Madame de Pompadour

by Nancy Mitford

  Then there were the hours of chat, and here Madame de Pompadour had an enormous asset in his eyes; she was very funny. Hitherto the King’s mistresses had told few jokes and the Queen even fewer, he had never known that particularly delightful relationship of sex mixed up with laughter; all the laughter in his life had been provided by his men friends, especially by Richelieu and Maurepas. He was a great tease and used to read sermons on chastity aloud to the Maillys, who never thought it at all amusing; with Madame de Pompadour he could laugh away to his heart’s content. Chat was the pastime of the age, cheerful, gossipy, joking chat, running on hour after idle hour, all night sometimes; and at this the Marquise excelled. She knew a hundred stories to amuse him; she read the police reports from Paris, the equivalent of our yellow press, and told him all the tit-bits she found in them; she also read quantities of private letters abstracted from the post and no doubt their contents gave rise to many a joke (it must be said that everybody knew quite well that a censorship existed). If he felt inclined for a tune she played and sang better than anybody. She knew whole plays by heart and could recite speeches from them for hours on end. He had never cared much for the theatre but she began to interest him in it. She provided exactly the right company for his supper parties; a few congenial friends, no surprises, and no new faces, and added a gaiety and a lightness all her own.

  The only thing that was not perfect in this relationship was its sexual side. Louis XV was a Bourbon, and had their temperament, while Madame de Pompadour was physically a cold woman. She was not strong enough for continual love-making and it exhausted her. She tried to work herself up to respond to the King’s ardours by every means known to quackery, so terrified was she that he would one day find out her secret; but she began to make herself ill. Madame du Hausset, her maid, spoke of this to the Duchesse de Brancas – the tall Duchess as she was always called, to distinguish her from her step-daughter-in-law.

  ‘It can’t be good for her, she is living on a diet of vanilla, truffles and celery.’ ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that,’ said the Duchess, ‘and now I’m going to scold her, you’ll see.’ They went together and attacked Madame de Pompadour, who burst into tears. The maid locked the door, and Madame de Pompadour said to Madame de Brancas: ‘The fact is, my dearest, that I’m terrified of not pleasing the King any more, and of losing him. You know, men attach a great deal of importance to certain things, and I, unfortunately for me, am very cold by nature. I thought I might warm myself up, if I went on a diet to heat the blood, and then I’m taking this elixir which does seem to be doing me some good.’ Madame de Brancas looked at the drug and threw it straight in the fire saying: ‘Fi!’ Madame de Pompadour said petulantly that she was not to be treated like a baby, and then began to cry again.

  ‘You don’t know what happened last week, the King said it was too hot, an excuse to spend half the night on my sofa. He’ll get tired of me, and find somebody else.’ ‘But your diet won’t stop him,’ said the Duchess, ‘and it will kill you. No, you must make yourself indispensable to the King by always being nice to him. Don’t rebuff him, of course, at these other moments, but just let time do its work and in the end he’ll be tied to you for ever, by force of habit.’ The two women kissed each other, Madame de Pompadour swore her friend to secrecy, and the diet was abandoned.

  Shortly afterwards she told Madame du Hausset that things were going better. ‘I consulted Dr Quesnay, though without telling him everything. He advised me to look after my general health, and take more exercise, and I believe he’s quite right, I feel a different woman already. I adore that man [the King] and I long to please him, but he thinks I’m fearfully cold, I know. I would give my life for him to love me.’

  However, in those pre-Freudian days the act of love was not yet regarded with an almost mystical awe; it had but a limited importance. Like eating, drinking, fighting, hunting and praying it was part of a man’s life, but not the very most important part of all. If Madame de Pompadour were not physically in love with the King, being constitutionally incapable of passion, it would not be too much to say that she worshipped him; he was her God. She had other interests and affections, but she made them all revolve round him; rarely can a beautiful woman have loved so single-mindedly. Of course her enemies have declared that what she loved was power and the life at Court; but she never really liked the Court and was under no illusions as to the nature of many of its denizens. She constantly declared, and as she was a very truthful person she can be believed, that had it not been for the King and her happiness with him, which made up for everything, she never could have endured ‘the wickedness, the platitudes, all the miseries of human nature,’ with which she was surrounded. A Parisian born and bred, she could not regard a man with awed respect, simply because he was Duc et Pair de France, and she often turned longing eyes towards Paris and the intellectual feasts there from which she was now excluded. Her attitude to Versailles is curiously reminiscent of that of Madame de Maintenon who had also found herself cut off from the delights of Paris. But Madame de Pompadour loved her young King much more than Madame de Maintenon had loved her old one.

