The Queen's Hamlet

I love irony. But it’s rare to find poignant irony outside of books. I think because it’s easy to miss in real life—we tend to lack a certain detachment that you need in order to see irony.

However, sometimes it smacks you in the face. Especially when it’s in someone else’s life. Even more so when it’s in Marie Antoinette’s life.

When we visited Versailles, we took a hike to The Queen’s Hamlet. It’s in the far corner of the estate, but worth the walk. MA had a peasant village built to use both as an escape from the palace and as a party playground for her and her coterie of hangers-on.

She had a romantic view of peasant life. And so that’s what she got. The sheep and goats were perfumed. Marie Antoinette dressed as a milkmaid. Though an actual milkmaid did the real milking. I can’t help but wonder how history might have been different had she visited a real village and milked a real goat.

Here are some photos of the “hameau.”

Here's the famous Mill. You can't go inside, but that small water wheel couldn't generate much grinding power.

I grew up with relatives who had dairy farms. None of them had marble mosaic floors or fountains in the walls. 

The Hamlet was gorgeous. Totally pristine. So not a real working village.

This was the entrance to the "farm" part of the village. Apparently, there was a real farm a ways outside of the Hamlet that did provide food for the residents.

Here's where the perfumed sheep and goats roamed. Can't you just see MA and her ladies-in-waiting dressed as peasants, giving the sheep and goats hugs and kisses?


I wonder if they're hiring re-enactors. I'd love to get paid to be MA pretending to be a peasant.

N.B. In all fairness to MA, she did wise up and try to help the poor. But by then, it was too late.

Versailles Needs Feather Dusters

Years ago I did some research on Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, etc., for a novel I was working on. I never finished the novel (though I’d love to go back to it), but the history stayed with me.

So we couldn’t visit Paris without visiting Versailles. It was as amazing as you’d guess. I was disappointed in the fountains—none of them were running and the biggest of the fountains was being restored so it was a maze of construction and dirt.

But here is the Hall of Mirrors.

And a photo of the chapel, from the second story balcony.

And here is Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber.

This is the door she escaped through when the mobs came to Versailles. 

Apparently, the guards feared reprisals from the mobs and when they demanded entry to the palace grounds, the guards opened the gates.

Here’s her bed in Le Grand Trianon, a second smaller palace on the grounds of Versailles.

And here’s her bed in Le Petit Trianon. Apparently, Marie didn’t like the grandeur, pomp, and court intrigue of the main palace or even the much smaller Grand Trianon. So she spent most of her time living in Le Petit Trianon.

Yes, the bed is really tiny. You'd have to curl into a ball to sleep there.

If you go back to the photo of the first bed, note the thick layer of dust on the bedspread--so thick you can't even see the pattern on the fabric. This is one of my few complaints about Paris. The museums and cathedrals have serious dust issues. Cal sneezed a lot. (I took allergy medicine.) I know the French have lots of work maintaining their historical artifacts, so I was thinking that I'd get together a group of dusting friends and we’d dust the museums, churches, etc. (My Dutch immigrant friends have all volunteered—they have a cultural aversion to dust, even a speck.) And the French government wouldn’t have to pay us, just buy us a plane ticket. They wouldn’t even have to get us a hotel room. We’d be happy to bunk out at Versailles.

Any other volunteers want to join us?