16

MOTHERLY ADVICE

Nearly a year after Marie Antoinette left Vienna, Maria Theresa received a portrait of her daughter. The empress was not pleased with what she saw. Maria Theresa perceived that Marie Antoinette had lost her youthful air. Clearly the dauphine’s bedeviled life among people who constantly gossiped and intrigued was taking its toll. This made the empress all the more determined to send Marie Antoinette letters loaded with counsel. Count Mercy wrote to the empress of the effects of these letters on her daughter: “I observe that anything coming from your Majesty produces the greatest impression and continually occupies her mind.”¹ “They say you neglect to single out and talk to distinguished persons,” went one letter from mother to daughter. “Follow the advice of Mercy, who only thinks of your welfare, and mix yourself up with no party; if you could even ignore all of them it would be better.”² Marie Antoinette tried to live up to her mother’s standards and amend her ways, telling Maria Theresa, “I am in despair that you should believe it when people tell you that I do not speak to them; you must have very little confidence in me, to think that I should be so unreasonable as to amuse myself with five or six young people, and fail in attentions to those whom I should honour.”³

As demanding a taskmaster as Maria Theresa was, her maternal side also shone through. In one letter, the empress told Marie Antoinette, “I have received your portrait in pastel: it is very like you and is my delight and the pleasure of all the family; it is in the cabinet where I work, and the picture [by Liotard] in my bedroom, where I work at night, so that I have you always before my eyes, as I have you always within my heart.” Maria Theresa also added encouraging words: “I am always convinced of your success when you undertake anything, as le bon Dieu has given you charm, and a pretty figure, and you have goodness in addition, so that all hearts are yours whatever you do.”⁴ And in another message, Maria Theresa wrote: “This letter will arrive too late for your birthday, but you may be very sure that I have not forgotten it, that I thank God daily, praying that He will keep you such that you may save your soul and do good in the country where you are while making your family happy and furthering inasmuch as may in you, the glory of God and the welfare of man.”⁵

Much as she hoped for the best from Marie Antoinette, Maria Theresa could never quite steer herself from worrying about “the lethargy into which she is sinking.”⁶ Hence, the hectoring tone of a letter to her daughter: “Do not think I am merely scolding with such energy; I see you sunk in a subjection from which you must be plucked as quickly as possible and by force … . I do not demand a total break with the company you frequent, God forbid! but that you tell them nothing, and learn to act for yourself. Too much compliance is degrading; you must play your own part, if you wish to be valued. If you do not, I foresee great trouble before you; nothing but mischief-making and plots, which will make your life unhappy. Believe the advice of a mother, who knows the world and idolises her children and desires only to pass her sad days in being useful to them.”⁷ Marie Antoinette wrote back, telling her “very dear mother” that “I especially want to follow the good advice you give me, my dear Mama.”⁸

Maria Theresa’s dead daughter-in-law Isabella of Parma understood the value attached to the empress’s advice as well as her character. Of Maria Theresa, Isabella had noted, “The Empress has an exceptionally tender, clinging, sympathetic disposition. Those whom she loves, she loves in very truth. She would sacrifice herself for any member of her family, or even for her friends … . Through suffering she has learned to know life and the world. Her advice is therefore extremely helpful.”⁹

Marie Antoinette was not the only one of Maria Theresa’s daughters who received advice. If the dauphine thought that her mother sometimes singled her out, she needed only to have read one long letter Maria Theresa wrote to Mimi, which touched upon a myriad of topics:

Every marital happiness consists of mutual trust and mutual kindness; passionate love vanishes quickly. Each must respect the other, and each must be useful to the other; each must feel true friendship for the other in order to be content in marriage, to bear the tribulations of this life, and to promote life’s happiness … .

What good fortune for him to find in you a loving wife at home, a wife creating happiness for her husband, supporting him, comforting him, being useful to him, never presuming to afflict him, allowing him instead to come to her, being satisfied with his frequent visits, and finding herself happy when she can be occupied with him. If you do not realize this immediately, you will certainly suffer the consequences later on.

