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 were 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 supreme 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
“Everything that characterizes the public spirit of a court . . . is always interesting to note,” wrote the Baron Grimm in one of his witty reports on Versailles life, which were sent back to his master the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.17 For this reason, a row about etiquette that broke out immediately after the Dauphine’s arrival, although apparently trivial, took on a significant aspect. It was all a question of a single dance—a minuet—and two masterful women. The first was the Empress Maria Teresa who liked the idea of family connections abroad being favoured. The second was the Comtesse de Brionne. Born a Rohan (of the Rochefort line) she was the widow of Charles Louis de Lorraine, from the cadet branch of the House of Lorraine established in France.
Once beautiful, and reputedly the mistress of Choiseul, the Comtesse de Brionne in middle age was one of those powerful women mentioned earlier; in her case she had settled into the solid pursuit of her children’s advantage. In particular, the Comtesse had social ambitions for her daughter Anne Charlotte, known as Mademoiselle de Lorraine. At Versailles, the Comtesse was determined to use the new Dauphine’s family connection with Lorraine to advance Anne Charlotte (who was exactly the same age as Marie Antoinette) above the duchesses. This Lorrainer Cinderella was to be among those who opened the court ball.
The duchesses were predictably—and according to court rules quite justifiably—furious over this breach of etiquette. Collectively, they indicated that they would not attend the ball, and although many of them did in the end, they managed to spoil the occasion by drifting around Versailles for some hours, parading the fact that they had not yet changed into court dress; as a result the ball got off to a late start.
So grave indeed was the threat perceived to be to the established order from Mademoiselle de Lorraine’s elevation that the Archbishop of Rheims and the Bishop of Noyon, the first and second ecclesiastical peers, actually addressed a memorandum to the King on the subject. It was not long before a little rhyme was being circulated:
Sir, the great ones at your dance
Will see with much pain
A Princess of Lorraine
Be the first at the ball to advance.
Louis XV, who hated this kind of trouble, refused to make any kind of ruling beyond saying that the presence of Mademoiselle de Lorraine did not create any kind of precedent. Since an invitation to the opening minuet was in his personal gift, he had merely intended to honour the Dauphine. As for Mademoiselle de Lorraine (or her mother), her dreams of grandeur were blighted by a complicated ruse. The Comte d’Artois danced for a second time after Mademoiselle de Lorraine. Since he was a member of the royal family and unarguably her superior in rank, it was obvious that the strict rules of etiquette were not being observed on this occasion. No precedent had been set for the future about the position of Mademoiselle Lorraine. Thus the Brionne triumph was negated.18
This was the affair of “the famous minuet of Mademoiselle de Lorraine,” as the Duc de Croÿ called it. It left an early, damaging impression of a foreign Dauphine determined to favour her own relations in defiance of the rules of Versailles. Yet the responsibility for all this unnecessary brouhaha lay, surely, with Mercy d’Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador who had been in France for the past four years (where he had also served a previous tour of duty) rather than with the newly arrived, rather dazed and extremely youthful Marie Antoinette. He should have headed off demands of the Empress that her relation be honoured and with equal tact disposed of the pretensions of the Comtesse de Brionne. Florimond, Count Mercy d’Argenteau, now takes the stage as the most important person in the Dauphine’s life in practical terms, and her major advisor. Nearly thirty years older than the Dauphine, he was intended to be, and did become, a kind of father figure to Marie Antoinette.19
Tall, spare and elegantly dressed, rich—and keen on riches—Mercy d’Argenteau had been born in the prince-bishopric of Liège, part of modern Belgium. He adored life in Paris, having also experienced Turin, St. Petersburg and Warsaw, and accompanied his single status with a splendid lifestyle, which included the fascinating singer Rosalie Levasseur as his mistress. (She had made her debut in 1766, the year of Mercy’s arrival in France, and would create the role of Amour in Gluck’s Orphée when it came to Paris.) This relationship flourished despite the prayers of the nuns at Liège for his reform, and the efforts of his uncle to arrange a good marriage. Mercy shrugged his shoulders and declared that Providence would decide. But since that was not how eighteenth-century marriages were brought about, he remained theoretically a bachelor; although it is notable that Mademoiselle de Lorraine and her elder sister were at one point considered candidates for the honour, thus emphasizing Mercy’s links to the Comtesse de Brionne.20
Fundamentally Mercy was a cold man and remarkably centred on his own material interests. Bad health of a peculiarly enervating kind (haemorrhoids) may have contributed to a sort of irritable detachment where Marie Antoinette was concerned. Yet he did show real and selfless devotion throughout his long life to one individual: the Empress Maria Teresa, and through her, to the interests of Austria. That was, unfortunately, not necessarily to the advantage of her daughter. Of course in one sense it was hardly surprising that the Austrian ambassador would put the interests of his own country first. But, as has been stressed, this management of double loyalties was a matter of enormous delicacy where foreign princesses were concerned.
