CHAPTER NINE
IN TRUTH A GODDESS
Vera incessu patuit dea: by her gait she revealed that she was in truth a goddess.
VIRGIL, QUOTED BY HORACE WALPOLE ABOUT MARIE ANTOINETTE
Shortly after the death of Louis XV, a fashionable jeweller made a fortune by selling mourning snuffboxes which showed a portrait of the young Queen surrounded by black and bearing the inscription “Consolation in Grief.” There was no doubt that the new reign was immensely popular at its outset. Not only the general indifference felt for the memory of the late King, but also the vivid expectations entertained for his successor contributed to this. The accession to the throne of “a young virtuous prince” was expected to lead to “a regeneration.”1
Few could remember the coming to the throne of Louis XV as a child of five, in 1715. This new accession, only the second in the eighteenth century, brought an adult to the role. In contrast to his grandfather, Louis XVI might provide that domestic propriety that was gradually beginning to be expected of royal families—as witness the English royal family across the Channel. For Louis XVI, in the popular perception, was a king with a gracious consort. The glamour of Marie Antoinette—to use a twentieth-century word which nevertheless seems appropriate—appeared to fit her admirably for the position of Queen of France. During the next few years Marie Antoinette’s beauty, or the illusion of beauty that she gave, reached its prime, fulfilling that promise hinted at when she had been a child in Vienna. Her figure, especially her bosom, filled out. Her large wide-apart blue-grey eyes were notably expressive, their short-sightedness only giving a softness to her gaze; her hair, insofar as the natural colour could be discerned beneath the “meal tub” of powder, had darkened from the childish ash to a light brown and was very thick. Her defects of course remained. Her nose was aquiline and, as such noses generally do, became more pronounced with age. Although increasingly elaborate hairdressing concealed the notorious forehead, there was nothing to be done about the Habsburg lower lip, other than ignore it, as the artists tried to do, concentrating on the Queen’s short and pretty upper lip.
In 1774 Jean-Baptiste Gautier-Dagoty painted Marie Antoinette in her bedroom in Versailles at her favourite pursuit of the harp, one beautiful hand well displayed. It was a charming composition. She wore a light grey gauzy dress under a wrapper with a hint of peach-coloured ribbon at her breast; a reader (female) held a book, a singer (male) held out music, a waiting-woman extended a basket of plumes to put in her hair and in the corner the artist surveyed his palette. The next year Gautier-Dagoty painted a portrait that was widely copied in different versions, showing the Queen with a diamond aigrette pinned to her coiffure, pearl and blue ribbons threaded through her locks, lace on her pale blue dress and a cloak of blue velvet, richly ornamented with fleur-de-lys and ermine, surrounding her. It was a cunning study of femininity and majesty combined. Both pictures showed Marie Antoinette full face. Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne’s marble bust, which was sent to Vienna a few years earlier, is, given the rigidity of the medium, inevitably a good deal less flattering.
The radiance of the Queen’s smile was celebrated; it contained “an enchantment,” which the future Madame Tussaud, an observer at Versailles, would say was enough to win over “the most brutal of her enemies.” But the Comte de Tilly, who first saw Marie Antoinette in 1775 when he was fourteen, and judged her with the critical eye of youth, thought it ridiculous to pretend that the heavy “and at times drooping underlip” lent nobility and distinction to the Queen’s appearance. Whatever the sweetness of her smile, it was a mouth that only came into its own when the Queen was angry.2
Yet even Tilly had to admit that her skin, her neck, her lovely shoulders, her arms and hands, were the most beautiful he had ever seen. The brilliance of her complexion caused the Prince de Ligne, who adored the Queen, to remark that her skin and her soul were equally white, and in a letter home Eliza Hancock picked out the Queen’s “very fine white complexion” for mention.3 It was this that led Mrs. Thrale, touring France with Dr. Johnson in 1775, to rate Marie Antoinette “the prettiest Woman at her own Court,” even better by day than she was by night (when of course she was still obliged to deface herself with the obligatory rouge). The artist Madame Vigée Le Brun was honest enough to say that since the Queen’s skin was “so transparent that it allowed no shadow,” paint could never quite capture it.4
It was, however, the graceful whole rather than the perfect individual elements that made such an impression on those who knew Marie Antoinette. Above all it was her bearing; in Baron de Besenval’s words, “Something delightful about the carriage of her head, a wonderful elegance in everything, made her able to dispute the advantage with others better endowed by nature and even beat them.”5 Of course the physical charms of royalty are seldom cried down, the lustre of a crown enhancing even the most mediocre appearance in the eyes of the public. Yet in the case of Marie Antoinette there is such unanimity of report from so many sources, including foreign visitors as well as her intimates, that it is difficult to doubt the truth of the picture.
