Tea at Trianon: Hôtel de la Marine

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

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Hôtel de la Marine

From Afar:

First, a little history. The Hôtel de la Marine dates back to 1755, when Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Louis XV’s chief architect, conceived the plan for the vast royal square now known as Place de la Concorde. Flanked on one side by monumental palaces, open to the Seine on the other, the city’s largest square would be an homage to the king after the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, his equestrian statue presiding over it all.

The Garde-Meuble de la Couronne—the depository for the royal furniture collections, crown jewels, tapestries, and precious objets d’art—was housed behind one of the imposing facades on the square. When it was open freely to visitors in 1772, the building—what is now the Hôtel de la Marine—became a museum even before the Louvre. (Read more.)

More HERE.