CHAPTER FIVE
FRANCE’S HAPPINESS
Marie Antoinette: “I shall never forget that you are responsible for my happiness!”
Choiseul: “And that of France.”
EXCHANGE IN THE FOREST NEAR COMPIèGNE, 13 MAY 1770
It was to be two and a half weeks of travelling before the Dauphine was officially handed over to France.1 Marie Antoinette would in effect cross the whole of central Europe in her passage from Vienna to Versailles. She spent a great deal of this time cooped up in her velvet-and-gold carriage; sometimes the day’s journey would last over nine hours. Essentially she was a royal package, sealed with the double-headed eagle of the Habsburgs and the fleur-de-lys of the Bourbons.
The first overnight stop was at the great baroque monastery of Melk. Here the Dauphine was received by her brother Joseph, and some convent pupils performed an opera. Marie Antoinette was reported as looking bored; but given the gruelling schedule to which she had recently been exposed, it is more likely that she was totally exhausted. These partings—having left her mother, she would part from her brother the next morning—were in their very nature distressing, despite Khevenhüller’s precautions. In this, she was not unusual. Maria Carolina had become extremely upset at the last Austrian outpost on her journey south. Louis XV, giving away his beloved daughter Madame Infante in 1748, went a short way with her, then hugged her as she wept. Finally the King had the courage to say to her coachman, “To Madrid,” and leaping into his own carriage, cried, “To Versailles.” Marie Antoinette in her turn was said to have burst into tears as she crossed the border of her mother’s dominions, exclaiming that she was frightened she would never see the Empress again.2
The nature of her reception at the various towns along the route was, however, enthusiastic, if repetitious. Her august birth was naturally emphasized—this was the daughter of that nonpareil Maria Teresa—but otherwise every kind of goddess of youth and beauty was invoked: Hebe, Flora, Venus, and so forth and so on. Thus the Dauphine in her stately caravan, lauded for her virtues and those of her family, finally reached Munich on 26 April. Here she was entertained by the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph, brother of the late Empress Josepha and a cousin on her mother’s side. In the agreeable surroundings of the Nymphenburg Palace, whose gardens were second only to those of Versailles, and with the Amalienburg Pavilion as her personal lodging, the Dauphine was allowed a day of rest. Then it was on to Augsburg, where master craftsmen of the town had specially decorated her apartments, and where she was made an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts, before heading for Günzburg and another two-day stopover, this time with her father’s sister, Princess Charlotte of Lorraine.3
From Marie Antoinette’s point of view, despite all the acclamations en route of which Prince Starhemberg was keeping Versailles fully informed, it was pleasant to be greeted by one of the familiar figures of her childhood. This emphasis on Lorrainer family ties as Marie Antoinette headed towards Versailles was deliberate. As the two Princesses prayed together at the Lorrainer chapel at Königinbild, the point was being made that Lorrainer claims and connections were not going to be overlooked. The new Dauphine was “de Lorraine” as well as “d’Autriche.”
After that it was on towards Ulm and then Freiberg, which was reached on 4 May. Here, over two days, the celebrations of the Dauphine’s arrival were notably elaborate, having been plotted well in advance, with all the ins and outs of city politics. It was in the evening of 6 May when, having passed through the Black Forest, the Dauphine reached the abbey at Schüttern where she was to spend her last night on German soil before the handover.
This was also the night on which Marie Antoinette encountered, formally, the first of the French court officials who were intended to guide her inexperienced footsteps at Versailles. He came in the person of the Comte de Noailles, Ambassador Extraordinary of Louis XV. A man in his fifties, the Comte was a member of that eponymous family that was “the most profitably provided with places and favours at court.” In the words of a knowledgeable observer, the Marquis de Bombelles, the family had reached “the crest of grandeur” by intriguing skilfully.*174 There was certainly an extensive network of them, in successive generations, available to do so. The Comte’s elder brother, the Duc de Noailles, had two adult sons, the Duc d’Ayen and the Marquis de Noailles. The Comte’s own sons, of whom the elder was part of the welcoming delegation, added to the total. Most importantly of all, the Comtesse de Noailles, whom Marie Antoinette would meet the following day, was to be in overall charge as her Mistress of the Household (Dame d’Honneur).
