Tea at Trianon: A Long Island 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

Monday, March 26, 2018

A Long Island Versailles

Not quite. But it has some wonderful interiors. From Mansion Global:

Maison des Jardins (which translates to house of gardens), a palatial house on Long Island, New York, that’s modeled after the Palace of Versailles in France, hit the market Thursday with an eye-popping price tag of $60 million. Owner Raphael Yakoby, an entrepreneur who created popular blue-color liqueur Hpnotiq and pink vodka Nuvo, developed a love for everything French when he started his business there, according to Eloise Halpern of Douglas Elliman, who’s handling the sale with colleague Patricia Bischoff. “It was always his dream to build a house like Versailles,” Ms. Halpern told Mansion Global. When he made his fortune after selling Hpnotiq for a reported $50 million in 2003, he forked out $3.25 million for a 8.4-acre land in Old Brookville in 2010 and began to build his dream house two years later, she said. (Read more.)