Tea at Trianon: La Marianne

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, April 30, 2017

La Marianne

From Tiny-Librarian:

The eldest surviving sister was Archduchess Maria Anna, or “La Marianne” as Empress Maria Theresa referred to her in her letters to Antoinette. Maria Anna had numerous physical handicaps, including a crooked back and weak lungs. It was early on decided that she was unmarriageable and so she was encouraged to become a nun. She eventually became the Abbess at Klagenfurt monastery in the Austrian Alps; it may be through her influence that Antoinette acquired some of her liturgical books, such as The Little Office of The Blessed Virgin Mary: According to the Usage of the Cistercian Order. The Abbess, who eschewed society as much as it eschewed her, was a patroness of the arts and sciences like her father the Emperor, and was perhaps one of the most intellectual of the sisters. She died at the age of 51.

Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars: Her Life, Her Times, Her Legacy- Elena Maria Vidal