Tea at Trianon: The Temple 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

Friday, January 27, 2012

The Temple Palace

From Vive la Reine, a sofa from the Comte d'Arois' Turkish boudoir at the Temple palace. It is true that both brothers of Louis XVI were quite extravagant, much more so than Marie-Antoinette. To quote:

The “Temple” in Paris was essentially a small city within a city, housing numerous buildings, including a palace used by the comte d’Artois since the 1770s. When the royal family and their small entourage was first brought into the Temple enclosure in the fall of 1792, they were led into the palace and given food. The king, at least, assumed they were to be held in the palace and began to designate rooms for his family, the waiting women, and their servants. It was not until later that they were led into the Little Tower and shortly after told that the royal family would be separated from their entourage and moved to the Great Tower as soon as it was furnished. (Read entire post.)