Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette: A Passion for Flowers

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

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Marie-Antoinette: A Passion for Flowers

From Geri Walton:

Marie Antoinette loved flowers so much that when her husband became king and gave her Petit Trianon, he did so saying, “You love flowers…well, I have a bouquet for you—the Little Trianon.” Among some of Marie Antoinette’s favorites flowers were irises, hyacinths, tulips, lilacs, lilies, poppies, and violets, and the gardens of Petit Trianon impregnated the air with their scents. In addition, the Queen also loved roses, and, in 1784, she ordered more than two thousand dog roses to be planted in the gardens of Trianon.

But the Queen and her Petit Trianon guests did not just enjoy flowers outdoors: “One of her ladies had special responsibility for seeing that everywhere in her apartments huge Chinese pots and small vases of crystal, Sèvres or Venetian glass were filled with flowers.” You could also see the profusion of flowers that grew outdoors from inside as the facade of Petit Trianon looked over a French garden of geometric shaped flower beds, “and the flowers themselves [were] planted in straight lines.” Inside the little place there were also “ornaments upon the panelling—crossed quivers surmounted by wreaths of roses and garlands of flowers—executed by order of Marie Antoinette.” (Read more.)