Tea at Trianon: Return to the Tuileries

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, February 2, 2012

Return to the Tuileries

Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de France, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, returned to the Tuileries palace in 1814 after a long exile. (From Vive la Reine.)

“She is positively haunted by phantoms at the Tuileries,” continued Madame de Boigne. “Every room holds some troubling memory. Madame weeps and weeps...and yet she ransacks the palace for mementos of her childhood. She sent for the old piano tuner, Monsieur Dubois, to ask what had become of her pianoforte. He tried in vain to convince her of the superiority of the pianofortes left there by Empress Marie-Louise, but no, Madame wanted her own, which she had played as a girl.”

~from Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal

Brantigny said...: I understand this completely. Genny comes home quite often, her old room has been converted into my "Mancave". The mementos of her child hood are replete. We have had to save her Stuffed animals, her books and her dressup costumes. these things she remembered from her happy childhood she now is intent on passing down to her daughter. The other day the baby (she is two) was wearing a tshirt that we got for her from my old squadron, carefully preserved.

I feel that Madame royale wanted to return to the joy she felt as a child. I belive she would have been a good mother had she been given the chance.; February 2, 2012 at 1:14:00 PM EST