Tea at Trianon: Of Knights and Nobility

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

Friday, August 12, 2022

Of Knights and Nobility

From Victoria:

Scottish heraldry brims with legends that unfolded within the storied stone walls of this mesmeric land’s myriad castles, tucked within its ancient towns and scattered across the braes and glens of the Caledonian countryside. Resting at the end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, the Palace of Holyroodhouse—also called Holyrood Palace—has undergone numerous renovations and additions in its long narrative, which includes many prominent names in Scottish history. Mary, Queen of Scots, held two of her weddings at the castle, and Oliver Cromwell’s troops once lodged here during the English Civil Wars. When King George V and Queen Mary reigned, they modernized the ancient structure and initiated the tradition of holding garden parties on the verdant grounds. (Read more.)