Tea at Trianon: Charles Hill Court

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

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Charles Hill Court

From Tatler:

Is there such a thing as a perfect country house? Maybe Hardwick Hall, built by Bess of Hardwick after an inheritance from four dead husbands left her the richest woman in England? Or consider Temple Newsam, the Jacobean manor that Francis Ingram, Viscountess Irwin, demolished in the 18th century ‘for the sole pleasure in building [it] up again’. Back in the English renaissance, aristocrats would built prodigy homes, designed specifically to appeal to Elizabeth I for a royal visit, but few estates have been built with the sole project of architectural perfection in mind – the platonic ideal of the country pile.
Enter Elizabeth Antrobus, scion of the Coutts banking dynasty. In 1908, she commissioned two of Europe’s leading architects to design ‘the perfect country house for a lady’. Taking inspiration from Marie Antoinette’s apartments at Versailles, the manor would need to combine the social politics of hosting and entertaining with the all too important business of leisure. The result? Charles Hill Court, which has recently hit the market with Knight Frank. (Read more.)