Marie Antoinette (94 page)

About this Title

This eBook was created using ReaderWorks Publisher, produced by OverDrive, Inc.

For more information on ReaderWorks, visit us on the Web at "www.readerworks.com"

^*01
Now part of the offices of the Austrian President. The bedroom in which Marie Antoinette was born is today the President’s salon, with red- and gold-embroidered hangings; the room is dominated by an enormous portrait of Maria Teresa by Mytens. An adjacent room still contains a collection of
pietra dura
(pictures in semi-precious stones of birds and animals) which Maria Teresa loved, a taste she handed on to Marie Antoinette.
Return to text.

^*02
The so-called Austrian (southern) Netherlands, in which modern Luxembourg was then included and centred on Brussels, would form the largest constituent part of Belgium when it was founded after 1830; the two areas were, however, not identical and the modern term Belgium is used purely for convenience.
Return to text.

^*03
A huge set of Sèvres porcelain, white ornamented with a pattern of forest-green ribbons, which was given by Louis XV to Maria Teresa to celebrate the alliance, can still be seen in the Hofburg Museum.
Return to text.

^*04
Maria Teresa celebrated her fortieth birthday on 13 May 1757 when Marie Antoinette was eighteen months old.
Return to text.

^*05
These private apartments can still be seen today, with pictures by Marie Christine. The so-called Marie Antoinette Room, one of the state apartments, is named for a Gobelin tapestry woven after a painting by Madame Vigée Le Brun and donated by the Emperor Napoleon III in the nineteenth century.
Return to text.

^*06
Laxenburg is now the seat of IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis); there is a thriving conference centre there.
Return to text.

^*07
This delightful background to the childhood of Marie Antoinette can still be seen today. The park that she would have known was, however, remodelled in “the English fashion” in 1783.
Return to text.

^*08
Like her elder sister, Marianne, who was an invalid, Elizabeth would live and die unmarried.
Return to text.

^*09
Today the imperial crypt is still a site of respectful mourning (visitors are requested to take off their hats); here 143 Habsburgs and one commoner—Maria Teresa’s governess—are buried. Amid the dark shapes of the tombs and the sculpted figures of death, the skulls grinning under their diadems, can be seen bouquets of tribute, including fresh flowers, tied in ribbons of the imperial colours.
Return to text.

^*10
Louis Auguste, unlike Marie Antoinette (who descended from Charles I’s sister Elizabeth of Bohemia), was descended from Charles I himself; the latter’s daughter Henriette Anne, Duchesse d’Orléans (Madame), was Louis XV’s great-grandmother.
Return to text.

^*11
The essay on the Queens of France, said to be by Marie Antoinette, now in the Habsburg Archives, is in a completely different handwriting, far more advanced than hers at that period or, indeed, for long after it. It was probably written for her, rather than by her.
³⁵
Return to text.

^*12
Mariazell, sometimes termed “the Lourdes of Austria” (although its origins are far older), is still a place of national pilgrimage; it is popular for First Communions, as well as a skiing resort.
Return to text.

^*13
Although 200,000 crowns was—
pace
Louis XV—a handsome dowry to most people, it was certainly not exceptional among great ones. In 1769, for example, the heiress Mademoiselle de Penthièvre brought a dowry of 6 million livres with her when she married the son of the Duc d’Orléans. In terms of British money of the period, Marie Antoinette’s trousseau cost over £17,000: a notional three-quarters of a million pounds at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Return to text.

^*14
In real life the Générale (or
Generalin
in German), as her name came to be shortened, seems to have been a lady of the court, presumably married to a General Krottendorf. Maria Teresa mentions her death in late 1779. But the precise origin of the nickname for the monthly period remains obscure; it is, however, to be compared to similar nicknames of the same time. For example, the daughters of the 2nd Duke of Richmond referred to “the French lady’s visit.”
¹⁶
Return to text.

^*15
Meaning literally “the Austrian woman”; but the coincidental combination of the two French words for ostrich
(autruche)
and bitch
(chienne)
meant that the name would present horribly rich opportunities for cartoonists.
Return to text.

^*16
The main feature of the church today is the vast Canova monument of 1805 to the Archduchess Marie Christine, Marie Antoinette’s disliked elder sister, with references to her as “the best wife.”
Return to text.

^*17
The Goncourt brothers, writing the life of Marie Antoinette in the nineteenth century, referred to the Comtesse de Noailles as “the bad fairy” in her entourage.
⁶
Return to text.

^*18
Bombelles’
Journals
are an important source of information. He was a diplomat with experience of many European countries, and his connections to the court included his mother-in-law, Madame de Mackau, deputy Governess to the Children of France, and his wife Angélique, who was a favourite of Louis Auguste’s sister, Madame Elisabeth.
Return to text.

