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# The British novelist Barbara Pym, in her ironic novel Crampton Hodnet, written in the 1930s and 1940s, remarks that the fish in the ponds of the Petit Trianon are so old that they must surely have seen Marie Antoinette
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/britanskaia-pisatelnitsa-barbara-pim-v-svoem-ironichnom-romane-crampton-hodnet-napisanom-v-1930-1940-gody-zamechaet-chto-ryby-v-prudakh-malogo-trianona-tak-stary-chto-naverniaka-videli-/
- Published: 2025-06-19T15:52:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:29:42.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Monarchies, Observations, Paris, Nature

The British novelist Barbara Pym, in her ironic novel Crampton Hodnet, written in the 1930s and 1940s, remarks that the fish in the ponds of the Petit Trianon are so old that they must surely have seen Marie Antoinette. In principle, some freshwater fish really do live for more than a hundred years; I am not sure that they inhabit that particular locality, but still…

Marie de' Medici, for instance, mentioned the carp of Fontainebleau, which lived for 800 years. That is admittedly rather a lot, but 70 to 100 years is quite conceivable. Near the château of Chantilly, too, very old carp were found in their day, which might well have remembered the Duc d'Aumale.

The canals and channels of the Petit Trianon may at first glance seem overgrown or neglected, but that is the original design. The pavilions look as though they had been set down on wild islands, the trees as though they had grown at random. The fish in the photograph live in the channels of the Queen's Hamlet, where Marie Antoinette milked a cow, next to the Petit Trianon. The fish usually gather in seething heaps by the bridges, hoping that passers-by will toss them a crust of bread or at least a bit of cake