Tea at Trianon: An Apartment in Paris

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 8, 2014

An Apartment in Paris

Marthe de Florian (1898), by Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931). Image Source: The Meta Picture.

From Histories of Things to Come:

In 1942, a French socialite, Madame de Florian, fled her apartment on Paris's Right Bank near the Opéra Garnier. She paid rent on it until her death in 2010, but never returned (hat tip: The Meta Picture). The apartment has sat, sealed and untouched, with nothing moved since the Second World War, gathering dust.

After 2010, the estate opened the apartment and began selling the contents. They included the portrait (above) of the apartment's absent tenant's grandmother. It was painted by Italian portrait painter Giovanni Boldini, and recently sold at auction for €2.1 million. (Read more.)

The North Coast said...: I read about the discovery of this beautiful old apartment and its interesting occupants a while back. I would have loved to be able to inhabit that place just as it was for a couple of days, just to experience another time for a little while.

I'd also like to to have been able to buy that fantastic Second Empire vanity.

We can only guess at why the 2nd Mme. de Florian closed this apartment and kept it intact and unoccupied for 70 years. We will never know now, but it's as if she was trying to forever preserve a moment in time, like a prehistoric insect caught in amber, sensing that the way of life and its aesthetic was about to be swept away forever. Or, perhaps, it was her way of keeping her late grandmother alive, in a sense. My sister and I felt an urge to do the same thing with my mother's house when she passed, and breaking the place up was a tearful event.; February 8, 2014 at 8:42:00 AM EST
elena maria vidal said...: They must have had wonderful times there, before the war.; February 8, 2014 at 9:17:00 AM EST