Mercy, who was supposedly helping Marie Antoinette find her feet at the French court, actually perpetuated a Rule-by-Maria-Teresa with consequences that were increasingly dubious. He was not at all abashed about this, telling the Empress at one point, with some satisfaction, that he saw no reason why her influence with her daughter would ever fade. In October 1770 the Abbé de Vermond who had been allowed to rejoin her household in France as Reader, summed up Marie Antoinette as having above all “a desire to please her august mother”; it was questionable whether this was an appropriate motivation for the Dauphine of France.21
Marie Antoinette was supposed to write to her mother every month. On exceptional occasions, such as a royal illness, an extra courier might be despatched. But in general the imperial couriers left Vienna at the beginning of each month, travelling to Brussels for despatches, before going on to Paris and picking up further letters there. They were expected back in Vienna around the 28th of the month. Since the whole process took eight or nine days either way, Marie Antoinette had to cope with a quick turnaround; in any case she tended to write her letters at the last minute, for fear of being spied on by her new family. Mercy commented on how the Dauphine was forever locking things up against unlawful inspection; he defended the blots on the letters on the grounds of this necessary speed. The Empress herself dictated her letters to her secretary, adding personal comments in the margin which the latter did not see. Similarly, Mercy sent his own letters attached to the Dauphine’s correspondence after she had already handed it over to him.22
The first surviving letter of Marie Antoinette to Maria Teresa from France, dated 9 July 1770, is certainly an ill-written missive, full of crossings-out. The signature was evidently intended to be “Antoine” since “tte” is cramped by the margin as in the wedding certificate, but the Dauphine now had to sign herself “Antoinette” to her mother, “Marie Antoinette” being reserved for formal documents. It was not, however, until the following year that the signature was really flowing and easy.*2423
In addition to these rather desperate dutiful letters from one who was never a natural correspondent, the Empress was receiving regular, detailed and intimate reports on her daughter’s behaviour from Count Mercy. These were kept utterly secret from their subject. Confronted by her mother’s omniscience, which never seemed to work to her advantage, only to her discredit, Marie Antoinette does not appear to have suspected the true culprit. How could the Empress be so well informed about much that was quite trivial gossip? “My sister Marie,” the Archduchess Marie Christine, known in the family as a tale-bearer, was a prime suspect; her aunt, Princess Charlotte of Lorraine, was also blamed. It all added up to a feeling of inferiority, of personal failure. Praise from the Empress was extremely rare; criticism—such well-informed, guilt-inducing and therefore often unanswerable criticism—inexorable.
At the heart of Marie Antoinette’s personal failure—as the Empress saw it—was her inability to inspire sexual passion in her husband. In her marriage to the heir to the throne, she represented the future, including future preferments for courtiers, as well as the present. Or did she? Nothing was quite certain about her position until the final physical act was performed that was intended to crown the Franco-Austrian alliance.
The Dauphin’s continued refusal to perform this act, or even to contemplate doing so, could at first be ascribed to his youth and shyness. That was Marie Antoinette’s hopeful scenario. Outwardly all seemed well. The two of them had the air of a gracious royal pair whose innocence in the public eye contrasted favourably with the debauched reputation of the King, his nymphets and now his wanton mistress. One popular rhyme on the subject contrasted two ruling women: Joan of Arc, who had saved the country, with “the Harlot”—the Du Barry—who was now ruining it.25 Even a frightful tragedy, which marred the magnificent fireworks set off in Paris on 30 May, did not redound to the discredit of the Dauphin and Dauphine.
