Mme de Pompadour was not strong, and after some years began to find Louis’s physical demands exhausting. She tried such aphrodisiacs as hot rooms, chocolate and truffles, and even celery soup, but to no avail; her lover said unkindly that she was ‘as cold as a coot’. In 1752 she therefore took the dangerous step of ceasing to sleep with him, relying on the indispensability of her companionship. She knew that so long as the King had his ‘Deer Park’ he would bed with illiterate girls who only interested him with their bodies, and ought therefore to be immune from the charms of any lady of the court. She had nothing to do with the Park, but prudently did nothing to discourage Louis in his use of it. Most unjustly it earned her the epitaph,
Ci-git qui fut vingt ans pucelle,
Quinze ans catin, sept ans maquerelle.
(Here lies a maid for twenty years, a whore for fifteen and a procuress for seven.)
The Parc aux Cerfs has given rise to pleasurable legends of naked young women being hunted through the woods by the King and his hounds. Carlyle writes zestfully of, ‘a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men, daily dragging virgins into thy cave’, Michelet of ‘an infamous seraglio of children whom he bought’. In reality, the Park was a modest house in the town of Versailles which discreetly procured healthy young women of the people for His Most Christian Majesty’s pleasure; many wealthy men of the period kept similar private brothels. The girls were engaged by Louis’s valet, Lebel, and brought to a little flat in the palace known as the ‘Bird Trap’; if they gave satisfaction they were then boarded—seldom more than one at a time—at the Park under the supervision of the house-keeper, Mme Bertrand. They were nearly always professional prostitutes with only their youth and beauty (and health) to recommend them. The most famous was Louise O’Murphy, whose posterior was immortalized by Boucher; she stayed at the Park for four years until she was dismissed for making an impertinent remark about Mme de Pompadour; the King arranged a good marriage for her. Before going to bed, Louis would sometimes make his little whores kneel down with him and they would say their prayers. Rumours about the establishment spread all over Paris and it was said that just as every man descends from Adam, so every Frenchman would descend from King Louis XV. Probably Louis sired no more than twenty bastards at most.
Otherwise, the King’s private amusements were far from sordid. It was the world of fêtes champêtres and commedia dell’ arte revels of the sort painted by Boucher and Fragonard, of picnics in Elysian parks, of Venetian carnivals, of parties on the water in gondolas, of balls in lamplit woodland glades where the court wore masks and dominoes and dressed as Pan and Flora, as Pierrot and Columbine. Louis loved music and adored dancing—pleasure has never been more elegant than it was in his reign. One bitter winter Mme de Pompadour had her flowerbeds filled with porcelain flowers while the air was sprayed with summer scents.
None the less, life at court was still stately and much of court etiquette remained unchanged until the Revolution. Even so, Louis XV’s timetable was very different from that of Louis XIV. Although he slept in his great-grandfather’s bed, instead of rising at the same hour every day he often slept long, telling his valet when to wake him; alternately he rose very early, before the servants, and lit his own fire. Having washed, shaved and dressed—he was scrupulously clean—he breakfasted on fruit and black coffee. He no longer used a chaise percée in public but had a modern, private cabinet with one of the new English water-closets. Council meetings, audiences and Mass occupied the morning, until he dined in public, by himself at a square table; unlike Louis XIV he ate with a knife and fork. He drank copiously but not heavily; his wines were usually burgundy or champagne (as Governor of Guyenne, the Duc de Richelieu once brought him the finest bordeaux obtainable, but the King merely sipped it, muttering ‘drinkable’, and never touched it again).
In the afternoon Louis hunted or shot; out of season he walked or went for a hard gallop. He killed on average over 200 stags a year, besides many wolves and wild boar, frequently exhausting his huntsmen and grooms. Violent physical exercise was essential to his wellbeing, though another reason why he, and indeed all Bourbons, were so passionately addicted to hunting may have been that it offered a chance of being by oneself and behaving naturally. There was a softer side to hunting which is often overlooked—ladies following the hounds down woodland rides in fast little phaetons, and the delightful hunt breakfasts painted by van Loo. Perhaps the greatest of all French sporting artists was discovered by Louis—Jean Baptiste Oudry, from whom the King commissioned a dazzling series of tapestries, ‘The Royal Hunts of Louis XV’.
