CHAPTER TEN
AN UNHAPPY WOMAN?
“You are getting older and you no longer have the excuse of youth. What will become of you? An unhappy woman and still more unhappy princess.”
THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II TO THE QUEEN OF FRANCE (AGED TWENTY-ONE) IN 1777
The New Year of 1776 was unusually severe with six weeks of snow. Ancient sledges were rooted out, last used by the King’s father in his youth. The noise of the bells on the gold-decked harnesses filled the air; horses were caparisoned with white plumes; masked ladies of the court took to visiting the Champs-Elysées. There was a time when Marie Antoinette would have been in ecstasy at such an opportunity to recreate the pleasures of her youth. But there was a chill in the air quite independent of the weather; in this case, criticisms of the pastime as being too “Viennese” caused her to abandon it after a while. Her relationship with the King, which had failed to develop into warmth in the past year, now became visibly cool.
Their lack of similar interests was obvious. In a revealing letter, written to Count Rosenberg in April 1775 (he was one of the Austrian correspondents approved by her mother because he passed on the contents), Marie Antoinette did not try to disguise the fact. Her tone, however, as invariably when writing to Vienna, was defensive. She suggested that the experienced diplomat should pay no attention to the tales about her conduct that were reaching Austria: “You know Paris and Versailles, you have been there, you can judge.” The Queen would be frank with him. “For example, my tastes are not the same as the King’s, who is only interested in hunting and his metal-working. You will agree that I would cut an odd figure at a forge; I am not one to play Vulcan [the god of Fire] there and if I played the role of Venus that would displease him a great deal more than my actual tastes of which he does not disapprove.”1
Eighteen months later, however, this gracious state of compromise outlined by Marie Antoinette, the basis for so many satisfactory royal marriages past and future, was no longer visible to interested observers. Baron Goltz, the well-informed Prussian envoy, heard that there were new scenes, which indicated a complete estrangement between the royal couple. In the view of the Austrians, this would only be solved by a visit from the Emperor Joseph; Goltz reflected that given the absolute diversity of their natures, his task was not going to be easy.2
At least the Queen always maintained a “most submissive” attitude to her husband in public. But she was beginning to incarnate what Maria Teresa angrily called “the spirit of dissipation” both by night and day; for the Empress had lost none of the vitriol of her pen with the passing years.3 In what did this “dissipation” consist? Some of it was harmless enough. The Queen began to enjoy going racing in the Bois de Boulogne escorted by her husband’s cousin (and her own), Philippe Duc de Chartres. The heir to the first Prince of the Blood himself extended his violent Anglomania—from her political institutions to her tailoring—to the English style of racing and English bloodstock.
More dangerous was the Queen’s growing passion for gambling at the various card games with which the court passed its time. Here neither Marie Antoinette nor the court of France was unique. Gambling was an endemic danger at such leisured and privileged places, extending back to the notorious occasion in the previous century when the Marquise de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV, had won 700,000 écus gambling on Christmas Day. The current furious craze had actually started in the reign of Louis XV. In the previous generation both Marie Antoinette’s parents had adored cards. Unfortunately the late-night card parties of Marie Antoinette, concentrating on the games of lansquenet and pharaoh, had two particular effects. They kept her away from the sleeping King, which she probably intended, and contributed to her financial problems, which she certainly did not. (They also contributed to the financial problems of her courtiers when she won.) It was not even that profit was the point of it all; the Queen gambled to be in the fashion and to amuse herself, not to win. By January 1778 Count Mercy contended that the Queen was so straitened that she no longer gave fully to the charities that she loved.
There is a vignette of the Queen’s life—and that of the King—in an account of a gambling session on the eve of the Queen’s twenty-first birthday in 1776. Marie Antoinette cajoled Louis XVI into importing players from Paris who would act as bankers. Play started on the night of 30 October and continued to the morning of the 31st, and then went on again until 3 a.m. on the morning of the Feast of All Saints. When the King taxed his wife with this, she replied naughtily: “You said we could play, but you never specified for how long.” The King merely laughed and said quite cheerfully: “You’re all worthless, the lot of you.”4
The so-called frenzy did not, however, consist of a full-blooded amorous intrigue of the sort practised by most of the inhabitants of Versailles. On the contrary, Marie Antoinette had, wrote the Prince de Ligne, “a charming quality of obtuseness which kept any lovers at a distance.” Courtly admiration and innocent but gallant flirtation with men who initially were a lot older was what pleased her. Saint-Priest, in his Mémoires, noted that there was “coquetry at the bottom of her nature.”5 These admirers were expected to be able to sing and of course dance to a certain elegant level—arts in which the King was singularly lacking. She herself listed a few of such men for herself in that letter to Count Rosenberg which rejected “Vulcan’s forge.” Her singing parties consisted of chosen ladies with good voices and “certain agreeable men who were, however, no longer young.” Apart from Comte Jules de Polignac, who was thirty, these included the Duc de Duras, father-in-law of one of her Dames du Palais, who was sixty, the Duc de Noailles who was seventy-two and the Baron de Besenval who was in his fifties.
