Tea at Trianon: A Perfect English Country Retreat

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, November 16, 2024

A Perfect English Country Retreat

From Country Life:

All this, plus a dovecot for 1,000 birds at Jaggards, in the heart of Wiltshire. Down in Wiltshire, Oliver Custance Baker of Strutt & Parker’s country department is overseeing the sale of the Grade II*-listed Jaggards at Neston, two miles from Corsham and 9½ miles from Bath. He quotes a guide price of ‘excess £2.95m’ for this graceful, elegant family home.

What today is essentially a Jacobean manor house is in fact a 700-year-old property that was rebuilt in 1657 for R. Kington, but which still incorporates parts of the original medieval house. And as you can see, it also blends elements of Georgian and Victorian design from the changes made over the centuries, all coming together in a home described by the agent as ‘the perfect English country retreat from the modern world ‘. According to its Historic England listing, it was part of a holding first referred to in 1340, which was held by the Kington family from about 1560–1766, before passing to J. Shore, the Leir family and, in 1866, to J. B. Fuller of Neston Park. (Read more.)