As a couple, the Comte and Comtesse de Noailles were upright and proud of their unusual marital fidelity. It was a virtue for which they were commended by Louis XV; for, like many roués, he respected what he could not practise. Unfortunately they were also rigid and severe in less admirable ways, obsessed with etiquette and rules for rules’ sake. As a member of Marie Antoinette’s household pointed out, the desiccated Comtesse de Noailles had little of that natural warmth that would induce young people to pay attention to her good advice.*185 As for the Comte de Noailles, he insisted on his right not only to fetch the Dauphine but also to distribute the presents of money and jewels—over 400,000 livres’ worth—that were by tradition given to her accompanying Austrian suite before their return to their own country.
Immediately there was a hitch, one of etiquette. The Comte de Noailles demanded a last-minute change in the language of the document of the handover. The phrase “Their Imperial Majesties having wanted [the marriage]” could be conceived as offensive to Louis XV, suggesting that he had been in some way manipulated by Austria. It had to be altered to “Their Imperial Majesties having been willing to accede to the King’s wish”: more diplomatically virile. Prince Starhemberg held out in turn for a dais in the handover salon. In the end there were to be two documents, as with the marriage contract. First, France signed before Austria and the order of signatures was then reversed.7
It was in keeping with this impartiality, so earnestly maintained, that the handover was to take place on an island in the middle of the Rhine, near Kehl. Handovers were never easy to arrange. Islands were the correct spot for actual brides; Maria Josepha of Saxony, the previous Dauphine, had been handed over on this same island twenty-three years earlier. So when Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, aged ten, was brought to the French court as the mere fiancée of Louis XIV’s heir, it was decided after much cogitation to use a hump-backed bridge on a steep slope. A coach was manoeuvred so that its back wheels were in Savoy, its horses and front wheels in France; the doors opened on to neutral territory exactly in the centre of the bridge.8
The problem with the island near Kehl was that its building had fallen down since the days of Maria Josepha; something wooden had to be hastily put together for this two-way ceremony. Wealthy citizens of Strasbourg were pressed into service to lend furniture and tapestries while the Lutheran University provided a suitable dais. Some of these hastily assembled tapestries struck an odd note; no official seems to have noticed that one series depicted the story of Jason and Medea, the rejected mother who slew her own children. But a young man named Goethe, then studying law at Strasbourg, was deeply shocked: “What! At the moment when the young princess is about to step on the soil of her future husband’s country, there is placed before her eyes a picture of the most horrible marriage that can be imagined!”9 To most of the spectators, however, the ritual details of the occasion were far more important.
Immediately after the handover, Marie Antoinette would say goodbye to her Austrian attendants, none of whom, except Prince Starhemberg, were to travel on to Versailles. Her farewells were punctuated with tears, protestations of affection and messages to her family and friends at home. Even her beloved pug Mops was not allowed to accompany her into France. This might seem hard, except that once the ritual ceremony of de-Austrification was over, Count Mercy d’Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador, found himself negotiating for the arrival of the pug from Vienna.10 With others, all equally ill trained and “dirty,” Mops was soon distracting the Dauphine from life’s serious purposes—at least in Mercy’s opinion.
Similarly, the ritual by which the Dauphine was stripped of her magnificent Austrian wedding clothes, even down to her stockings and underwear, in order to don French-made garments, was not quite as harsh and humiliating as it sounds. It was of course a symbolic act of possession; in the words of Madame Campan in her memoirs: “that [the bride] might retain nothing belonging to a foreign court (an etiquette always observed on such an occasion).” But an eighteenth-century princess, even one raised in a comparatively informal court, had little of the modern concept of personal privacy where dressing, undressing and the performing of intimate functions were concerned. Life at Versailles would be even more public. You did not have to be the Francophile who found the Dauphine “a thousand times more charming” in her new attire, to realize that parting from her faithful suite was a good deal more painful for Marie Antoinette than the formal divestment.11 She had, after all, been treated as a doll, to be dressed up in this and that at the adults’ whim since childhood; this was just one more example of that process.*19
The fate of the rich Austrian bridal clothes, incidentally, was equally symbolic, representing in this case the way things worked at Versailles. Marie Antoinette’s senior attendants, the Dames du Palais, seized them as perquisites of office. A few years later, Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, negotiating the marriage of his granddaughter Josephine to the Dauphin’s brother, was suitably alarmed to hear about this plundering of Marie Antoinette’s trousseau.
