How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (47 page)

The episode also had a complex personal significance for Carlyle. He griped that history had now ‘degenerated into empty invoicelists of Pitched Battles and Changes of Ministry’. At one point in the essay, he urges the reader to place
‘
aesthetic
feeling’ above ‘insatiable scientific curiosity’. The affair was as much an allegory of the parching of his profession by desiccated antiquarians, just as the live-wire Jeanne is restrained and bolted in the Bastille. Carlyle had written about Cagliostro at great length elsewhere and he condemns him in ‘The Diamond Necklace’ as an
‘arch-quack’. Yet, almost in spite of himself, Carlyle cannot help lighting upon points of similarity between them. He is normally careful to distinguish his characters’ voices from his default glutinous style; but it is noticeable how much Cagliostro, whose address to his
‘fellow scoundrels’ concludes the essay, sounds like his creator at full pelt. History’s impossible task was, for Carlyle, to convey ‘the ever-living, ever-working
Chaos of Being’ without traducing it into plodding linearity. Cagliostro, as the apostle of chaos, falsity, imposture, is more alive than anyone else to history’s impurity. In granting the ‘King of Liars’ the prescience to see France consumed in a
‘Fire-sea’, Carlyle shows how closely the historian’s insight presses against the mountebank’s. ‘Are not intrigues’, Rohan asks earlier in the essay, ‘the industry of this our Universe; nay is not the Universe itself, at bottom,
properly an intrigue?’
If so, the Diamond Necklace Affair reveals the fabric of history to the blinkered world.

A number of historians have refused to believe that Rohan was simply a dupe and the queen entirely uninvolved in the purchase of the necklace. The profusion of voices, the ‘whole illimitable dim
Chaos of Lies’, as Carlyle put it, has led some to hear the grind of a conspiracy amid the cacophony. Munro Price, a leading authority on pre-revolutionary France, has written that ‘I at least suspect that the Cardinal may have been an accomplice of la Motte’s in her scheme to
steal the necklace’. Yet if this was the case, why did Rohan retain the bill of the sale – the evidence which nearly damned him – and why did he insist the jewellers thank the queen, a gesture that would arouse suspicions? Louis Hastier, author of the very scholarly
The Truth about the Affair of the Necklace
(1954), believed that Jeanne was acquainted with the queen, who even looked on as Rohan knelt before d’Oliva. Michelet, the great historian of France, thought the same, though the only evidence he could adduce in his favour was Marie Antoinette’s fondness for performing plays by Beaumarchais. He believed Rohan and the queen had collaborated in obtaining the necklace, pinning Jeanne with the blame when their unseemly activities threatened to flower into public scandal.

The purpose of this book is to establish that the most likely explanation of the facts is Rohan’s innocence, Jeanne’s guilt and Marie Antoinette’s lack of involvement – a purpose complicated, though not obviated, by the characters’ strange behaviour. Dissenting historians have frequently argued that it is unbelievable Rohan should not have recognised the queen’s signature or doubted her appearance in the garden. But to read motivations back into events, we need to assume a consistent standard of rationality, one that we rarely live up to ourselves. Enthusiasm is as much an engine of history as calculation.

At the same time, I hope this book has revealed the extent to which the Diamond Necklace Affair is stitched into the fabric of the Revolution. This was a perception shared by a number of those involved, irrespective of which side of the verdict they fell. Nicolas de La Motte declared that ‘the sentence by which we were condemned was the signal for the astonishing revolution which was brought about with so much ease by the corruption of the Court,
the disorder of the finances, and the tyranny of those who shared
in public power’ – all significant factors which the Affair accreted, justly or otherwise, into readily comprehensible symbols of the country’s malaise.

The queen’s confidante, the princesse de Lamballe, writing from an entirely different perspective, believed that the Affair marked the moment when the French stopped regarding Marie Antoinette as
‘a beneficent deity’. Lamballe may have been unduly rosy-eyed about the early years of the queen’s reign, but she acutely notes that Marie Antoinette’s own reaction intensified the contempt of her subjects:

Public opinion began to vacillate, and the private enemies of the princess stimulated the discontent . . . No one told the queen that the coldness the crowd manifested towards her might have fatal results, and far from seeking to destroy it, she took offence. Her features, hitherto so sweet and caressing, expressed in public nothing but haughtiness and disdain for the opinion of those whom she never dreamt of regarding as able to dispose of her destiny and that of her family.

