Tea at Trianon: Jane Austen's Family Home is For Sale

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, March 31, 2023

Jane Austen's Family Home is For Sale

From Town and Country:

The current Grade II-listed Georgian house sits on 51.64 acres of land and was built in the early 19th century by Jane Austen's older brother, Edward. Jane was born in the original Steventon house, which was located elsewhere on the property, and lived there from 1775 to 1801. Many of Austen's greatest works were written during her time living in Hampshire: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Northanger Abbey (1817) to name a few. When Jane's father retired from being a village rector for over 40 years, he moved his family to Bath, England.

"Steventon House was the birthplace of iconic author Jane Austen… While the original house no longer stands, what is there today is the glorious Georgian vision of her older brother Edward, which is very befitting of the world that Jane wrote about," Ed Sugden, director of Savills country department said. According to Tatler, Sugden considers the sale as one of the "rarest opportunities to live in one of Hampshire's, if not the United Kingdom's most significant country houses." (Read more.)