Tea at Trianon: An Elegant French Interior

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

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

An Elegant French Interior

From Victoria:

Through the viewfinder of her own camera, transplanted American Corey Amaro guides us through the four-hundred-year-old French home she has painstakingly designed as a haven for hand-me-down treasures and flea-market finds.

“The sense of love” is among the prized possessions in Corey Amaro’s home, she says, along with “an angel that my grandmother brought with her when she left the Azores and came to America alone when she was 14.”

This home is hidden off an alley in a one-thousand-year-old fishing village so anchored in history, it boasts roads built by the ancient Roman engineers. It is filled with French antiques, pieces Cory carefully chose and arranged just so to create a constant source of serenity and to help stave off the kind of homesickness that only an expat can feel. (Read more.)