Relics on the James

To all the FFVs* of Richmond:

I have “five under the ground” in the most beautiful city in the western hemisphere. I bow to no man in the realm of cosmopolitan patrimony. But your town has some excellent things. I can see why you regard it as the center of the cosmos.

I would have much more to present here, dear reader, if only the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ website were not so impossibly bad.

Does the Kreuser collection of Art Nouveau belt buckles make Richmond the most excellent repository on earth? Just about.

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* “First Families of Virginia.” At West Point in the 1840’s, the FFVs considered Stonewall Jackson a hillbilly beneath their notice, since he grew up in the Ohio River basin.

Be My Speed

Basilica of St. Denis

First thing this morning, I put my red on. But it wasn’t in honor of the faltering Caps.

I vested in a blood-red chasuble in honor of the martyr Saint Denis, who was beheaded 1751 years ago today. He was the first to preach the Gospel in Paris.

In Act V, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Henry V, the king invokes the aid of St. Denis.

Henry is trying to woo the Princess of France. But she is stone-faced, because she thinks Henry is an “enemy of France.”

Katharine. I cannot tell vat is dat.

Henry V
No, Kate? I will tell thee in French; which I am
sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married
wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook
off. Je quand sur le possession de France, et quand
vous avez le possession de moi,—let me see, what
then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc votre est
France et vous etes mienne. It is as easy for me,
Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much
more French: I shall never move thee in French,
unless it be to laugh at me.

When Kenneth Branagh delivered this line in his movie version, he skipped the invocation of St. Denis. Not a good idea!

…A brother-priest and I will undertake the Baltimore Half-Marathon tomorrow morning.

Please say a prayer for us that some heavenly power will be our speed! (Both of us are slow in more ways than one.)