Tea at Trianon: Madame Louise de France

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

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Madame Louise de France

Catherine Delors concludes her wonderful series of articles on the daughters of Louis XV by exploring the life of the youngest daughter who became a nun and a Blessed of the Church.
She added that moralists were right when they said happiness does not dwell in palaces; that she had proved it; and that, if I wanted to be happy, she advised me to come and enjoy a retreat in which the liveliest imagination might find full exercise in the contemplation of a better world.
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2 comments:

tubbs said...: A very cute, very pretty, almost coquettish young lady comes through the Nattier portrait inspite of that work's period stylization. (a young Drew Barrymore?) I am completely intrigued, enchanted,.....I want to go back in time!; March 8, 2009 at 11:29:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Me, too, which is why I enjoy writing historical fiction. A good book can take you back in time.....; March 9, 2009 at 10:01:00 AM EDT