Tea at Trianon: The Marchioness of Milford Haven

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, May 3, 2025

The Marchioness of Milford Haven

Princess Victoria of HesseDarmstadt the eldest daughter of the Late Princess Alice and her fianc Prince Louis of...

I just read a book on Victoria of Hesse and found it extremely interesting, along with a biography of all four of the Hessian princesses. From Tatler:

In 1884, Princess Victoria married her first cousin once removed, Prince Louis of Battenberg at her home city of Darmstadt. Her father, also called Louis, did not approve of the match: in his eyes, Prince Louis had very little money, and the marriage would inevitably involve his daughter moving away from Germany to live in Britain. However, he could not argue too strongly as he had secretly married his mistress, Countess Alexandrine von Hutten-Czapska, which sent shock-waves through royal families. He was subsequently forced to seek an annulment of the marriage. Princess Victoria had four children with her husband: Alice, Louise, George and Louis. They lived at a series of houses including Chichester, Sussex, and Schloss Heiligenberg. Princess Victoria taught all four of her children. Her younger son, Louis, remembered in 1968 that she was ‘a walking encyclopaedia. All through her life she stored up knowledge on all sorts of subjects, and she had the great gift of being able to make it all interesting when she taught it to me.’ (Read more.)