalties they have endured in our cause.
I pray God to shower down his blessings upon France—France, that I have never ceased to love even under my bitterest afflictions.
I thank the Emperor of Austria for the asylum which he accorded in his dominions to me and my family. I am grateful for the proofs of interest and friendship which I have received from the imperial family, especially under circumstances of deep sorrow; and not less so for the sentiments manifested by a great number of his subjects, more especially the inhabitants of Goritz …
Having always considered my nephew Henri and my niece Louisa as my children, I give them my maternal benediction. They have had the happiness of being educated in our holy religion: may they continue in fidelity to it, worthy decedents of St. Louis.
May my nephew consecrate his happy faculties to the accomplishment of the great duties imposed on him by his position! May he never wander from the paths of moderation, of justice, and of truth!
I institute my nephew Henri my universal legatee. It is my wish that my remains be deposited at Goritz, in the vault of the Franciscans, between those of my husband and his father.Share
Let no solemn service be celebrated on my account. All that I desire are masses for the salvation of my soul. (Read more.)
David Chavchavadze, who died Oct. 5 at 90, was an American spy and a great-great-grandson of Czar Nicholas I of Imperial Russia. As a CIA case officer, he specialized in clandestine communications and surveillance in matters affecting his ancestral homeland. He did much of his work in Berlin in the years after World War II and at the start of the Cold War. His assignments included recruitment of Soviet agents.Share
By blood, he was connected to the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years. His mother, Nina, was a Russian princess and a great-granddaughter of Nicholas I, who was czar from 1825 to 1855. His father was Prince Paul of Georgia, a direct descendant of the former Caucasian kingdom’s last monarch, George XII, who died in 1801.
At the CIA, Mr. Chavchavadze fought the political heirs of the Bolshevik revolution that brought down the Romanovs in 1917. In 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children by firing squad in the cellar of a house at Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.
Mr. Chavchavadze’s grandfather Prince Alexander Chavchavadze, a regimental commander in the czar’s army during World War I, was shot in a Georgian prison in 1931 by the Bolsheviks, who more than a decade earlier had overrun Georgia. His maternal grandfather, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich, a grandson of Czar Nicholas I, was shot in 1919 at the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul in Leningrad. His espionage career, he wrote in a memoir called “Crowns and Trenchcoats,” was spurred by a desire to “do something about the dangers of international communism.”
David Paul Chavchavadze was born on May 20, 1924, in London, where his parents, as members of the Russian nobility, had sought refuge from the revolution. (Read more.)
[Joyeuse] is the traditional sword of Charlemagne and by the 13th century was used as the official sword for the coronation of the Kings of France. The Song of Roland describes how by Charlemagne's "side hung Joyeuse, and never was there a sword to match it; its colour changed thirty times a day." The sword now can be see in The Louvre, and scientific tests show that its part date from different times: the pommel to the 10th to 11th centuries, the crossguard to the 12th and the grip to the 13th century. However the blade itself dates from either the 9th or 10th century, so that part could be the same one used by the Carolingian emperor.Share
(Read more.)
When I was a little girl and we would visit my father's relatives in Kingston, Ontario, my parents would always take us to visit my great-grandfather's only sister, Aunt Madeline. Aunt Madeline was about as eccentric as anyone could be. She had quaint little house full of antiques and memorabilia, and a beautiful garden. Her house reeked of cats, however, but we knew enough not to scrunch up our noses as the grown-ups conversed. Before we left, she would give us each a crisp Canadian two dollar bill. Later, I would enjoy the stories my grandmother and my cousins would tell about Aunt Madeline. She was gifted with clairvoyance and was known to accurately describe things happening far away. Sometimes she would read tea leaves at parties, but she stopped because she became too disturbed by what she saw. Also, she was a devout Catholic. She became a writer under the name of "Joan Talbot," recording a great deal of local history and anecdotes for magazines and newspapers, later collected in a book of essays called Memory Turns the Dial.