The Baron de Besenval, a lieutenant colonel of the Swiss Guards, was typical of the kind of older man who appealed to the young Queen as an amusing companion. As the Comte de Ségur wrote, “His agreeable levity, entirely French, made one forget that he was born a Swiss.” He was rated the best raconteur in the Polignac set, a virtue that weighed heavily in those circles against his minor vices of drinking and womanizing. Besenval was later accused by contemporaries of encouraging the Queen’s spirit of mockery (to her friends this was merely her sense of fun) although he stepped out of line with an inappropriate declaration of passion. It seems that there was a misunderstanding on both sides. Marie Antoinette imagined that Besenval’s “grey hairs” were security against serious attentions, whereas as a result of the Queen’s friendship Besenval deluded himself into thinking that they would be welcome. When Besenval fell on his knees, it was the Queen of France who rebuked him in icy tones: “Rise, sir, the King shall not be informed of an offence that would disgrace you for ever.” Besenval stammered an apology and withdrew.6
Almost exactly the same thing happened when an even more celebrated roué, the Duc de Lauzun, was encouraged by the spectacle—as he saw it—of a beautiful young Queen for the taking and similarly declared himself. In his case the false impression arose over a misunderstanding connected with a magnificent plume of white heron’s feathers sported by Lauzun at the salon of the Princesse de Guéméné and which the Queen admired. Her admiration forgotten, the Queen was startled to receive the plume subsequently as a present via the Princesse. Wrote Madame Campan: “As Lauzun had been wearing it, the Queen had not imagined that he could think of giving it to her.” Etiquette being all-important, Marie Antoinette now calculated that a single airing of the plume in her own coiffure in Lauzun’s presence would be sufficient to avoid giving offence. Unfortunately Lauzun’s vanity led him to magnify the favour. He too pressed his suit, and was also rejected, with the chilling regal words: “Go, sir.”7 Whereas Besenval remained part of the Polignac set, finally being too amusing to be banished, Lauzun moved to the Orléanist opposition circle.*36
There is a sense of hysteria about these rejections. But it was an understandable hysteria; the Queen was only too well aware that her chastity, like the state of her marriage, must always be a subject of gossip and conjecture. For example, a whole romance was built round an incident in which a good-looking if slightly foolish young man in the household of Artois, called “le beau Dillon,” fainted in public. The alarmed Queen placed her hand over his heart to check for signs of life—a spontaneous gesture, which was either “imprudent” or concerned, depending on the point of view.9 She repaid those who badmouthed her on the subject with an intense dislike. One notable example was the malicious Prince Louis de Rohan, French ambassador in Vienna, about whom she began to share her mother’s feelings of acute disapproval.
More seriously, her undeniable enjoyment of the company of the Comte d’Artois himself, the most attractive royal brother, would become a long-running favourite of the libellistes. They drew obscene conclusions about the Queen’s pleasures by contrasting Artois’ evident virility with Louis XVI’s impotence. In fact the attitude of Marie Antoinette to Artois had something of the big sister about it (she was two years older than he) even if she did have more tastes in common with him than with her husband. In any case, had Marie Antoinette indeed chosen to embark on a real love affair at this stage, her brother-in-law was the last man she would have chosen. The danger of revelation was far too great in view of the fact that Artois’ own children had much to gain from the Queen’s ruin; their chances in the succession would have been improved still further.
With the whole question of physical intimacy in her marriage unresolved, it would be natural for Marie Antoinette to feel awkwardness if not outright disgust at the whole sexual process. Certainly Madame Campan called her personal modesty “extreme.”10 Marie Antoinette understandably appreciated admirers who courted her without pressing their suit, either out of respect or because they were in fact romantically engaged elsewhere. With the handsome young Swedish aristocrat Count Fersen far away from France (insofar as their brief encounter had been remembered by either party), it was the gallantry of older men that bolstered the Queen’s selfconfidence and allowed her to give vent to her taste for harmless flirtation. The Duc de Coigny, for example, one of her clear favourites, was almost twenty years her senior. He had been a good soldier in the Seven Years’ War, and was now the pattern of a faithful servant. His elegant manners and devotion were much commended, but to those in the know, it was clearly not an ardent relationship.