The result was a plethora of comparisons to goddesses and nymphs—much as had been made on her wedding journey, the difference being that Marie Antoinette was now a visible woman, rather than an unknown girl. Madame Campan compared her to the classical statues in the royal gardens, for example, the Atalanta at Marly. There was the story of the twelve-year-old boy, educated in the classics, who flung himself at the Queen’s feet at court, seeing in her the embodiment of “all my father’s goddesses.” At least two writers chose to cite the famous passage in the Aeneid when Venus appeared incognito to her son Aeneas. But as Venus turned away “by her gait she revealed that she was in truth a goddess” (vera incessu patuit dea). The novelist and essayist Sénac de Meilhan was reminded of Virgil by the Queen’s manner of walking, so light of foot and yet so majestic. Horace Walpole would never forget seeing her following Louis XV into the Royal Chapel, how she “shot through the room like an aerial Being, all brightness and grace and without seeming to touch earth.” Madame Vigée Le Brun, watching her outdoors with her ladies at Fontainebleau, thought that the dazzling Queen, her diamonds sparkling in the sunlight, might have been a goddess surrounded by nymphs.6*31
It was on this occasion that Marie Antoinette turned to the painter and asked, half humorously, half regretfully: “If I were not the Queen, they would say I looked insolent, is that not so?” Yet it was not a totally unconscious posture. An English child at Versailles, petted by Marie Antoinette, was “astonished and terrified” to witness the deliberate change in her countenance when she had to receive some ambassadors; “the striking air of dignity” she assumed where minutes earlier there had been a friendly, playful woman.8 It might not always be so advantageous for Marie Antoinette to indicate by her very bearing that she was born an Austrian archduchess. However, there was no such shadow on the popular mood at the time of the accession of Louis XVI.
The new King and Queen did not stay long at Choisy because it was feared that the royal aunts had become infected with smallpox. The court then moved on to the château of La Muette, on the outskirts of Paris, and then progressed to Marly and Fontainebleau. Altogether the court stayed away from Versailles for six months, until that palace was deemed safe for habitation again. During this period there were two dismissals. Both were predictable and both were attributed to Marie Antoinette.
The Comtesse Du Barry could not expect her reign to outlast that of the former King. For the time being she was instructed to reside in a convent; later she was able to live at her château of Louveciennes where she received the curious, and on occasion the amorous. For the Comtesse still remained beautiful, still wanton, into her forties; the “full-breasted” figure that had pleased the late King was still appealing, if ampler. All this meant that the late King’s favourite had been treated without vindictive severity by the standards of the time. Gossips were furthermore wrong in ascribing her exile to the Queen. It was Louis XVI, under the influence of his pious aunts, who had every intention of banishing their old enemy. Marie Antoinette might have demanded the banishment of the Du Barry, but it was not necessary.
Sorting out a scandalous situation left behind from the previous reign was one thing. A far more serious question of rearrangement was needed where the question of the new King’s advisors was concerned. In theory the monarch possessed absolute power but in practice he could hardly operate alone. The prevailing method of government was to use a series of committees and even more informal consultations, some of them tête-à-tête with a minister, known as the King’s travail (labour). Louis XVI was an honourable and conscientious young man, but even those who wished him well referred to his indecisiveness, the need for a stronger nature to dominate him, a relic no doubt of the lack of confidence inculcated during his unloved childhood. Furthermore there is no evidence that he had been prepared by his grandfather to be “the master.” Under the circumstances, the character and inclinations of his chief advisor and other ministers were likely to be of the greatest significance.
It was unthinkable, however, that the Duc d’Aiguillon should continue to fulfil the role he had played under Louis XV. His connection to the Du Barry, together with suspicions of his disloyalty in conduct and conversation, made him personally odious to both King and Queen. Here too his speedy dismissal was attributed to Marie Antoinette alone whereas the truth was very different. Anxious as the Queen was to see Aiguillon dismissed, she was equally anxious to see him replaced by the man, still exiled from the court, to whom she remained loyally attached, the Duc de Choiseul. In the event the Comte de Maurepas was appointed to be the King’s chief minister. This was the first example of Marie Antoinette’s inability, whatever the hostile propaganda to the contrary, to sway her husband where their interests diverged.
Many other examples would follow. Ten years later the Queen wrote ruefully to her brother the Emperor that “the natural suspiciousness of the King had been strengthened long before his marriage by his boyhood Governor.” The Queen added that the Comte de Maurepas, although less forceful and less wicked than Vauguyon, thought it useful for the maintenance of his own credit “to maintain the King in the same ideas.”9 More philosophically, Count Mercy reflected that a chief minister would inevitably try to curb the influence of the Queen.
Maurepas, a man in his seventies, had been in exile for twenty-five years for allegedly circulating scurrilous verses about the Pompadour. He seems to have been a candidate of the King’s aunts who, during the period when quarantine from smallpox meant that Louis XVI was cut off from many other potential ministers, exerted a particular sway. In short, the King preferred the advice of his French aunts to that of his Austrian wife. Cynical by nature—people mistook the stylish indifference with which he had greeted his disgrace for wisdom—Maurepas was an excellent manager of the court system. According to the Comte de Ségur: “All his policy consisted in taking men and times as he found them and maintaining peace at home.” The Duc de Lévis, more critically, described him as having no feeling at all for the public good.10
This man would now be the closest advisor of the young French King for the next seven years. An even longer span of influence was enjoyed by the Comte de Vergennes, fifty-five at the time of his appointment as Foreign Minister in 1774. A career diplomat, Vergennes had been hampered in his rise by what was regarded as an unsuitable marriage to his mistress, of Turkish origin, whom Louis XV called “that dreadful woman.” But he was clever and hard-working, his main character fault being a strong mercenary streak—“the man of his age who most loved money.”11 Vergennes would serve the King in various capacities for nearly thirteen years.