Like most Bourbons, Louis liked working with his hands. Sometimes he would spend a whole day toiling with his gardeners. He was an expert silversmith and at Marly in 1738 made a pair of candlesticks. He also turned ivory.
In the evening the King joined the Queen and the Royal family at supper, after which—having a true Bourbon appetite—he would often slip away and eat a second supper with his mistress. Then he might drive to Paris to go to the opera, to dance masked at one of the public balls, or to visit a brothel. Sometimes he stayed at home, giving little supper parties, playing cards and making coffee into the small hours of the morning; frequently his pages fell asleep on his bed waiting for the Coucher. As soon as they had left him, Louis, who did not even bother to undress, would jump out of the state bed and join his mistress by a secret staircase.
Louis XV by Quentin La Tour
Jean Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, by Boucher, 1759
Frequently the King was away from Versailles. He spent much time at Compiègne, Marly, Rambouillet, La Muette, Fontainebleau, moving about to escape from his awful boredom. When he went to inspect the fleet at Le Havre in 1749, he travelled all night and hunted all day, exhausting his entourage. He was always escorted by his hunt staff and by a special bodyguard of the Black and the Grey Musketeers; at Rambouillet 500 persons had to be housed on each visit. Louis understood little about money; once, hearing that the poor were starving, he sacked eighty gardeners, but took them back when it was explained to him that as a result they too would starve.
Although the King far preferred women’s company, he had his male cronies, some being lifelong friends. Among them were the Duc d’Ayen (a Noailles and a soldier) and the Comte de Coigny, who was killed in a duel over a card dispute in 1749. From his youth these two accompanied Louis everywhere, were invariably invited to his little supper parties, and escorted him on the nocturnal expeditions. Other men friends were the Duc de Vallière (one of the better French soldiers of the reign and a gunnery expert), and the rather silly Duc de Penthièvre, a bastard Bourbon who was Grand Huntsman of France, and whose lovely château of Saint Leger was frequently borrowed by the King. Ayen, Vallière and Penthièvre all had the misfortune of outliving their master and of surviving until the Revolution.
An outsize member of his little circle was that illiterate condottiere, Maurice de Saxe. One of the 365 children of Augustus II—‘The Strong’—of Saxony-Poland (Stanislas Leszczynski’s supplanter), Marshal Saxe had been a soldier since the age of twelve, entering the French service in 1720. Louis rewarded his many victories by creating him Marshal General of France and giving him the château of Chambord. Saxe had strange and colourful ambitions; after losing his delightful little Grand Duchy of Courland on the Baltic, he dreamt of making himself King of Madagascar. A huge, corpulent man, dropsical and stone-deaf, the Marshal was a glutton and a womanizer but his eccentricities were gladly suffered. He had an embarrassingly coarse wit; once, seeing Louis and Mme de Pompadour out walking together, he bellowed, ‘There go the King’s sword and the King’s scabbard.’ Saxe died in 1750, of over-exerting himself with a lady of pleasure.
The one member of the circle who dared to be openly hostile to Mme de Pompadour was the infamous Richelieu. Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu and a great-nephew of the Cardinal, had been born in 1696 and was First Gentleman of the Bedchamber (and therefore in charge of all court entertainments) for
more than half a century. A brave and skilful soldier—he captured Minorca from the English in 1757—he was also almost unbelievably venal and unscrupulous; once he offered to sell the frontier town of Bayonne to the Spaniards, while during the Seven Years War his soldiers nicknamed him Papa la Maraude (Daddy Plunder). A creature of exquisite elegance and breathtaking extravagance who gave wonderful parties, the Duke also had intellectual pretensions; he was elected to the Academie Française, was the friend and patron of Voltaire, and was a notorious free-thinker. However, Richelieu’s chief claim to fame was as a Don Juan; he was a sexual athlete whose uncanny gift of attracting women was attributed to supernatural powers; when he died at ninety-four, letters were found in his pocket from four ladies, who each begged for an hour in his bed. Countless scandals enveloped this insatiable debauchee and intriguer—he had been in the Bastille three times. Richelieu was really rather a horrible man, but the King, like most people, never tired of his disreputable, amusing company. Mme de Pompadour had the good taste to dislike him.
