Tea at Trianon: Dolly Madison in Old Age

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, July 13, 2024

Dolly Madison in Old Age

From The Art Newspaper:

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has acquired the earliest known photograph of a US First Lady. The quarter-plate daguerreotype of former First Lady Dolley Madison (1768-1849), wife of fourth US president James Madison, dates from around 1846. It joins a host of other early photographic portraits in the NPG's collection, including what is believed to be the earliest photograph of a US president, an 1843 daguerreotype of John Qunicy Adams by Philip Haas, which was acquired by the museum in 2017. The Dolley Madison daguerreotype, made by artist and entrepreneur John Plumbe Jr, shows the trailblazing First Lady when she was in her late seventies. Plumbe, an English immigrant who came to America in 1821, picked up photography professionally around 20 years after his arrival, establishing studios in more than a dozen cities before selling his business in 1847. In addition to his portrait of Madison, he created the earliest extant image of the US Capitol. (Read more.)