Looked at from the angle of Marie Antoinette, the important point was that both men, although not in favour of abandoning the Austrian alliance altogether, were anxious to keep it on a purely defensive level. In particular, they feared the expansionist nature of Joseph II, once his mother succumbed altogether to her failing health. A letter from Vergennes of December 1774, at a moment when Maria Teresa was believed wrongly to be dying, expressed this worry about the “restless and ambitious spirit” of the Emperor. In their suspicion of Austria, Maurepas and Vergennes found a convenient identity of view with their sovereign. And all three men looked warily on the Habsburg Queen.12
Maurepas’ intimate status was conveyed by the fact that he occupied the Du Barry’s old apartments at Versailles. In time he would even be allowed to use the secret staircase that joined the royal apartments to that of the favourite, if for a very different purpose. Symbolically, the Queen’s apartments were now considerably further away from those of the King. It was not until the summer of 1775, at the urgent insistence of Mercy, that a long subterranean staircase linking the two was constructed.*32 Up until that time Louis had been condemned to make his sporadic marital visits by going through the so-called Oeil de Boeuf antechamber (named from its ox-eye window) in which courtiers lounged speculatively.
What theoretical powers did Marie Antoinette have, in order to combat the insidious propaganda of the King’s advisors? The fact was that there was no agreed official role for a French queen. The status of the French royal female was generally low: a reflection of the fourteenth-century Salic Law by which no woman could ascend to the throne. In contrast women had succeeded to the thrones of Spain, England and Hungary, whatever the powers of the queens concerned, whatever their subordination to their husbands. This obviously lifted up the position of princesses because they were capable of inheritance. Certainly there was a tradition in the Habsburg family, from which Marie Antoinette sprang, of strong female rulers, either as Regents appointed by their close male relatives (as Margaret of Austria had ruled the Netherlands) or Queens Regnant such as Isabella of Castile and, of course, Maria Teresa.
What were the other possibilities for royal women? Motherhood could lead to an improvement in status. Maria Carolina, in her marriage contract, was promised a place in the Council of State when she produced a male heir. Her first son, following two daughters, who was greeted with unselfish joy by Marie Antoinette, was born in 1775 and a second in June 1777. Altogether the Queen of Naples, emulating her mother in fertility, would undergo eighteen pregnancies, but it was the birth of the heir that was crucial. Given that an official position for the Queen in the French King’s Council of State was unthinkable, there was obviously no such clause in Marie Antoinette’s wedding contract. It was true that a widowed Queen of France could be Regent for her young son, as had happened in the case of three foreign-born princesses, Catherine de’ Medici in the sixteenth century, Marie de’ Medici and Anne of Austria in the seventeenth. In France the powers of the mother (as opposed to the wife) were acknowledged. So far, however, Marie Antoinette had not even managed to take the first step up this particular ladder of power.
In the absence of a more formal structure, unofficial influence was the proper sphere of the female and the French court was well used to it. But it was the influence of the mistress not the wife. Throughout the long reign of Louis XV, the mistress had been a force to be reckoned with, whether it was the intelligent, tasteful Pompadour or the Du Barry, who was so much less gifted that the Prince de Ligne said of her that she would have to use important documents as curling papers “in order to get them into her head” (the Du Barry had particularly long thick hair of which she was inordinately proud). The last consort, Maria Lesczinska, trained by her father to be intensely grateful for her position, had made one little venture at a political action nearly fifty years earlier, and had thereafter subsided into a formal, pious, secluded life.13 She was, however, seen—by the French—as a model of a queen.