There are more subtle ways in which the Diamond Necklace Affair made its presence felt during the Revolution and the Terror. Jeanne’s actions brutally dramatised what had been known for a long time – that the Bourbons were no longer the uniquely glorious individuals prescribed by royal ideology. Their signatures, even their corporeal forms could be replicated. While Jeanne was in prison, a certain Madame Equant was accused of a similar offence – forging the signature of the king’s brother Provence to obtain goods on
credit from merchants. This may simply have been a copycat crime or symptomatic of something deeper: the prevalence of a belief that the worth of a king or queen or prince was in the amount they spent or the leverage that might be extracted if they fell into one’s debt. They had become commodities, they had a value – the Boehmers knew it, so did Rohan – and, like all economic goods, their value might rise and fall. So when the economy collapsed and the price of bread rose, it was easy for the country to ask if they could afford an absolute monarchy.

The affair also educated the French public in ways of interpreting their rulers’ actions that would fundamentally guide the dynamics of
the Revolution. The historian Lynn Hunt has noted that ‘the obsession with conspiracy became the central organizing principle of
French Revolutionary rhetoric’. Periodic bloodlettings were prompted by fear of traitors bringing down the country from within. The Diamond Necklace Affair was the defining opportunity presented to the French public in the pre-revolutionary years to learn to read conspiratorially. During the trial, and on the subsequent publication of Jeanne’s memoirs, they were, it seemed, offered backstage access to the royal Court and invited to judge for themselves whether the conduct of their betters was hypocritical. In adjudicating over competing versions of evidence, Frenchmen developed similar sensitivities – paranoically so, in some cases – to the pronouncements and decisions of the men in charge. This was, of course, not the only classroom in which they learnt to read politics; but the affair offered a richer opportunity, full of reportorial detail, to speculate on royal misbehaviour than any of the vaporous slanders then wafting through the kingdom. The vigour with which members of all political factions attempted to track Jeanne down after the outbreak of Revolution is testament to a pervasive view that her story – irrespective of its veracity – was taken as an exemplary instance of royal despotism.

The object that chained Rohan and Jeanne and Marie Antoinette radiated a terrible glow. The suggestiveness of diamonds, the ballast of the scandal, gave weight to the calumnies against the queen – extant prejudices were electrified simply by the mention of the necklace in conjunction with her. Diamonds congeal wealth to its densest form. They induce disgust – Georges Bataille thought jewellery
akin to excrement – because, however finely cut or polished, the admiration they provoke is a direct function of their value, beauty a tangential concept at best. Diamonds display a fortune efficiently – they incarnate profligacy. Had not Madame Deficit, in her untrammelled expenditure, shown herself bereft of a sense of economy, of lacking the awareness that self-restraint was a national priority? If you cut open Marie Antoinette, did you not expect to find a diamond for a heart? It is understandable why some Frenchmen found it so hard to disentangle her from the necklace.

Gems also secrete sexual connotations – Diderot’s
Les Bijoux indiscrets
(
The Indiscreet Jewels
) were prating genitals. A stolen necklace
was an apt symbol for the lost virtue of Marie Antoinette, orbited by rumours of infidelity. Diamonds draw the eye but also distract it; their flash in the light fascinates, but they hold the gaze on the surface and are impenetrable to the core. They betoken a secret world, in which conspiracy may flourish, in which enemies are crushed in the clench of a fist, in which the Austrian plenipotentiary might guide the queen’s hand across the engine of government. In the flare of the diamond, one meets the lure of the dangerous, enigmatic female.

Retrospectively, it was particularly poignant that they were strung together in a necklace, laid around the most vulnerable juncture of the body, the indestructible crystal against the lacerable skin and cartilage and vein. It does not take much force to make a choker choke. And, as the French discovered, the quickest way to kill a queen was to slice straight through her throat.

