Marie Antoinette (22 page)

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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
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) had some of the good German qualities. 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.

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.

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. 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.)

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.

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.

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.
^*39

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.

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. 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.