The role designed for Marie Antoinette by Count Mercy was intended to be more like that of the mistress, taking advantage of the unique advantage she did have—personal access to the monarch in a period when this was a crucial element in all court intrigues. The fact that she was not fulfilling the most significant function of a mistress was an irritating weakness in such calculations. However, it did at least mean that the “indolent” King showed no penchant for other women, a palliative seized upon by Maria Teresa. In the meantime Marie Antoinette was supposed to infiltrate herself into the confidence of the King, while being careful always to wait for him to consult her, as Mercy emphasized (not an easy mission to fulfil). There was some difference of aim between Mercy and the Emperor Joseph. Whilst Mercy saw Marie Antoinette as playing her part in these court intrigues, Joseph was more interested in his sister exerting a notional “German” influence. But the method of operation was to be the same: her access to the King was to be used.14
The Queen did have other weapons at her disposal. She had considerable patronage. Here she was on safe ground, with the custom of the country behind her. Even if particular appointments of hers were criticized, there was nothing unusual in her making them. When her mother protested at members of the Queen’s household being rewarded, Marie Antoinette pointed out that it was expected of her, and her supporters would otherwise miss out. Furthermore, showering people she liked with benefits was exactly suited to the temperament of Marie Antoinette, where political infighting was not. This lack of any real interest in politics—the game for its own sake—was an aspect of her character that struck all those who knew her well. The Comte de La Marck said that she had “a repugnance for the whole subject common to women,” ignoring the fact that the Queen’s close female relations felt no such repugnance. It was certainly a cause of despair among her Austrian advisors that she remained fundamentally uninterested, “both by principle and inclination,” in Vermond’s words, except where questions of personal distaste or gratitude were concerned, as with Aiguillon on the one hand (where she succeeded because the King agreed with her) and Choiseul on the other (where she failed because he did not).15
If not political by temperament, Marie Antoinette was generous and loyal—good qualities in a royal person but expensive ones. The household of a Queen of France traditionally consisted of about 500 people all paid for by the Minister of the Royal Household (Ministre de la Maison du Roi) at a cost of 4 million livres. These ranged from its official Mistress, the Comtesse de Noailles, down to the footmen who turned the royal mattress because it was too heavy for the women to manage. They included the numerous functionaries, who generally worked in a quarterly rota in squads of four, for the stable and the kitchen as well as the bedchamber.16 Looked at with a twenty-first-century eye, this is a vast establishment; it needs to be considered, however, from an eighteenth-century perspective. The King’s household was even larger—that was only to be expected. But the respective households of his younger brothers and their wives were almost as large as the Queen’s, the Mistress of the Household and the Mistress of the Robes for the Comtesse de Provence receiving the same financial reward, for example, as those for Marie Antoinette.
In general, the royal system, which had been established long before the arrival of Marie Antoinette, was incredibly lavish. And there were many, many people, mainly but not entirely noble, with a vested interest in continuing it. In addition, it was not as if the rest of the world adhered to a different standard of life. The Spanish ambassador had at least seventy servants, the English ambassador over fifty; at the château of Chantilly, an amazed English visitor watched a supper party given by the Prince de Condé at which eight people were waited on at table by twenty-five attendants. As Thomas Jefferson wrote of the French and their lifestyle: “The roughnesses of the human mind are so thoroughly rubbed off with them that it seems as if one might glide through a whole life among them without a justle [sic].”17
It was theoretically to smooth out roughnesses, then, that Marie Antoinette had, for example, a Grand Almoner, a First Almoner, an Almoner in Ordinary, four almoners who rotated quarterly, four quarterly chaplains, four quarterly chapel boys, down to two chapel summoners. Of course the effect of such gross overmanning was the reverse of smooth and it was also very expensive. All these people, like all the other courtiers, watched each other perpetually to see that no extra advantage was being taken, no privilege neglected. The Queen’s trainbearer, to take only one example, had to be of noble birth; otherwise the First Gentleman Usher, who had to provide a place for him in his coach, could not tolerate the association. The trainbearer also had to surrender the train to a page when the Queen entered the chapel of the private apartments of the King, although he was entitled to carry it in the State Apartments and the Gallery of Mirrors. He was also in charge of her cloak, although he had to hand it to an usher or equerry if she actually wanted to put it on . . . Woe betide the trainbearer who overstepped the limits of his role, committing crimes like carrying the train into the chapel, or handing the Queen her cloak himself.
This honeycomb of privilege and payment was well described in her memoirs by the Queen’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, Henriette Campan, née Genet.*33 One of the few intelligent women that Marie Antoinette liked and trusted, Madame Campan was three years senior to her mistress, having begun her career as Reader to the Mesdames Tantes when she was fifteen. In a period rich for the first time in female testimonies, that of Madame Campan stands out not only for her intelligence and education but also because she had access to the Queen and the court over a long period at a particular intermediate level where much information could be gathered.
Shortly before the death of Louis XV, Henriette had been married off to a widower, François Campan, the son of Pierre Campan, Marie Antoinette’s librarian. The junior Campan proved to have been reluctant to remarry; his rapid disappearance abroad meant that Henriette had plenty of time to concentrate on court affairs, her single child, Henri, being born ten years later when she was in her early thirties.19 Apart from being daughter-in-law to the Librarian, Henriette Campan had a sister in the Queen’s household, Adélaïde Auguié, known to Marie Antoinette as “my lioness” because of her exceptional height, and another sister, Julie Rousseau, also in royal service.