All marriages would be happy if people followed this advice. But everything depends on the wife, who should pursue the proper course, try to win the attention and trust of her husband, never abuse or boast of it … .

The less foolishness you display, the better it will be. That is another modern evil: it consists of a great emphasis upon spirit and the idea that people can play tricks on each other without impropriety … . Allow at your court no two-faced talk and no malicious backbiting. Make this clear immediately, so you will keep evil elements at a distance. At every opportunity show your eagerness to maintain virtue … .

Neglect none of your religious duties; in marriage prayer and God’s help are even more necessary than in single life. Your spiritual lessons should occur regularly. I recommend very strongly that you be exact in this matter. Regularize your devotions as well as your moderate offerings according to your confessor’s advice.¹⁰

Nothing better encapsulates Maria Theresa’s motherly advice to Marie Antoinette than one of the messages she sent her daughter: “I hope that my constant repetitions do not bore you but convince you that I speak them because I want to see you happy and help you to avoid the pitfalls of youth.”¹¹ Marie Antoinette never lost the chance to remind Maria Theresa that “I shall never be happy, my dear mother, without the knowledge that I have pleased you.”¹² To Count Mercy, though, Marie Antoinette admitted: “I love the Empress, but I fear her even from a distance: even in writing I am never at ease with her.”¹³

Maria Theresa was grateful to Count Mercy for his guardianship over Marie Antoinette and his ceaseless work on her behalf. “I see, with grief, the dangers that threaten my child,” the empress once wrote to him, and “I put my trust in your discernment and zeal alone. Your task is, in truth, arduous, in view of the indifference and levity of my daughter (with a little obstinacy besides), who is accustomed to content herself with passing amusements, without reflection upon their consequences.”¹⁴

In 1773, Maria Theresa could take comfort in signs that her daughter might be capturing the hearts of her future subjects. In June of that year, Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette paid an official visit to the French capital, Paris, where the dauphine created a sensation. At seventeen and a half years old, Marie Antoinette had grown into a graceful and attractive creature with a beautiful fair complexion and sparkling blue eyes. Thousands mobbed the two, even to the point of climbing trees, in order to catch a glimpse of the future of France. From the Tuileries Palace gardens, the Duc de Brissac, governor of Paris, told Marie Antoinette: “There you have two hundred thousand people who love you.”¹⁵

Count Mercy eagerly reported to Maria Theresa the sensation caused by Marie Antoinette, saying, “Nothing was wanting; the public was seized with a sort of delirium for the Dauphine … [with] cries of ‘How beautiful she is! How charming’”¹⁶ Mercy’s descriptions were echoed by an English naval officer who witnessed the royal entrée. He wrote of the “amazing crowd” calling out to the dauphine “in rapture, ‘God bless your sweet face!’”¹⁷

Marie Antoinette could not contain her excitement in her letter to Maria Theresa, telling her mother it was a day “that I shall not forget all my life … . They received us with all the honours it is possible to imagine; but it was not this that touched me most; it was the tenderness and eagerness of the poor people who, in spite of the oppressive taxes with which they are crushed, were in transports of joy at seeing us. When we went to walk in the Tuileries there was so great a crowd that for three-quarters of an hour we stood there, powerless to advance or to retreat.”¹⁸ Marie Antoinette was “moved to tears”¹⁹ by the reception. “I can’t tell you, my dear mother, the transports of joy, of affection, that were shown to us despite all the burdens of these poor people … . How fortunate we are, given our rank, to have gained the love of a whole people with such ease,” she wrote.²⁰

Besides her triumphant appearance in Paris, the dauphine’s kindness also made a positive impression. She had once given a thousand écus without fanfare to a fund for victims of a fire at the hospital Hôtel Dieu. Then there was the time she went to give her personal sympathy to a lady-in-waiting whose young son had died. It was unprecedented for a French royal to go far from court to pay a visit, but Marie Antoinette begged Louis XV for permission and received it.

