Tea at Trianon: The Marie-Thérèse Pink

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 24, 2025

The Marie-Thérèse Pink

I did not know of this gem when I chose pink to be the color of the paperback edition of the novel Madame Royale. From Christie's:

This is a diamond with a history as striking as its beauty. The 10.38 carat stone is believed to date to the mid-18th century and was once owned by Duchess Marie-Thérèse d’Angoulême, the only surviving child of Queen Marie Antoinette.

According to royal tradition, the queen entrusted her jewels to her loyal coiffeur before her failed escape from Paris in 1791. Many of those jewels were later passed to Marie-Thérèse. While uncertain if this specific diamond was among the storied cache, what is known is that the jewel belonged to Marie-Thérèse, who bequeathed it to her niece, Duchess Marie-Thérèse de Chambord, and was later acquired by Queen Marie Theresa of Bavaria, who referred to it in her will as ‘a pink solitaire diamond from Aunt Chambord.’

It remained part of the royal family’s own storied collection and was henceforth passed down for generations until it sold in 1996. Later, the current owner tapped legendary jewellery designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known as JAR, to design a new setting for the diamond as the centrepiece of a stunning ring. (Read more.)