Tea at Trianon: A Country House in Paris

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, October 2, 2012

A Country House in Paris

The New York Times reports on a house which once belonged to the Comte de Provence and later to Cole Porter.

A visitor approaching from the street first sees a traditional 19th-century apartment building. But, through a large wooden gate at the end of the building’s cobbled courtyard stands the unexpected: a white-brick, half-timbered structure that looks like it might have been plucked from the Normandy countryside and deposited in the center of Paris.

Built for Monsieur, as the Comte de Provence was known, the property dates to the construction of a stables complex that he commissioned from the architect Alexandre Brongniart in 1777-78. Mr. Brongniart went on to design several mansions nearby that became landmarks on the rue Monsieur, the street named for his patron.

(Unlike his brother, Monsieur escaped the Revolution to reign later as Louis XVIII.)

What remained of the original design was a converted stable and the residence, most probably once used by the count’s écuyer, or equerry in charge. By the 20th century, the two buildings had been merged into a desirable townhouse with more than 20 rooms in a bucolic setting that includes a garden covering 500 square meters, or 5,382 square feet. (Read entire article.)