Tea at Trianon: The Royal Menagerie

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

Thursday, January 25, 2018

The Royal Menagerie

The Royal Menagerie at Versailles

From Royal Central:

Marie Antoinette would not have been shocked by the number of animals at Versailles; she, of course, created her own private domain ‘en plein air’ at her hameau, the Petit Trianon. In keeping her own pets at Versailles, she was very much keeping up the tradition long established here, dating back to the reign of Louis XIV, with his beloved ‘sporting dogs’ – who had their own special room in the Palace, the Cabinet des Chiens – and of course, the Royal Menagerie at Versailles. This menagerie contained an elephant during the reign of Louis XVI; we know this because Marie Antoinette’s brother, Emperor Joseph II visited Versailles in 1777 and joked of the fact that there was a female elephant in the Austrian imperial menagerie – so, perhaps, the occasion for yet another alliance between the two reigning families: “We could make a marriage” (Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette, Pg 183). The Austrian imperial menagerie was, of course, the ‘Schönbrunn Zoo’, at the magnificent summer residence of the Habsburgs outside Vienna. Today, it is the oldest baroque zoo still in operation. (Read more.)