A rumble of thunder from the nearby Black Forest could be heard during the actual ceremony. Otherwise it went more or less according to the much-debated plan. There were two entrances to the hastily erected building, and two exactly matching rooms, one for the Austrians, one for the French. Marie Antoinette was led from the Austrian room into the salon of the handover by Prince Starhemberg. Here a table covered in red velvet represented the boundary between the two countries. On the other side of it she found the Comte de Noailles, with two aides, awaiting her. A human touch was provided by his son, the eighteen-year-old Prince de Poix, who could not resist peeking through the keyhole from the French side to try to get an advance view of his future Queen. Speeches were made and the deed was done.
It was time for the Dauphine to meet her French attendants. Here there was a slight hiccup which involved, once again, etiquette and the Noailles family. The Comte de Noailles was anxious that his wife should be handed into the main salon by a gentleman-in-waiting, which he maintained was her right, as opposed to merely walking into it. In order to achieve this, it was arranged that the salon door on the French side should be left slightly ajar, so that it could be nudged open by her heavy flowing skirts at the appropriate moment. Unfortunately this resulted in the door opening too soon . . . Once dignity was recovered, an elaborate quadrille of presentations took place. First of all, the Comte presented the Comtesse to her new mistress. In an impulsive gesture that would turn out to be characteristic of her approach to her new French “family,” Marie Antoinette flung herself into the Comtesse’s arms.13
This, however, was not the way of Versailles. The Comtesse was quick to establish the right of her husband to a ceremonial embrace. This was based on his additional rank as a Grandee of Spain, rather than as a French count. (As Grandees of Spain, people managed to climb up higher on the ladder of etiquette than otherwise entitled, which was the aim of more or less every courtier at Versailles.) So having just been presented by her husband, the Comtesse now re-presented him back again, for his due embrace.14
After that the gentlemen of the Dauphine’s household were presented. Then the Comtesse presented the ladies, who had originally attended Queen Maria Lesczinska, who had died two years previously in her late sixties. There was the Duchesse de Villars as her Mistress of the Robes (Dame d’Atour) and among the Dames du Palais the Marquise de Duras, who was yet another Noailles, the Duchesse de Picquigny and the Comtesse de Mailly.
Not all the ladies-in-waiting, however, were as formidable as the Comtesse de Noailles, who said herself that she saw her role as that of a governess to a young woman as much as an attendant to a Dauphine, thus reincarnating that feared figure in Marie Antoinette’s life, the critical older woman. Although the Duchesse de Duras, as she became, tended to alarm the Dauphine with her superior intelligence, the Comtesse de Mailly was sweet-natured as well as wise, and would inspire great affection in her young mistress. As for the Duchesse de Picquigny, bold and amusing, her appointment was certainly due to her rank rather than her virtues, since she had a disreputable private life; the appointment raised some eyebrows including those of the Austrian ambassador.
Nevertheless, for better or for worse, the Dauphine was now officially French. These ladies, all chosen by the King without consultation for a variety of reasons to do with public policy and private intrigue, together with her various Ladies of the Bedchamber and her lesser waiting-women, were to be the companions of her waking hours, until and unless Marie Antoinette took steps to make alternative arrangements.
Stratx1ourg, conscious of its importance as the first French city to hail the Dauphine, put on a brave show. It was all witnessed by the sixteen-year-old Henriette de Waldner, from an old Austrian family, who as Baronne d’Oberkirch would write a percipient memoir of her varied life. She watched the picturesque arrival of the Dauphine, surrounded by children dressed up as shepherds and shepherdesses, offering her baskets of flowers. Meanwhile the daughters of the bourgeoisie, in their best clothes, strewed further flowers in her path. Marie Antoinette gathered them up “as the goddess Flora might herself have done.” In the evening the entire city was illuminated, the cathedral from top to bottom looking like “one single light.”15
“Oh, if I lived a hundred years, I would not forget this day, these celebrations, the cries of joy issuing from a people drunk with happiness,” wrote the Baronne d’Oberkirch at a time when those innocent days of Marie Antoinette’s French welcome were a mere memory. Henriette was present when the public orator began to address the Dauphine in German and she stopped him. “Don’t speak to me in German,” she said firmly. “From now on I want to hear no other language but French.” The fact that Marie Antoinette spoke these engaging words with a slight accent made them especially touching.
