Tea at Trianon: A Royal Retrospective

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

Friday, June 13, 2025

A Royal Retrospective

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A new exhibit at the Victoria and Albert. From Tatler:

Whatever you think you know about Marie Antoinette, however, prepare to put it aside – because the Victoria & Albert Museum is to hold the first show in Britain (and only the third outside France) dedicated to this most divisive of queens. And what it uncovers will, says the exhibit's curator, upend all our long-held opinions.
‘She is still seen as a byword for excess and frivolity… it is just this trope based on mythology that is trotted out repeatedly,’ says V&A curator, Sarah Grant. ‘This idea that she bankrupted France and was responsible for the [French] Revolution, which of course wasn’t the case.’
It is intriguing that the exhibition will be held at a quintessentially English museum, as Grant feels that Marie-Antoinette is ‘viewed more sympathetically’ by the British than the French. Anyone seeking confirmation of this should look to the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in July – which featured a ghoulish version of the monarch, clutching her own sliced-off head in her hands. (Read more.)