Tea at Trianon: The Dairy at Trianon

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

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Dairy at Trianon

From Vive la Reine:

The laiterie de propreté, or “Refreshments Dairy,” was one of two dairies built for Marie Antoinette at her hamlet retreat in the Petit Trianon; milks and cheeses were produced at the first dairy, the laiterie de préparation (“Preparation Dairy,”—it has not survived) and brought for consumption at the laiterie de propreté.

Although today, the Refreshments Dairy features ornate decor, including a trompe l’oeil ceiling, white marble basins, several gilded ram’s head fountains and an exquisitely carved marble table, these were not part of the dairy’s original design. The basins and fountains were not added until the Bourbon Restoration, and the central table was installed on the order of Napoleon’s second wife, Empress Marie-Louise, during the First Empire. (Read more.)