Marie Antoinette Read online

  Yet the key ceremony—on which the Franco-Austrian alliance symbolically focused—was still to come. This was the ritual bedding of the young pair, which would be followed, it was hopefully assumed, by the physical consummation of the marriage. Sex was not a subject from which Louis XV had shied away in the past. He had taken an interest in the wedding night of his grandson Don Ferdinand of Parma and the Archduchess Amalia that was as much prurient as dynastic: “Send me all the details down to the smallest ones,” he wrote, and as time went on, he asked keenly after the health of his grandson’s “generative organ.”37

  Nor was it to be expected that Maria Teresa, so rigorously inquisitive about the monthly cycles of her daughters, would neglect to follow through her enquiries to the procreative act itself. In the case of Maria Carolina, the Empress was delighted to hear that King Ferdinand, boorish as he might be with certain disgusting physical habits, had nevertheless performed his marital duties with enthusiasm on his wedding night. The arrival of Maria Carolina’s period a few days later, putting a temporary halt to this new sport, had caused much disappointment.38 The same obsession meant that the Archduchesses were frankly instructed about what was going to happen to them in the marriage bed.

  Naturally not every wedding night between two people who had met only days, if not hours, before, went wonderfully well. The Dauphin’s father Louis Ferdinand had burst into floods of tears instead of making love to Maria Josepha in 1747 because the occasion brought back poignant memories of his dead first wife. But Maria Josepha exhibited discreet sympathy and matters righted themselves so that they managed to produce a large family. For every George III, who was perfectly happy with his bride from the first although they were total strangers to each other, there was a Frederick II, spending a reluctant hour with his wife Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Bevern and then walking about outside for the rest of the night.39

  On this occasion, nothing ceremonial was left undone. The Archbishop of Rheims blessed the nuptial bed. Louis XV himself, present in the bedchamber, gave his grandson the nightgown, according to preordained etiquette; the young Duchesse de Chartres gave the Dauphine hers. The King then handed his grandson formally into bed. The Duchesse de Chartres performed the same function for the Dauphine. Everyone who had the Rights of Entry to the chamber on this occasion—a remarkably large number of people, based on birth and position at court—now bowed or curtsied and withdrew.

  At Versailles there was none of the ribaldry—at least, not recorded—that had led Charles II of England, a hundred years earlier, to whisper to the young William of Orange as he drew the nuptial curtains: “Hey, nephew, to your work! St. George for England.”40 There were, however, exactly similar expectations on behalf of the patron saints of France and Austria.

  Versailles being a palace of rumour as well as a centre of power, it was not long on the following morning before it was being hinted that these expectations had not been fulfilled.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE WORLD

  “I put on my rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world.”

  MARIE ANTOINETTE ON HER DAILY ROUTINE, 12 JULY 1770

  Louis XV’s sensual romps in his private apartments with the Du Barry might be devoid of spectators, but very little else in the life of Versailles went without witnesses. Furthermore these witnesses were not secret pryers and peepers (although they might perform that function as well); they were royal servants of many different ranks who had a legitimate right to be present. Many of their paid positions—known as charges—were either bought or were presented by the monarch as a source of income.1 Ceremonies framed the royal day; these included the ritual morning dressing (lever) at which the formal toilette was performed with much assistance, and the ritual evening undressing (coucher). The Rights of Entry to these ceremonies, which despite their apparently intimate nature had nothing private about them, were prized as an indication of personal prestige. The great ones had Major Rights while quite another category of servitors, including physicians, valets-de-chambres, and the Royal Reader, had Minor Rights.

  Then there was the public dinner (grand couvert). More or less anyone who was decently dressed could come and gape at the royals at their food, provided, in the case of a man, that he was equipped with a sword; but then swords for the unprepared could be obtained at the gates of Versailles.2 Since separate households meant on certain occasions separate dinners, the stairs at Versailles might be busy with people scurrying from one prandial spectacle to another. You might catch Marie Antoinette at her soup, the younger Princes at another course and Mesdames Tantes at their dessert. It was characteristic of both Dauphin and Dauphine that Louis Auguste ate with gusto while Marie Antoinette scarcely touched her food in public. Nevertheless it was always presented to her by her Mistress of the Household (the aged Comtesse de Noailles) kneeling on a stool with a napkin on her arm, with four other Dames du Palais in full court dress to assist her. When the whole royal family was gathered at the public dinner (Princes of the Blood were only admitted on the day of their marriage), conversation tended to languish, with the exception of the Comte d’Artois whose irrepressible spirits allowed him to keep chatting away.