Marie Antoinette also became closer to Louis-Auguste and told her mother excitedly: “I think I can confide to you, my dear Mama, and only to you, that my affairs have taken a very good turn since we arrived here [Versailles] and that I consider my marriage to be consummated; even if not to the degree that I am pregnant.”²¹ The empress was beside herself with happiness: “The joy is incredibly great everywhere. What delight!”²² In reality, some kind of intimacy had been reached by Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste, though not to the extent that the dauphine could become pregnant.

Maria Theresa concluded that, by this time, Marie Antoinette was old enough to receive political advice. The dauphine was touched by her mother’s confidence, telling her: “I will do my best to contribute towards the preservation of good friendship and alliance; where should I be if there were a rupture between my two families?”²³ A part of the empress, though, still hesitated in getting Marie Antoinette too quickly involved in politics; she told Mercy: “I confess frankly to you that I do not wish my daughter to gain too decided an influence in affairs. I have learned, only too well, by my own experience, what a crushing burden is the government of a vast monarchy. Besides, I know the youth and levity of my daughter … [with] her little taste for application (and she really knows nothing), and this adds to my fear for her non-success in the government of a monarchy, so shattered as that of France is at present; and if my daughter could not sustain it, or the condition of this kingdom changed more and more for the worse, I would prefer that the people blame some minister and not my daughter, and that it should be another’s fault.”²⁴

There was one crucial issue—political and personal—that mother and daughter wanted resolved. This was Marie Antoinette’s lack of children. Her central role, after all, was to be the mother of an heir, and here she never hesitated to compare herself with others. When Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother about the stillborn birth to someone she knew, she added sadly, “But I would rather have even that, terrible as it is, than be as I am without hope of any children.”²⁵ And when the dauphine learned that her sisters Maria Amalia and Maria Carolina were both awaiting the births of children, she lamented to her mother: “When shall I be able to say the like?”²⁶

This nagging issue took on added urgency when, in May 1774, King Louis XV fell seriously ill with the dreaded smallpox, signaling the possible end of his long reign. Count Mercy told Maria Theresa that Marie Antoinette had bravely offered to make the sacrifice of staying with the dying king. But for their health’s sake, Louis XV refused to see her or Louis-Auguste. Instead, the king allowed his daughters, physicians, and Madame du Barry to care for him. The king’s final days were harrowing. Shortly before he died, Louis XV’s body began to blacken and emit a putrid stench. He died on May 10, 1774, after a reign of nearly fifty-nine years. His festering body was placed in a lead coffin and rushed away for burial. Once they became aware of their accession, the new king and queen, in a flood of tears, fell on their knees and exclaimed, “O God, guide us, protect us, we are too young to govern.”²⁷ The royal family and courtiers immediately left Versailles in order to avoid contamination. Over a dozen carriages took the royal family to Choisy. Already seventeen people who had had some kind of contact with Louis XV had died from smallpox. It became imperative that the new king and queen be removed from the danger zone.

From Choisy the eighteen-year-old Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother of her new position: “Although I was placed by Heaven at my birth in the rank I occupy, I cannot help admiring the arrangement of Providence that has chosen me, the last of your children, for the most beautiful Kingdom in the World. I feel more than ever what I owe to my August mother, who took all that trouble and pains to establish me so well.”²⁸ Maria Theresa in turn told her daughter: “You are both very young: the burden is great: I am anxious, very anxious.” And to her son Ferdinand, the empress wrote with a heavy heart, “I fear this is the last of your sister’s peaceful happy days.”²⁹ This foreboding was not an overreaction. After all, “thirty laborious years had taught [Maria Theresa] how burdensome is a crown, while during the same period as a mother she had learned the weaknesses and defects of her daughters.”³⁰ Where the new Queen of France was concerned, “it was her instability, her lack of firm anchorage, her squandering of energies that were great but incessantly misapplied, which her mother took so much amiss.”³¹ Maria Theresa had indulged her children with a carefree childhood, but she had expected that, when duty called at adulthood, they would easily shed their disposition toward recklessness and giddiness. She, after all, had transformed herself from happy young bride and mother, unprepared for queenship, into a formidable leader who defended the Habsburg lands from being dismembered. Could she not expect the same kind of tenacity and responsibility from her offspring?