  She was perfectly happy with him. Often puzzled by his strange nature which she never quite understood and which, she told the Duc de Choiseul, on her death bed, was indéchiffrable (undecipherable), but fascinated and happy. We have only to read the diaries of the day, in which we see her with the King walking, talking and alive, to recognize the unmistakable signs of true love. ‘Put not your trust in princes’ has never been less to the point than in her case, she put her trust in him and he did not fail her. This love affair took its course. After a few years of physical passion on his side it gradually turned into that ideal friendship which can only exist between a man and a woman when there has been a long physical intimacy. There was always love. As in every satisfactory union it was the man who kept the upper hand; Madame de Pompadour was far too strong a character herself, far too clever and downright, to have been happy for long with a man whom she could not respect. She could say exactly what she liked to him, in some ways he spoilt her, but she never ceased to be a little bit in awe of him. She was always terrified of losing him; she strained every nerve to keep up with him in all his activities, he so strong and she so delicate, and in the end it killed her. She had many miscarriages during the first years, which pulled her down and disappointed her, for she naturally longed to have a child with the King. Certainly she never rested enough after them – two days in bed, smelling delicious, is the most we hear of. The King would sup alone, or with one other friend, in her room on these occasions. Then the exhausting life began once more. Seldom in bed before two or three in the morning, she was obliged to be up at eight, dressed as for a ball, to go to Mass in the unheated chapel. For the rest of the day not one moment to herself. She must pay her court to the Queen, the Dauphine and Mesdames, receive a constant succession of visitors, write sometimes as many as sixty letters and arrange and preside over a supper party. At least once a week there would be a voyage of one or two nights, with a house party to entertain, often in a house full of workmen, where improvements or landscape gardening were in progress and needed supervision. It was too much for her.

  ‘Of all the mistresses so far she is the most lovable, and he loves her more than any of the others.’ The Prince de Croÿ, who saw a great deal of them in these early days of their attachment, was a serious, pious young widower. At first he was shocked by this adultery, but rather cynically paid his court to Madame de Pompadour because he wanted to get on in the world. He wanted a great deal, and it is easy to guess, reading between the lines of his invaluable memoirs, that he must have been the Court bore. He could not be in a room with anybody at all influential without buttonholing him and trying to further some affaire of his own. There were the affaires of the grandeeship of Spain; of the Saint Esprit (or Cordon Bleu, so called because of its blue riband, the equivalent of our Garter); of the passe droit, the Prince de Beauvau having been allotted higher precedence, which
literally made poor Croÿ ill with rage and humiliation; of the entrée to the King’s private rooms; of various embassies he would have liked; of military commands and governorships which seemed to be his due; of the marriages of his children. Last but not least he wanted to be made a French duke. We can see only too well how dreadfully tedious he must have been when prosecuting these affaires, many of which went on for years, most of which he gained in the end by wearing everybody down. Madame de Pompadour is often very cold with him; the King gallops off when he comes face to face with him out hunting; Choiseul, who when Minister of State kept open table at Versailles, quickly sits between his own wife and sister when Croÿ presents himself and they chatter away so that the Prince cannot get in a word. Croÿ notes all these facts with ingenuous surprise. He was fond of writing memoranda, and pestered the ministers with screeds on every current subject. He could not even have a chat with Richard, the Irish gardener at Trianon, without sending him a memorandum on evergreens.

  All the same, we cannot help loving him for the precious details with which he acquaints us and for his affectionate nature; he is truly devoted to the King. This priggish young man was soon under the spell of King and Marquise, and indeed they must have been a very attractive pair. Impossible, he says, to be nicer, prettier or more amusing than she, while the King, when at his ease with close friends, was an excellent talker, gay, funny and ready to be amused. Sometimes his shyness closed in on him; if one of his friends had been away for only a few weeks he could hardly say a word and had to begin, as it were, from the beginning. ‘How old are you? How old is your son?’ and so on. Then Madame de Pompadour would come forward and smooth everything over and make it easy for him. They teased each other the whole time, nobody could have had a moment’s doubt as to their relationship; but she was always respectful, there was never a word out of place.

  The King’s supper parties were given for the men who had been out hunting with him that day; anybody who had could apply for an invitation, the King was given the list and chose whom he wanted. The would-be guests must then present themselves at the door of his apartment and an usher read out the names of those who were invited. It was rather a lowering occasion for those who were not. Croÿ applied regularly and was by no means always accepted; once when he was not he says that it was particularly disappointing for him because two friends of his up from the country were standing by as sightseers, and it would have been so agreeable to have gone in while they were watching. Every time he did go, he describes the evening and gives a list of his fellow guests – between eight and twenty in number and always far more men than women.

  30 January, 1747

  We were eighteen, squashed round the table, beginning at my right: Monsieur de Livry, Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, the King, the Comtesse d’Estrades, the Duc d’Ayen, the tall Madame de Brancas, the Comte de Noailles [governor of Versailles], M. de la Suze, le Comte de Coigny, the Comtesse d’Egmont [the Duc de Richelieu’s daughter], M. de Croix, the Marquis de Renel, the Duc de FitzJames, the Duc de Broglie, the Prince de Turenne, M. de Crillon, M. de Voyer d’Argenson. The Maréchal de Saxe was there, but he never has supper so he walked about tasting bits of food, for he is very greedy. The King, who still calls him Comte de Saxe, is very fond of him and he seemed quite at home; Madame de Pompadour is devoted to him.

