Tea at Trianon: Queen Mary's Shamrock Brooch

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, March 19, 2024

Queen Mary's Shamrock Brooch

Queen Mary loved jewelry and had exquisite taste. From The Court Jeweller:

To tell the story of the shamrock brooch, we need to travel back in time to the earliest stages of Queen Mary’s jewelry collection. When Princess May of Teck, as she was then, married the Duke of York in the summer of 1893, she received a treasure trove of jewelry gifts. Among these were multiple trefoil and shamrock brooches. On the Monday after the royal wedding, the Daily Telegraph described many of the jewels in detail, including “an emerald and diamond trefoil brooch,” the gift presented to the bride by the Royal St. George Yacht Club.

Royal jewelry writers, including Beth at the History of Famous Jewels and Collections, have argued that the yacht club’s trefoil brooch is the one shown in detail above. The jewel features a three-leafed shamrock outlined in diamonds, with a large diamond brilliant set in the center of the jewel. Inside the open leaves are a trio of emeralds on knife-edge settings. Shamrocks and trefoils were popular jewelry motifs in the Victorian era, and of course they have special meaning in Ireland. The Royal St. George Yacht Club was (and still is) located in Dublin. (Read more.)