Yet even here, as oxen were roasted and fireworks set off “as though it was the end of the world,” there were troubles. Those who had the status of “foreign princes,” for example, chose to arrive “incognito.” This was an elaborate sham (we shall meet it again at Versailles), since everyone knew perfectly well the identity of the people concerned; but it did mean that the foreign princes were not subject to the rules of French etiquette, which were so unsympathetic where they were concerned.16 And there was one encounter that would cast a long shadow, or as the Baronne d’Oberkirch wrote: “What strange connections there are in life!”
For it was here at Strasbourg that Marie Antoinette had her first meeting with Prince Louis de Rohan, a handsome rather dissolute man in his mid-thirties who was Coadjutor of the see where his uncle Cardinal Louis Constantin was Bishop (the third member of the family to hold the position). In due course the womanizing of Prince Louis would get an angry reaction from the strait-laced Maria Teresa, when he was sent to Vienna as ambassador: “A dreadful type . . . without morals.”17 Nor did it make things better that Prince Louis, quite apart from his own activities in that direction, also enjoyed gossiping about the sexual failings of other people. But at Strasbourg in 1770, Prince Louis de Rohan simply represented another member of a great French noble family, with whose claims—or pretensions—Marie Antoinette as Dauphine would have to learn to cope.*20
Like the Noailles family, that of Rohan consisted of an extensive network, knitted still closer by frequent intermarriage in the clan. For example, Prince Louis’ father was a Rohan-Guéméné and his mother a Rohan-Soubise. Despite being Breton princes with origins of great antiquity, the Rohans were “perpetually occupied with their own elevation,” as the critical Baron de Besenval wrote. Their obsession about being treated as sovereign princes had annoyed their contemporaries, including Saint-Simon at the court of Louis XIV, through several generations.18
After a night spent in the episcopal palace of the venerable Cardinal Louis Constantin de Rohan, the Dauphine continued on her way across north-eastern France. She and her cumbersome but splendid cortège still had 250 miles to go before they reached Versailles; the cost to the French of this stage of the journey would be 300,000 livres. The route took Marie Antoinette to Nancy, part of her father’s former Duchy of Lorraine, where once again the Dauphine was able to emphasize the connection by praying at the tombs of her ancestors. At each stop there were addresses, reviews, theatrical entertainments, which at Châlons-sur-Marne were performed by actors provided by the royal household. At Soissons, the Dauphine was allowed a day of rest while the French court travelled on to the château of Compiègne. The first actual encounter of two young people whose union had already been celebrated in verse and address almost to exhaustion, was about to take place.
This fabled meeting took place at three o’clock in the afternoon on 14 May in the forest near Compiègne, where the road crossed the river at the Bridge of Berne. The French King arrived in a carriage that contained only his grandson and three of his four surviving spinster daughters. The curiosity of Louis XV concerning his granddaughter-in-law was at last to be gratified. He had already cross-questioned his ambassador to Austria about her bosom, and on being told with a blush that the ambassador had not looked at the Archduchess’s bosom, the King replied jovially: “Oh didn’t you? That’s the first thing I look at.”19
As the Dauphine stepped out of her carriage on to the ceremonial carpet that had been laid down, it was the Duc de Choiseul who was given the privilege of the first salute. Presented with the Duc by Prince Starhemberg, Marie Antoinette exclaimed: “I shall never forget that you are responsible for my happiness!”
“And that of France,” replied Choiseul smoothly.20
Then the King and his family left their carriage. The Duc de Croÿ, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, duly presented “Madame la Dauphine” whereupon Marie Antoinette flung herself on her knees in front of “Monsieur mon frère et très cher grand-père,” now to be “Papa” or “Papa-Roi.”