Madame Campan, while defending Marie Antoinette for following the existing structure of a Queen’s household, was critical of her where an innovation of 1775 was concerned. The Princesse de Lamballe was made overall Superintendent of the Household, that is to say, superior to the Comtesse de Noailles and the Duchesse de Cossé, Mistress of the Robes. In theory this was a revival of an ancient post. But since the post itself had been abolished as being too powerful, its reappearance marked an unfortunate decision by a Queen determined to give the Lamballe “greater personal consideration.”20
Nor was the Princesse de Lamballe’s handling of her post diplomatic. She interfered with the running of the household, but did not issue the requisite invitations for lavish suppers, for which her stipend was intended, on the grounds that it was beneath her status as a Princess of the Blood to solicit others. The other Princesses of the Blood took offence at this. Lamballe was only the widow of a prince of legitimated royal descent, so it could be argued that if the post was to be re-created, it should have gone to someone with a superior claim: Mademoiselle de Clermont, for example, the daughter of the impeccably royal Prince de Condé, whose aunt had been the last incumbent.21
It was ironic that the Queen, while generously determined to please her friend, was also beginning to tire of her. Was the Princesse de Lamballe, with all her devotion and her famous sensitivity, becoming, to put it delicately, somewhat of a bore? She certainly did not provide the kind of amusing society to which Marie Antoinette was beginning to turn in compensation for the other deficiencies in her life. The new favourite, Yolande de Polignac, was a far more fascinating and seductive character. Yet by the rules of Versailles, the post of Superintendent, once given, could not be withdrawn. The Princesse de Lamballe continued disconsolately to haunt Versailles and to insist on such prerogatives as putting the Queen’s breakfast on her bed, while the Queen’s feelings of sentimental friendship for her demonstrably waned.
Comtesse Jules de Polignac, as she was known, had been born Yolande de Polastron, of an ancient but poverty-stricken family, and when very young had married Jules de Polignac, who was similarly noble, similarly poor. She was now twenty-six, but her particular freshness of appearance, giving an impression of “utter naturalness,” was undiminished; Yolande with her cloud of dark hair, her big eyes, her neat nose and pretty pearly teeth was generally likened to a Madonna by Raphael—even if the Duc de Lévis thought her rather an insipid Madonna. People enjoyed themselves in her company; her manner was gently pleasing and she had a delightful laugh.22
Not everyone could see her attraction. Count Mercy for one thought that neither the Comtesse’s wit nor her judgement made her suitable for the Queen’s favour. He could not understand that it was her apparent passivity, her languid sweetness which convinced bystanders of her lack of “avidity or egotism,” that attracted Marie Antoinette.23 Afterwards the satirists were happily convinced that the Queen’s emotional dependence on Yolande de Polignac was accompanied by a full-blown sexual relationship which lost nothing in the telling, as though affection between two women must invariably take this form. But what Marie Antoinette wanted at this point was an intimacy based on sentiment rather than sex; nothing in her life so far had made her look on sex as anything but duty and a rather disagreeable duty at that. The pattern of intense friendships in France had been set by the Princesse de Lamballe. This was another, deeper version.
It was the Comtesse who was now, for better or for worse, to form the emotional centre of the world of Marie Antoinette. She came to mean to her what Maria Carolina had meant for so long in the Queen’s early life, and the Princesse de Lamballe more briefly. Furthermore, because Yolande saw to it that all her relations were part of the new royal circle, her family life came to be in effect that of the Queen, who predictably adored the two small Polignac children Armand and Aglä ié. As for Yolande’s character, it was appealing that she was notably calm by nature; she had neither the ultra-sensitivity of the Princesse de Lamballe, nor the capricious moods that increasingly swept over Marie Antoinette.
None of this corresponded to an active lesbian relationship, if the test of that is physical consummation. But it is plausible to believe that Marie Antoinette was in some romantic sense in love with Yolande de Polignac (or, in girlish language, had a crush on her), at least in the early years of their relationship. The French saying that in love there is always one who bestows kisses and the other who extends the cheek was not irrelevant; Marie Antoinette, metaphorically speaking, bestowed the kisses on the apparently gently indifferent cheek of Yolande de Polignac.
What were the favourite’s own feelings? Gentle indifference in a love object, however fascinating to an affectionate nature, may mask selfcentredness on a large scale. Yolande had an accepted lover, the clever, artistic but dominating Comte de Vaudreuil. For one seemingly lacking in avidity, she would amass an amazing amount of positions and rewards for herself, her large family, her connections and, of course, Vaudreuil.
In terms of the court, 1775, which was destined to be the year of the coronation of Louis XVI, also heralded a series of humiliations for his consort. In December, Marie Antoinette had had to break to her mother the news that she had been personally dreading for two years, and she did not expect Maria Teresa herself to receive it with “much joy.” The Comtesse d’Artois was pregnant.24
The patronage of Gluck continued. Orphée, attended by the Queen, had been a success in the previous August, and at the beginning of January there was a new production of Iphigénie en Aulide, which led to a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for the Queen. In a moving moment in the second act, Iphigénie’s bridegroom Achilles began to praise her, predicting eternal happiness for the kingdom as a result of their marriage. As the chorus duly responded, “Let us sing, let us celebrate our Queen . . .” loud applause brought them to a halt. The tribute was acknowledged with graceful embarrassment and tears by Marie Antoinette, while others present also wept at the touching spectacle. Once the chorus was allowed to complete the verses, there were shouts of bis and the whole thing was repeated. Then cries of “Long live the Queen” filled the air for fifteen minutes. The Baron Grimm was moved to reflect: “What prologues, what panegyrics can compare to these outbursts of tenderness and public admiration!”25 The popular ecstasy, the worship of the true goddess, was in sad contrast to Marie Antoinette’s private despair over the good fortune of her sister-in-law, which she hid behind a veil of solicitation.
