Tea at Trianon: Tsar Nicholas II in Italy

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, February 28, 2012

Tsar Nicholas II in Italy

A gift remembered.

To my brother Umberto... the Emperor of Russia gave a singular and complicated toy: it was a Russian village, with all its houses, streets, animals and vehicles. The houses, there were about 10 of them, were in real masonry, with doors and windows, each of them about 60cm high. Pedestrians and about 50 Cossaks on horseback, in proportion, "were circulating" in the streets, realistically furnished with everything that can really be seen in a real street of a Russian village. It was necessary to use an entire salon of the Castle, surrounded by a railing, to store the huge toy in. Everyone warmly welcomed the beautiful present: but not that much Umberto, who used to say that was not as much a "toy" but "a show". (Read entire post.)