Elaborate preparations had been made for the celebration of the royal marriage by France’s capital city. Merchants agreed to put up their shutters both on the day of the wedding itself and for the setting off of the fireworks. Detailed police orders were also issued. But for some reason workmen had dug a series of trenches which blocked the exits from the Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde). As the colossal crowds sought to move with the progress of the illuminations, men, women, children and, even more disastrously, horses and carriages plunged in. Altogether, 130 people were crushed to death. Lord Edward Beauclerk could not open his carriage door for the pile of corpses and when his groom finally got out, he found his own father dead in the heap. Fifty-five years later, the Comte de Ségur wrote of the dead in his memoirs: “Methinks I still hear their cries . . .”26 They were buried in a certain common grave by the Church of the Madeleine off the rue d’Anjou (which would later be used for those executed by the state). The next day the appalled young royal couple dedicated a month’s income each for the relief of the dependents.
A little while later, Marie Antoinette further established her public reputation for sweetness and mercy by stopping her carriage for over an hour to aid an injured postilion. She would not continue until she had established the presence of a surgeon. She then insisted on a stretcher for the wounded man, instead of an uncomfortable post-chaise, and followed its progress. This behaviour was much acclaimed, Mercy reported to Vienna. Another celebrated incident confirmed the image. When a peasant wine-grower was gored by a stag in the course of the royal hunt, the Dauphine conveyed the unfortunate man in her own coach, while making arrangements for the family he left behind and for his ruined crops. Wide publicity was given to the scene, commemorated in engravings, tapestries and even fans, under the general title, “An Example of Compassion.” This much-disseminated image of the lovely, caring Dauphine was felt to be completely appropriate for a future Queen of France.27
For once publicity did not lie. The impulse of compassion was genuine enough and was deeply rooted in Marie Antoinette’s character. “She was so happy at doing good and hated to miss any opportunity of doing so,” wrote Madame Campan of a much later occasion: some country people addressed to her a petition on the subject of a predatory game-bird, reserved for the King’s sport, which was destroying their crops. Marie Antoinette ordered the bird to be destroyed. Six weeks later, when the arrival of a second petition made her aware that her orders had not been carried out, she was upset and angry.28
It is true that Marie Antoinette’s insistence on personal involvement in humanitarian enterprises—a tradition in which she had been brought up in Vienna—was privately thought to be rather unnecessary at Versailles. Louis XV pointed this out when the Dauphine requested permission to go to Paris to comfort one of her Dames du Palais, the Comtesse de Mailly, who had lost her only child: “We are not accustomed to paying visits at a distance, my dear daughter.” All the same, he agreed that she might act according to the dictates of her “kind heart.”29
This lauded public style contrasted dismally with what was actually going on behind the royal bedroom door. In short, rien, the word actually used by Louis Auguste in his hunting journal to denote a day without sport but curiously appropriate to his marital situation. Marie Antoinette herself attached much importance to his sixteenth birthday—23 August 1770—and the Dauphin seems to have made some promise to her that matters would be remedied when the royal family went to Compiègne around this date. Then “he would make her his wife.” Unfortunately the visit passed without any change in a situation that was at once puzzling and deeply humiliating. In September a further promise was made, but Marie Antoinette made the mistake of boasting about the impending glorious event to Mesdames Tantes who quickly spread the news. The Dauphin used this as an excuse to renege yet again.30
No doubt out of embarrassment, having to run the gauntlet of speculative courtiers as he made his way there and, worse still, back again, Louis Auguste stopped visiting his wife’s bed on a regular basis. The proper apartments of the Dauphine, to which she had attached some hopes, were readied at last. In the process there was a considerable clash of wills between the royal architect Gabriel and the Dauphine, supported in this case by the Dauphin. The young couple wanted something plainer, simpler than the magnificent gilded style that had prevailed before. Above all, they wanted something that could be finished quickly. Marie Antoinette’s constant pleas were for the project to be most quickly realizable: “a white dais, any dais.” But Gabriel thought a square white platform would produce “a monstrous dissonance,” and in any case 50,000 livres had been allowed for the gilding thought suitable for a Dauphine. In the end roses and fleur-de-lys alternated, together with sphinxes holding the arms of France. Over the bed itself loomed the great double-headed eagle of Austria.31
In avoiding the predatory gaze of the eagle—and the expectant little eagle lying below it—Louis Auguste was helped by the custom of the French court by which married couples did not necessarily share beds. This became an enduring bone of contention between the Empress and her daughter. Maria Teresa, who, believing in the marital double bed herself, attached enormous importance to this spending-the-night-together, presumably hoping that passion might strike the Dauphin in some unguarded moment in the middle of the night or the early morning. Austrian ways in this respect were in her opinion definitely preferable. Maria Teresa refused to listen to Marie Antoinette’s citation of the usages of France—those usages that in another context she had specifically told her daughter to respect.