  The public pomp of Versailles was one thing. It was after all a planned display. A hundred years ago Louis XIV had deliberately constructed a system that centred round himself, the Sun King about whom the galaxies of the nobility were obliged to revolve by their constant attendance at his court. In a sense the spirit of the mighty King lived on in the routines he had established: as late as 1787 Chateaubriand observed that Louis XIV’s presence remained “always there” at Versailles. Presentation at court was the most important ceremony in a young woman’s life. Managing the long, heavy train was an art in itself. Candidates needed to rehearse the three vital curtsies beginning by the door with at least two lessons with a special dancing-master in Paris. These “reverences” had to be at one and the same time “modest, gracious and noble,” wrote Madame de Genlis in her Dictionnaire . . . des Etiquettes de la Cour, for if style was the man, “the curtsy had to express the whole woman.” The man in question, Monsieur Huart, was large and imposing. His hair white with powder, he positioned himself at the end of the room in a kind of courtly drag (a billowing underskirt) standing in for the figure of the Queen.3

  “It was all very funny,” wrote the Marquise de La Tour du Pin much later, describing the whole rigmarole of the presentation. But it was also all very serious, in view of the fact that the new girl’s appearance would generally be torn to pieces by the spectators at Versailles. For example, was her skin really white enough to endure the contrast with the fine lawn chemise that was deliberately allowed to peep through the lacings at the back of her dress?4

  For all this incredible formality, service was often by contrast extremely slapdash owing to the nature of an organization where menials actually performed the tasks for which the great ones had the official charge. Thus the favourite fish of Marie Antoinette, destined for a royal dinner given in her honour by the Comte d’Artois, was stolen and ended up being served to the Scottish gardener at Versailles for his breakfast; on another dreadful occasion a piece of glass was swept into the gruel (panade) of a Child of France by an incompetent kitchen servant because the Royal Governess was too haughty to prepare the dish herself. What struck foreign observers was the ease of access to Versailles of those who by no stretch of the imagination could be described as great ones (nor were even decently dressed). The common people thronged the antechambers: “It appears that no questions are asked.”5 This was in direct contrast to the laborious formality of the court and came from a very different tradition by which every French subject had the right of access to the sovereign.

  The market-women—originally confined to fishwives (poissardes)—were a case in point. Their right to address the Queen of France on certain prescribed celebratory occasions had become transformed into a general right of access for these mouthy battleaxes. Brawny and unafraid, they wer
e generally allowed to go unchallenged in their self-endowed mission to comment on the failings of queens and princesses. The English agriculturalist Arthur Young on a tour of France was amazed to find a group of “poorly dressed blackguards” thronging into the King’s apartments only minutes after he had gone hunting. It was true that when Young tried to push his luck and see the Queen’s apartments too, he was told: “Good heavens, Sir, that’s another matter.” Nevertheless there was an extraordinary lack of security about life at Versailles. It was a fact acknowledged by the searches made by the royal bodyguards, who were equipped with spaniels as sniffer-dogs; their task was to try to rout out vagrants and others who had simply established themselves in its numerous nooks and crannies.6 Apart from this kind of sporadic effort, it was the sanctity of the royal majesty, so endlessly paraded in public, that was supposed to provide its own security.

  As Marie Antoinette quickly learnt, the minutiae of this system of parade were astonishingly significant. For what had once been a method of control exerted by Louis XIV had developed into a power struggle among the nobility, played out on the field of etiquette. When the Duc de Coigny handed the candle to the King at his coucher, he did more than perform an apparently menial function: he established himself literally close to the centre of influence. The right to sit on a sofa or a stool (tabouret) in the royal presence meant far more than the mere physical comfort of the noble concerned.

