Tea at Trianon: The Hapsburg Legacy in Prague

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

Monday, February 28, 2022

The Hapsburg Legacy in Prague

From The New York Social Diary:

Marie Antoinette was born a Hapsburg and during her childhood Prague was the seat of power of Bohemia, part of the Austrian empire. For the American Friends of Versailles who support restoration projects at the palace, this year’s annual heritage tour to Vienna and Prague was an opportunity to study the region which had shaped her. After four days visiting sites of the queen’s childhood in Vienna (click here for Part I) we boarded a comfortable coach for the five-hour ride to the capital city of the Czech Republic.
Pausing en route we stopped in Cesky Krumlov a charming medieval village, one of the country’s 23 UNESCO heritage sites. After touring the historic streets and dining in the restored dining room of the Rose Hotel which built in the 16th century as a Jesuit monastery and university, we were treated to a visit to the city’s remarkable 18th-century Baroque Castle Theater, a correlation to the theater Marie Antoinette commissioned near the Petit Trianon and which was recently restored at Versailles.

Remarkably well preserved, the theater in Cesky retains many of the original sets, costumes, and machines which were shown to us by Pavel Slavko who supervises the restoration. (Read more.)