Tea at Trianon: Charlotte and Leopold

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

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Charlotte and Leopold

A brief but romantic idyll. Share

2 comments:

May said...: Later, when Leopold was King of the Belgians, and married to Louise-Marie of Orleans, he still used to keep a portrait of Charlotte and would gaze at it with a distant look. Of course, he also named his daughter, by his second wife, after his first wife. I wonder how Queen Louise-Marie felt about all this...; November 10, 2010 at 5:49:00 PM EST
ThereseMarie27 said...: Hi, the portrait was probably the pregnant portait of Charlotte. The one given to she commissioned from Sir Thomas Lawrenece for Leopold's birthday. It was painted in October. She died in Novemeber and it arrived on Prince Leopold's birthday on Dec 16. King Leopold took the painting with him to Belgium. I posted it in my blog; January 9, 2011 at 6:08:00 AM EST