Where younger men were concerned, the foreign-born were particularly welcome because their material expectations at Versailles would not match those of the French and they might also avoid some of the many interfamilial intrigues that plagued the court. Marie Antoinette was fascinated by several of the other personable young Swedes at court, with their dashing appearance and excellent French. Then there were various British aristocrats from across the Channel who made an appearance at Versailles as part of the constant Anglo-French connection at the court level, which somehow floated lightly above more mundane political differences. Indeed, the Emperor Joseph (who had an extremely low opinion of Austria’s former ally) accused his sister of flirtatiousness where “useless” young English people were concerned. A few years later, whether flirtatiously or not, Marie Antoinette certainly relished the spectacle of the young Lord Strathavon, who possessed a famously well-turned pair of legs, dancing the Highland Fling at Versailles. She also danced with “this charming Scot” herself, presumably something more conventional.*3711
More serious and long-lasting relationships were enjoyed by Marie Antoinette with the Prince de Ligne and Count Valentin Esterhazy, respectively twenty years and fifteen years her senior. The Prince’s roots were in Belgium but he had come to Vienna at the age of sixteen; his mother was a princess of Salm and his wife—to whom he had been married about the time Marie Antoinette was born—a princess of Liechtenstein. Thoroughly cosmopolitan, he could claim cousinage of sorts not only with the Habsburgs but also with the Kings of France, Prussia and Poland. Such a man, who described himself as feeling “an Austrian in France [where he had a house in Paris in the rue Jacob] and a Frenchman in Austria,” could not fail to appeal to the expatriate Marie Antoinette. Furthermore, for “elegance of mind and manners,” the Prince de Ligne never had an equal, according to Madame Vigée Le Brun.12
Count Valentin Esterhazy was of Hungarian origin but he had been brought up in France and had fought well in the Seven Years’ War. Madame de la Tour du Pin wrote that the Queen addressed Esterhazy as “brother” and treated him as friend. The Empress expressed surprise that such a “whippersnapper” of no particular distinction should be a member of her daughter’s circle; her view was coloured by the part that Esterhazy’s Hungarian family had played in an uprising against her. But Esterhazy showed himself unselfish as well as a dashing courtier; the Queen rewarded his fidelity by helping to arrange his marriage to a wealthy young heiress, to whom Esterhazy became notably attached. He was also approved by Louis XVI, who wrote him a delightful little note on the arrival of his son: “A little Hussar has been born,” signed “A Person at Versailles.”13
The Queen’s innate chastity, the fact that her virtue was “intact, even strict” in the words of Emperor Joseph, who kept himself well informed on the subject of his sister’s failings, did not mean that she was without faults. It meant merely that she was without that particular one—sexual promiscuity—that would be generally ascribed to her in the future by those who did not know her. There was beginning to be something desperate about her enjoyment of pleasures, that rapidity with which she turned from one to the other. The levity, the lightness of spirit, the volatility, that quality called by the French légèreté for which there is no exact English equivalent, with which Marie Antoinette is so much associated in the popular mind (and in many historians’ minds), can be traced back to this period, when disappointment in her marriage began to be masked by enjoyment of her position.14
The girlish laughter of her early years in France had not gone away. But as the Prince de Ligne observed, “the great queens of history” did not laugh. This irreverent spirit—defensive in origin—was not denied by those who admired Marie Antoinette. “The gaiety of her character led to mockery,” wrote the Comte de La Marck and that was a fault in someone in her position, especially as the people around her pandered to her desire to be amused in this manner. The older women of the court in particular were affronted. Marie Antoinette the moqueuse should perhaps have borne in mind the saying of the cynical Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses: “Old women must not be angered, for they make young women’s reputations.”15
Of course the stories became exaggerated, especially in circles where “the Austrian woman” had not been welcome in the first place. There was a persistent tale of the Queen making fun of the dowagers in their old-fashioned black, come to pay their respects on the accession of the King. According to Madame Campan, the truth was very different. It was the Queen who tried desperately not to laugh, hiding her face behind her fan, at the mischievous behaviour of the old Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre. Although she should have been standing up, the Marquise actually sat down unseen behind the wide-hooped skirts of the court ladies, twitching them as she indulged in “indiscreet drollery.” A malicious little verse commemorated the supposed incident:
You’ve given offence a-plenty
Little Queen of only twenty
You’ll go home to Austria
Fal lal lal, fal lal . . .16
