Tea at Trianon: Pierre Toussaint's New York

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, January 6, 2015

Pierre Toussaint's New York

From the Municipal Art Society of New York:

Date:	Sunday, February 8
Time:	11:00 AM
Pierre Toussaint, a 23 year old slave, arrived in New York in 1797 a refugee from the revolution in Saint-Domingue. He went on to become a society hairdresser and philanthropist--a one-man social service agency. Word around town in antebellum New York was "go to Toussaint" if you were down and out. The Catholic Church says he practiced heroic charity and his cause for canonization is in progress. Join urban historian James A. Sullivan to learn about his remarkable life and the New Yorkers who admired him. Follow Toussaint’s footpaths in lower Manhattan, from Wall Street and Trinity Churchyard to Reade and Franklin Street. The tour will conclude at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral where Toussaint was buried in 1853. Cost: $20 / $15 Members