Tea at Trianon: Fairytales of Blenheim Palace

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, September 8, 2024

Fairytales of Blenheim Palace

From Tatler:

The poster girl of America’s Gilded Age, heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt married the 9th Duke of Marlborough in the ultimate cash for class transaction in 1895, orchestrated by her ferocious social climber mother, Alva Vanderbilt. She met the Duke at 17 years old at a dinner party given by Lady Paget. 'My hostess had placed the Duke on her right and had put me next to him - a rather unnecessary public avowal of her intentions,' she wrote in her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold.
The story goes that she was all but forced down the aisle, but once the deal was sealed, it secured financing for an increasingly dilapidated Blenheim. The heiress arrived in England and the fortunes of the palace began to change. The 9th Duke was given $2,500,000 of capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company in trust, and an annual income of four per cent guaranteed to him by the New York Central Railroad Company, which continued until his death — about £66 million in today's money.
Now chatelaine of England’s most lavish estate, the Duchess set about integrating into the English social set. Winston Churchill was a regular guest, as was Nancy Astor - but ideally never at the same time. ‘She and Winston Churchill were actuated by a strong antipathy one for the other, so much so that one never invited them together, dreading the inevitable explosion,' wrote Vanderbilt. ‘It was therefore unfortunate that on one of Lady Astor’s visits to Blenheim, when my son was host, Winston should have chosen to appear. Nancy, with a fervour whose sincerity could not be doubted, shouted, "If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!" Whereupon Winston with equal heat and sincerity answered, ‘And if I were your husband I would drink it.’ (Read more.)