Tea at Trianon: Rooted in the Past

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, December 3, 2024

Rooted in the Past

From House and Garden:

Some of the most enchanting houses are those where any alterations are inconspicuous: the type where you would be hard pushed to distinguish old from new and would struggle to detect the hand of an interior designer... Such is the case with this 17th-century dower house in Northamptonshire, where a patchwork of terracotta tiles and wooden boards, rich distemper walls, and an exquisite collection of primitive English furniture and folk art sit together to create an interior that looks as though it has remained largely unchanged for the best part of 400 years.
That was all part of the plan, of course. ‘We wanted to make it look like it had always been this way,’ says antique dealer and interior designer Robert Young, who worked on the house just over 20 years ago, in collaboration with the then owners, who were in their seventies at the time. ‘Almost everything that looks original is in fact a new addition,’ explains Robert, gesturing to the uneven-width reclaimed floorboards in the entrance hall. ‘Over the years, the character had been lost, so the house was really quite ordinary. One of the only things we retained was a built-in cupboard in the dining room, which we had dry-scraped to reveal the original paint.’ (Read more.)