Marie Antoinette grasped the immense responsibility that befell the royal couple during Louis XVI’s coronation at the cathedral at Rheims. Dating back hundreds of years, the solemn ceremony that saw Louis crowned king excluded Marie Antoinette, in accordance with ancient tradition when kings were not married. Near the high altar, Marie Antoinette watched her husband touch Charlemagne’s sword, prostrate himself as litanies were sung, receive the scepter and ring signifying unity with the people, then have the gold crown of Charlemagne placed on his head. She was so moved that she told her mother, “I could no longer restrain myself; my tears flowed in spite of me, and the people liked this.”³²

Not long after Louis XVI became king, Marie Antoinette and Madame Adelaide, one of the aunts (all of whom came down with smallpox but eventually recovered), jockeyed for the role of influential adviser. Both suggested candidates for Louis to appoint as his top ministers. Madame Adelaide promoted the Comte de Maurepas, who was seventy-three and had previously served Louis XV but had been disgraced when he incurred the wrath of Madame du Pompadour. Marie Antoinette pushed for the Duc de Choiseul. To the pious Louis XVI, only twenty at the time, there was not much to commend Choiseul. A friend of Voltaire, Choiseul had insisted on the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, an act that earned the aunts’ disapproval and Louis XVI’s disfavor. The queen lost this battle to Madame Adelaide when Louis XVI chose Maurepas as his chief minister. But overall, the aunts’ domination began to wane. No longer appendages at Versailles, they now lived at Bellevue, Madame du Pompadour’s former home, which was given to them by the new king.

With the aunts away from court, the new king and queen, now at the apex of the social ladder, were left to their own devices. King Louis XVI, who had increasingly come to view his wife with affection, began listening to Marie Antoinette’s opinions and granting most of her requests. Though she did not exercise complete control over him, Louis did not dismiss her opinions. Count Mercy reported to Maria Theresa that “it is now proved that when she really wishes for anything it is hers.”³³ But, Mercy cautioned mother and daughter alike that everything would be lost if Marie Antoinette were careless. “Her Majesty, who invariably listens to me … agrees with my arguments,” he recounted to the empress, “but since dissipation always effaces the serious impressions, I only obtain results in particular cases, never anything systematic or consecutive.”³⁴ The fact that Mercy confirmed Marie Antoinette’s influence over the king was no great consolation to Maria Theresa, for she knew that unless her daughter applied herself and paid constant, careful attention to serious matters, little good would come of it. One of Marie Antoinette’s letters confirmed her mother’s suspicions when her daughter confessed: “I must admit my dissipation and disinclination for serious things. I wish and hope gradually to correct it.”³⁵ Maria Theresa, however, continued to be wary of Marie Antoinette’s future, telling Mercy that “I am more and more convinced that I am not mistaken about her whole character and her penchant for dissipation. I have noticed, that, despite her deference to your remonstrances, she none the less goes her own way when her wishes are involved. I place all my confidence in your zeal and wisdom, but I cannot conceal my fear that some day she may try to get rid of the Abbé Vermond on some plausible pretext in order to be relieved of an embarrassing observer.”³⁶

