Tea at Trianon: A Family Business

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, May 27, 2020

A Family Business

The history of one of my favorite shops, Chartreuse and Company, in Frederick County, Maryland. From The Chartreuse Blog:

In my family, we’ve always joked that we – the Crums (Chartreuse founder Virginia’s immediate family) – were the ‘& co.’ function of ‘Chartreuse & co.’ I was ten years old when we moved to my great-grandmother’s house and eleven when my mom had her third baby: a business that would save the family farm. At that time, Clifton-on-the-Monocacy (which was the original name of both the house and farm) was a sad relic of former glories: the verdant pastures which had once stretched emerald fingers to the Monocacy had been reduced to a parcel of land hovering on the lap of Buckeystown Pike; and even domestic pleasures, such as the green-painted swing set, that had once entertained my mother and her sisters for hours on end, had been mangled by a fallen tree and overgrown in an immense thicket worthy of Sleeping Beauty, herself. What did remain were the farm buildings which, since the ‘50s (my grandfather recollects a wild reconstruction in which the tenant house was pulled by mules walking in gradual circles to its new site), had all inhabited a relatively small plot of land.

The house, itself, was in need of a great deal of tender loving care (many the hours we spent scrubbing floors and power washing the immense 60s-office-building-style windows on the addition when we first moved in – little less the issue of the house raining indoors when it rained outdoors…), but its condition was perfectly spotless in comparison to the immense barns that hunkered together beyond the two houses. Those farm buildings had long been converted to storage by the time we moved in, and muck and grime were everywhere. I remember, in fact, that after being in the barn for any amount of time at all, if you blew your nose, the residue on the tissue came out black. The insurance company told my parents, upon purchase of the barns, that they were attractive nuisances and best torn down, but my parents saw another option. All across the county, many such buildings were facing the same fate and, crumbling amidst their ruin were the traces of our county’s history.

Our bank barn dates back to the 1700s and, so ancient is its construction that wooden pegs were used rather than nails. Our dairy barn – the second-newest building on the premises – began its construction in the 1920s and was expanded by my great-grandfather in the 1940s (you can see the shift in construction at what is now the center of the barn if you stop and look). Wherever you look, nuggets of the past and the people who moved through it percolate, making these buildings more than the brick and mortar that holds them together, and transforming them into monuments of the past: artifacts of all those who have walked between their walls or stopped to touch them, as someday they may well stand in recollection of you and of me. Rather than demolishing these priceless barns, my parents chose to save them and, out of that, a decision was made that would shape what has, so far, been the vast majority of my life.

The business has gone by many names – Mille Fleur Cottage, Trellis, Fleurish – but the one that stuck you already know. We’re asked about the origin of the name Chartreuse & co. fairly often. It’s the name given to that electric shade of green which can be seen in the Chartreuse liqueur (a heady herbal concoction, at once refreshing and powerful and not for the faint of heart) from which it derives its name. The liqueur, itself, is named for the mountains in France of the same name where it was first made, but the christening of the mountains remains – for me, at least – shrouded in mystery (apparently based on an ancient Gaulish word of unknown meaning). What also stuck? The proud ‘& co.’ moniker my family has adopted. It’s been well-earned, too, I may say. (Read more.)