Tea at Trianon: September

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 6, 2015

September

From Once I Was a Clever Boy:

The painting is attributed to Paul Limbourg and, in part, to the later painter who worked on the manuscript in the 1480s, Jean Colombe.

September is the time of the grape harvest. Five people gather the grapes whilst another man, who looks to be sampling the vine crop, and a woman, apparently pregnant and perhaps stretching after bending to gather the grapes, watch them. The bunches of grapes are put first into baskets and than transferred to paniers which are borne by mules. The paniers are then loaded into larger whicker containers on carts drawn by oxen, presumably to the winepress linked to the château of Saumur in Anjou which forms the backdrop to the scene.The towers are decorated with gilt fleurs de lys, similar to the details shown on English castles in sixteenth century survey drawings for the Duchy of Lancaster.

Once again in the Limbourg's scenes there is the sense of peace and tranquility, of plenty and a confident enjoyment of the good things of life. (Read more.)