In the meantime, France continued to wallow in crisis. At King Louis XVI’s accession, the country’s fortunes were at a low ebb. Attempts were made to address the myriad of problems. Another important ministerial post, that of treasurer, went to Jacques Turgot. It was hoped that the able and honest Turgot might help turn the fortunes of France for the better. The 23 million subjects of the king were divided into three estates: the first consisting of the clergy (around 130,000); the second, the nobility (around 500,000); and the third, the commoners (approximately 97 percent of the total population). Unlike the third estate, the first two were exempt from taxation. The third estate was made up of bourgeoisie, or the middle class, and the peasants. Peasants composed the overwhelming majority of the third estate and also carried the heaviest tax burden. Though peasants might still be able to declare their affection for their king, they had no sympathy for those who collected the taxes. “Officialdom” thus became “the people’s bugbear”; and it was officialdom’s minions “who settled on them [peasants] like locusts devouring the work of their hands.”³⁷ Drought and poor harvests aggravated the hunger and poverty of the peasants, who also had little sympathy for the nobles, absentee landlords who disliked and avoided the countryside. Those nobles who were not impoverished preferred to flee to Paris, where many of them indulged in a dissolute existence. The clergy too had problems. During Louis XV’s reign, the nobility had profited from obtaining high Church offices, which allowed them to collect additional tithes and taxes. Some lived profligate lives that bred increasing resentment from the people and other clergy, particularly of the lower orders, against these insincere men of the cloth.

Madame de la Tour du Pin was an eyewitness to the impending revolution. She wrote of society just years before the conflagration, saying, “The rot started at the top and spread downward. Virtue in men and good conduct in women became the object of ridicule and were considered provincial.”³⁸ La Tour du Pin bemoaned the nobility’s “instances of every form of vice. Gaming, debauchery, immorality, irreligion, all were flaunted openly.”³⁹

The turmoil in French society and at court had been brewing for some time. Nothing had changed much since 1771, when the English politician Horace Walpole wrote from Paris, “The distress here is incredible, especially at Court … . You never saw a great nation in so disgraceful a position.” Referring to the future Louis XVI, Walpole predicted then, “Their prospect is not better: it rests on an imbécile, both in mind and body.”⁴⁰ Awkward and shortsighted, heavily set with a propensity to get his hands blackened from working at his clocks, locks, and forge, the new king had many drawbacks, but he was not an imbecile. Louis may have been poorly educated, but when a subject interested him, he applied himself to learning on his own all he could. He came to know English well, including grammar, and he excelled in geography. Louis XVI’s aims for the French people upon his accession were certainly well-meaning. An English contemporary wrote of him, “Never did any prince manifest more rectitude of intention, greater probity, or a warmer desire to advance the felicity of his people.”⁴¹ Louis recognized that France was critically in need of changes and wanted to revive the country by introducing reforms. But the task would be huge. It demanded an adroit and strong king.

Marie Antoinette told her mother, in a letter tinged with seriousness and maturity, of her worries: “For the moment there is nothing but praise and admiration for the King, which he thoroughly deserves because he is so honest and so anxious to do good. But I am worried as to how long the enthusiasm of the French will last. From the little I understand of politics, it seems that things are very difficult at present, and that the late King has left the country where the people are so volatile and impatient that they want to have everything done at once. But the King will never be as weak as his grandfather, nor I hope will he ever have favourites.”⁴² Lord Stormont, the British ambassador to France, noted some hopeful characteristics in Louis XVI, saying, “The strongest and most decided feature in this King’s character are a love of justice, a general desire of doing well, a passion for economy and an abhorrence of all the excesses of the last reign … . He is eternally repeating the word economy, economy.”⁴³

Unfortunately, despite the queen’s support for her husband, she was unaccustomed and uninclined to economize in her own life. Moreover, as if to make up for her barrenness and her desire to break out from the unbearable etiquette and public scrutiny to which she was subjected, Marie Antoinette unwisely indulged in heady frivolity. And now that she was queen, she led a very public life at Versailles for a large part of the day, so much so, in fact, that “she could not make a gesture, take a step, utter a word without triggering a reaction in the attendants who never left her.”⁴⁴ From morning until late in the day and often at night, eyes were trained on the queen, and etiquette demanded that she conform to protocol.

