Tea at Trianon: Smiling Victoria

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, September 11, 2011

Smiling Victoria

The queen was often amused.

According to her granddaughter, Princess Alice of Albany (Countess of Athlone), Queen Victoria insisted that she never said, “We are not amused” but that four-word phrase – alongside the perpetual mourning for ‘angel Albert’ - has seeped into the popular imagination and created a totally false picture of the Queen as a very sombre and dreary woman.

In fact, Queen Victoria was often highly amused. Lady Longford, in her wonderful ‘Victoria R.I.’ recounts a humorous story of a meal at which the Queen sitting next to an elderly admiral who was very hard of hearing. The Queen asked about the progress of repairs to a wrecked ship but the admiral did not catch her words. Out of the politeness, the Queen tried a different conversation, “How is your sister?”

“Ah,” said the admiral, suddenly realising what had first been said, “She’ll be fine, ma’am, when we turn her over and scrape the barnacles off her bottom!” The Queen was so overcome with laughter that she had to hide her face in her handkerchief. (Read entire post.)