Tea at Trianon: Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

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, April 25, 2020

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

From the Monaco Tribune:

Born in a private mansion overlooking Place de la Concorde in Paris, Béatrice de Rothschild never knew anything but luxury, growing up amidst gilded woodwork, master paintings and furniture crafted by the best woodworkers. In 1905, she was 40 years old and separated from her husband, the Russian banker Maurice Ephrussi. Their differences had been immediately apparent. Without children, she had just inherited a colossal fortune. There was nothing more in her life than time to think and the means to carry out whatever projects she desired.

Her contemporaries said she was not very accommodating to say the least; according to her cousin Elisabeth de Gramont, Beatrice’s destiny was to “thwart the stupid laws of common sense […] requiring flowers to grow even under the Mistral.” To do this, she blew up the rock, leveled the land and brought in tons of soil. (Read more.)