Even the simple event of dressing in the morning after waking, “la grande toilette,” was tightly scripted. One of the queen’s ladies had to hand her the chemise she was to wear. If a princess was present, the princess was the one who had to hand the chemise to the queen. If there were two princesses of the royal family present, the senior-ranking was the one who was to hand the chemise, but the precious chemise could not be passed between the two women. Instead, a lady of the chamber had to take the chemise from the lower-ranking princess and pass it on the higher-ranking princess. The tedious grande toilette gives a hint of what the queen had to endure in the gilded goldfish bowl that was Versailles. Next, Marie Antoinette was formally attired in an uncomfortable large hooped gown and train in front of the court. She was also inundated by visits from dignitaries, during which she had to remain attentive and preserve a doll-like countenance. Daily Mass was not kept private but was a court affair. Court dinners were ceremonial and often formal. These ceremonials—in many ways developed to keep the nobility preoccupied—continued while the country was coming unhinged.

Little wonder then that Marie Antoinette, feckless and gregarious by nature, yearned for escapes. The queen appeared at masked quadrilles and fancy dress balls, full of animated chatter. She created a lighthearted life among intimates in less formal settings, such as the Petit Trianon. Marie Antoinette adored the Petit Trianon, given to her by Louis XVI soon after his accession. Located on the grounds of Versailles, the Petit Trianon was a small, square-shaped château decorated on the outside with Corinthian columns. The new queen had an English garden created just outside and a mock temple, known as the Temple of Love, built for her amusement. Ever an enthusiast for music, Marie Antoinette added a theater, fancifully decorated in papier-mâché, where she could act in comic operas by the French librettist Michel-Jean Sedaine. It was in this theater that The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre de Beaumarchais was first put on before the royal family.

The queen also entertained her coterie of intimates at Versailles and the other royal palaces of Fontainebleau and Compiègne. Among them was her brother-in-law the Comte d’Artois. A libertine who thought little of paying the proper respects to his brother, Louis XVI, Artois liked to amuse Marie Antoinette by organizing horse races, then a novel amusement imported to France from England. Hence, often accompanied by Artois and the king’s other brother and sister-in-law, the Comte and Comtesse de Provence (called Monsieur and Madame), the queen attended not just balls but also horse races, while her poor adopted country quickly descended toward a ruin similar to what her mother had forestalled in her realms. Wherever Marie Antoinette appeared, her unrestrained comportment astonished her countrymen, who expected more decorum from their queen. Count Mercy reported to Maria Theresa that crowds of people watched the royals, “but the Queen was not welcomed with the customary signs of joy and applause … . The public sees that the Queen is only thinking of amusements.”⁴⁵ Already, ominous signs of Marie Antoinette’s unpopularity were appearing. For the present, though, the queen seemed almost oblivious. Instead, she enjoyed diversions with her favorites and lived a life among them buffered from reality.

Marie Antoinette’s intimate circle of friends included the Princess de Guéméné, who encouraged the queen’s growing appetite for gambling. Marie Antoinette attended parties at Guéméné’s apartments in the Tuileries Palace. Soon, late nights during which Marie Antoinette and her friends danced and played fashionable games like lansquenet and faro for high stakes became a regular part of her life. Marie Antoinette’s frenzied nightlife did nothing to improve her intimate marital relations. Unlike his frenetic wife, the king liked a regular routine, eschewed parties and gambling, and was in bed by eleven. Luckily for Marie Antoinette, Louis was patient with her and did not seek companionship as other kings of France had done before him by taking a mistress. Instead, he remained content with his hobbies of hunting and locksmithing.