The irritation of the Empress with a situation that even she could not control—although she tried hard—grew with the months. Her personal solution (quite apart from a double bed), which she advocated relentlessly over the coming months, was caresses and “redoubled caresses.” Had she not given her own recipe for a happy marriage—a subject on which she was an acknowledged expert—in May? “Everything depends on the wife, if she is willing, sweet and amusante.”32
The attitude of the French King, whose flagrant enjoyment of extramarital bliss provided such an embarrassing contrast to the laggardliness of his grandson, was rather more laid back. A royal doctor made a physical inspection and for the time being had nothing adverse to report. An enquiry to Louis Auguste himself brought about the temporizing reply that although he found the Dauphine delightful, he could not as yet conquer his shyness. So there was no progress. When the Duchess of Northumberland, making diplomatic small talk, suggested that the Dauphin, who had been hunting all day, must have been impatient to get back to his wife, the King answered drily: “I can’t say he mentioned anything on the subject.” Privately he told his favourite grandson, Don Ferdinand of Parma: “It will happen when we least expect it.”33
Yet there was a more serious aspect to the situation than the implied refusal of a gawky adolescent boy (“The Dauphin is not a man like others!” wrote Maria Teresa crossly) to act the husband. This was the manifest public coldness that he showed to his young wife. In the summer of 1770, Mercy optimistically predicted of Marie Antoinette’s relationship with Louis Auguste: “There can be no doubt that with a little caution, she will be able to dominate him completely.”34 But of that there was little sign.
It was true that the influence of the Duc de Vauguyon, the Dauphin’s anti-Austrian Governor, began to wane. Marie Antoinette reported proudly that she had managed to elude the appointment of a confessor in the Vauguyon camp by appealing directly to the King to appoint one. (Although the rules of the Catholic Church concerning the secrecy of the confessional were strict enough for the Dauphine’s spiritual faults to be safe from inspection, a confessor could still exercise considerable influence merely by the advice he gave.) Marie Antoinette also told a comic tale of catching Vauguyon listening at the keyhole when she was in conversation with the Dauphin; in her version the two young people laughed together at Vauguyon’s discomfiture.
Nevertheless the lessons of his tutor had been well learnt by Louis Auguste in his youth. He had been warned in advance against the domination of an Austrian archduchess—in the interests of Austria—and dark stories had been told about the Habsburgs. Here was the Archduchess in person. From the point of view of Maria Teresa, it was an error to suppose that sexual incompatibility was the only problem facing her daughter, and that if that was solved, everything was solved. Louis Auguste’s uncommunicative Journal does, however, give details of his health. Throughout the summer he suffered a series of digestive upsets, which although attributed to his habit of guzzling sweet pastries (about which Marie Antoinette ticked him off) were surely linked to the pressure he felt.35
In this way Marie Antoinette’s efforts to share the Dauphin’s predominant interest by attending the hunt even if she did not actually hunt herself, in short, to make herself part of his daytime life if not his night-time occupation, were well advised. Maria Teresa, however, waxed furious about the fact that she rode. It was true that a riding mishap would have been most unfortunate if the Dauphine had actually had any chance of being pregnant; but since she had none, that issue could hardly be said to arise. Nevertheless the Empress, ignoring her own sporting past, preached against the practice. In vain the Dauphine pointed out that the King of France himself—to whose wishes she was supposed to be subject—had given her money for horses and had welcomed her presence. Maria Teresa merely told an anecdote of a princess of Portugal who had had a miscarriage through riding.36 The implication that her daughter had really only one function, one that she was not fulfilling successfully, was inescapable.
