Tea at Trianon: Dress from the Sea

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

Friday, July 21, 2023

Dress from the Sea

When Queen Henrietta Maria was traveling to Holland to sell her jewels for her husband's cause a storm sank the baggage ship. From Vintage News:

When the divers had separated the loot from the wreckage, they realized it was more than just a bag of rags; that they had most likely found an important piece of history. They found a rather well-preserved dress that could be linked to the Stuart Dynasty.

After finding the dress, researchers had begun looking for some documents to prove whether or not this dress belonged to one of the Stuarts. They found some documentation for one of these ships having carried Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. She had been traveling to Holland in 1642 when her ship sank in the same area as where the wreckage was uncovered.

The researchers have gone as far as suggesting that the gown belonged to Jan Ker, a Countess of Roxburghe. She had been known as one of the controversial Catholic advisers to the queen, and had gone along on the journey with Queen Henrietta Maria during the early years of the English Civil War. (Read more.)