To the scaffold (51 page)

2 "The style of her handwriting is not particularly good," Vermond wrote in October of 1769. "What is most vexing is that partly through

idleness and inattention, partly also, as it is thought, owii^ to faults of her writing-masters, she has acquired the habit of writing inconceivably slow. ... I often help her with her writing, but I confess that on this point I have made the least progress." Younghusband, p. 131.

3 Younghusband, pp. 129-31.

4 The Guardian of Marie Antoinette: Letters from the Comte de Mercy-Argenteauy Austrian Ambassador to the Court of Versailles, to Marie Tberese, Empress of Austria, 1770-1780, ed. Lillian C. Smythe (Lx)ndon, 1902), I, 14.

5 Olivier Bemier, The Secrets of Marie Antoinette (New York, 1985), pp. 31-4.

6 Maxime de la Rocheterie, The Life of Marie Antoinette, trans. Cora Hamipton Bell (New York, 1906), I, 5-7.

1 Ibid,

Chapter 5

1 The young Goethe, then a law student at the University of Strasbourg, was outraged when he went to see the salle de remise and observed the tapestries. "Such subjects," he wrote, "appeared to me to be so little in harmony with the circumstances that I could not help exclaiming out loud, *What! At the moment when the young princess is about to step on to the soil of her future husband's country, there is placed before her eyes a picture of the most horrible marriage that can be imagined! Might one not say that the most awful specter has been summoned to meet the most beautiful and happy betrothed?'" Cited in An-dr6 Castelot, Queen of France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette, trans. Denise Folliot (New York, 1957), p. 18.

2 Younghusband, p. 65.

3 Ibid.

4 John Lough, France on the Eve of Revolution: British Travellers' Observations 1763-1788 (Chicago, 1987), p. 235.

5 Mercy wrote to Maria Theresa on this point: "Your Majesty commands me to say whether the King has taken to drink. The report is not well founded, and arises from the fact that one may often observe in this monarch attacks of vacuity [absences d'esprit] which resemble the effect of drunkenness. It is obvious that the mind of the King weakens daily, and to the failing is added the apathy caused by the universal disorder that surrounds him." Mercy, I, 97.

6 Lough, p. 263.

7 Mercy, I, 96. He was writing in April, 1771, but his characterization applies equally well to the spring of 1770.

Notes J49

8 Padover, p. 28.

9 The couriers rode from Paris to Vienna and back again in a little under a month, allowing time for a day's halt at Brussels each way and pausing in both Paris and Vienna to give the correspondents time to digest their letters and reports and compose replies. Younghusband, p. 224.

10 Younghusband, pp. 176, 178.

11 Bemier, Secretsy p. 38.

12 Ibid., 43.

13 Mercy, I, 24.

14 Bemier, Secretsy p. 45.

Chapter 6

1 Lough, p. 240.

2 Lettres de Marie Antoinettey ed. Maxime de la Rocheterie and the Marquis de Beaucourt (Paris, 1895-6), I, 5.

3 Mercy, I, 25-6.

4 Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan, Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette (New York, 1917), I, 16-9.

5 This summary of Antoinette's day is taken from Lettres de Marie Antoinette, I, 9-11.

6 Campan, Memoirsy I, 28.

7 Bemier, Secretsy p. 71.

8 Lettres de Marie Antoinettey I, 8.

Chapter 7

1 Mercy, I, 40-1.

2 Ibid.y 41-2.

3 Bemier, SecretSy pp. 49-50. ^Ibid.y 50.

5 Campan, Memoirs, I, xcix-c, 46.

6 Ibid.y I, 46 and 47 note.

7 Bemier, Secrets, pp. 36-7.

8 Mercy, I, 116-17.

9 Ibid.y I, 110-11. Lettres de Marie Antoinettey I, 19.

10 Mercy, II, 378-9. Mercy added of the Princesse de Lamballe, She was that rarity—a Piedmontese without intrigue."

11 Mercy, I, 197-8.

12 Bemier, Secretsy p. 64.

u

13 Mercy, I, 130.

14 Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London, 1969), pp. 299-300.

15 Maria Theresa wrote to Antoinette that "You know how fond I am of your sister Caroline. I must do her the justice to say that, next to you, she has always shown the most genuine attachment to me and the greatest readiness to follow my advice." Moffat, p. 320. Antoinette's avowal to Mercy that she believed herself unloved is in Mercy, I, 197-8.

16 Mercy, I, 183.

17 Ibid., I, 182.

18 Bemier, Secretsy p. 84; Lettres de Marie Antoinette, I, 22.

19 Antoinette missed four periods during her first eight months in France, probably because of emotional stress. Bemier, Secrets, pp. 39, 61.

