Tea at Trianon: Of Cups and Saucers

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

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Of Cups and Saucers

"La Tasse de Chocolat" featuring, left to right:
Louis-Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre;
Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, prince de Lamballe;
Marie-Thérèse Louise de Savoie, princesse de Lamballe, with her dog;
Marie-Victoire de Noailles, comtesse de Toulouse

A Sèvres cup and saucer

Much thanks to my friend Hyacinth, who sent me a series of historic pictures of people in polite society drinking coffee and chocolate out of their saucers. Since the coffee was boiled à la Turque, in the Turkish fashion, it was so hot it was poured from the cup into the saucer to help it cool. I assume the same was done with the hot chocolate. Above is a painting of Madame de Lamballe, a close friend of Marie-Antoinette's, surrounded by the family of the Duc de Penthièvre, her family by marriage.