Tea at Trianon: Changing of the Garden

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, February 24, 2021

Changing of the Garden

From Tatler:

Charles Maurice Petty-Fitzmaurice, 9th Marquis of Lansdowne, is passionate about soil acidity. A surprising interest, perhaps, for the businessman, peer and Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, but one that has served him well at his family seat in Wiltshire. ‘Bowood is extraordinarily fortunate, as there’s a range of soils here,’ he says. How is that fortunate? He laughs. ‘Plants only grow where they want to grow.’
It certainly does seem that a dazzling variety of plants want to grow across the 4,000-acre estate – and have done for centuries, thanks to green-fingered marquesses past and present. William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (who became the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne in 1784) commissioned Capability Brown to design the 1,000-acre park in 1762 for a fee of 30 guineas – roughly £5,500 today. The undulating landscape is dotted with perfectly positioned oak and beech trees and a 700-species-strong arboretum. The south-facing Terrace Gardens, which today are edged with box hedging and filled with formal beds of seasonal tulips, alliums, Corinda geraniums and fragrant roses, were added by the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, to remind him of his time in Italy. But it is the Woodland Gardens, which the 3rd Marquess laid out in 1854, planted with 300 rare hybrids of rhododendrons, magnolias and azaleas, that would delight his soil-savvy successors the most. (Read more.)