Tea at Trianon: Archaeologists at Althorp

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, May 29, 2023

Archaeologists at Althorp

From Tatler:

Althorp House, the family home of Diana, Princess of Wales, has undergone significant excavations in recent weeks as Earl Spencer seeks to learn more about the remains of a Roman villa first discovered in the grounds a century ago. The 13,000-acre estate in Northamptonshire has belonged to the Spencer family since 1508 when they bought the land after amassing great wealth as sheep farmers. It is currently the home of the 9th Earl Spencer, the younger brother of Princess Diana who lives at Althorp with his third wife, Karen, Countess Spencer and their 10-year-old daughter, Lady Charlotte Diana Spencer.
Earl Spencer, 59, posted a photo on Instagram of a group of archaeologists standing around a long trestle table outside his stately home in the sun. ‘Archaeologists, about to settle down to an end-of-dig feast this evening at Althorp’, he wrote. ‘They’ve been here for three weeks, excavating the Roman Villa that stood here from perhaps 100 AD for what looks like several hundred years…. Amazing to think of those long ago folk enjoying Althorp, 1,000 or so years before my family first farmed here in the 1480s.’ (Read more.)

Countess Spencer currently has a marvelous newsletter with videos about her own restoration projects at Althorp as well as about English country life. I could watch all day. Delightful!