Tea at Trianon: Earl Grey

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

Friday, April 26, 2013

Earl Grey

Tea and the Duchess. To quote:

The real Charles Grey was described as ‘tall, slim and strikingly handsome’. He had been born on 13 March 1764 into a prominent Northumberland family, with its country seat at Howick Hall. One of seven children, he went to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge, and at the age of 22 was elected to Parliament. He gravitated towards Whig politics and was closely associated with Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the Prince of Wales.

Shortly after becoming an MP he was introduced to Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. She was of course already married but he pursued her with headstrong impetuosity. She became pregnant by him in 1791 but their relationship was doomed: Georgiana went abroad to have their child, Eliza Courtney, returning to her husband in September 1793 and handing the child over to Grey’s parents to raise. (Read entire post.)