  Modes of address were also jealously guarded privileges. Thus to address the King or Dauphin simply as “Monsieur,” as opposed to “Monseigneur” or “Majesté,” was in fact a sign of great privilege or intimacy; Marie Antoinette would formally address her husband as “Monsieur.” (When Count Mercy d’Argenteau heard the Comtesse Du Barry call Louis XV “Monsieur” in public he was deeply shocked.) Madame Adélaïde, a king’s daughter, hearing herself described as “Royal Highness,” was furious, the simple address of “Madame” being so much grander.7

  At the same time the rules were intensely complicated. On one occasion in Louis Auguste’s childhood he complained about Philippe Duc de Chartres addressing him as “Monsieur.” Since he was a member of the royal family, and Chartres was one rank down as a Prince of the Blood, the correct term was “Monseigneur.” At this point his younger brother, the Comte de Provence, intervened: Chartres should actually address Louis Auguste as “Cousin.” Marie Antoinette, at her formal morning toilette, had to learn the correct degree of acknowledgement for every person who came in. It might be appropriate to nod her head or to incline her body or—most graciously of all, in the case of a Prince or Princess of the Blood—to make as if to rise up without actually doing so. The fact that anyone with the Rights of Entry might choose to attend without prior notification also made the actual routine of the toilette infinitely complicated. Marie Antoinette could reach for nothing herself; the handing over of a garment to the Dauphine (or the Queen) for her to put on was a jealously guarded privilege.8

  On one notorious occasion, Marie Antoinette had actually undressed and was about to receive her underwear, put out by the First Lady of the Bedchamber, from the hand of the Mistress of the Household. All this was according to plan and the Mistress of the Household had already stripped off her glove in preparation to take the chemise. At this point a Princess of the Blood, the Duchesse d’Orléans arrived, her entry indicated by that peculiar scratching sound that was the Versailles equivalent of a knock. The Mistress of the Household, according to etiquette, relinquished the chemise to the Duchesse, who proceeded to take off her own glove. Marie Antoinette, of course, was still naked. And she remained so when yet another princess appeared, the Comtesse de Provence, who as a member of the royal family took precedence in the ceremony and was in turn handed the chemise. When the Comtesse tried to speed things up by omitting to remove her glove, she managed to knock off the royal mob cap. All this time Marie Antoinette stood with her arms crossed over her body, shivering. She tried to cover her impatience by laughing, but not before muttering audibly: “This is maddening! This is ridiculous!”9

  Marie Antoinette’s own account of her daily routine, written to her mother in July 1770, makes it clear that this constant element of the private-performed-in-public was present from the very beginning. Waking between nine and ten, she would dress informally, say her morning prayers, eat breakfast, and after that visit the royal aunts. “At eleven o’clock I have my hair done. At noon, all the world can enter—I put on my rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world. Then the gentlemen leave and the ladies remain and I am dressed in front of them.” This was followed by Mass, with the King if he happened to be at Versailles, otherwise with the Dauphin. After Mass the two of them dined together “in front of the whole world.”10

  In many ways the young Marie Antoinette, with her grace and amiability, was well equipped to play the part of a hieratic figure at Versailles. The Dauphine certainly had nothing to fear from being exposed to the whole world, morally or physically. At this point she accepted all the conventions of the role, to be played on the stage of what was, in essence, an ageing court. The earlier deaths of the Dauphine Maria Josepha and of the Queen meant that the fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette was the First Lady of Versailles from the start. In effect, a generation had been skipped. There were courtiers present whose experience stretched back half a century, and even in one or two cases still longer to the last days of Louis XIV. The old man who as a boy had accidentally set light to the wig of the great monarch as he tried to guide his passage with a candle still trembled at the memory. The Duc de Richelieu, widely thought to be the original of Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, had been born in the previous century, and in the words of the Comte d’Hezecques, who had been his page, the roses of love and the laurels of glory had been showered on him throughout three reigns (as well as a few other less admiring accolades).