In February, a visit that should have brought consolation to the Queen turned sour; once again, as in the case of Mademoiselle de Lorraine’s minuet, it was mishandled by Count Mercy. The Archduke Max, the Queen’s youngest brother, chose to pay an incognito visit to Versailles using the name of the Comte de Burgau. A picture painted by Joseph Hauzinger to mark the occasion shows a gloomy-looking Marie Antoinette, hair piled high, cheeks well rouged, and a melancholy Louis XVI, with a complacent Archduke, whose corpulence at the age of eighteen was already earning him the nickname “Fat Max.” The French royal couple had reason to look depressed. The Archduke showed himself tactless in his behaviour on every level.
To Marie Antoinette’s polite French, he insisted on answering in German. Then he wore uniform, something that was expressly forbidden to the French at court in order to promote the wearing of the French silk civilian dress, as Mercy should surely have warned him. Max was gauche to a degree that appalled the civilized French; when presented with one of Buffon’s works at the Jardin du Roi by the great naturalist himself, he waved it aside, saying casually that he would hate to deprive the author of his own book. All this was, naturally enough, fodder for the Austrophobes at court. But it was the Archduke’s tactless behaviour to the Princes of the Blood, which Mercy also allowed to pass, that created a really unfortunate impression, redounding inevitably to the discredit of the Queen.
When it came to rank, an Archduke, the son and brother of an Emperor, was obviously superior to a French Prince of the Blood, who was already one rank below that of the French royal family. If, therefore, Max had arrived in full archducal fig, the Princes would have been bound by the rules of etiquette to call on him first. The “Comte de Burgau” was another matter. Since he was a foreigner of no particularly distinguished rank, it could be argued that the Comte should call on the Princes first. The situation was aggravated by the fact that Mercy bear-led Max to call on various ministers without waiting for them to make the first move. So the Princes of the Blood sulked and did not call. The Queen, misled by the ambassador, was both indignant and upset on behalf of her family. As for Max, he left behind him the sobriquet “the Arch Fool.”26
It was not altogether surprising that as the coronation, planned for mid-June, approached, Mercy’s efforts to get the Queen crowned at Rheims alongside her husband were rebuffed. The burgeoning pregnancy of the Comtesse d’Artois—her baby was due in August—emphasized the tenuous nature of Marie Antoinette’s claim. Maurepas advised the King to resist the pressure of the ambassador, using the expense of a double ceremony as an excuse, but Louis XVI himself certainly went along with the decision.27
Marie Antoinette expressed herself indifferent to the whole matter. She would accompany her husband, and she would order a magnificent dress from the fashionable new couturier Rose Bertin. The weight of this robe, due to the richness of the jewelled embroidery, was so great that Bertin, a woman of fearless spirit where her creations were concerned, proposed that the Duchesse de Cossé, as Mistress of the Robes, should convey it to Rheims on an expensive stretcher. When the Duchesse declined to do so, suggesting a more humdrum trunk, the Queen was reduced to carrying it in her own luggage. The expense of the Queen’s dress was, however, a comparatively minor item in the extravagance of the whole occasion. The King’s own clothing was enormously costly. Since the crown of Louis XV was found to be too small, there was a special new gold crown made for the King by the royal goldsmith, Auguste, at a cost of 6000 livres, which included rubies, emeralds, sapphires and “the finest known diamond,” the Regent. A further 150 livres went on a morocco case for it, lined with velvet.28
The costs of such an elaborate coronation had already been queried by Anne Robert Turgot, the King’s new Controller General of Finance, who had been appointed in August 1774. Through a series of edicts, he was attempting to remedy the finances of government, never properly stable since the Seven Years’ War. There was now a deficit of 22 million livres with a projected further 78 million still to come. Turgot intended to reform the tax system, with measures that involved reducing the fiscal privileges of the nobility. He also tried to establish a free market in grain. Unfortunately a disastrous harvest in 1774 compounded the hardship caused by a system that was ill received in the first place. Prices rocketed and there were rumours that they were deliberately held high for profit. Violent protest in the shape of grain riots followed, the “Flour War,” as it was known, reaching Versailles on 2 May.
Turgot had argued for a simplified coronation in Paris. This would have given the impression of a King crowned by popular acclamation, with the double effect of bringing extra commerce to the capital. Perhaps it was the May riots that persuaded the King and his advisors to go for the security of Rheims, so much further from the capital. At all events, this excursion of the King and Queen, exposing themselves to the public gaze a long way from Versailles and in the direction of the north-eastern border, at a time when the physical appearance of royalties was generally speaking an unknown factor, was to have unforeseen consequences in years to come.
