Tea at Trianon: A Peek Inside Château de Digoine

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

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

A Peek Inside Château de Digoine

From The New York Times:

Jean-Louis Remilleux, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who is a member of the committee that oversees La Biennale Paris, is among the most passionate and experienced collectors of items from France’s ancien régime. Mr. Remilleux, 58, has a pied-à-terre in Paris, but his primary residence is the 15-bedroom Château de Digoine, on a 250-acre estate near the city of Beaune, in Burgundy. Parts of it date from the turn of the 18th century, and Architectural Digest has chronicled its contents, which include an array of antiques with a focus on works from the 16th through the 18th centuries. There is also a room dedicated to Marie Antoinette. (Read more.)