Tea at Trianon: An Estate in Old Virginia

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

Saturday, March 23, 2024

An Estate in Old Virginia

From Veranda:

Each year the nation’s oldest fox hunt, the Piedmont Hunt (dating to 1840), goes off from the Upperville, Virginia, property of Alex and Jill Holtzman Vogel and their family of six children, and it is a magnificent, cinematic sight. This celebration of horse, hound, and open Virginia spaces is a tableau worthy of a painting by Sir Alfred James Munnings.
“Seeing some 400 people standing in your front yard, setting off on this chase, is amazing,” a cause for enormous gratitude, says Alex Vogel, the CEO of the Vogel Group, a lobbying and advisory firm in nearby Washington. “This is a family house with children and animals and lots of activity,” adds Jill Holtzman Vogel, an attorney and Virginia state senator.
The family’s gratitude is for reasons beyond the obvious. The fact that this property is alive with the sound of children and horses and dogs is a testament to the Vogels’ efforts to preserve a 343-acre portion of the 2,000-acre property, called Oak Spring Farm, that belonged to the late Paul and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. Mrs. Mellon’s interiors and gardens are considered the holy grail of good taste, and sustaining that legacy—not to mention that much property—undoubtedly would present a daunting responsibility for any owner. (Read more.)