It is curious, even taking into account that war was the only occupation fit for a nobleman, that almost all Louis’s closest friends were distinguished generals. Ironically, in view of his distaste for bloodshed, the King was surrounded by soldiers. The guardsmen of the Maison du Roi numbered no less than 10,000, including such specialized troops as the 150 Horse Grenadiers (reputedly the finest-looking men in France). Even when he went to Mass he arrived to martial music from a fife and drum band.
The portraits of Louis XV by Nattier, van Loo and Quentin La Tour give some idea of his good looks. Those who knew the King were even more struck by his charm and beautiful manners; by now a unique and fascinating compound of majesty and simplicity, he could be delightfully gay and talkative, though only in private. Manners had relaxed generally, the honnête homme giving place to the bon compagnon as the pattern for gentlemanly behaviour, and sometimes Louis was the best of companions. The Prince de Croy tells us of little dinner parties (so informal that sometimes the gentlemen dined in their shirtsleeves); there were no servants in the small room under the eaves, everyone helping himself and the King making the coffee. The Prince says, ‘Often I felt more at ease with him than with almost anyone else—his kindness is engraved on my heart.’ In public he was a very different person, shy and stiff. ‘One could see that he wanted desperately to say something but the words died in his mouth’, observes a courtier. The King could be rude too, sulky and scowling, especially when his dreadful melancholy was upon him, though according to Croy ‘he never grumbled or shouted’. Savage things are said of Louis XV by other contemporaries who also knew him well, but these were invariably frustrated men whom he had dismissed from their posts.
His was a strange temperament. In his melancholy moods the King often showed a morbid obsession with death, which may have been due to his parents’ untimely fate; like the Prince of Denmark he sought for his noble father in the dust; on occasion he was very like Hamlet in the churchyard—once, passing a cemetery, he sent a groom to find out if there were any newly-dug graves. At court he frequently inquired about dangerous operations and serious illnesses, asking people where they would like to be buried and even foretelling their demise. For although Louis literally lived for pleasure, he knew little happiness. His entire character and intellect were vitiated by pessimism. Even if the hostile d’Argenson could admit that the King ‘gave orders like a master and discussed business like a minister’, at Council meetings his suggestions were too easily over-ruled by his ministers, while he would agree to policies which his innate shrewdness told him were misguided. His hopeless lack of purpose is illustrated by the immortal remark (made famous by Carlyle), ‘If I were Lieutenant of Police, I would prohibit those Paris cabriolets.’
Yet with all his frivolity and dissipation, Louis—like all Bourbons—was a deeply religious man. He never missed Mass, walked tirelessly in processions, had an expert knowledge of the liturgy, and prayed with real devotion; he once said naively, ‘I do not regret my rheumatism—it is in expiation of my sins.’ He was also like all his family in being in no way an intellectual. He found the ideas of the Philosophes—ces gens là as he scornfully termed them—quite incomprehensible; their excessive rationality did not appeal to a doubting mind which knew very well that men are fools by nature. The King was old-fashioned too in his complete conviction that he had received absolute authority from God—he believed it no less firmly than had Louis XIV. For all his Rococo tastes, Louis XV was more a man of the seventeenth than of the eighteenth century.
Unlike Louis XIV, the King did not enjoy the company of men of letters. None the less his reign was the silver age of French classical literature. It saw the publication of Candide, Manon Lescaut, Gil Blas, Emile and the Nouvelle Héloïse, of Buffon’s natural history and Vauvenargues’s maxims, to name only masterpieces.
Unfortunately for Louis XV, his prime coincided with the age of the ‘Enlightenment’. This was a climate of ideas, almost amounting to a new religious and political philosophy, which was largely derived from the thoughts of Newton and Spinoza, partly from the example of English freedom, and partly from the dissatisfaction of under-privileged bourgeois intellectuals. It was disseminated by Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire and a host of others, broadcast everywhere in France by means of a new encyclopaedia of knowledge which claimed to deal with every aspect of human activity. Later the Enlightenment was reinforced by Rousseau, though his pernicious ideas about equality and a return to nature were hardly compatible with reason. By the end of the reign, most literate Frenchmen had consulted the Encyclopédie, which could be obtained through the new Masonic lodges or at the public reading rooms despite every attempt at censorship. However, the Philosophes really wanted reform, not revolution. Their aim was to eradicate Diderot’s ‘artificial man’, the man of tradition, which meant putting an end to religious and intellectual intolerance (of which the Jesuits were a symbol, ‘fanaticism’s grenadiers’ as d’Alembert called them); humanizing the country’s barbarous mediaeval code; and setting the state on a sound economic basis. They were quite content with the Ancien Régime, so long as it could be brought up to date and made to function efficiently. They did not wish to destroy privilege, but merely to rationalize it, as—so they thought—had been done in England.