When all was said and done, the Queen was now officially answerable to no one—except the King. For example, Louis agreed readily to the idea of a Rousseau-esque adventure on behalf of the Queen and courtiers to watch the dawn, so long as he personally, devoted to his sleep, did not have to participate. The presence among others of the Comtesse de Noailles, still at this point Mistress of the Household, who stayed close to the Queen’s side at all times, was sufficient guarantee of the respectability of this outing. There were also, of course, bodyguards present. The Queen, who had got the idea from Marmontel’s Histoire des Incas, was ecstatic, exclaiming over and over again: “How beautiful it is! How truly beautiful!” She said that she now understood why Incas worshipped the sun. This innocent scene, so characteristic of the sensitivities of Marie Antoinette, was transformed into an outright orgy in the first scurrilous pamphlet that was addressed to the Queen personally, Le Lever d’Aurore. She was said to have overcome the problem of her ladies’ attendance by stealing away into the shrubberies for amorous encounters.17
The King was furious; he always reacted chivalrously to insults to his wife. The state censorship common to the eighteenth century meant that a licence was necessary for printing, which was why a great many of the obscene libelles, including those of the previous reign against the Du Barry, were printed in Holland and England for clandestine importation. The author, identified as the Abbé Mercier, was imprisoned in the Bastille. But the libelles did not cease. The Queen was accused of dalliance in yet another thicket immediately after the coronation, in the so-called Aventure de la Porte-Neuve. The continuing need to emphasize the outdoor setting of the Queen’s illicit couplings was due to the demonstrably large entourage that generally surrounded her in public. Here the physique and performance of an unknown lover was said to have been greeted with enthusiasm by Marie Antoinette: “Prince, lord or simple gentleman, you’re Hercules in the form of Adonis.”18
The satirical attacks at this point were, however, no more than an unpleasant douche of cold water. Marie Antoinette herself was left with the alternatives of weeping or shrugging them off with laughter that was intended to show disdain. In fact, she did both by turns. Tears were provoked by the sheer unfairness of it all—“these miserable gazettes,” as she termed them to Maria Teresa. She took to singing the refrain of Les Nouvelles de la Cour, the obscene attack on the King’s potency referred to earlier, in an effort to demonstrate a sophisticated indifference.19
For the time being the disdainful mode of reaction prevailed, as though the Queen found it impossible to take these anonymous ambuscades seriously. When Maria Teresa was shocked by the “inveterate hatred” manifested in such publications against “the Austrians, my person and my poor innocent Queen,” her daughter urged her not to condemn a whole nation for the sins of a few scandalmongers. An important factor in Marie Antoinette’s attitude, ironically enough, was her belief that the French people were fundamentally volatile and inclined to express things with “their pens and their tongues” that were not actually in their hearts. She herself in contrast prided herself on her own German sobriety: “I shall always glory in being one,” she told her mother and she only wished that the people of “this country” (ce pays-ci*38) had some of the good German qualities.20 As the Queen’s lack of seriousness became a target of the anonymous libelles, she herself thought it was the satirists who were not to be taken seriously. There was the possibility of a dangerous misunderstanding here.
In fact the libelles and the gazettes, while inventing freely on the subject of Marie Antoinette’s lewd conduct, had more of a case when it came to her extremes of fashion. Maria Teresa waxed indignant when she read about these coiffures. Three feet high, and so many feathers and ribbons! “A young and pretty Queen, full of charms, has no need of these follies,” fulminated the Empress.21
But then it could be plausibly argued that one of the duties of the Queen of France—the centre of the world of fashion, which had a strong commercial motive to remain so—was to see that the modes flourished by leading them. The feathers that annoyed the Austrian Empress were made so popular by Marie Antoinette that a lucrative trade sprang up. If Louis XVI gave his wife a jewelled feather (aigrette) that was ornamented with diamonds which he already owned, as a hint to put it in her hair instead of real feathers, this was not an option open to every husband. As for the elaborate headdresses, nicknamed poufs, these might allude to the wearer’s state—a miniature baby and nurse to indicate the recent childbirth of the Duchesse de Chartres, a tiny funeral urn for a widow—or to a current craze such as ballooning, or to political events such as the American Revolution.22
It was easy for Maria Teresa to condemn these as ridiculous, from the viewpoint of another country and another generation. To put it at its most practical, Paris was a city dependent on the financial support of the noble and rich to maintain its industries, which were in the main to do with luxury and semi-luxury goods. For foreigners, fashion was part of the point of being in Paris; Thomas Jefferson subscribed to the magazine Cabinet des Modes and sent fashion plates back to ladies of his acquaintance in America. As the Baronne d’Oberkirch remarked on her first visit to the French capital, the city would be sunk without its luxurious commerce.23 In a country where details of appearance, costume and presentation were “vital matters,” as the Savoyard ambassador had observed on the subject of the Comtesse de Provence, Marie Antoinette was an appropriate consort.
