Tea at Trianon: The Soul of a French Palace

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

Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Soul of a French Palace

The Abbey-Palace of Royaumont.

The collection adorned the French neoclassical Abbey Palace of Royaumont near Chantilly, a late 18th-century mansion designed by Louis Le Masson for the Abbot of Royaumont, Henri Eléonore Le Cornut de Balivière, chaplain of Louis XVI. The actual abbey was destroyed in the French Revolution, but the Abbey Palace survived. The mansion changed hands until it was eventually bought by Baron and Baroness Eugène Fould-Springer in 1923. Their grandson Nathaniel de Rothschild says in the catalog that they immediately set out to restore the "magnificent property" and give it a "soul."

The Fould-Springers carefully selected works of art, furniture, lighting, clocks and ceramics that reflected the stately beauty of the house. Before the three-day auction, Sept. 19-21 in Paris, the collection will be on view Sept. 17-18 at Abbey Palace, offering an opportunity to see the pieces in their original surroundings and arrangements. (Read entire article.)