Illogically—but then the Empress, like many people who believe themselves to be always in the right, was not necessarily logical—Maria Teresa praised a portrait of her daughter in riding-costume carried out by Joseph Krantzinger in 1771, and rated it her favourite. This charming equestrian study showed the Dauphine wearing a raking tricorne-hat (which concealed her high forehead), her eyes wide and doe-like, her pretty hands well displayed. It was found to be “very like” by the mother and also incidentally by the ambassador. Maria Teresa kept it in her study and another in the private little room where she worked at night: “Thus, I have you always with me, under my eyes.”37 These were words, of course, that were capable of a metaphorical interpretation.
Mercy, who in principle deplored the Dauphine’s spontaneity, while paradoxically praising her for her “good instincts,” was similarly critical when she handed out cold meats at a hunting party to young people of the court. This was conduct unbecoming in the Dauphine of France. And yet the attempt to secure Louis Auguste’s friendship by undemanding friendliness—and hunting was, so far as could be seen, his only unequivocal passion—was surely as good, if not better, a method of proceeding as Maria Teresa’s “redoubled caresses,” which had no appearance of being welcome. In December 1770, the Dauphine began to give little dances in her apartments which the Dauphin attended; they might at least enjoy a normal social life if a normal sexual one still eluded them. The sight of his wife dancing even elicited a wistful comment from the Dauphin who was so clumsy himself. When a court lady praised Marie Antoinette, Louis Auguste replied: “She has so much grace that she does everything perfectly.”38
Coming to terms as she was with her husband’s lack of sexual interest, Marie Antoinette also had to cope with the implications of his grandfather’s continuing sexual energy. The presence of the Du Barry at court constituted a problem—but only if it was allowed to become one. Morals at Versailles were lightly worn. The nobility married young, their marriages being more or less arranged, and then lapsed gracefully into extramarital relationships, which were generally tolerated provided they were conducted in sufficiently elegant style. The polite expostulation of the Duc de Richelieu on finding his wife in bed with her lover, expressed the mood: “Just think, Madame, of the embarrassment if anyone but myself had discovered you.” The Duc de Guiche apologized to his wife for returning unexpectedly and finding her in a similar situation; he was the one at fault for not giving due warning.39
There were many long liaisons established at court, such as that of the Prince de Guéméné with the beautiful half-Irish Madame Dillon. The conduct of their affair demonstrated the cool manners of the day. The Comtesse d’Ossun said that when she first arrived at court she understood they were lovers, but six months later she no longer believed it. Affairs with actresses, singers and dancers were accepted with similar sophistication. When the Prince de Hénin began an affair with the famous singer Sophie Arnould, the Princesse professed herself delighted that her husband had found an occupation on the grounds that “an unemployed man is so dull.”40
In such a climate, the presence of a royal ma"tresse-en-titre as such was hardly likely to raise many eyebrows among the majority of the French courtiers who had been accustomed to a changing cast of such ladies for most of the long reign, even if the Du Barry’s disreputable origins were more difficult to accept. Nevertheless by now “the new lady,” as she was known, was simply a force with whose influence they had to reckon. Unfortunately there were three reasons why Marie Antoinette found herself unable to take such a pragmatic view of simply accepting the fact that “the Harlot” pleased the King (the attitude she had innocently expressed at La Muette when she declared herself the rival to the unknown charmer). In that first surviving letter of 9 July 1770, Marie Antoinette described the Du Barry as “the most stupid and impertinent creature that you can imagine” and she expressed pity for the King’s “weakness” for her.41 She now began to pride herself on giving the favourite no formal acknowledgement.
The first of these reasons was the prudish nature of her own upbringing in which Maria Teresa, ignoring the mistresses of Francis Stephen, had preached a straightforward morality based on the teachings of the Catholic Church. At fourteen, a protected and virginal girl, Marie Antoinette had not lived long enough at the Viennese court to understand the currents of extramarital desire that swirl beneath the surface of any community; she was naturally chaste as she was brought up to be. Now she was launched into a society where the undercurrents were more like rapids. This, however, might have been overcome with time and suitably discreet worldly instruction. Unfortunately there was a second reason. Marie Antoinette’s instinctive revulsion (which cannot have been unaffected by the sense that the Du Barry was succeeding where she was failing) was enhanced by the counsels of the spinster royal aunts and used for their own ends.
