Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette’s Private Chambers at Versailles

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

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Marie-Antoinette’s Private Chambers at Versailles

Some of the most interesting pictures I have seen of the Queen's boudoir and bedchamber. From Habitually Chic:

One of the more special things I did in Paris in April was stay at Le Grand Contrôle Airelles Château de Versailles hotel which included private after hour tours of Versailles. There are two different tours that are possible for the first evening of your stay, the King’s Apartments or the Queen’s Apartments, and depend on which day you arrive. I was lucky to be scheduled for the Queen’s Apartments which included Marie-Antoinette’s Private Chambers. What I didn’t realize at the time of my tour was that they had recently undergone a renovation and would not be open to the public until the end of June. Visitors to the Palace of Versailles will once again discover a series of rooms shrouded in mystery within the former royal residence. Several years of research and restoration have reawakened the richness and coherence of an eminently feminine suite of rooms spanning two floors of the Palace. (Read more.)

Pictures from Petit Trianon and the hameau are HERE, via Le Boudoir.