The day of the coronation, 11 June, was intensely hot and the long ceremony was exhausting. Nevertheless Marie Antoinette was deeply moved by the occasion. First of all her husband’s dignified concentration caused her to weep as the Te Deum was being sung. The King too had tears in his eyes, but the Queen’s emotion was so overwhelming that she was forced to withdraw for a short while. On her return, the eyes of the royal couple met tenderly. All of this was noted and received much approbation: “The people loved her for her tears.” Second, as Marie Antoinette told her mother afterwards, she was affected by “the most touching acclamations” on the part of the people and the evident devotion shown to them both; this despite the shortage of bread, which continued. In the evening both the King and Queen promenaded outdoors informally through the city, stoically enduring the stifling heat, Marie Antoinette on the arm of her husband.29
Now, if at all, during the period of the Flour War, was the occasion when Marie Antoinette might have uttered the notorious phrase: “Let them eat cake” (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche). Instead, she indulged to her mother in a piece of reflection on the duties of royalty. Its tenor was the exact opposite of that phrase, at once callous and ignorant, so often ascribed to her. “It is quite certain,” she wrote, “that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget the day of the coronation.” This was the tender-hearted Marie Antoinette who, alone among the French royal family, refused to ruin the peasants’ cornfields by riding over them, because she was well aware of the minutiae of the lives of the poor.30
In fact that lethal phrase had been known for at least a century previously, when it was ascribed to the Spanish princess Marie Thérèse, bride of Louis XIV, in a slightly different form: if there was no bread, let the people eat the crust (croûte) of the pâté. It was known to Rousseau in 1737. It was credited to one of the royal aunts, Madame Sophie, in 1751, when reacting to the news that her brother the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand had been pestered with cries of “Bread, bread” on a visit to Paris. The Comtesse de Boigne, who as a child played at the Versailles of Marie Antoinette, attributed the saying to another aunt, Madame Victoire. But the most convincing proof of Marie Antoinette’s innocence came from the memoirs of the Comte de Provence, published in 1823. No gallant guardian of his sister-in-law’s reputation, he remarked that eating pâté en croûte always reminded him of the saying of his own ancestress, Queen Maria Thérèse. It was, in short, a royal chestnut.*3431
While Marie Antoinette was still at Rheims, she attempted to alleviate the condition of the Duc de Choiseul, exiled from court for the last four and a half years. It was not a notably successful manoeuvre. The best the Queen could do was persuade the King to let her receive her former patron personally. While Choiseul’s enemies shivered at the thought of his return to power, and the Queen herself tried to present the whole episode as a political triumph for herself in an unwise letter to an Austrian diplomat, Count Rosenberg, the truth was that, thanks to Maurepas and Vergennes, she simply did not have sufficient influence with the King to restore Choiseul.
In vain Marie Antoinette boasted to Rosenberg that “the poor man”—a reference to Louis XVI—had been induced to arrange the visit himself without having any idea how his wife had manipulated him. When Maria Teresa heard of the “style, the fashion of thinking” of this letter, she delivered a stunning reprimand to her daughter. The Empress was shocked! How could she refer to her royal husband in such a manner?33 The hypocrisy of the rebuke—delivered to one constantly adjured to govern her husband by stealth—was breathtaking.
Nor did the Queen fare any better in the case of Choiseul’s ambitious protégé, the Comte de Guines. A cultured man, an accomplished flautist who commissioned a concerto from Mozart, Guines was a member of the Polignac set, quite apart from his Choiseuliste origins. He was also vain; the Duc de Lévis, whose sharp tongue got him the nickname “Mosquito” from Marie Antoinette, reported that as Guines got fatter, he had his clothes made tighter and tighter to minimize his bulk so that in the end he had to have two identical sets of breeches cut according to whether he had to stand up or sit down. Guines had been for several years French ambassador in London. Now a “louche and cruel” scandal blew up, known as the Guines Affair, in which the ambassador was framed by his own secretary who used his master’s name to sell information to speculators. The resolution of the affair turned into a contest of political wills. Vergennes as Foreign Minister was determined to take the opportunity to get rid of Guines from this embassy, and if possible from other future embassies as well. As for the Queen, it has been suggested that she viewed the vindication of Guines as a stepping-stone towards the return of Choiseul himself.34
Vergennes, enjoying the confidence of the King where the Queen did not, won. Guines was dismissed without a future. A curt note from Louis XVI to his Foreign Minister early in the following year was explicit: “I have made it quite clear to the Queen that he cannot serve either in England or in any other Embassy.”35 The dukedom that Guines received subsequently in order to propitiate Marie Antoinette could not mask her actual defeat.