When she was raised up—the King was moved by the touching gesture of submission—Marie Antoinette saw before her a distinguished figure with “large, full, prominent black piercing eyes and a Roman nose,” a monarch who even at the age of sixty was generally regarded as “the handsomest man at his court.”21 Unfortunately it was a description that the Dauphin at his side was never likely to merit. Here was a youth with heavy-lidded eyes and thick dark eyebrows, looking generally awkward—or was it sulky?—and, although not sixteen until August, already quite portly. In short, Louis Auguste was not quite the idealized figure of the portraits and the miniature that Marie Antoinette had received, which had tactfully and understandably trimmed his jawline and minimized his bulk.
As for the royal aunts, aged thirty-eight, thirty-seven and thirty-six respectively, the malicious English anecdotalist Horace Walpole had described them as “clumsy, plump old wenches.” In fact the eldest and cleverest, Madame Adélaïde, had had a certain charm in youth, even if it had now long vanished; Madame Victoire was not bad-looking but had become so fat that her father nicknamed her “sow”; whilst Madame Sophie, known as “Grub,” tilted her head sideways like a frightened hare.22 These nursery nicknames bestowed by the King (Adélaïde was “Rag”) cast a deceptively warm and cosy light on these three disappointed women left behind at Versailles, but, as Marie Antoinette would discover, cosiness was not really their main attribute, at least so far as l’Autrichienne was concerned. She would also discover that her husband the Dauphin, robbed of his own mother three years ago, was devoted to his aunts.
Louis XV for his part saw a charming little girl who was roughly of an age with the teenage nymphets he had been wont to visit in various establishments (in effect royal brothels) in the district called the Parc des Cerfs. She was nevertheless very different from those rosy curvaceous creatures, the types of freshness and sensuality, half knowing, half innocent, portrayed by Fragonard. It was easier for the King to relate Marie Antoinette to what he had been told about his own mother, who had died when he was two and for whose memory he had a sentimental veneration. For Marie Adélaïde of Savoy was another little girl who had arrived at Versailles.
Marie Antoinette’s complexion was her best feature, the dazzling white skin and wonderful natural colour offsetting the less fortunate “Austrian lip.” But her undeveloped figure—alas for the King’s hopes—was somewhat of a disappointment, even if it had to be admitted that it was satisfactory enough for her age. In general, the King’s verdict on the Dauphine was “spontaneous and a little childish.” What did Louis Auguste see? His hunting journal, begun four years previously, in which only major events got a look-in, reported briefly: “Meeting with Madame la Dauphine,” with no comment on his reaction to Marie Antoinette’s physical appearance.23 He now gave his “wife” a formal embrace.
That night at the château of Compiègne, the Dauphine was introduced to the Princes and Princesses of the Blood, as the relatives of the King were known, this title being the most prized distinction at the French court. Here were the Bourbon-Contis and the Bourbon-Condés; the two branches had separated in the seventeenth century but had frequently intermarried. Foremost among the Princes of the Blood, however, was the Duc d’Orléans (whose late wife had been a Bourbon-Conti). He was present with his son Philippe, currently known as the Duc de Chartres.
Philippe, better known to history as the Duc d’Orléans, the title that he would inherit in 1785, was an energetic if somewhat frivolous character. He was always wonderfully dressed and was rated the best dancer at court. By marrying the great heiress Mademoiselle de Penthièvre a year previously, he had ensured that his fortune was potentially the greatest in France, given that the Orléans wealth was already prodigious. At the time of the marriage Louis XV had commented that the bridegroom was a libertine. The verdict of his English mistress, Grace Elliott, was kinder: Philippe was “a man of pleasure.” Whatever his character faults, Philippe, as the eventual Orléans heir, was next in line to the throne if the French male Bourbon line failed.*2124
A charming young widow, the Princesse de Lamballe, was among the ladies whom Marie Antoinette encountered for the first time. Born Marie Thérèse de Savoie-Carignan, she was half Italian and half German, her mother having been a German princess. Her appearance was sweetly soulful, like an angel painted by Greuze; her nature was almost morbidly sensitive. She had a strain of melancholy generally held to come from her German side. It was the early death of her dissolute young husband, only son of the famously charitable Duc de Penthièvre, that had in fact created the vast fortune of Philippe’s wife. As a widow, the Princesse de Lamballe concentrated on acting the devoted daughter-in-law to the bereaved Duc, grandson of Louis XIV; his father the Comte de Toulouse, one of the royal bastards, had been legitimated by the King. She was much admired for her dedication and nicknamed “the Good Angel”; the generous Duc de Penthièvre was known as “the King of the Poor.”25 As to the question of remarriage—she was only twenty—it was an important point, by the rules of the game that the Dauphine had to learn, that the Princesse de Lamballe’s rank at court derived from her marriage into a legitimated princely house, not her birth. Remarriage to one of lower rank might involve sacrificing her own.
