Tea at Trianon: Return to Versailles

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

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Return to Versailles

From Madame Guillotine:

A visit to Versailles is always a massive treat and especially so when you’re there with someone special who has never been before and so get a chance to show off all your special history and art history knowledge to a (mostly) captive audience! I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Versailles six times now, first going there in 1989 when I travelled to Paris for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, and feel like I have been privileged to see the palace grow, change, develop and even blossom over the decades since that first amazing visit. I remember that back in the late eighties, Versailles was a lot more rough and battered around the edges than it is now – it was still stunning, of course, and jaw droppingly magnificent but there was much less of the building open to the public and it definitely lacked the contemporary slickness that today’s palace enjoys thanks to the €500 million renovation currently underway to refurbish the rooms, make more of the palace accessible to visitors and also modernise the facilities. (Read more.)