Tea at Trianon: Dreaming in French

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, December 5, 2017

Dreaming in French

From Victoria:

A natural storyteller, Shawn Stucker is the owner of Louisville, Kentucky’s renowned European Antique Market—now the largest importer of French antiquities in the state. “It all began,” says Shawn, “with a woman who had a passion for French patina, who was aspiring to enrich her life—a dream that eventually led her to France in search of antiques … but what she found was something much greater.”

While working a corporate job in merchandising and operations, Shawn began collecting and selling antiques as a hobby in the early 1980s. “It was a very conscious effort,” she recalls, “because I knew that eventually this is what I wanted to do.” Her endeavors then led to the purchase of an old farmhouse she could use for stocking her wares, and she acquired a booth at a local antiques market. From there, Shawn started traveling to England and importing on a small scale. “But when I finally went to France to buy,” she remembers, “it was as if I had died and gone to heaven.” Preferring southern France for the magnificent finds and unbelievable bargains, she has journeyed across the Atlantic some fifty-three times now and has combed places such as Lyon, Auvergne, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Avignon, and Provence, as well as the surrounding villages and sprawling countryside. (Read more.)