Louis disliked most new ideas, but eventually allowed the Encyclopédie to be published when ‘sincère et tendre Pompadour’ (Voltaire’s name for her) intervened in its favour. She tried to turn him into a ‘Benevolent Despot’ of the sort to be seen at Vienna or Berlin, but—predictably—was unsuccessful. None the less, he was not averse to his ministers holding fashionable views and actually made Voltaire his Historiographer Royal and a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.
Poor Queen Marie, prematurely aged, had become duller and dowdier than ever. Her dreadful red velvet bonnets were a constant cause for merriment. She painted execrable little pictures, performed dismally on the guitar, harpsichord and hurdy-gurdy, and worked day in, day out at her tapestry; her sole indulgences were gluttony and some mild gambling on a peculiarly dreary card game. Her religious duties were scrupulously observed—she frequently overspent her allowance on charities. The Queen was a frump, but a most dignified one—her stateliness put some in mind of the old court of Louis XIV—and everyone, including the King, respected her deeply. She had a cosy little circle of dull friends, most of whom joined with her in abominating all Philosophes and free-thinkers, in abhorring Jansenists and in cherishing Jesuits.
The Dauphin Louis, small-eyed and black-haired, resembled the King hardly at all. He was another Duc de Bourgogne, of whom some contemporaries had excessive hopes. Like his sainted grandfather, he had been an evil-tempered child who frequently struck his servants, but whose personality had completely changed when he was about fourteen; like his grandfather he became lethargic and taciturn, perhaps as a consequence of having grown unnaturally fat; he may well have suffered from a glandular affliction. Henceforward he was disturbingly pious;
his intimate friends were fanatic priests and, to the alarm of all Enlightened courtiers, he would throw himself flat on his face at the Elevation of the Host. His preferred occupation was ‘vegetating’—his own name for it. His habitual rudeness, even boorishness, did not arouse affection. D’Argenson writes, ‘If there really is some spark in him, it is a dying one, extinguished by fat and bigotry.’ None the less, at sixteen he showed at Fontenoy that for all his lethargy he had plenty of courage, begging to lead a charge.
In 1745 the Dauphin married yet another Spanish Infanta, the red-haired Marie Theresa (sister of his father’s former betrothed) with whom he quickly fell in love, but the poor girl soon died. The young husband was prostrate. In 1748 he was forced to take a second bride, the fifteen-year-old Marie Joséphine, straw-haired and sapphire-eyed, who was shy and plain (although the sour d’Argenson thought her ‘a pretty child’). Despite bad teeth and a flat nose, she grew up high-spirited and surprisingly attractive, and the Dauphin fell in love again, becoming an uxurious husband; the pair shared a mutual love of religion and music, withdrawing into a secret world of their own. Five sons were born to them; the short-lived Ducs d’Aquitaine and de Bourgogne, and the Duc de Berry and the Comtes de Provence and d’Artois—the last three becoming Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. There were also two daughters, Mesdames Clothilde and Elisabeth.
Louis had mixed feelings about the Dauphin. ‘My son is lazy, quick-tempered and moody. He is not interested in hunting, women or pleasure. But he really does love goodness, he is genuinely virtuous, and he is not without intelligence’; this seems to have been the King’s considered verdict. He cannot have been too pleased with the Dauphin’s calculated rudeness to poor Mme de Pompadour, to whom he could not even bring himself to speak; he referred to her father as ‘that gallows Bird’. Nor was Louis above sneering at him, especially at his plumpness—he once asked, ‘Do I not have a well-fed son?’ None the less, when the Dauphin was dangerously ill with smallpox in 1752, the King spent whole days and nights in his room.
The Bourbon Kings of France Page 17