Tea at Trianon: Hope Chests

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

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Hope Chests

From Victoria:

In the back of my grandparents’ closet sat an old cedar chest filled with blankets and linens. I loved that beautiful chest and the smell of the blankets when they came out of storage. My grandmother told me it had been crafted by my great-great-great grandfather for his daughter. I always imagined it traveling with my great-great grandmother from Plymouth, New Hampshire, to Boston when she married, and I often wonder about its history and the stories it could tell. When my grandmother passed away, I brought the cedar chest home. Over the years, the chest was scratched and the legs cracked. I recently had it lightly refinished because I wanted it to continue to tell its story. The refinisher was astonished at the level of craftsmanship that went into the chest’s construction, but I like to think it was built by a father using his craft to express his love for his daughter. (Read more.)