Tea at Trianon: Portraits of Frances Brandon

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

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Portraits of Frances Brandon

Will the real Frances Brandon please stand up?

The painting below is by far the one most usually associated with Frances. For centuries, it was misidentified as a portrait of her and her second husband, Adrian Stokes. Recent scholarship has identified it as one of Mary Neville and her son, Gregory Fiennes, but centuries of error die hard. As dozens of books, nonfiction and fiction alike, have relied on this painting in depicting Frances’s physical appearance (and even her personality), it’s likely that it will be associated with Frances for years to come. (Incidentally, the myth that Adrian Stokes was half Frances’s age rests largely upon this portrait; Stokes was actually only a couple of years Frances’s junior. Before joining her household he was the marshal of Newhaven in France, where he commanded ten men until the fortress fell to the French in 1549.) (Read entire article.)