It was the personal extravagance of Marie Antoinette that could be criticized rather than her modishness. The Queen’s relationship with the imaginative, talented and extremely domineering couturier Rose Bertin was either a magic union or a folie à deux, depending on the point of view. It was Mademoiselle Bertin who gave orders to the tailor, receiving back a plain, unadorned shape on which she proceeded to let her fruitful imagination play. Against the spectacle of an exquisitely dressed Queen, her appearance a work of art in itself—French art—must be put in the balance the dress bills that mounted, and the dress allowance that was never ever enough. (Although even here one might point out the vast bills run up with Bertin by the Du Barry in the previous reign—100,000 livres a year on silks and laces alone.)24
The arrogance of Rose Bertin in her shop in the rue Saint-Honoré became a byword as news of the Queen’s custom spread. There was a story of the provincial lady who came to ask for something new for her presentation at Versailles. Bertin surveyed her from top to toe and then with a regal air turned to one of her helpers: “Show Madame my latest work for Her Majesty.” About eight years older than Marie Antoinette, Bertin was introduced to court circles by the Duchesse de Chartres, and was swiftly nicknamed “the Minister of Fashion.” Her clients included the Princesse de Lamballe, who spent extremely freely, as well as numerous foreign royalties, with Russian aristocrats particularly plentiful among them.25
It has been estimated that the couturier visited the Queen roughly twice a week from the accession onwards, being received in her inner cabinet. In contrast the celebrated hairdresser Léonard only came to Versailles once a week, on Sundays, leaving the daily work to others including his assistant, known as “le beau Julian”; but that was because Léonard’s salon in Paris in the week was so violently busy, rather than a measure of economy. A lively, good-humoured Gascon, with a sharp wit—and a star’s temperament—his triumphal arrival as a coiffeur was described by Madame de Genlis: “Léonard came, he came and he was king.” As for Bertin, it was not helpful that the dressmaker did not bother to present detailed accounts, as one of Marie Antoinette’s Mistresses of the Robes, the Comtesse d’Ossun, complained. However, succeeding Mistresses of the Robes themselves were not always competent accountants, although handling of the royal accounts was supposed to be one of the duties of the position.26
By the end of 1776, the Queen, who had a dress allowance of 150,000 livres, had managed to incur liabilities of nearly 500,000 livres. Six months earlier she had bought a pair of chandelier diamond earrings, partly on credit and partly by exchanging some of her own gems, from the celebrated Swiss jeweller Boehmer. The King paid up “at her very first word” according to Mercy. Again when she bought a pair of diamond bracelets for 400,000 livres, she had to borrow from the King, who did not complain.*3927
Of course to complete the picture, it should be pointed out that the entire royal family was prodigiously extravagant, seeing little connection between what they spent and what they had to spend. This included the pious royal aunts, capable of using up 3 million livres in a six-week expedition to Vichy to drink the waters. Then there was the Comte d’Artois, a noted spendthrift who regularly had his debts paid by his elder brother; they soon reached a total of 21 million livres. The Comtesse de Provence, quickly forgetting her modest Savoyard upbringing, also began to spend lavishly. As for the Comte de Provence, he would have debts of 10 million livres paid by Louis XVI in the early 1780s.28
Similarly, the Queen’s household had managed by immemorial custom to build in fantastic elements of extravagance to their own benefit. Bills were sent in for four new pairs of shoes a week, three yards of ribbon daily to tie the royal peignoir (that is, brand-new ribbon) and two brand-new yards of green taffeta daily to cover the basket in which the royal fan and gloves were carried. And these were only minor items. The “right to the candles” (candles were replaced even if unused) brought four of her women 50,000 livres a year each. The extraordinary amount of new outfits ordered annually—twelve court dresses, twelve riding habits and so forth and so on—was in part explained by the privileges of her household to help themselves to these garments once discarded but hardly worn. It was typical of the way things were run that a fresh chicken was provided every night—and subsequently sold by the Queen’s servants—because she had on a single occasion happened to ask for some chicken for her dog.29 Yet for all these extenuating circumstances, the impression given by Marie Antoinette on the eve of the arrival of her brother the Emperor is of someone for whom shopping, like gambling, has become a central compensation.
