Tea at Trianon: Bliss on the Battery

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, May 7, 2018

Bliss on the Battery

From Southern Lady:

The tree-sheltered streets of Charleston’s prestigious South of Broad neighborhood are wrapped in romance, and at the very heart of the area’s narrative is the charming Two Meeting Street Inn. The history of the enchanting white house that stands on the coveted corner of Meeting Street and South Battery begins with a love story. Back in the late 1800s, Charleston jeweler Waring Carrington met and married the lovely, young Martha Williams. The delighted father of the bride bestowed an incredibly generous gift: a check for $75,000 to be used for the newlyweds’ first home. The stunning Queen Anne–style house they built in 1892 now welcomes guests as Two Meeting Street Inn, a bed-and-breakfast. (Read more.)