Tea at Trianon: Baby Bonnets

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, June 4, 2017

Baby Bonnets

From Southern Lady:

Markey Hutchinson, owner and designer of The Beaufort Bonnet Company, had always dreamed of dressing her daughter in the kind of classic bonnet she and her sister sported in their early years, but her search for the perfect style for her little one on the way proved surprisingly difficult.

“Every bonnet I found was really dressy and frilly but not practical,” Markey recalls. “I wanted something Betsey would be able to throw on for the pool or beach or show off on Easter morning.” By chance, in a photo of a friend’s baby, she spotted what she had been searching for—a pink gingham bonnet from a children’s store in Beaufort, South Carolina. The expectant mother obtained her own, and once Betsey arrived and began modeling the bonnet, Markey quickly realized others shared her instant affection for the piece. “Everywhere I went, women expecting babies, women with grandbabies, and even women who wanted grandbabies were asking where to get it,” she says. (Read more.)