Tea at Trianon: Hartwell House Revisited

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, February 16, 2018

Hartwell House Revisited

The novel Madame Royale opens with the Bourbonic sojourn at Hartwell House. From Hello!:

First mentioned in the Domesday Book almost a thousand years ago, this hotel has a rich and fascinating royal history. In the early 19th century the stately home served as a royal residence when Louis XVIII, the exiled king of France, hid out there with his family for five years during the French Revolution. He was joined by his queen, Marie-Josephine de Savoie and his niece, Duchesse D'Angoulême, the daughter of his brother Louis XVI and sister-in-law Marie Antoinette, along with over one hundred courtiers. Louis stayed there until 1814, when Napoleon was defeated and he signed papers of accession to become king. (Read more.)