Tea at Trianon: Signatures

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

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Signatures

From Vive la Reine. (Click on picture to see it close up.) It is the marriage contract of a Bourbon family retainer and was witnessed by everyone in the Royal family old enough to write in 1785. From top to bottom, we have the signatures of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, the Comte de Provence, the Comtesse de Provence, the Comte d'Artois, the Comtesse d'Artois, Madame Elisabeth, Madame Adelaïde, Madame Victoire, the Duc d'Angoulême (the future husband of Madame Royale), the Duc d'Orléans, and the Duc de Berry (who signs his name almost as large as his uncle the King.) I cannot decipher the name beneath Berry's and the names next to Berry's but one looks like Louis-Joseph de Bourbon (the Dauphin.) I do not see Madame Royale's signature but perhaps I just cannot decipher it.

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