There was another rule of the game that had to be learnt the following next night at the château of La Muette. The Dauphine remarked on another charming young woman present, whose large blue eyes were described by one man with some excitement as having “a frank caressing regard” and by the English ambassador as having “the most wanton look in them that I ever saw.” This was the Comtesse Du Barry, born more plainly Jeanne Bécu, and the King’s mistress. Her presence at the supper party had already caused enormous discontent behind the scenes; the pious aunts who hated her were furious while the Austrian ambassador, allowed to pay his respects at Compiègne, resented the imposition. The King shrugged it all off. “She’s pretty and she pleases me,” was the royal line.26 As for the Du Barry’s appearance at the supper, although a social outrage, it was technically allowable since the King had recently, with some official manoeuvring, secured her presentation at court by a tame noblewoman.
Marie Antoinette fell into the trap of asking the Comtesse de Noailles the identity of this lady; the Du Barry had obviously not featured in the lessons given by the Abbé de Vermond on the personnel of the French court. When the Comtesse tactfully replied that the lady was there to give pleasure to the King, the Dauphine cheerfully said: “Oh, then I shall be her rival, because I too wish to give pleasure to the King.”27
More in keeping with Count Mercy’s sense of propriety was the call paid to Madame Louise on the way to Versailles. Youngest of the Dauphin’s aunts, she had recently taken the veil as Sister Thérèse Augustine. One of the nuns in the Carmelite convent always remembered the apparition presented by the young Dauphine: “The most perfect princess as to her face, her figure and her appearance . . .” She had an air “at once of grandeur, modesty and sweetness.”28
Although there had been much lightning at La Muette, the next day, Wednesday, 16 May 1770, dawned brightly, fortunately for the crowds, including many great ones, who had to get up early and make the three-hour carriage journey to Versailles. Admission was by ticket only—with many stern official orders to the effect that this must be respected—but there were probably about 6000 people present of all ranks. For the great ones, full court dress (grand habit de cour) was de rigueur: swords and silk coats for men, tightly boned bodices, hooped skirts and a long train for women, as well as elaborately dressed and powdered hair. The Duchess of Northumberland for one had to get up at 6 a.m. to have hers done.29
Marie Antoinette, not yet officially attired in her wedding robes, arrived with her entourage at Versailles at about half past nine in the morning. Every window of the great façade was thronged with curious spectators. Marie Antoinette also benefited from the brilliant May morning for her first sight of the fabled palace where, as she assumed, she would spend the rest of her life. She was then conducted to the ground-floor apartments that had once belonged to the previous Dauphine Maria Josepha (and where incidentally Louis Auguste had been born) to prepare herself for the wedding ceremony. This was arranged to take place in the colonnaded Royal Chapel, built at the turn of the century.
These were not to be her permanent apartments, as they lacked privacy due to their ground-floor location. They therefore had the slightly depressing air of temporary accommodation. The officials of the King’s Works (Bâtiments du Roi) had spent two years refurbishing the rooms intended for the Archduchess’s use, starting them, in fact, as soon as the marriage looked likely.*22 But not for the first time or the last in the history of such things, the projected works were not finished on time.30
There was, however, at least one unalloyedly pleasant encounter before her: this was with the two Princesses, Clothilde and Elisabeth, her sisters-in-law, who were too young to be present at the supper the previous night. It was then that Marie Antoinette had met her two brothers-in-law. One was Louis Xavier, Comte de Provence; at fourteen and a half (almost exactly her own age) he was even more corpulent than the Dauphin, although unlike Louis Auguste, he was sharp and intelligent in conversation. Charles Comte d’Artois was two years younger, and of the three brothers was the only one who had inherited something of the celebrated good looks of his grandfather.
