Tea at Trianon: Boughton House

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

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Boughton House

From The Conversation:

Montagu inherited his family’s country seat in Northamptonshire when his father died in 1684. A monastic building was converted into a manor house by Sir Edward Montagu in 1528, following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The younger Montagu’s renovations began upon his inheritence and continued well into the 1690s.

Montagu’s contemporaries knew Louis XIV’s palace was the inspiration for Boughton.

The “Sun King” had transformed his father’s modest hunting lodge at Versailles into the most magnificent palace of the age. By 1680, it was the French king’s principal residence and the centre of government.

According to one account written shortly after Montagu’s death, Boughton was:

contrived after the Model of Versailles, with extending Wings, excellent Avenues, Vistas and Prospects; for Rich Furniture, Exquisite Gardens, Beauty of Building, and advantageous Situation, scare to be equalled in Britain.

Boughton House may not be well know today, but it was famous when it was built.
Montagu was a greedy and ambitious fellow. He married twice for money and to advance his social status. He first went to France as an ambassador of King Charles II of England in 1669.

Although he was a minor noble, as the representative of the King of England his official entry into Paris was of unequalled magnificence. He developed a taste for the finest things at the time France was fast becoming the centre for luxury in Europe.

He travelled to France again in 1678, and returned to England with more than 200 trunks filled with works of art and furniture. (Read more.)