Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette's Chinese Pavilion

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, July 12, 2019

Marie-Antoinette's Chinese Pavilion

Once at Petit Trianon. Maxime de Rocheterie says of it:

In 1776, at a short distance from the palace, the Chinese pavilion was built, and beneath the pavilion a roundabout, which was moved by invisible mechanism hidden beneath the ground, and whose riders sat astride of dragons and peacocks, carved by Bocciardi.

According to Pierre de Nolhac:

Among the diversions of Trianon, mention must be made of the game of 'the Kings,' which had been set up by the Queen's directions on the lawn, sheltered by a Chinese pavilion, also billiards and loto; these Louis XVI. particularly liked. But everybody's chief pleasure was walking in that well-cared-for, widely-varied garden, whose beauties were analysed by Prince de Ligne with the skill of a connoisseur, and which suggested the poetic descriptions of the Chevalier Bertin in the 'Almanach des Muses.' The number of exotic trees, the 'surprises' in landscape effects to be met at every turn, the refinement of this contest with nature made foreigners who were admitted to see it understand the young Queen's love for her little domain, which she had so greatly embellished.