The passion of the Queen for her new Jardin Anglais—the eighteenth-century English style of planting being much less formal than the grand planning of seventeenth-century France—was more imaginative. This garden was to ornament the small palace attached to Versailles, known as the Petit Trianon. She had long wanted a country retreat, something to which she had been accustomed in her youth. The idea that the King should bestow the Trianon upon her was actually the suggestion of the Comte de Noailles, Governor of Versailles and husband of the Mistress of the Household. It was approved by Count Mercy who told the Queen to make the request. Louis XVI readily agreed with the gracious words: “This pleasure house is yours.” According to another story, he replied even more gallantly that he agreed on the grounds that “These beautiful places have always been the retreats of the King’s favourites.” The order came through on 27 August 1775.30
The Queen’s taste encompassed the kind of romantic garden that could be created by the designs of the painter Hubert Robert and the royal architect Mique. Tree-planting became a passion.*40 With gardening in her blood—her father’s love of horticulture was a childhood memory—Marie Antoinette plunged herself into creating a sylvan paradise that would perhaps recall the lost Eden of Laxenburg. Her impatience to see its realization, even if it was deplored by her administrators, was an understandable mark of her enthusiasm: “You know our mistress . . . she likes to enjoy her pleasures without delay.”31
Contemporaries referred to the Petit Trianon snidely as “Little Schönbrunn,” alternatively as “Little Vienna.” In later centuries Marie Antoinette’s involvement with her “pleasure house” would be the subject of misinterpretation on a scale with her alleged reference to cake. It would be suggested, for example, that she had had the palace built herself before plastering it in “gold and diamonds.” Trianon had in reality been designed and built by Gabriel in the previous reign, and the whole point of its interior was its exquisite simplicity. This desire for simplicity and retreat was in fact the key to the whole enterprise—that and the desire to have something personal to her. Significantly, Marie Antoinette hung family portraits in her boudoir there, including one of her father in a Franciscan habit, and one of her aunt Charlotte of Lorraine in similar religious attire.32
Of course it was easy afterwards to contrast these expensive activities (not only those of the Queen, although hers were inevitably more visible) with a worsening financial situation. The Controller General Turgot was dismissed in May 1776, as the King and the other ministers increasingly resented the reforms which seemed to represent a usurpation of the royal authority. Although Marie Antoinette was in favour of his dismissal because of Turgot’s attack on her protégé Guines, the will was that of Vergennes and the King.
Turgot was also disinclined to support French participation in the American struggle for independence. This intervention in America was the brainchild of Vergennes, who viewed it in terms of traditional French hostility to England: what hurt England (that is, an American revolt) helped France. Louis XVI’s agreement was not secured without some heart-searching on the subject of rebellion and monarchy; was it really right to go to the assistance of those who were rejecting their sovereign, King George III? In the end he submitted to Vergennes’ desire, although years later he would complain that the minister had taken advantage of his youth.33
The fact was that the hideous expense of despatching thousands of French troops and ships to fight in the New World plunged the government still further into the giddy spiral of deficit, just as Turgot had predicted. The incoming financial minister, Jacques Necker, hoped to pay for the war by ambitious borrowing schemes. Even if Mercy clucked over Marie Antoinette’s acquisition of further diamonds “in these circumstances,” the fact was that the personal extravagance of the Queen of France was of very little monetary consequence compared to this vast American venture, masterminded by Vergennes.
The Emperor Joseph finally arrived in France on his mission to save the royal marriage on 18 April 1777. He came at a time when the Queen’s personal credit had recently been weakened still further. Louis XVI sided with the Governess to the Children of France during his youth, the Comtesse de Marsan, against his wife over a court appointment. It was a question of the Prince de Rohan, who had finally been edged out of his ambassadorial role in Vienna to the delight of Maria Teresa. Of his return to France, Marie Antoinette observed with a certain prescience to her mother: “If he behaves himself as he has done in the past, the result will be plenty of intrigues here.” It was the intention of Rohan to claim that position—Grand Almoner—to which family custom entitled him, when the present incumbent died. It was, however, an intimate post, involving constant attendance on the King (and Queen) at family ecclesiastical functions. Marie Antoinette, furious about the tales that Rohan had told in Vienna, including his relaying of the contents of the pamphlet Le Lever d’Aurore, saw no reason why he should be rewarded. On the other hand, the Comtesse de Marsan, as the Prince’s aunt, claimed that the appointment had long been promised on the word of the King. Louis protested feebly to his former Governess that he had also given his word to the Queen that it would not take place. “Your Majesty cannot have two words,” riposted the Comtesse and hinted that if thwarted, she would publicize the King’s unfair favouring of the Queen.34
In the end, as so often, it was the Queen who was defeated. Nevertheless she assured her mother that the “bad principles” and “dangerous intrigues” of Rohan would ensure that she personally ostracized him.35 The cut-off was to be as far as possible complete. Rohan would only see the King at his lever, to which he had the Rights of Entry, and at Mass, where Rohan had a professional role. The Queen’s stance over Rohan was one of those seemingly minor decisions, born of hurt pride, perhaps a little provocative towards the Rohan interest but understandable enough, that were to have momentous consequences.
