Tea at Trianon: A Garden Buzzing With Bees

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, May 12, 2023

A Garden Buzzing With Bees

From Architectural Digest:

The late-19th-century former rectory, which the couple bought when they moved out of London in 2017, is perched atop a promontory, 30 miles west of Oxford in the heart of the Cotswolds. To the south are breathtaking views overlooking a quintessentially English pastoral scene of hedged fields and woodland that has remained largely unchanged for centuries, with the Monarch’s Way, the route used by King Charles II when escaping from Cromwell’s troops in 1651, running through it. “One of the things Jinny understands is the setting and the history of the house,” says Shah, who was inspired to contact her after reading her best-selling treatise, The Thoughtful Gardener.
"This is a place for a great English country garden, full to brimming with abundant life and tumultuous planting,” says Blom. Now divided into discrete areas of terraces overflowing with herbaceous plants, banks of roses, an orchard, a large vegetable garden, wildflower meadows, a water garden, and a mini arboretum, all 100 percent organic and buzzing with bees to the constant backdrop of birdsong, the garden is a far cry—and a far happier one—from the minimalist scheme the couple inherited. As the previous owners didn’t live there full-time, that design was admittedly low-maintenance: Save for some established trees, it consisted of close-mown lawns edged with blocks of tightly clipped lavender and boxwood, which sat stiff, quiet, and uneasy within their rural context, as if they had turned up to a barn dance wearing a formal suit and tie. (Read more.)