Tea at Trianon: Life in Color

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, May 20, 2017

Life in Color

From Southern Lady:

For Jayne Morgan, art was always a part of life, but it wasn’t until she was filling out college applications that she realized the hobby she had excelled at throughout her childhood could become a rewarding career. Sitting at the family computer with her father, she wondered aloud what she should choose for her major, and without hesitation, he responded, “Art.”

“My dad’s mom was an artist—not professionally, but she painted—and she died when he was young, so I think he saw that side of her in me,” Jayne says of her father’s instrumental role in her success. She started out at the University of Alabama, but soon began craving an education more immersed in the artistic realm and transferred to Savannah College of Art and Design. (Read more.)