Tea at Trianon: A Secret Paris Archive

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, March 15, 2014

A Secret Paris Archive

From Messy Nessy Chic:

The Galcante was founded by Christian Bailly, the chairman of the ”Musée de la Presse”. When it first opened in 1975, it began as a small shop that just sold copies of what was in the museum’s collections, and later progressed into the first French society selling old newspapers and documents. (Read more.)

The North Coast said...: Oh, dear. I could spend my whole vacation in that one little pocket of Paris, a city stuffed with intriguing little pockets of history.

I could also spend my personal allowance of "spending" money for the rest of my life

Would love to have a couple of months just to explore this place alone; March 15, 2014 at 10:22:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Me, too! I would love to rent an apartment in Paris and spend a summer there, just poking around.; March 15, 2014 at 10:34:00 AM EDT