Tea at Trianon: The Royal Christmas of 1377

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

Saturday, December 11, 2021

The Royal Christmas of 1377

From katherineswynford:

One reason for Christmas feasting and merriment was that it followed Advent, a period during which no animal products were to be consumed, with the exception of fish (which one simply did NOT serve during Christmas as people were sick of it and the host thought the more poorly for it serving), goose (as long as one claimed in good conscience that it was the mythical barnacle goose) and tail of beaver (it was declared sufficiently fish-like as it lived in the water). The hours of daylight were shorter and the cold could be bitterly so. The feasts on Christmas day, however, served to mitigate some measure of all that. Eggs, cheese, milk and meats could be eaten (the boar's head presentation was fairly common throughout the land and even in those areas where there were no boars to eat, it was still traditional to serve up some foodstuff resembling a boar's head). Goose, ox, all manner of other birds, pigs and venison were artfully served at the aristocrat's table, basted and baked with butter and saffron to give a golden hue. (Read more.)