Marie Antoinette (8 page)

At Versailles the news of the death of a Great-Granddaughter of France was treated with appropriate ceremony and lamentation. The city of Paris went into mourning and money was distributed to the poor in her memory. There was, however, no truth in a subsequent story that Louis XV had really wanted the Dauphin to marry Teresa, only turning to Antoine after his great-granddaughter’s death. As has been seen, preparations for the marriage of Antoine were well advanced by the end of January; on the 21st a ring had arrived for her from the Dauphin.

Another death, on 6 February 1770, was a good deal less tragic from Madame Antoine’s point of view; the unpopular Countess Lerchenfeld died and was replaced as head of her household by Countess Trautmannsdorf. Antoine was in need of a sympathetic ally. The really tumultuous event of February for her occurred on the 7th when, as the Empress was quick to inform the French ambassador, the future Dauphine “became a woman.” She had had her first period that very morning but no particular problem had been presented, since the Archduchess had been able to dance in the evening; Maria Teresa was confident that Louis XV would be very happy at the news. Madame Antoine was now on course to become a mother, as and when her marriage was consummated. Furthermore she would be the mother of a child with imperial Austrian blood in its veins. And it was this dynastic aspect of the matter that inspired in Maria Teresa an obsessional curiosity about her daughters’ monthly cycles.

It was a preoccupation with which considerations of distance, let alone privacy, were never allowed to interfere. Once her daughters were married, the Empress greeted with indignation the news of the arrival each month of the “Générale Krottendorf,” for such was the nickname given by her to her daughter’s periods.
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These daughters, the wives of important princes in other countries, were expected to give full and frequent reports on the subject. Envoys such as Count Mercy d’Argenteau were pressed into service, and the French royal doctor, Lassonne, was supposed to report “every month” directly to her mother with news of Marie Antoinette’s cycle so that Maria Teresa was not left to the doubtful “meticulousness” of the young woman herself. Less appropriately, perhaps, Gluck was at one point asked to bear the vital message. Louis XV himself gave the Empress a news-flash on the subject a few months after she had arrived in France; the
règles
(the French term) of the Dauphine had arrived for the first time “since we have had the pleasure of possessing her.”

That was the point. The fate of a princess who married into a foreign country was to be a hostage—possessed. But she was also expected to be an ambassador. Marie Antoinette was certainly an egregious example of such a complicated twofold destiny but throughout history there were many, many other princesses who shared it. Isabella of Parma had outlined the unhappy possibilities: “What should the daughter of a great prince expect? . . . Born the slave of other people’s prejudices, she finds herself subjected to the weight of honours, these innumerable etiquettes attached to greatness . . . a sacrifice to the supposed public good.” Napoleon, marrying Marie Antoinette’s great-niece forty years later, expressed the bargain rather more crudely: “I am marrying a womb.”

Under the circumstances it was scarcely surprising that royal women retained strong feelings for the land of their birth, from which duty had wrenched them and which, in the course of events, it was more than likely they would not see again. The Dauphine Maria Josepha, who was immensely proud of her position in the French royal family, told her brother Prince Xavier after fifteen years of marriage that her heart could detach itself neither from France nor Saxony. But this was pre-eminently true when the bride had reason to suppose her own country superior to all others. (Some French princesses, as Marie Antoinette would discover to her cost, enamoured of both their status and their country, would solve the problem by staying there unmarried.) Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese-born wife of Charles II, tried to cheer up her niece Princess Mary, who was on her way to Holland to marry her cousin William of Orange, with memories of her own apprehensions, which had happily been unnecessary. “But Madam, you came into England! I am going out of it,” replied the Princess with the cruelty of youth.

Nine years before the wedding of Marie Antoinette, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz made a long journey across Europe to marry George III, sight unseen as it were. Arriving in London at three o’clock in the afternoon, she was dressed in English clothes and was married to him a few hours later, with a long reception and the wedding night to follow immediately. The whispered encouragement of the Duke of York—“
Courage, Princesse, courage
”—as he took his future sister-in-law up the aisle was appropriate to Charlotte’s situation, as it was to that of many other princesses. It was not as though the bride could necessarily expect sympathetic endorsement in her new family circle. Marie Antoinette was sneeringly baptized
l’Autrichienne
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by Madame Adélaïde, eldest surviving daughter of Louis XV, years before it became a popular term of derision. Similarly the French Queen Maria Lesczinska, wife of Louis XV and daughter of the dispossessed King Stanislaus, was known as
la Polonaise
. The shy Infanta Maria Teresa, wife of Louis XIV, had been mocked for her Spanish accent.

The advice of Maria Teresa to her daughters, stepping lightly in their pretty satin shoes across these morasses, was extremely detailed. And yet it did little to reconcile the two covert roles of hostage and ambassador. The two previous Archduchesses had received long instructions, many of which were religious in nature: adjurations to pray long, pray often, read holy books and so forth and so on. To Maria Carolina, Maria Teresa hammered home the precept that marriage was the greatest happiness. Above all, she must try to understand her ill-educated but well-meaning husband, King Ferdinand, who had received the following encouraging rating as a bridegroom: “Although an ugly prince, he is not absolutely repulsive . . . at least he does not stink.” Where her homeland was concerned: “Do not always be talking about our country, or drawing comparisons between our customs and theirs.”

Amalia was similarly admonished in advance: “You are a stranger and a subject; you must learn to conform; even more because you are older than your husband, you must not seem to dominate . . . you know we are subjects of our husbands and owe them obedience.” Yet for whatever reason, by the time of Antoine’s wedding, both the Queen of Naples and the Duchess of Parma were being perceived in Europe as interfering consorts. Maria Teresa bewailed her daughters’ reputation for domination: “This will reflect badly on my Dauphine.” It does not seem to have occurred to her that she herself had not actually led such a visibly meek life.