Marie Antoinette was apprehensive about her brother’s arrival. On the one hand she longed for this contact with home, particularly from the “august” elder brother she “tenderly loved,” in Mercy’s words. There had been no further family visit since the disastrous visit of “the Arch fool” two years previously, and Maria Teresa’s occasional promise—or threat—to arrive in Flanders, close enough for a visit from France, had not materialized. On the other hand, the Emperor, now thirty-six, had a scornful, even brutal style when he chose and had already weighed in with his own critical letters. Mercy told Maria Teresa apropos of the imperial visit that the Queen of France was afraid of being scolded.36
The Emperor, or rather “Count Falkenstein,” the incognito name under which he travelled, arrived wearing plain grey and was sporting none of his many Orders. It was pouring with rain. In an open carriage, without an escort, Joseph was soaked to the skin. He did not complain. The next day he set off in similarly unadorned style for Versailles. Count Mercy, his ambassador, could not, however, accompany him as protocol demanded; the unfortunate Mercy was laid low with an attack of haemorrhoids, whose severity became a general talking-point. As a result his house in Paris was besieged by people come to suggest the most diverse remedies; these included a messenger from the Abbess of Panthémont, a sufferer for the last ten years, recommending pills and pomade on the one hand, the avoidance of agonizing coach journeys on the other. She would confide still more if a person of discretion came to visit her in person.37
The absence of Count Mercy had the effect of underlining the intimacy that King, Queen and “Count Falkenstein” now enjoyed for the next six weeks. It was true that Joseph insisted on being lodged in a hostelry in the town of Versailles, where he slept on a wolf skin. Rising early on the first morning, he visited the menagerie before 8 a.m. and admired a female elephant. Later in the day the Emperor commented jovially to the Duc de Croÿ that since there was a male elephant in the Austrian menagerie, “we could make a marriage.” Croÿ resisted the temptation to point out that there could be another more important match. The Emperor had remained unmarried since the death of his second wife Josepha; there were rumours (as it happened, unfounded) of the Emperor’s interest in the thirteen-year-old Madame Elisabeth as a third wife.38
Joseph II’s determination not to be involved in the time-wasting and costly rituals of Versailles meant that he was able to enjoy the best of the informal life of the Queen—and the King. His relationship with the Queen began with a long, wordless embrace. Thereafter, on 22 April, she took him for a walk alone in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, having dined with merely two ladies in attendance. Marie Antoinette then received her first lecture, the topics of which included the unsuitability of her friends and her mad passion for gambling, as well as her neglect of the King.
In many respects the Emperor did not abrogate the natural harshness of his tone. His savage mockery of the Queen’s use of rouge was intended to show his total contempt for the Versailles way of life: “A little more!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Go on, put it under the eyes and the nose, you can look like one of the Furies if you try.” His reaction to one of the Queen’s towering headdresses showed more wit. The Emperor told his sister drily that he thought the fabulous plumed creation “too light to bear the burden of a crown.”39
What made all this endurable from the point of view of Marie Antoinette was the genuine warmth that Joseph demonstrated towards her, a warmth lacking perhaps from the maternal relationship. As Mercy told the Empress, Joseph had struck the right note to get the Queen to promise amendment. Given the fifteen-year gap in their ages, it was an attitude that was quasi-paternal, quasi-amorous. To the Emperor, who no longer had a daughter—or any child—living, she was “my dear and charming Queen” and “my little sister.” But the long-widowed Emperor also said jokingly that if Marie Antoinette had not been his sister, he would have liked to have married her in order to have the “pleasure of her company.” In a confidence, Joseph revealed that he had forgotten how sweet existence could be until he entered his sister’s life again.40
The fact was that Joseph, unlike Maria Teresa, was thoroughly captivated by Marie Antoinette. A few years later she had become “this sister, who is the woman I love best in the world.” It was a fact acknowledged by another sister, Maria Carolina, after he had visited her in 1784: “He spoke about you with such tenderness that we have great reason to be jealous of you, because without flattery I believe that you are his darling.” Of course this only proved his good taste, added the Queen of Naples hastily.41
The Emperor’s reports at the time to his brother, the Archduke Leopold in Tuscany, were more outspoken. He began by describing their sister as a delightful young woman who had not yet found her proper role. Many of her pleasures were in fact perfectly appropriate, but dangerous insofar as they distracted her from the sober reflections in which she badly needed to indulge. After studying Marie Antoinette he came to the conclusion that she was good-natured and honest, a little thoughtless due to her age, but fundamentally a decent, virtuous person. She was also intelligent with good instincts, so long as she trusted them, and did not listen to the advisors who were her weakness because they preyed on her love of amusement.42 The Emperor meant the Polignac set.