20 Mercy, I, 204-5.

Chapter 8

1 Younghusband, p. 546.

2 Mercy, I, 243-4.

3 Ibid.y I, 225, 212. It seems that Provence was no more virile than his elder brother in the early days of his marriage. Several months after the wedding Josephine confided to Antoinette that she too was still a virgin.

4 Lettres de Marie Antoinettey I, 53; Bemier, Secrets, p. 108.

5 Mercy, I, 257-8.

6 Ibid.y I, 198, 252. Mercy was convinced that "the dauphin, with good sense and excellent ingredients in his character, will probably never have the strength or will power to permit him to reign by himself. If the Archduchess does not govern him he will be mled by others." Young-husband, p. 547.

7 Mercy, I, 207-8.

8 Ibid., I, 200.

9 Ibid., I, 207. Antoinette's tongue-lashings were severe enough for Mercy to caution her about being overly vehement. Her language at times upset Louis so much that he burst into tears. Bemier, Secrets, p. 71.

10 Younghusband, p. 550; Castelot, p. 69; Mercy, I, 207-8. Mercy had more faith in Antoinette's abilities than her mother did. In August of 1773 Maria Theresa wrote to the ambassador, "I own to you frankly that I do not desire to see my daughter gain preponderating influence in affairs. I have only too thoroughly learned by my own experience what an overwhelming burden is the government of a vast monarchy. More-

over, I know her youth and levity, joined to her distaste for application (also that she knows nothing), which would make me all the more fearful for her success in a government so gone to pieces as is the French one at present. If my daughter could effect no improvement, or if the state of things grew worse, I should prefer that a Minister rather than my daughter should bear the blame." Younghusband, pp. 547-8.

Was Maria Theresa overly jaundiced in her view of Antoinette, measuring her too severely against her own austere standard, or did she simply know her daughter better than the ambassador knew her.'

11 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, I, 51.

12 L. S. Mercier, The Waiting City: Paris 1782-88, trans. Helen Simpson (London, 1933), p. 44.

Chapter 9

1 Campan, Memoirs, II, 278-9.

2 Padover, p. 48.

3 Ibid., 51.

4 Mercier, pp. 163-4.

Chapter 10

1 Campan, Memoirs, I, 249.

2 What follows is taken from Souvenirs d'un Page de la Cour de Louis XVI, par Felix, Comte de France d*Hizecques, Baron de Mailly (Paris, 1895), passim.

3 Somewhere within the large household were Mercy's spies who, he said, gave him "an exact account" of everything that went on in Antoinette's private apartments. In 1770 his informants were one of the bedchamber women and two pages of the chamber. Mercy, I, 61.

4 Memoin of Madame La Tour du Pin, ed. and trans. Felice Harcourt (New York, 1971), pp. 89-90. Madame La Tour du Pin's husband was created a peer of France in 1815, and in 1820 was created Marquis de La Tour du Pin. Before that time he was the Marquis de Gouvemet.

5 La Tour du Pin, Memoirs, pp. 68-9.

6 Ibid., 70-75,

7 Ibid., 17.

Chapter 11

1 Castelot, p. 83. In an often quoted passage, the nineteenth-century architect Viollet-Ie-Duc told of visiting Versailles with an elderly noblewoman who had lived at Louis XVFs court. She seemed disoriented

in the vast palace, then unfurnished, until she and the architect came to a place where "a waste plug, which had burst owing to the frost, had covered the floor with filth." The stench was appalling, and it suddenly brought the old woman to life. "Ah! I know where I am now," she cried joyously. "That was Versailles in my day. ... It was like that everywhere!"

2 Constantia Maxwell, The English Traveler in France 1698-1815 (London, 1932), p. 109. Mercy, I, 253.

3 Mercy, I, 253.

4 Ian Ehinlop, Royal Palaces of France (New York and Lx)ndon, 1985), p. 60.

5 Mercy, II, 588. The Due de Lauzun commented that Madame de Gu^menee was "a very singular person, with much esprit, which she used to plunge into the most mad follies." Castelot, p. 108.

6 Mercy, I, 321.

7 Hez^cques, pp. 174-5.

8 Campan, Memoirs, I, 229-30.

9 Mercy, I, 63-4.

10 F. Funck-Brentano, The Old Regime in France, trans. Herbert Wilson (London, 1929), pp. 173-4.

11 La Tour du Pin, Memoirs, p. 75.

12 Campan, Memoirs, II, 339-42.

13 This account of Cahouette de Villers's adventures comes from Campan, Memoirs, I, 122-4.

14 Jacques Levron, La Vie Quotidienne d la Cour de Versailles aux XVIP et XVIW siecles (Paris, 1965), pp. 232-4. The Countess of Walburg-Frohberg, who married Stanislas du Pont de la Motte, is not to be confused with the other Comtesse de la Motte-Valois who was a much better known villainess.

