The Handkerchief

As the gate clashed behind them, a voice cried from the window:
"Girl, girls! Have you both got nice pocket handkerchiefs?"
"Yes, yes, spandy nice, and Meg has cologne on hers," cried Jo, adding, with a laugh, as they went on, "I do believe Marmee would ask that if we were all running away from an earthquake."
"It is one of her aristocratic tastes, and quite proper, for a real lady is always known by neat boots, gloves, and handkerchief," replied Meg....
~from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

The handkerchief is yet another relic of western civilization that has fallen into disuse. Crumpled tissues have replaced them, or worse, people wipe their eyes and noses with their fingers. In the case of infectious colds, tissues are more sanitary, but cloth hankies are easier on the nose. They are also easier on the environment. Ironing handkerchiefs is not really necessary, although it is a nice touch. They are easy to wash, just use hot water and a little bleach.

The May/June 2007 issue of Southern Lady Magazine has a lovely article about handkerchiefs by Phyllis Hoffman. Mrs. Hoffman describes how important handkerchiefs were in the days when there was courtship and coquetry:

During the 19th century, handkerchiefs were indispensable. In fact, young ladies and gentlemen actually communicated through hankie gestures since strict rules of propriety prohibited much contact otherwise. If the lady drew the handkerchief across her lips while she looked at a young man, it meant she wanted to meet him. If she placed it upon her cheek, that meant she loved him. Sweeping the cloth across the forehead was the signal that they were being watched! ("Gracious Living with Phyllis Hoffman" Southern Lady Magazine, May/June 2007, no. 3, p. 78)

Handkerchiefs make lovely gifts; they are charming to have at weddings and formal occasions. Children should be taught early on to always have a hankie or a tissue with them, so that they are not going around wiping their noses on their hands and sleeves. It is a small matter, but one that involves healthy self-respect, as well as regard for the sensibilities of others.

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Deo Gratias!

ABC News: Supreme Court OKs Abortion Procedure Ban Share

Blessed Marie of the Incarnation

Terry reminds us that today is the feast of Blessed Marie of the Incarnation, Barbe Acarie (1566-1618). She was a happily married wife and mother, very well-off. Her husband did not like it that she was reading romance novels all day and encouraged her to read spiritual books instead. She became very devout and was instrumental in bringing the Discalced Carmelite Nuns into France. She later became a widow and then a nun herself. She was a Carmelite lay sister and humbly performed all the menial tasks of the monastery, in spite of her past privileged life. Share

Condolences from the Holy Father

The Pope Says Campus Shootings "Senseless" and sends his condolences. We cannot imagine the post-trauma that will be suffered by those who survived when everyone around them was murdered. It is unfathomable.
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Marie-Antoinette and Style

Author Caroline Weber offers some interesting insights into Marie-Antoinette's clever use of fashion in this article. Here is an excerpt:

Needless to say, the use of clothing to enhance one’s symbolic power had been an effective political tactic at least since the days of Louis XIV. As historians from Voltaire to Louis Marin have rightly emphasized, the Sun King’s thoughtful and extravagant manipulations of costume did much to bolster his absolutist grip on an unruly nation. In this context, it may not be incidental that while still a teen-ager, Marie Antoinette declared Louis XIV her favorite French king—“because he is so great,” she is said to have informed her tutor, the Abbé de Vermond. In fact it is telling that, shortly after her accession, when she was, as she admitted to her brother Joseph II, anxious to cultivate “the appearance of credit” she enjoyed with her newly crowned husband, Marie Antoinette commissioned Louis-Auguste Brun to paint her portrait “riding like a man.” Brun complied, and depicted the young consort heroically straddling a rearing steed, outfitted in shocking male breeches and riding habit. Unconventional in the annals of royal Frenchwomen’s equestrian portraiture (in which subjects tended to strike a ladylike, sidesaddle pose), the Brun painting bears a startling resemblance to the great representations of Louis XIV on horseback. I cannot think of a single commentator who has dismissed the Sun King’s strategically deployed equestrian posturing as that of an immature youth endeavoring “to be thought cool.” Yet Marie Antoinette’s recourse to a similar iconographic strategy somehow fails to register—with the likes of Coppola and Thurman—as anything but garden-variety teenage rebellion, notwithstanding the fact that the young queen, still childless, had good cause for wishing to appear untouchable and strong. Share

Killer Identified

It is so bizarre to read about the disturbed man who almost made my dear little cousin a widow, while murdering so many others. Spirit Daily offers some reflections on the spiritual aspects.

UPDATE: Cousin Gil is home from the hospital. Bullets grazed his head and shoulder, but mercifully he was spared. Deo Gratias. Thanks to everyone for their prayers. Let us pray for those whose loved ones will never come home. Share

Return to Reverence- Let's Hope!

