Tea at Trianon: Vegetables at Versailles

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, September 6, 2013

Vegetables at Versailles

Jean Baptiste la Quintinye was hired by Louis XIV to create a potager or kitchen garden at Versailles, in order to feed the enormous household. From My French Life:

The gardeners and students at the little-known kitchen garden at the Chateau de Versailles in France strive to maintain King Louis XIV’s rare fruit varieties and experimental gardening technics. Once a mosquito infested bog, the potager is now a national treasure.

When the French King Louis XIV moved his court to the Chateau de Versailles in 1682, the kitchen garden in the grounds was too small to satisfy the legendary appetite of the King and his court, where there were often several thousand people to feed.

The King commissioned Jean Baptiste la Quintinye, a court lawyer, to create the Potager du Roi on the site of a mosquito infested bog, behind the famous chateau. It took more than five years to drain away the stagnant water and bring in rich fertile soil from the Satory forest nearby to make the site fit for use....La Quintinye fell in love with gardening during a trip to Italy, so with the creation of the potager he was able to indulge this new passion by creating the nine hectors of geometrically laid-out gardens in the French style, complete with a central fountain. (Read more.)