And what of the diamonds themselves? Unfortunately, the records of Daniel Eliason, the broker who bought most of those Nicolas sold to the London jeweller William Gray, no longer survive, so following a paper trail is impossible. Two grand English dynasties – the Sackvilles and the Leveson-Gowers – have claimed that stones from the necklace were set into family heirlooms, a tasselled diadem and a
22-stone
sautoir
respectively. Vita Sackville-West wrote to
The Times
on 1 January 1959 with evidence she had found in the archives at Knole – a receipt from 1790 for a necklace from Jefferys of Piccadilly. But Nicolas sold the stones five years earlier and Jefferys, dubious about their provenance, had refused to buy them. The genealogy is probably apocryphal, most likely arising from the service of two forebears – John Sackville, 3rd duke of Dorset, and George Leveson-Gower, later 1st Duke of Sutherland – as successive ambassadors to the French Court between 1784 and 1792. But diamonds are hardy things, and history does not scar them. Somewhere, anonymously, in a Swiss safe or around a neck, reconfigured into earrings or brooches or a mortuary statuette of a beloved Dobermann, they sit, unperturbed by the anguish they caused.

Acknowledgements

This book has been nearly six years in the making and would not have been completed without the abundant support and encouragement I received. I’m grateful to Lisa Hilton, Michael Holroyd, Alan Jenkins, Candia McWilliam and Boyd Tonkin for the award of a Society of Authors Grant that substantially funded my research in Paris; and to Robert Macfarlane, Claire Armitstead and Tristram Hunt for a Royal Society of Literature/Jerwood Award in 2010, which provided an invigorating fillip during a particularly overwhelming period of research.

The staff of the London Library, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Archives de la Bastille, the Archives des affaires étrangères at La Corneuve, the Archives nationales in Paris, the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris and especially the Bibliothèque nationale – who allowed me to examine documents normally available only on microfilm – were helpful and attentive throughout.

In Paris, I was hosted in palatial accommodation, first by Jean-Marie Besset, then by Koukla and Christopher MacLehose. Richard, Jane and Edmund Gordon and Tom Fleming generously provided me with idyllic rural retreats where I could concentrate solely on my work.

My colleagues at
Literary Review
– Alex Blasdel, Frank Brinkley, David Gelber, Tom Fleming, Nancy Sladek and Tom Williams – have not merely tolerated my extracurricular activities but have been remarkably enthusiastic and accommodating towards them. I’m particularly grateful to Nancy for her generosity in allowing me five months’ leave to research and write this book.

Tim Blanning, Tom Fleming, Wil James, Charlotte Mardon-Heath, Andy Miller, Kate Prentice, Leo Robson and Naomi Wood
all read this book in various states of disrepair. Their comments have improved it immeasurably and their excitement at the story kept mine burning. Any mistakes that remain are naturally my own.

Sarah Day worked exceptionally hard in helping me get to grips with the hundreds of pages of trial documents. Fleur Macdonald and Susannah Robinson also provided vital research assistance.

I’m thankful for the companionship, encouragement, advice and help offered by Daniel Beckman, Joshua and Gila Beckman, Christopher de Bellaigue, K. Biswas, Mark Bostridge, Nina Bowden, Michael Burleigh, Ambrogio Caiani, Hermione Calvacoressi, Irving David, Jon Day, Samantha Ellis, Charlotte Faircloth, Nicholas Gill, Eveleen Habib, John Hardman, Susanna Hislop, Lydia Garnett, Philip Goodman, Louise Greenberg, Molly Guinness, Paula Johnson, Ivan Juritz, Jeremy Lewis, Laura Keeling, Philip Mansel, Tom Marks, Tim Martin, John Pemble, Alfie Spencer, Tom Stammers and Nicki Stoddart, as well as many of those previously mentioned.

Simon Trewin, my agent, has enthusiastically championed this book throughout its long gestation. His assistants Ariella Feiner, Liv Shean, Sophie Lobl and Matilda Forbes-Watson have been models of professionalism.

I will always be thankful to Nicholas Pearson at Fourth Estate for taking a punt on an unproven writer bearing a proposal riddled with typos. John Murray, my new home, has welcomed me warmly. I’m grateful to everyone there, especially Nick Davies, for sanctioning the transfer, Sara Marafini, for the wonderful cover, Caroline Westmore, Lyndsey Ng, Bea Long, Ben Gutcher, Jason Bartholomew, my copy-editor Martin Bryant, my proofreader Nick de Somogyi and Douglas Matthews for the index.