  We were two hours at supper, free and easy but without any excess. Then the King went into the little salon, where he made the coffee and poured it out; there were no servants and we helped ourselves. He made up a table of Comète with Madame de Pompadour, Coigny, Madame de Brancas and the Comte de Noailles, the King rather enjoyed that sort of little game, but Madame de Pompadour seemed to hate gambling and to be trying to put him off it. The rest of the company, also playing a small game, was at two tables. The King told everybody to sit down, even if they were not playing – I stood leaning on a screen and watching his game. Madame de Pompadour was very sleepy and kept begging him to break up the party; finally, at two o’clock, he got up and said, half under his breath to her, I thought, and very gaily – ‘come on then, let’s go to bed’. The women curtseyed and went out, he bowed and went into his little rooms. The rest of us left by Madame de Pompadour’s staircase and came round through the state rooms to his public coucher which took place at once.

  Croÿ adds that he had a strong impression that beyond these private rooms and this semi-intimacy there were other, smaller, rooms to which only very great friends indeed were admitted.

  8

  Pleasure

  VERSAILLES, IN THE eighteenth century, presented the unedifying but cheerful spectacle of several thousand people living for pleasure and very much enjoying themselves. Pleasure, indeed, had an almost political significance since the nobles, removed from their estates and drugged with useless privilege, had to be kept contented and amused. A state department, Les Menus Plaisirs, was devoted to its promotion, drew upon unlimited funds and was sought after as a profession by promising young men. People in those days approved of pleasure. When the Duc de Nivernais left on his important, difficult mission to London after the Seven Years’ War, he was described as going ‘like Anacreon, crowned with roses and singing of pleasure.’ This was by way of being high praise.

  Nineteenth-century historians, shocked by the contemplation of such a merry, pointless life, have been at great pains to emphasize the boredom from which, they say, the whole Court, and the King himself, suffered. No doubt a life devoted to pleasure must sometimes show the reverse side of the medal, and it is quite true that boredom was the enemy, to be vanquished by fair means or foul. But the memoirs of the day and the accounts of those courtiers who lived through the Revolution and remembered the Ancien Régime, do not suggest that it often got the upper hand; on the contrary they speak, one and all, of a life without worries and without remorse, of a perfectly serene laziness of the spirit, of perpetual youth, of happy days out of doors and happy evenings chatting and gambling in the great wonderful palace, its windows opening wide on the fountains, the forest and the Western sky. If ever a house radiated cheerfulness, that house is Versailles; no other building in the world is such a felicitous combination of palace and country home.

  The four main pastimes were love, gambling, hunting and the official entertainments. Love was played like a game, or like a comedy by Marivaux; it had, of course, nothing to do with marriage. Children, in those days, were married off in their teens, and these little husbands and wives usually grew up to be very fond of each other, sharing the same interests, absorbed in the family and its fortunes. Even if they did not like each other, which was rare, they could generally manage to get on, since good manners demanded that they should; it was quite unusual for a woman to go back to her father or into a convent because she could not bear to live with her husband. She had a lover, he had a mistress; everything was most friendly.

  ‘I allow you every latitude,’ the courtiers used to say to their wives, ‘except footmen and Princes of the Blood.’

  A husband, finding his wife in bed with her lover: ‘Madame! Is this prudent? Supposing somebody else had seen you!’

  Mademoiselle de Richelieu and the Comte de Gisors played together when they were very small, and fell in love. When they were of marriageable age they so desperately wanted to marry each other that various sentimental relations tried to help them; it was a perfectly suitable match. But Gisors, though one of the paragons of that age, enormously rich and son of the powerful Maréchal de Belle-Isle, had bourgeois blood; he was the great-grandson of Fouquet. The Duc de Richelieu would not hear of such a connexion. He refused his consent to the marriage, saying coldly: ‘If they are in love they can find each other in society.’

  The bourgeoisie of Paris did not see things with the same eye. The financier La Popelinière discovered a revolving fireplace in his wife’s bedroom, by which the Duc de Richelieu used to come from the next-door house and visit her. Though she was as brilliant as she was lovely, an ornament to his house and adored by his fr
iends, La Popelinière turned her into the street there and then. She went straight off to the army manœuvres which were going on near Paris, found Maréchaux de Saxe and Lowendal, and persuaded them to take her home and use their influence with her husband. They had just come back from Fontenoy and were at the very height of their glory. But La Popelinière was adamant, his door remained shut. Richelieu gave her a house and an income; she very soon died of cancer. At Versailles such tragedies were unheard of; good manners – bon ton – prevailed in love as in everything else; the game must be played according to the rules.

  Gambling was a more savage pursuit; enormous fortunes were won and lost at the tables and, as in eighteenth-century England, everything was the subject of a bet. At the Queen’s table, where they played the dowdy cavagnole with dice, it was possible to lose 200 louis in an evening; at the King’s table, where piquet and whist were played, 1,000 louis and more often changed hands, a huge sum in those days.