Against All Heresies has a link to an article in the Altoona-Johstown diocesan paper. We live in that diocese and I hope that basic reverence during Mass is restored according to the Holy Father's wishes, even in the vernacular liturgies. I do hope that SOME priests will start saying the traditional Latin Mass.

Let me say that the A-J diocese is by far better than other dioceses where I have lived (I have lived in some VERY "far-out" dioceses.) There are so many wonderful priests and at our parish we could not ask for more dedicated pastors.

However, there are problems in the Church here, as there are just about everywhere. There have been scandals of all varieties, including priests who have chosen to leave their pastoral duties in order to get married. Unlike some parishioners, I do not blame our bishop for the free choice made by grown men who became involved with women.

I do not foresee massive overnight changes around here when the Motu Proprio goes through. I doubt that many of the priests of the A-J diocese know much Latin, and most are too harried and overworked by their pastoral duties to learn the rubrics of the traditional Latin Mass. However, there is hope for the future, because the priests who do want to say the Latin Mass will hopefully not be obstructed. Things will start small, and the changes will be gradual, but the seed will have been planted. Share

Gone With The Wind

It is the American War and Peace. This is one of the best articles I have ever read about Margaret Mitchell's epic, which I must have read about ten times by the age of fifteen. It mentions the influence of Celtic culture upon the classic novel of the South:

These characters, most importantly Scarlett, Rhett Butler, Ashley and Melanie Wilkes, and Mammy, personify the antebellum South. Scarlett’s father is Celtic-Irish and her mother, Anglo-Norman, which represent the two primary cultures in the antebellum South. Celts, from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, were in the majority. Many were hardscrabble "poor whites," and few Celts owned slaves. The Anglo-Normans, from England, like Ashley, were the genteel, slave-owning upper class in this culture. Tara, Scarlett’s plantation, is the name for the capital of ancient Ireland and is the spiritual center of Irish culture. (A statue of St. Patrick now stands on the Hill of Tara, in County Meath, Ireland.)

James Cantrell’s "Celtic-Southern thesis" brings a fresh perspective to this work.⁴ He maintains that "Gone With the Wind is not merely a novel about fighting and rebuilding from a losing war, nor is it merely a cloying though ultimately heartbreaking love story; it is an epic in which the protagonist ultimately has the tragic perception that her life has been false in cultural terms. The conflict in Gone With the Wind concerns which of the two different cultures should be pre-eminent in the South, a conflict Mitchell embodies in Scarlett’s relationships with her parents and, especially, in her love for Ashley Wilkes." Cantrell contends, "The South’s tragedy, in Mitchell’s vision, is that its Celtic hardheadedness did not prevent it from choosing the pretty illusions of cavalier [Anglo-Norman] gentility, which include a cavalier defense of chattel slavery and the caste system that goes with it. The South, like Scarlett, blinded itself to reality, and thereby lost what was most precious to it."

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Madame Royale's arrival in Vienna, 1796

This is a painting of Madame Royale being received by her Austrian relatives, after being released from the Temple prison. In the words of Madame Campan:

It might have been supposed that the Princess would rejoice to leave behind her the country which had been the scene of so many horrors and such bitter suffering. But it was her birthplace, and it held the graves of all she loved; and as she crossed the frontier she said to those around her, "I leave France with regret, for I shall never cease to consider it my country." She arrived in Vienna on 9th January, 1796, and her first care was to attend a memorial service for her murdered relatives. After many weeks of close retirement she occasionally began to appear in public, and people looked with interest at the pale, grave, slender girl of seventeen, dressed in the deepest mourning, over whose young head such terrible storms had swept. The Emperor wished her to marry the Archduke Charles of Austria, but her father and mother had, even in the cradle, destined her hand for her cousin, the Duc d'Angouleme, son of the Comte d'Artois, and the memory of their lightest wish was law to her. Her quiet determination entailed anger and opposition amounting to persecution. Every effort was made to alienate her from her French relations. She was urged to claim Provence, which had become her own if Louis XVIII. was to be considered King of France. A pressure of opinion was brought to bear upon her which might well have overawed so young a girl. "I was sent for to the Emperor's cabinet," she writes, "where I found the imperial family assembled. The ministers and chief imperial counsellors were also present . . . . When the Emperor invited me to express my opinion, I answered that to be able to treat fittingly of such interests I thought, I ought to be surrounded not only by my mother's relatives, but also by those of my father . . . . Besides, I said, I was above all things French, and in entire subjection to the laws of France, which had rendered me alternately the subject of the King my father, the King my brother, and the King my uncle, and that I would yield obedience to the latter, whatever might be his commands. This declaration appeared very much to dissatisfy all who were present, and when they observed that I was not to be shaken, they declared that my right being independent of my will, my resistance would not be the slightest obstacle to the measures they might deem it necessary to adopt for the preservation of my interests."

~from the Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette by Madame Campan Share