Tea at Trianon: The Marriage of Madame de Lamballe

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

Sunday, September 1, 2013

The Marriage of Madame de Lamballe

From Madeleine Doak:

Formerly Princesse Marie Louise of Savoy, she married the Duc de Penthièvre's son, the Prince de Lamballe, when she was seventeen years old and attained the title of Princess de Lamballe. Like most royal and aristocratic marriages of the day, it was arranged by their families. Nonetheless, the Princesse recorded in her memoirs that her husband-to-be was so anxious to get a pre-official presentation look at her that he joined the group that traveled to meet her when she arrived in France, disguised as a page. She was so taken with the page that during the journey to Paris, she exclaimed, "I hope my prince will allow his page to attend me, for I like him much. What was my surprise when the Duc de Penthièvre presented me to the Prince and I found in him the page for whom I had already felt such an interest! We both laughed and wanted words to express our mutual sentiments. This was really love at first sight."

Alas, their bliss was short-lived. The duc de Penthièvre had selected Princesse Marie Louise hoping that her beauty and purity would influence his son to abandon his dissolute lifestyle. A lifestyle he shared with his sister's husband the infamous duc de Chartres. Didn't happen. Within two years he had sold her diamonds, run off with an opera singer, and died of a venereal disease. (Read more.)