Chapter 12

1 Mercy wrote of Theresa that she was "very small, of very commonplace figure, although one cannot justly say that its defects are shocking; her skin is white enough, the face thin, the nose much too long and badly finished, and eyes not well shaped, a big mouth—altogether an irregular physiognomy, unattractive and most vulgar." Madame Campan, however, thought that Theresa had a very interesting face and an enviably white complexion, though she acknowledged that the Countess's unfortunate nose drew all the attention away from her fair skin.

Mercy, who was always eager to criticize the women around An-

toinette in order to make her charm and attractiveness stand out the more, positively gloated when Theresa arrived at Versailles. She was, he said, "ungraceful in bearing, timid and awkward, cannot speak a word, no matter what pains her lady-in-waiting takes to prompt her, dances badly, and, in fact, there is nothing in her that does not point either to faults in her disposition or to an excessively neglected education." Mercy, I, 317-18.

2 An anonymous pamphlet circulated at court described how in the summer of 1774 Antoinette had held an orgy at Marly; this was a fictitious embroidery based on an innocent incident in which Antoinette, on a warm summer night, decided that she wanted to stay up to watch the sunrise and did so, in the company of her women and many others—all of whom knew the truth about what happened that night.

3 Journal de Papillon de la Fertiy Intendant et contrdleur de Fargenterie, menus-plaisin et affaires de la cbambre du rot, 1756-80, ed. Ernest Boysse (Paris, 1887), p. 378.

^Ibid.

5 Eyewitnesses to the bread riots reported that the protesters did not scruple to cut open loaves and dye them green and black to make them look moldy, then wave them in the faces of the police and other officials. Journal de VAbbe de Vert, ed. Baron Jehan de Witte (Paris, 1928-9), I, 290.

6 This account of the guerre des farines is taken from Padover, pp. 75-7 and Bernard Fay, Louis XVI ou la Fin d'un monde (Paris, 1955), pp. 154-7.

7 Rocheterie, I, 119.

8 Maxwell, p. 123.

9 Rocheterie, I, 117.

10 It was strongly suggested to Louis that he break with tradition and move the coronation to Paris, which would save costs in that the entire court would not have to be transported to Rheims and would also benefit the Paris artisans and merchants—a prudent gesture at a time when Paris had been disrupted by the grain riots. But Louis wanted to be crowned where his ancestors had been crowned, and the suggestion was withdrawn. As to the issue of whether or not to crown Antoinette Queen as part of the ceremony, it was decided that, to save money, only Louis would undergo the rite of coronation. No Queen of France had been crowned for two hundred years.

11 Campan, Memoirs, I, 288-94. Papillon de la Fert6, Journal, pp. 385-6.

12 Veri Journal, I, 304.

13 Mercy, II, 418.

14 Bemier, Secrets, p. 173.

15 Campan, Memoirs^ I, 107.

Chapter 13

1 Mercy, II, 490.

2 Bemier, Secrets^ p. 218.

3 Campan, Memoirs, I, 163.

4 Ibid., I, 161-2.

5 Mercy, II, 496.

6 Bemier, Secrets, p. 217.

7 Ibid., 215-16.

8 Because he was a Protestant, Necker was not permitted to hold the office of Controller-General, but he exercised its functions while titularly lower in authority. In every important respect, Necker was Controller-General.

9 Bemier, Secrets, pp. 223-4.

10 Ibid., 111.

11 Mercy, II, 591-2. \1 Ibid., 590.

U Ibid., 592-3.

14 Benjamin Franklin was taken up by the fashionable world and, like Antoinette's brother Joseph, much admired for his austere personal habits. Madame Campan recalled in her memoirs that Franklin appeared at Versailles in the dress of an American farmer, with his sparse gray-white hair wom straight and unpowdered. No trace of vanity or artifice was detectable in his appearance. His plain suit of brown cloth, his fur cap, his spectacles were a refreshing contrast to the laced and embroidered coats and the curled and powdered heads of the Versailles courtiers. He was unadorned, but perfectly groomed, Madame Campan wrote; his "air of cleanliness," his snow-white shirt and collar were always immaculate. (This was more than could be said of the unwashed courtiers with their soiled linen and yellowing lace. Down-at-heels noblemen, it was said, touched up their lace with powder to conceal its age and deterioration.) Franklin carried a stick, his only weapon, and wore a round hat with no feathers or jewels.

"Elegant entertainments were given to Dr. Franklin," Campan wrote, "who to the reputation of a most skilful natural philosopher added the patriotic virtues which had invested him with the noble character of an apostle of liberty. I was present at one of these entertainments, when the most beautiful woman out of three hundred was selected to place a crown of laurels upon the white head of the American philosopher, and two kisses upon his cheeks."