Many years ago a little girl we will call N. and her teenaged Aunt we will call M. named a big field of white daisies "Daisyland."...Every morning N. and her young aunt would cross the orchard to visit Daisyland....Sometimes the summer breeze would stir the daisies towards the orchard and they would seem to bow a welcome....Then again a real wind would rock the flowers to and fro, as if they were merrily dancing.When Madeline grew up she moved to Kingston with her parents. When they died she inherited their boarding house. Madeline, however, had no head for business matters and did not pay the mortgage, so she lost the house. At one point she fell in love with a young Protestant man but their religious differences kept them from marrying. The young man ended up as a missionary in China. Madeline never married. Her brother eventually bought her a little house on Barrie Street. She devoted herself to writing and helping "the oddest people," as one of her nephews said. She could be very difficult, especially when it came to her menagerie of cats, but was always willing to listen to the troubles of others. She became the font of information on our family history. She died in May 1982, quite a long life for someone who was seen as frail as a child.
How prone we are in this age of scientific marvels to think of the life of our forefathers, the pioneers of this country, as dull, monotonous and lonely. But we should note the signs and symbols they left, simple and humble ones, to prove that they, too, knew the poetry of life, they appreciated the true nobility of nature, better than we their descendants in this age of hurry and speed. (Memory Turns the Dial, p.73)Share
If the Tudors had trouble finding a spare then the Stuarts had problems keeping them off the throne. In the history of the British monarchy, this one dynasty saw more seconds in line eventually take the crown than any other. From start to finish, the House of Stuart was filled with princes and princesses who went from playing second fiddle to ruling the realm. Here are the Stuart spares to the heirs – and some of them might be very familiar.Share
When James VI of Scotland became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 he brought with him a nursery filled with princes and princesses. His heir was a nine year old called Henry Frederick who arrived with his parents as they took over the royal residences of London. The spare was his little brother, two year old Charles, who only came to England the following year when he was judged strong enough to make the journey. Henry was a hugely popular figure who grew up in the public gaze and at times outshone just about everyone else in his family so the first spare of the Stuart dynasty had to lurk in obscurity while England fell in love with its young Prince of Wales. The deep affection in which Henry was held showed when tragedy struck in November 1612. The nation was distraught when the popular young prince, taking on more responsibility in public life and showing every sign of being a more than able king in the making, died unexpectedly. Thousands took to the streets to grieve publicly and his brother, Charles, was chief mourner at his funeral. He also stepped into the role of heir but was still overshadowed by his brother’s memory.
Charles became the first spare of the House of Stuart to become king when he succeeded James I in 1625.
One of the first things this new king did was to marry and start a new royal family. His bride, Henrietta Maria of France, became queen as soon as she said ‘I do’ in 1625 just months after his accession but the couple waited almost four years for a family. Their first son, Charles James, lived for just a few hours but their second little boy, another Charles, arrived almost exactly a year later and became heir to the throne.
The spare, James, arrived in 1633. But while their father had been raised at an ambitious court where his brother was a star in the making, these two royal brothers grew up in an increasingly fractious political situation and by the time both were ten their father was embroiled in the English Civil War which would lead to his deposition and execution in 1649. The monarchy was restored in 1660 when Charles took the throne and James, Duke of York became his heir and he retained that position throughout his brother’s reign as the new king had children with several mistresses but none with his wife, Catherine of Braganza.
James had several sons of his own during his brother’s reign although whether they can be considered spares is debateable as, by the time of both their births, it was fairly obvious that Charles II and Queen Catherine would have no family of their own. The baby boy born to James and his first wife, Anne Hyde, in 1667 had a very good chance of becoming king himself so baby James was really more of a monarch in waiting than a supporting member of the royal dynasty. He died in 1671 just before his fourth birthday and just months before his parents welcomed another son, Edgar. This prince of York with a very Anglo-Saxon name was, like his brother James, in the direct line of succession until he, too, died months before turning four. (Read more.)