Poor plump Clothilde, the Gros-Madame of unkind court nomenclature, was nine, as “round as a bell” with her circumference thought to exceed her height. She was nevertheless famously good-natured, loved by her little circle and forgiving of those who teased her. Madame Elisabeth was just six years old, and “scarcely out of her leading-strings,” having been under three when her mother died.31 Shy to outsiders but pretty enough—the family embonpoint had not yet struck—Elisabeth quickly became Marie Antoinette’s pet. Because the Princesses were still so young, etiquette could be circumvented and Marie Antoinette could receive them before she put on her court dress: a nice distinction.
An awe-inspiring moment was provided when Marie Antoinette was presented with the magnificent jewels, diamonds and pearls, that were her due as Dauphine. They had previously belonged to Maria Josepha whose wealth of gems at her death had been valued at nearly 2 million livres. Since there was no Queen of France extant, the Dauphine also received a fabulous collar of pearls, the smallest “as large as a filbert nut,” which had been bequeathed by Anne of Austria to successive consorts. This seventeenth-century Habsburg princess who married Louis XIII was incidentally Marie Antoinette’s own ancestress as well as that of the Dauphin.*23 The bride added all this to the various jewels, among them some fine white diamonds, that she had brought with her from Vienna.32
There were a multitude of other luxurious gifts provided by the French King, such as a fan encrusted in diamonds, and bracelets with her cipher MA on the blue enamel clasps, which were also ornamented with diamonds. The royal bounty arrived in a crimson velvet coffer, six feet long and over three feet high. Its various drawers were lined with sky-blue silk and had matching cushions; the central feature was a parure of diamonds for the Dauphine herself, but there were also presents labelled for her attendants. (She herself would present Prince Starhemberg with a magnificent set of Sèvres porcelain as a reward for his services.)33 The wedding ring itself had been fitted from among a dozen provided at Compiègne and was therefore expected to give no problem.
The full panoply of Versailles was now loosed upon a central figure who, in the words of one observer, was so small and slender in her white brocade dress inflated with its vast hoops on either side that she looked “not above twelve.” Yet the dignity of Marie Antoinette who had “the bearing of an archduchess”—the result of that rigorous grooming of her childhood, which had been the most efficient part of her education—was universally commended. And this was a place where style and grace of self-presentation were of paramount importance. The Dauphin on the other hand was generally reported as being cold, sulky or listless throughout the long Mass, in contrast to his bride. And he trembled with apprehension as he placed the chosen ring on her finger.34
In the signing of the marriage contract, however, their relative skills were reversed. The entire royal family signed in the appropriate order, first of all “Louis” for the King, then “Louis Auguste” neatly and precisely written by the Dauphin. But the third signature, “Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne,” had a large blot on the first “J”: the first of those blots—were they careless or nervous?—that would later blight Marie Antoinette’s correspondence with her mother. Furthermore her signature began to slope markedly downwards on “ette” after the half-word “Antoine” as though the Dauphine had not quite accustomed herself to her new signature. Nor is it clear whether the first “e” of “Jeanne” is actually there.35
For all these small omens, for all the rain that fell later, disturbing the radiance of the morning, the festivities were widely felt to constitute the finest royal wedding anyone had ever seen; indeed, the King thought so himself. The outstanding nature of the celebrations was generally ascribed to the high rank of the bride: “The Dauphin does not marry the daughter of the Emperor every day.” Louis XV had married a relatively obscure princess but his grandson was marrying “the daughter of the Caesars.” The Duc de Croÿ, intoxicated by the idea of seeing the glorious scene en fête, climbed up on to the roof: “It’s from here that one should see Versailles.” The lanterns and the lights everywhere, even the canal covered in illuminated boats, left an unforgettable impression.36
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.