Tea at Trianon: The Perfect Bath

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, December 7, 2016

The Perfect Bath

From Inside Chic:

Going back to antiquity, we started with the Egyptians, whose obsession with cleanliness was such that they discriminated against cultures whose members didn’t follow their own bathing customs; their bathing rituals expressed a view of the bath as a font of hygiene, health, and healing. The Greeks refined the language of tubs and basins to the form that persists today, encouraged the habit of bathing as a means of relaxation, and – in the belief that specific natural water sources had been blessed by the gods – connected the ideas of cleansing and healing…

Modernity, to be sure, offers many advantages over antiquity. But the idea of the bath as a place of relaxation, reflection, and restoration, developed by the ancients, is one that has never been improved upon – all we can do is translate that timeless concept into a personal reflection of contemporary life. (Read more.)