Tea at Trianon: Victoria and Albert's Love Affair

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

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Victoria and Albert's Love Affair

From Town and Country:

As for Albert, he too had survived a sad childhood. His father was a chronic womanizer who, like George I, went berserk when his wife dared to take a lover as well. Albert's mother, the kind and lovely Duchess Louise, was sent away when the boy prince was five. She had to disguise herself as a farm woman to observe her son from afar.

Growing up, the studious and artistic Albert accepted the fact that marrying Victoria would be a magnificent destiny. The Duchy of Coburg was 200 square miles, with some 41,000 people. But he found Victoria's indifference and wish to postpone talk of marriage humiliating. If after a few more years Victoria decided not to marry him, he wrote to his uncle "it would place me in a very ridiculous position and would, to a certain extent, ruin all the prospects of my future life."

Uncle Leopold counseled Albert to be patient and continued putting quiet pressure on Victoria. He suggested that Albert visit England with his brother. He hadn't been there in two years, after all. Victoria grumpily agreed.

So what turned this into the love story of the 19th century? (Read more.)