Tea at Trianon: Kelmscott Manor

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, September 10, 2018

Kelmscott Manor

From Victoria:

Surrounded by a higgledy-piggledy fence and all manner of cottage-garden flora, the gray limestone farmhouse known as Kelmscott Manor was once the home of British textile designer William Morris and his family. Though Morris received much acclaim for his work throughout his life, his exceptionally talented daughter May more often than not lived in her father’s shadow. She eventually took over his business, Morris & Co., but it is only in recent years that her design genius and needlework expertise have received the recognition they deserve.

While growing up at Kelmscott Manor, May was surrounded by ample artistic and advocative inspiration. Not only was William a designer and a leader in the British Arts and Crafts movement, he was a poet, writer, and social activist. His wife, Jane, was an accomplished seamstress, and renowned artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti shared the family’s home. A portrait of May and her older sister, Jenny, painted by Rossetti, hangs to the right of the fireplace in the Panelled Room, where the Morris girls were schooled by their mother. (Read more.)