Tea at Trianon: Tiara Collection of Queen Mary

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, July 15, 2025

Tiara Collection of Queen Mary

Queen Mary official portrait photograph of 1935 in sash and tiara holding fan. Illustrated London News Silver Jubilee...

From Tatler:

A formidable character who became the matriarch of the Royal Family, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck was born at Kensington Palace on 26 May 1867 in the same room where Queen Victoria (who was a distant cousin) had been born 40 years prior.
In 1891, aged 24, Mary was betrothed to her second cousin once removed, Prince Albert, eldest son of the then Prince of Wales (future King Edward VII). However, six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, Prince Albert died unexpectedly during an influenza pandemic. The following year, Mary became engaged to his only surviving brother, Prince George (future King George V), marrying him in 1893. When he became Prince of Wales in 1901, she became Princess of Wales.
In 1910, following the death of his father, King Edward VII, King George V acceded to the throne and Mary became Queen. In 1936, her husband died, and was succeeded by her son, Edward VIII, until he abdicated in favour of his brother, George VI, in order to marry Wallis Simpson. When Queen Mary’s granddaughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, were born, she took an active interest in their lives, taking them to London to visit art galleries and museums. She died on 24 March 1953 at the age of 85, 10 weeks before her granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. (Read more.)