Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    L30/11/329/26a
  • Title
    Extract of a letter from Elizabeth Yorke , Lady Hardwicke to Mrs [Agneta]Yorke, sent from Paris. [Typed transcript available]. Reference to marriage and a banquet. [Note: probably refers to the marriage of Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile and Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duke of Berry, the nephew of Louis XVIII of France - See L30/11/329/49.]
  • Date free text
    15 Jul 1816
  • Production date
    From: 1816 To: 1816
  • Scope and Content
    On Tuesday the bride received the Corps Diplomatique and the Ambassadresses of England and Spain. The day was the 18th [June], the anniversary of Waterloo, and there was no fete or illumination on that day, though no reason was given. The Royal Family dined in public at St.Cloud. On Wednesday was a grand ball; the ladies who danced unhooked their long trains. The Duchess danced a quadrille, very ill indeed, with the Duc d’Angouleme, and another with the Duc de Berry; she succeeded better in the English country dance. The next day the Duchess had her drawing room for Ladies; the opera at the Tuilleries came next ‘and was as beautiful and as dull as everywhere else.’ Mention of a play on Monday, full of invective against the English. The play was ‘Adelaide du Guiselin.’ The next day there was to be a Ball at the Duke of Wellington’s and there was an expectation that the Duke and Duchess would be there. ‘Monsieur and the Duc d’Angouleme and the Berrys all arrived, an honour not known before at Paris. An odd smell was noted, and it later became known that ‘there was gunpowder found and musket balls and the cartridges were wetted that they might not blow up at once, and they had begun to burn among some oil and the smell and smoke had caused the discovery … if more is known it is not transpired, but it seems either to have been done from spite to spoil sport or in the hopes of plunder if an alarm was given…’ The Duke departed the next morning to go to Cheltenham for his health. ‘You ask if this royal pair seem likely to be happy, and from having been at their marriage and hearing so much about them, I feel satisfaction in saying that I really think they have a fair chance.’
  • Level of description
    item
Hierarchy browser