  Then there were various old ladies, described by the Prince de Ligne as impressive like the ruins of Rome and gracious like classical Athens. The ageing Maréchale de Mirepoix, for example, was so charming “that you would imagine that she had thought of nothing but you for the whole of her life.”11 It would be a great mistake to underestimate the power of the old at Versailles, especially the older women. For all the sentimental attachment to the fresh appearance of youth—possessed so markedly by the Dauphine—prestige did not vanish with the first wrinkles. A woman was generally held to grow old at thirty, or at least lose the seduction of her beauty (although the bal des vieux at court was actually for women over twenty-seven). Louis Petit de Bachaumont, author of numerous volumes of anecdotal reminiscence, put the masculine point of view crudely enough when he repeated a contemporary saying: a girl of fifteen was a coffer whose lock had to be forced, while a woman of thirty was “venison well ripe and good to put on the spit.” After that a forty-year-old woman was “a great bastion where the cannon had made more than a breach” and at fifty “an old lantern in which one only places a wick with regret.”12

  However, the bastions and the lanterns had, from the feminine point of view, lost neither their strength of character nor their influence with the passing of time. The mocking, mischievous spirit that Madame Antoine had developed in Austria to cope with her own fears of older, cleverer women, was going to be inappropriate at Versailles. Nicknaming the Comtesse de Noailles “Madame étiquette” and sending to know the correct procedure for a Dauphine of France who had fallen off her donkey was amusing enough for Marie Antoinette. Such levity was understandable in a girl. “At the age of fifteen she laughed much,” wrote the Prince de Ligne.13 But it was perilous laughter.

  Where court conventions were concerned, however, Marie Antoinette was for the time being completely docile. With her natural dexterity, she could manage with ease the cumbersome court dress with its wide hoops and long train, and the famous “Versailles glide,” by which ladies seemingly moved without their feet touching the ground, their satin slippers mysteriously avoiding the dirt, was something of which she would become the supre
me exponent. For lesser mortals, the glide was practical too; by this means ladies avoided stepping on the train of the lady in front of them. There were two other practices that symbolized the courtly way of life. First was the essential powdering of the hair. So all-embracing was this practice—in 1770 you could not come to court without it—that the smell of powder (and the pomatum that was applied first to fix it) became one of the pervading perfumes of eighteenth-century Versailles, remembered long afterwards by those who had been there. Huge capes had to be draped round those in court dress, men and women, while the powder was blown on to their coiffures; Louis XVI would need a vast peignoir. But these monstrous edifices of wool, tow, pads and wire, looking as if they had been “dipped in a meal-tub” (in the words of Eliza Hancock, Jane Austen’s cousin), that were so often identified with Marie Antoinette actually predated her and were already part of the normal usage of Versailles.14

  The second symbolic practice was the lavish application of rouge to the cheeks: not delicate shading but huge precise circles of a colour not far from scarlet. Casanova believed that rouge emphasized ladies’ eyes and indicated “amorous fury,” while widows like Maria Teresa and the Dauphine Maria Josepha gave up wearing it as a measure of austerity. In the case of Marie Antoinette, with her superb complexion, it still had to be formally applied every morning in front of “the whole world.” Rouge, however, was not worn at Versailles in order to allure. It was a badge, or rather two badges, of rank and distinction. It was for this reason that the market-women, who ignored the prohibition on those outside court using rouge, made themselves look like “raddled old dolls,” according to Madame Vigée Le Brun, in an attempt to ape the great ladies; by 1780 French women were said to use 2 million pots of rouge a year.15

  Visitors from other courts were often appalled by what they saw; in the 1760s Leopold Mozart thought the aristocratic French women looked like wooden Nuremberg dolls on account of this “detestable make-up . . . unbearable to the eyes of an honest German.” The Emperor Joseph II was equally scathing; he would mock his little sister for her grotesque appearance. In wearing her rouge, however (and spending a great deal of money on it; rouge was so expensive that poorer people used red wine to stain their cheeks) Marie Antoinette was for the time being loyally obeying the convention for Versailles, even if it made her unbearable to German eyes.16