Tea at Trianon: Mar-a-Lago

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, November 27, 2016

Mar-a-Lago

The winter residence of the President-Elect was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post. The pictures are old but interesting. From Veranda:

In 1973, cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post donated her 128-room Palm Beach mansion to the U.S. government to be used as the winter White House. And if the house's current owner Donald Trump wins the presidency in November, that's exactly what it will become. Here, T&C takes a look at the history of the property. Post was one of the world's richest women when she finished building Mar-a-Lago in 1927 at a cost of $7 million.

American architect Marion Sims Wyeth designed it (he also built the Florida governor's mansion in Tallahassee). The house is on 17 acres that border the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Florida's Intracoastal Waterway on the other. Post willed it to the American government upon her death for use as the winter White House. But in 1980, the government returned the house to Post's daughters because of the $1 million in annual maintenance costs. (Read more.)