Tea at Trianon: Shawford Park

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, May 1, 2020

Shawford Park

From Country Life:

In August 1682, Winchester opened its gates to receive Charles II. For the ageing monarch, bruised by the recent attempts of Parliament to bar his Catholic brother from succeeding to the throne, his stay proved a great success. The Hampshire city was welcoming — unlike London with its unpredictable crowds — and offered excellent hunting and horse racing. In the cathedral, he performed the ritual of the touching for the King’s evil and was reported to have cured about 60 people from the affliction of scrofula. The visit had one completely unexpected result: Charles II determined to build a palace in Winchester (Country Life, March 3, 2005). Speed was of the essence. ‘If it be possible to be done in one year,’ the King observed, ‘I will have it so; for a year is a great deal in my life.’ Following a prolonged visit the next summer, the Earl of Sunderland predicted: ‘We are like to be here twice a year, the King growing fonder of his building and the country every day.’ No doubt aware that Louis XIV had abandoned the Louvre for rural Versailles that same year, the ambitious began to look for residences in and around Winchester. (Read more.)