^*19
Madame Campan’s claim that the Dauphine was totally undressed has sometimes been treated sceptically on the grounds that the writer was not personally present; but Madame Campan’s father-in-law, to whom she was very close, was part of the handover party. Other sources describe the Dauphine as changing her clothes or being dressed, which presupposed being undressed. That the ritual had not yet been abandoned is clear from the fact that it was applied to Josephine of Savoy, marrying the Comte de Provence three years later.
¹²
Return to text.

^*20
It was later suggested by scandalmongers that Marie Antoinette had known Prince (later Cardinal) de Rohan as a girl in Vienna and had been debauched by him. Leaving aside the improbability of such a story, given the nature of her childhood, it was also impossible since Prince Louis arrived in Vienna in 1772, two years after she left.
Return to text.

^*21
Although Philippe, future Duc d’Orléans, was only a fourth cousin once removed of the future Louis XVI.
Return to text.

^*22
By the standards of European royalty, Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste were not particularly closely related. On the Habsburg side (Maria Josepha’s mother was a Habsburg) they were second cousins once removed. They shared Bourbon descent from Louis XIII and additional Orléans blood, since Louis XV’s grandmother Anne Marie had been an Orléans princess; at its closest this amounted to second cousins twice removed. Interestingly, Marie Antoinette had more actual French blood in her than her husband—two grandparents out of four—to his one in the shape of the King.
Return to text.

^*23
These apartments today have their view masked by large plants in boxes, which gives a good idea of the lack of privacy that they would have without them. Somewhat surprisingly, a large and showy replica of the so-called Diamond Necklace can also be seen there in a case.
Return to text.

^*24
This first letter, and many others that are also authentic, can still be seen in the Habsburg Archives. During the nineteenth century, however, the letters of Marie Antoinette were frequently forged; inauthentic examples flooded Paris, Vienna and London. One editor printed a number of letters for which the “originals” had vanished; other forgeries of an allegedly early date were blatantly copied from the handwriting of her later years. The situation was unravelled and a definitive edition, with all forgeries eliminated, was printed in 1895 in Paris by Maxime de la Rocheterie and the Marquis de Beaucourt. Nevertheless, at this point the correspondence between mother and daughter was censored according to nineteenth-century standards; the most intimate aspects of Maria Teresa’s advice, although partly printed in 1933 by Georges Girard in
Correspondance entre Marie-Thérèse et Marie-Antoinette,
were not published in full until 1958, by Paul Christoph in
Maria Theresia und Marie Antoinette: ihr geheimer Briefwechsel.
Return to text.

^*25
It is impossible to exaggerate the influence of
La Nouvelle Héloïse,
a story of (heterosexual) love and renunciation. First published in French in 1761, it went through seventy-two editions before 1800, as well as ten in England and others in America.
²
Return to text.

^*26
It was an additional torment for Marie Antoinette that she had from the beginning an irregular menstrual cycle. In those reports on the arrival of the Générale (period) demanded by her mother of all her daughters, Marie Antoinette was obliged to mention a gap of four months before adding that there was no reason for it.
⁹
Return to text.

^*27
Patrie
was the word always used by Marie Antoinette to denote Austria in her correspondence with her family.
Return to text.

^*28
Tightness of the foreskin, due to insufficient elasticity, which does not, however, make erection, or even ejaculation, impossible, although it might inhibit both.
Return to text.

^*29
These particular acclamations, if they took place, would have been a tribute to the European reputation of the Empress since she had, of course, never visited France, let alone Paris.
Return to text.

^*30
It should, however, be noted that Marie Antoinette also had the works of Piccinni in her library, as well as French music.
Return to text.

^*31
In 1775, with more originality, Lady Clermont told Marie Antoinette that she was put in mind of the English beauty, eighteen months younger, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire; the French Queen professed herself “much flattered.”
⁷
Return to text.

^*32
This staircase would play a dramatic part in the subsequent story of Marie Antoinette.
Return to text.

^*33
Madame Campan became something of a hate figure to the ultra-royalists after the Bourbon Restoration, because she had taught the step-daughters of Napoleon, and her testimony, first published in 1823, was criticized for that reason alone. Although she does make mistakes (like many other memorialists) and is not averse to self-glorification in order to atone for her “Napoleonic” affiliations, Madame Campan is nevertheless a vital witness. A recent French writer, Jean Chalon, has compared her status to that of Figaro in the song: “Figaro here, Figaro there.” But of course Figaro, like all domestics, saw a great deal of the game.
¹⁸
Return to text.