The “Reflections” that the Emperor left behind with his sister, written the day before he departed on 31 May, were on the contrary extremely tough, like his mockery of her fashionable appearance. “What are you doing here in France,” wrote the Emperor, “by what right should one respect you, honour you, except as the companion of their King?” He went on to list all her faults extensively and unsparingly, beginning with her lack of “tenderness and pliancy” towards her husband when in his presence. Did she not show herself “cold, bored, even disgusted”? There was her attendance at opera balls in Paris or race meetings in the Bois in place of a solid programme of serious reading. On and on went the Emperor, culminating with the following: “It is time—more than time—to reflect and construct a better way of life. You are getting older and you no longer have the excuse of youth. [She was twenty-one.] What will become of you? An unhappy woman and still more unhappy princess.”43
The reason the Queen accepted all of this gratefully, reading and rereading the “Reflections,” was because she now believed—and would continue to believe—that she enjoyed the protection and understanding of her brother. Quite as important as the criticisms made by the Emperor of his sister, and in many ways more so, were the intimate lectures given to Louis XVI. On arrival Joseph had judged Louis as “rather weak but no imbecile,” but unfortunately there was “something apathetic about both his body and his mind.”44 He set out to remedy this in the most candid manner. On 24 May the King’s Journal recorded: “Walked alone on foot with Emperor.” Five days later there was another walk, just the two of them.45 Whatever the Emperor said to his brother-in-law on these two crucial occasions can only be deduced, but it is clear that he broke to him not so much the “Facts of Life” as the “Facts of a King’s Life.”
In the end it was not in fact a case of phimosis, the overtight foreskin mocked by Les Nouvelles de la Cour. Even if that had been a factor contributing to the King’s psychological disinclination to complete the sexual act, it need not continue to do so. In the latter half of 1775 there had in fact been considerable discussion of the possibility of an operation, as Marie Antoinette reported to her mother, the birth of the Duc d’Angoulême in August no doubt contributing to the urgency. But by 15 December she confided to Maria Teresa: “I doubt very much that the King will decide to undergo it [the operation].” The new Savoyard ambassador, the Comte de Viry, heard similarly of the King’s reluctance. Marie Antoinette reported that the doctors disagreed, hers being in favour, and the King’s own doctor—“an old blatherer”—opposing it on the grounds that it would do as much harm as good. In the meantime she would hold her peace on the subject.46
In January 1776, Moreau, a surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, was pronouncing the operation unnecessary and a few months later Marie Antoinette was increasingly sure that the surgeon was right. One year later, on the eve of the arrival of the Emperor, the Saxon envoy, Baron Goltz, heard that the King had definitely declined to undergo the operation, either because of the possible harmful consequences or because he had become indifferent to the whole matter.47 Once again the birth of the Duc d’Angoulême made the problem of the succession less urgent from the purely Bourbon point of view, while remaining just as crucial to the Habsburg interest.
So there never was an operation.*41 Joseph II described the true situation in graphic terms to his brother Archduke Leopold: “Imagine, in his marriage bed—this is the secret—he has strong, perfectly satisfactory erections; he introduces the member, stays there without moving for about two minutes, withdraws without ejaculating but still erect, and bids goodnight. It’s incredible because he sometimes has night-time emissions; it is only when he is actually inside and going at it, that it never happens. Nevertheless the King is satisfied with what he does.” As Louis XVI confessed to the Emperor, all this was done in the name of duty, never for pleasure.
“Oh if only I could have been there!” wrote the Emperor furiously to the Archduke. “I could have seen to it. The King of France would have been whipped so that he would have ejaculated out of sheer rage like a donkey.” Joseph concluded with a reflection on his sister’s lack of “temperament” in this respect, meaning lack of sexual appetite leading to lack of sexual initiative. It underpinned her virtue in which from personal observation he strongly believed; it was a virtue that arose “less from forethought than an inborn indisposition” towards it. The King and Queen of France were “two complete blunderers.” In short, there was nothing wrong with Louis XVI, other than laziness, apathy, and the inevitable consequences of this situation being “ill handled.”48
It was in this way, thanks to the outspoken orders of the Emperor, that Louis XVI did at last stop being “two thirds of a husband” to Marie Antoinette, seven years and three months after their marriage. The crucial nature of the Emperor’s intervention in this sensitive but hitherto insoluble matter was made clear by the fact that both King and Queen subsequently wrote to the Emperor thanking him and “attributing it,” the consummation, to his advice. The King also wrote again in December 1777. As the Emperor told Leopold, this advice had been quite basic.49
What the Emperor called “the great work” was accomplished shortly before the King’s twenty-third birthday. On 30 August, no longer an unhappy woman, an ecstatic Queen was able to write to her mother about her feelings of joy—“the most essential happiness of my entire life”—beginning eight days ago. This “proof” of the King’s love had now been repeated and “even more completely than the first time.” There is something touching about Marie Antoinette’s first instinct, which had been to send a special courier to her mother; she had held back first for reasons of security and then to make absolutely sure.50
Nothing was now so threatening, not even the third pregnancy of the Comtesse d’Artois in two and a half years. The Queen had in mind a Temple of Love to be built in the grounds of the Petit Trianon. Under the circumstances, the Temple seemed a happy augury of the future, rather than the unhappy reminder it might once have been.