In contrast to the theme of obedience, there was the crucial question of remaining a good German. Maria Teresa had told Maria Carolina that “in her heart and in the uprightness of her mind,” she should be a German; only in things that were unimportant (although nothing that was wrong) must she appear to be Neapolitan. The Empress’s instructions to “the little one,” as she sometimes called Antoine to Maria Carolina, also contained this important admonition. On the one hand Antoine was never to introduce any new custom, or behave in any way other than was strictly ordained in advance at the court of France; she must never ever cite the usages of the court of Vienna. On the other hand she must also see it as her duty to “be a good German.” How was this apparently contradictory admonition supposed to be effected? As Dauphine, Marie Antoinette would need to find out.

The rest of Maria Teresa’s instructions, conveyed in the form of a long letter which Antoine was told to read once a month, were simple enough, if hardly envisaging much independence of action on the part of one who would shortly be the subject of another monarch. It was carefully laid down, for example, to whom the Dauphine would be able to write; her Lorrainer uncle Prince Charles and her Lorrainer aunt Charlotte were on the list, as was Prince Albert of Saxe-Teschen. It must have come as a relief to Antoine that the Queen of Naples was on the list on the grounds that the one sister who had faced a difficult situation in her marriage—“much more difficult than your own”—would inspire the other. Antoine was not to read any book without permission of her confessor, since French books, under the veil of erudition, often showed a shocking lack of respect for religion. Antoine must never forget the anniversary of her father’s death on 18 August. In time she would of course commemorate annually the death of her mother—not exactly a consoling thought for one shortly to leave her side—but in the meantime Antoine should say special prayers for her mother on her birthday.

It was only in a few sentences that Maria Teresa revealed apprehensions for her daughter based on the terrible (and unacknowledged) inadequacy of Antoine’s preparation. The future Dauphine was not to display undue curiosity—a particular fault of hers. She must not cultivate familiarity with “underlings.” Above all, she must remember that “all eyes” would be fixed on her; she must give no scandal.

The month of April 1770—her wedding month—began with a three-day spiritual retreat for Madame Antoine. This programme of prayer and reflection was directed by the Abbé de Vermond. Since he tactfully promised not to make his various little instructive talks too long, it was probably less onerous than the Archduchess’s new sleeping arrangements, which were to be in her mother’s black velvet-draped apartments. The Empress was making up for lost time in this close last association with her daughter, however gloomy the surroundings must have seemed, however awesome the privilege.

Outside the imperial bedchamber, the onward march of ritual festivities left little space for tranquillity. These included the presentation of a Latin address by the university, to which the Archduchess was said to have responded in kind; since she had not been taught Latin, presumably Vermond took a hand. Then there was the kissing of her hand by mixed German and Hungarian guards. On 15 April—Easter Sunday—the Marquis de Durfort returned in splendour as Ambassador Extraordinary of the French King, having quitted Vienna as a mere ambassador shortly before. In theory Durfort had returned to France to perform this transformation act; but all he had actually done was acquire an enormous cortège of forty-eight carriages, drawn by six horses each, in order to emphasize the new magnificence of his status to a court that had come to know him well over the last three years.

Since Durfort had to find the money out of his own pocket, he would shortly resell all but two of the equipages. But it is to be hoped that in the meantime Madame Antoine, who watched this formal entry from the house of Countess Trautmannsdorf, was suitably impressed. The two remaining carriages were in fact provided by the French; these were to have the honour of conveying the Dauphine personally on her journey, and were the most gorgeous of all. One was upholstered in crimson velvet and embroidered with motifs of the four seasons in gold; the other was upholstered in blue, with motifs of the four elements, and bouquets of flowers made from thin gold wire trembling on the roof.

The next day Durfort was received in audience by the Empress and the Emperor. It was all very courteous. Durfort doffed his hat and was politely told to put his hat back on. Having done so, he took it off again as a sign of respect. When all this was finished, the Ambassador Extraordinary was able to present a letter and two portraits of the Dauphin to Madame Antoine. Primed by Countess Trautmannsdorf, Madame Antoine took one of them, set in diamonds, and pinned it to her corsage. The letter was one of exquisite courtesy and formality, in the contents of which it is unlikely that the Dauphin had much say.

As for the portrait, there had already been trouble behind the scenes on that score when the French despatched a picture of Louis Auguste out ploughing. This was a classical image but not the image of an archduchess’s fiancé that was expected in Vienna. The new portraits were more conventional likenesses. However, if Marie Antoinette had any reaction to them, either public or private, it was not recorded; as these ceremonies gradually progressed throughout April, it was as though her small figure was gradually disappearing under “the weight of honours, these innumerable etiquettes attached to greatness” described by Isabella of Parma as the inevitable fate of a princess bride.

The next day, 17 April, Madame Antoine swore on a Bible to renounce her right through her mother to the Austrian hereditary lands and through her father to Lorraine. This formal renunciation was frequently asked of departing princesses in order to prevent a foreign dynasty from trying to acquire the family throne if the male succession failed.

That evening the Emperor Joseph gave a supper party for 1500 people at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. There had been some doubt whether he would participate in the ceremonies, given that he was still in mourning for his recently dead child; but to the general relief the Emperor rallied to the imperial cause, in spite of his sorrow, although Khevenhüller’s copious records suggest that most of the decisions were taken by Maria Teresa. In addition to the huge numbers invited for supper in the palace, which had been designed in the early eighteenth century for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a further 600 would dance at a ball in a pavilion specially erected in the palace gardens for the purpose; masks and white dominoes or hooded cloaks were to be worn. (But there was a special order that no “disagreeable” masks would be tolerated.)