Marie Antoinette’s proclivities left her vulnerable to attacks from pamphleteers and gossipmongers. Her self-indulgent excesses reinforced their criticisms of her, making her less and less popular. Criticisms increased when Marie Antoinette embroiled herself with two close friends and their respective factions. Living in an “age of sentimental friendships, when women who had little to do would exchange long and soulful letters, addressing one another as ‘Dearest Heart,’”⁴⁶ Marie Antoinette found two favorites who fell into this category. The first was Marie Thérèse de Savoie Carignan, known as the Princess de Lamballe, who came to Marie Antoinette’s attention as the twenty-one-year-old widow of the great-grandson of King Louis XIV and his mistress Madame de Montespan. Sensitive and prone to swooning (which Maria Theresa thought were mere affectations), the Princess de Lamballe befriended Marie Antoinette, who in turn felt protective toward her close friend. Marie Antoinette’s other confidante was Yolande de Polignac, wife of Comte Jules de Polignac. A brunette of middle height, attractive, with a wonderful complexion, like that of the queen, Comtesse de Polignac was not particularly intelligent or clever. Nevertheless, she possessed a certain charm, which made her a sympathetic creature to many who came into her orbit, including the queen. Even King Louis willingly went to Yolande de Polignac’s soirees. Surrounded by interesting and lively people, Marie Antoinette eagerly became drawn to the de Polignac set and happily spent hours in Yolande’s company.

Hungry for close companionship, Marie Antoinette clung to Princess de Lamballe and Comtesse de Polignac to the extent that their relationship inevitably invited false accusations about the degree of intimacy they shared. Marie Antoinette also befriended an Englishwoman and allowed her into her inner circle. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was a leader of English society and married to one of the country’s most influential aristocrats. When she went to Paris, she visited Marie Antoinette. The two discovered “they had much in common, not only in having married a position rather than a lover, but also in their relations with their mothers.”⁴⁷

In early 1774, Marie Antoinette befriended another noble who came to play an important part in her life. While attending an opera ball in Paris, incognito with a mask, she met the Swedish nobleman Count Axel Fersen, who was only two months older than she. They talked for a while until Marie Antoinette was recognized. They met several times more, but briefly and in very public settings. The wily Swedish ambassador had warned Fersen to watch himself in the queen’s company. However prudent Fersen was, his repartee with the queen was sufficient to prompt individuals who disliked Marie Antoinette to start spying on the two. Again, the ambassador urged Fersen to keep his wits about him and to avoid getting entangled in “the bees’ nest of Versailles.”⁴⁸

For Marie Antoinette’s detractors and the growing numbers who sought revolution, Versailles epitomized all that was wrong with the nobility and the royal family. To them, the headquarters of the house of Bourbon was not a magnificent palace surrounded by beautiful manicured gardens, spectacular fountains, and an assortment of enchanting buildings. Instead, it was the home of Louis XVI’s foreign consort, who frolicked and spent money to her heart’s content while French peasants toiled endlessly to feed themselves during increasingly trying times. Only a glance at the elaborate wigs the queen began sporting was enough to prove that here was a woman who cared little for her less fortunate subjects. Her outlandish coiffures and headdresses known as poufs were proof of her dissipation. Designed by Madame Rose Bertin, the queen’s milliner, and Monsieur Léonard, prominent hairdresser to the elite, these concoctions of powdered hair and assorted decorations grew to tremendous heights. What emerged was “an elaborate miniature still-life, intended either to express a feeling (pouf au sentiment) or to commemorate an event (pouf à la circonstance) of importance to the client.”⁴⁹ No theme was too bizarre to create and wear. These astounding creations, aped by ladies of fashion, included cornucopias full of fruits, swimming ducks, landscapes, and even the British fleet on a stormy sea.