The third reason why Marie Antoinette declined to give the Du Barry the brief acknowledgement, required not so much for the favourite’s amour propre as for the King’s, lay in her developing character. Desperately insecure for obvious reasons, she took refuge in that kind of obstinacy that is often the refuge of the weak.
Marie Antoinette did have one little victory over the Du Barry when she pleaded prettily for one of her Dames du Palais. The Duchesse de Gramont, Choiseul’s sister, had been exiled to the country for refusing to make room for the favourite in a coach. Although the Duchesse now needed to reach Paris for urgent medical reasons, the Du Barry refused to allow a waiver of the terms of exile. “But Papa,” said the Dauphine in the most winning way, according to Mercy, “quite apart from compassion and justice, think of the hurt to me if a member of my household was to die while still being in disgrace with you.”42
In general, however, dignity not sweetness was her stance where the favourite was concerned. It was a dignity that concealed an ability to hold a grudge, on this occasion aided and abetted by Mesdames Tantes. Of course Marie Antoinette was not the only person at Versailles who harboured grudges; but for her there was a danger that her judgements, both private and political, might be warped, where wiser heads knew when to abandon resentments that no longer served their purpose.
The aunts, of course, rested their case on their father’s danger of hell-fire due to his immorality. But a good deal of jealousy also went into the mixture, and sheer trouble-making. It was especially delightful that l’Autrichienne could be led into offending Louis XV by simply upholding decency, at the same time as ditching her own prospects. Count Mercy deplored the influence of the royal aunts in this respect, understanding how crucial it was that the Dauphine should please the grandfather if she could not please the grandson. Yet to Marie Antoinette, lonely and rather homesick, the daily company of the aunts at Versailles was highly comforting; they were surrogate mothers, who unlike her own mother had nothing to do but fulfil the royal routine. If she was easily led by them, getting involved in mischiefs not her own, as Mercy told the King, it was hardly surprising. That letter quoted earlier, describing her daily life, makes it clear how much Marie Antoinette saw of the aunts: four extremely long visits daily, in the morning, the afternoon, in the early evening and again later. She spent more time in their apartments than her own.
The year 1770 had begun so promisingly for Madame Antoine, Archduchess of Austria, heralded by the arrival of the Dauphin’s ring, jewelled harbinger of a glorious and contented future. It ended sadly for the Dauphine of France with the exile of the Duc de Choiseul from court. It was he who had brought about “her happiness . . . and that of France” and she felt a fierce loyalty to him as to all those she believed to be her early supporters. As it was, Choiseul was the victim of various elements in the political scene, including intrigues centred round the Du Barry who had conceived one of her rare personal dislikes for him.
Rancour was not generally part of her nature; the Du Barry saw herself as sent into the world to seduce, not to snub. Although the Dauphine refused to address her, the Du Barry had asked to install a portrait of the Dauphine in her apartments.43 But Choiseul had had the audacity to launch an “open war” against the favourite and—even more mortifying perhaps—had indulged in amusing sallies at her expense along with his intimates and relations. Perhaps the great minister, who had been in power since 1758, might have ridden out the enmity of the Du Barry and her political allies, but his own influence with the King had been gradually eroding. For all Choiseul’s energetic reforms of the army and navy, so necessary following the Seven Years’ War, he had not been able to solve the problem of the country’s finances, which had been severely strained by that conflict. Furthermore Louis XV, looking for a way to curtail the activities of the Parlement de Paris, found his Foreign Minister siding with it over such measures as the suppression of the Jesuits; this was a ban that enraged the King’s devout daughters, the Mesdames.
The Duchesse de Choiseul reacted to the unexpected appearance of her husband at dinner—she had believed him to be at court—with some style. “My dear friend,” she said, “you have the air of a man who has been exiled, but pray sit down, our food will not taste any the worse for that.”44 Such sang-froid could not conceal the fact that with the disappearance of its architect, the Franco-Austrian alliance and its upholders had been dealt a major blow. Maria Teresa was aghast at the loss of Choiseul, as she told Mercy. Nothing seemed to be going right in France, according to her carefully laid plans, neither politics nor sex.
Only the Dauphin reacted to the fall of the Foreign Minister with apathy, greeting it with neither pleasure nor pain. But then, in contrast to his wife’s emotional nature, apathy was his usual reaction to everything.