The dreaded accouchement of the Comtesse d’Artois took place on 6 August 1775. The result was a large healthy baby and it was a boy. Immediately Louis XVI granted him the royal title of the Duc d’Angoulême. The birth of this first Bourbon prince in the new generation was a blow to the Orléans family, immediately relegating their claims to the throne. It was more than a blow to Marie Antoinette; it was a ritual humiliation. For by the rules of etiquette she, along with all the other courtiers with the suitable Rights of Entry, was compelled to attend the birth and witness its most intimate moments. The Queen was present when the Comtesse d’Artois, hearing that she had gone further than merely produce a baby and had given birth to a male, cried out to her husband: “My God, how happy I am!”
When it was all over, and Marie Antoinette had embraced her sister-in-law most tenderly, she was free at last to retire to her own apartments. At this point, however, this woman, so maternal that she had even envied the Duchesse de Chartres when she gave birth to a baby that died, had to run the gauntlet of the raucous market-women. Exercising their traditional right to hang around Versailles on occasions of state importance, they pursued the departing Queen with their cat-calls: “When will you give us an heir to the throne?” Marie Antoinette’s demeanour was as ever calm and dignified and she showed nothing outwardly of her mortification. But once she arrived at the safety of her own suite of rooms, the Queen shut herself up in her inner sanctum, alone with Madame Campan, and wept bitterly. As the First Lady of the Bedchamber wrote: “She was extremely affecting when in misfortune.”36
This was the kind of experience that made one of Marie Antoinette’s more desperate acts of charity comprehensible. The Queen was in her carriage near Louveciennes when a little village boy of four or five with fair hair and big blue eyes fell under her horses’ hoofs. He was unhurt. By the time the boy’s grandmother had emerged from her cottage, the Queen was already clutching him to her with the words: “I must take him. He is mine.” It helped that the boy’s mother had died, leaving five other orphans. The grandmother certainly raised no objection when Jacques was whirled away to Versailles, especially since Marie Antoinette promised to maintain the whole family financially. It was poor little Jacques who howled with homesickness as he was thoroughly scrubbed, before being dressed up in white-edged lace to be presented anew to the Queen. Undaunted, the Queen proceeded to share her food with Jacques whenever possible, as well as supervising his education and of course keeping her word about the financial arrangements.37 The sweet but desperately unreal impulse was characteristic of Marie Antoinette at this time.
The marriage celebrations for the King’s sister, Gros-Madame Clothilde, which followed in the second half of August, were also no great comfort to an Austrian Archduchess. The bridegroom was the Prince of Piedmont, heir to the kingdom of Sardinia, which made the third Savoyard marriage in a row within the royal family, to say nothing of a half-Savoyard heir to the throne, the infant Duc d’Angoulême. Poor Clothilde’s notorious weight caused the wits to say that two Savoyard Princesses had been received in exchange for one very heavy French one. That weight had indeed caused some concern to the grandfather of the bridegroom, King Charles Emmanuel III, on the grounds that if the fourteen-year-old Clothilde was fat already, she would certainly get fatter still in Savoy, as French women always enlarged on Italian food; his anxiety focused on the question of heirs. Clothilde herself worried that her bridegroom might recoil from her appearance although in the event the Prince behaved with style. She was, he said, much less fat than had been reported and in any case, “I find you adorable.”38 About the only consolation for Marie Antoinette in all this was the increased companionship of her younger sister-in-law Madame Elisabeth, now aged eleven, who was able to graduate from the care of the Royal Governess, the Comtesse de Marsan.
There was an epidemic of satiric and grossly obscene pamphlets or libelles in the autumn of 1775, a phenomenon that Marie Antoinette felt obliged to report to her mother. “No one was spared,” she wrote, “not even the King.” One pamphlet in particular was dangerously wounding, producing a flood of angry tears from Marie Antoinette, because it was, unlike the majority of them, horribly true.39 This was against the background of the continuing fecundity of the Comtesse d’Artois who was almost certainly pregnant once more.*35
The pamphlet was entitled Les Nouvelles de la Cour, centring on the despair of the “sad Queen” with the refrain: “Can the King do it? Can’t the King do it?” The verses themselves were extremely graphic, to the extent that even Bachaumont was shocked, although he printed it happily in his Correspondance Secrète. The Lamballe was said to be working at alleviating the Queen’s frustration with her “little fingers,” Maria Teresa to be advocating a lover:
My daughter, to have a successor
It little matters whether the maker
Is in front of the throne or behind it.
The problem of the King’s foreskin (prépuce) was contrasted with the Queen’s enthusiasm for puce, the new fashionable colour. Speculation on the royal emissions suggested “clear water” to be the most likely substance.40
Count Mercy’s pronouncement on the whole matter of the unfulfilled marriage, made at the end of the year, was much less ribald than the crude verses of the libelliste that provoked the disloyal courtiers to snigger behind the backs of their royal master and mistress. But it conveyed the same message. It was not enough to be a true goddess to the people, and listen to the cries of “Let us celebrate our Queen!” at the opera. “However brilliant the Queen’s position at the moment,” wrote Mercy to Maria Teresa on 17 December, she would never consolidate it until she produced an heir to the state. She needed “the quality of a mother to be regarded as French” by this “petulant and frivolous nation,” which would otherwise resent her influence.41