Because “they were explicitly designed to convey topical messages, Marie Antoinette’s poufs [also] allowed her to play at politics and look fashionable at the same time.”⁵⁰ Such was the case with the queen’s poufs that celebrated her music teacher Gluck’s opera Iphigénie en Aulide. His success in Paris just before Louis XV’s death was thanks to Marie Antoinette’s patronage despite Madame du Barry’s interference. The Iphigénie pouf celebrated Gluck’s success and Marie Antoinette’s victory over du Barry. Empress Maria Theresa queried her daughter on these strange creations, writing incredulously: “They speak of hair-dressing a coiffure of thirty-six inches high from the roots of the hair, with feathers and ribbons above that again! You know my opinion, to follow fashion in moderation, never to excess. A young and pretty Queen has no need of such follies.” In reply, Marie Antoinette admitted with defiance: “It is true I am rather taken up with dress; but as to feathers, every one wears them, and it would seem extraordinary if I did not.”⁵¹

The queen’s coiffures along with dresses, the gardens at Trianon, gambling, and horses (she had three hundred) were just some of the expenses that caused concern and consternation. Marie Antoinette also spent money on jewelry, such as 460,000 livres on pearl-shaped diamond earrings from the jeweler Böhmer. She also bought a pair of diamond bracelets from Böhmer at a cost of 250,000 livres. Close friends too were on the receiving end of Marie Antoinette’s largesse, which did nothing but add to the criticisms against her. In 1775 the queen secured for Princess de Lamballe the position of superintendent of the queen’s household. For the obligatory entertaining this entailed, the princess was granted 150,000 livres a year. Thanks to Comtesse de Polignac’s close friendship with Marie Antoinette, the de Polignac family was also a beneficiary of the queen’s patronage.

Though the king was fairly frugal in his personal life, he tolerated his wife’s extravagance. She was stronger willed than he, and it was easier to accede to her wishes than call her to task. He also sincerely loved Marie Antoinette and could not bring himself to deny her anything. His guilt over his inability to father a child with his wife along with the malicious gossip that was hurled at Marie Antoinette for being barren made it even harder to say no to the queen’s spending habits. When she approached Louis XVI about her debts, which amounted to over 487,000 livres, the king volunteered to pay them out of his own income, earning her sincere gratitude. Unfortunately, however, far from reining in her spending habits, Louis’s lenience only encouraged the queen to continue the frivolities. Considering how indulgent her husband was with her, Marie Antoinette shocked her mother when she flippantly referred to the king as “the poor man” in a letter to a family friend. When Maria Theresa saw this, she was indignant, lamenting to Mercy: “I am cut to the heart. What a style! What a matter of thought! It confirms my dread; she is rushing, by great steps, to her ruin, and she will be fortunate if, in her fall, she retains even the virtue of her rank.”⁵²

In a moving letter to this wayward daughter, Maria Theresa poured out her disappointments and anxieties in the hope of shaking Marie Antoinette into action:

All I see is intrigue … of a sort that a Pompadour or a Barry would have indulged in so as to play a great role, something which is utterly unfitting for a Queen, a great Princess of the House of Lorraine and Austria … . Your too early success and your entourage of flatterers have always made me fear for you … . Those excursions from pleasure to pleasure without the King and in the knowledge that he doesn’t enjoy them and that he either accompanies you or leaves you free out of sheer good nature—all that caused me to mention in my letters my justified concern … .

Your happiness can vanish all too fast, and you may be plunged, by your own doing, into the greatest calamities. That is the result of your terrible dissipation, which prevents your being assiduous about anything serious. What have you read? And, after that, you dare to opine on the greatest State matters, on the choice of ministers? What does the abbé do? And Mercy? It seems to me that you dislike them because instead of behaving like low flatterers, they want you to be happy and do not amuse you or take advantage of your weaknesses. You will realize all this one day, but it will be too late. I hope not to survive that dreadful time, and I pray to God that He end my days sooner, since I can no longer help you but cannot bear to lose or watch the sufferings of my dear child, whom I love dearly till my last breath.⁵³