Tea at Trianon: A Queen Anne Town House is Renewed

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

Friday, July 28, 2017

A Queen Anne Town House is Renewed

From Victoria:

Perhaps it is the mix of the old with the new, the grand with the humble, that is the secret to the beauty of this old house—that, and its palpably peaceful atmosphere. Today, the wide hall, with its pale oak boards and water-blue runner, welcomes.

It takes a woman of vision to buy a neglected circa-1760 Queen Anne London town house and, within a year, transform it into an elegant family home. That its graceful architectural features were intact and its room proportions generous naturally helped, and finding South African interior decorator Grant White to assist her was kismet. “When I walked into this magnificent period property,” says owner Georgie Penn, “I knew I need never move again.” (Read more.)