Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette's Books

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, January 19, 2012

Marie-Antoinette's Books

From her private library at Versailles. They're not what you would think.

The Latin and French books are bound in citron moroccan leather and have triple gilt fillet borders. The covers are stamped with Marie Antoinette's coat of arms.

The titles are:

L'Office de la semaine sainte, à l'usage de la maison du roi by the Abbot of Bellegarde

Les Plaideurs by Jean Baptiste Racine

Officium parvum B. Mariæ Virginis, ad usum ordinis Cisterciensis.

Histoire des Celtes...nouvelle édition by Simon Pelloutier

(Read entire post.)

To translate, the books are The Office of Holy Week, The Litigants by Jean Baptiste Racine, The Little Office of The Blessed Virgin Mary: According to the Usage of the Cistercian Order, and History of the Celts by Simon Pelloutier. Marie-Antoinette had two sisters who were nuns, and history was one of her favorite subjects. She enjoyed plays and novels as well.

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