by Hilton, Lisa
THE KING THE QUEEN STOOL STOOL STOOL STANDING STANDING BEFORE THE KING STOOL BEFORE THE QUEEN STOOL STANDING STANDING STANDING
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF FRANCE ARMCHAIR STOOL STOOL STANDING BEFORE SONS STOOL BEFORE DAUGHTERS STOOL STOOL STANDING STANDING STANDING
GRAND- CHILDREN OF FRANCE ARMCHAIR CHAIR CHAIR CHAIR CHAIR STOOL STOOL STANDING
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES OF THE BLOOD ARMCHAIR ARMCHAIR ARMCHAIR ARMCHAIR ARMCHAIR SEATED SEATED
This table is drawn from Henri Brocher’s Le Rang et l’Etiquette sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1934), p. 28. How do the horizontal categories conduct themselves in the presence of the vertical? The table indicates the solutions, at least at Versailles. For example, a cardinal had to stand before the King, but could have a chair before a grandchild of France and an armchair before a prince of the blood. (Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie, Saint-Simon ou la Système de la Cour, Paris, 1997.)
Acknowledgments
Ishould like to thank Professor Anthony Nuttall of New College, Oxford, for his excellent advice, without which this book would never have been attempted. Many thanks, too, to Michael Alcock, at Michael Alcock Management, for endless encouragement and faith in the book. Alan Samson at Time Warner Books has been equally kind, and I am very grateful, as I am to my editor, Caroline North, whose patience and diligence have been so overwhelming that any remaining errors in the book are entirely mine. Linda Silverman was wonderful at tracking down pictures from all over Europe. Kinch Hoekstra, of Balliol College, was also kind enough to provide some obscure material: thanks for easing the tension. Without the scrupulous and dedicated attention of Asya Muchnick, this book might have proved as exasperatingly elusive as its subject. I am extremely grateful for her scholarly discernment. Thanks to Jack Murnighan, for Florence. Most of all, I would like to thank Dominique de Bastarrechea, for more inspiration, goodness and delight than I or this book can ever deserve.
Notes
GENERAL SOURCES
As certain sources have been quoted extensively, to avoid unnecessary repetition, these are not listed separately in the notes. Unless otherwise noted, Madame de Sévigné’s correspondence is quoted from Correspondance, edited by Roger Duchêne (Paris, 1978) and Lettres, edited by Louis Jean Nicolas Monmerqué (Paris, 1866).The memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon are Lucy Norton’s translation (London, 1967). Quotations from Bussy-Rabutin are from Correspondance avec Sa Famille et Ses Amis, edited by Ludovic Lalanne (Paris, 1858).
For Mme. de Maintenon (Mme. Scarron), the definitive source is the Correspondance Générale, edited by Théophile Lavallée (Paris, 1865). Quotations from Mademoiselle, Duchesse de Montpensier, are from the Mémoires edited by Christian Bouyer (Paris, 1985), while Mme. de Caylus is quoted from her Souvenirs, edited by Bernard Noël (Paris, 1965). Unless otherwise sourced, the quotations from Louis XIV are taken from his memoirs as edited by Jean Longnon (Paris, 1978). Primi Visconti is quoted from Mémoires sur la Cour de France, edited by Jean Lemoine (Paris, 1909). The correspondence of Madame, the second Duchesse d’Orléans (the Princess Palatine) comes from Correspondance, edited by Olivier Amiel (Paris, 1985).
Full details of these and other texts cited in the Notes may be found in the Bibliography.
EPIGRAPHS
The epigraphs that open each chapter are taken from the Maxims of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld.
POEMS
I do not pretend to be a literary translator, but except where translations are otherwise credited, I have tried to render the meaning of the poems I have quoted and, where I was capable, their rhyme and meter.
A NOTE ON CURRENCY
The basic unit of money at Louis XIV’s court was the livre. There were 3 livres to 1 ecu, and 10 livres to one pistole, which was equal in value to a louis d’or. Three livres were roughly equivalent to $15 in today’s money. So, for example, Marly, which cost 4.5 million livres to build, would have cost about $22.5 million in today’s money. However, the purchasing power of the livre of course fluctuated widely during Louis’s reign.
ON PRONUNCIATION
Athénaïs is pronounced A-ten´-ay-EES.
CHAPTER ONE
1. Primi Visconti. See General Sources above.
2. Be limping, fifteen, witless
Ill-born, brainless, titless
Have your children
In a back room
You’ll have the best of lovers on my faith
And La Vallière is the proof.
3. Cronin, Louis XIV, p. 70.
4. Mongrédien, Madeleine de Scudéry, p. 164.
5. Diderot and D’Alembert, “Article adultère,” in Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonnée des sciences, des arts et des métiers, p. 128.
6. Melchior-Bonnet and De Tocqueville, Histoire de l’Adultère.
7. Quoted by Dulong in Le Mariage du Roi Soleil.
8. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
9. Comtesse de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves, p. 46.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Mme. de Caylus. See General Sources.
2. Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV.
3. Duc de Saint-Simon. See General Sources.
4. Mitford, The Sun King, p. 45.
5. Cronin, Louis XIV, p. 33.
6. Mongrédien, Madeleine de Scudéry, p. 164.
7. Martine Sonnet, “A Daughter to Educate,” trans. Arthur Gold-hammer in A History of Women in the West, ed. Davis and Farge, p. 122.
8. Mme. de Sévigné. See General Sources.
9. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 203.
10. Madame. See General Sources.
11. Mercure Galant, 1660.
12. Quoted in Memoirs of Madame de Montespan (London, 1754).
13. Cousin, “Clef inédite du Grand Cyrus.”
14. Leonard Tancock, “Introduction,” in Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims, p. 12.
15. George Eliot, “Women in France: Madame de Sablé,” in Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 9.
16. Tancock, “Introduction,” in Maxims.
17. Jean-Paul Desaive, “The Ambiguities of Literature,” trans. Arthur Goldhammer in A History of Women in the West, ed. Davis and Farge, p. 264.
18. Lougée, Le Paradis des Femmes, p. 25.
19. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 86.
20. Lougée, Le Paradis des Femmes, p. 192.
21. Mortemart, old fellow,
Loves La Tambonneau
She’s a little yellow
But he’s an ugly beau.
22. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan, p. 10.
23. Anonymous, Alosie, ou les Amours de M.T.P.
24. Magne, Ninon de Lanclos.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
2. And on my faith you will have the best of lovers.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Mademoiselle. See General Sources.
2. Marquis de La Fare, Mémoires et réflexions sur les principaux évènements du règne de Louis XIV.
3. Tooth and nail.
4. Madame, quoted by Mademoiselle. See General Sources.
5. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan, p. 42.
6. Primi Visconti.
7. Truc, Madame de Montespan, p. 163.
8. Ibid., p. 171.
9. Poucher, Les Trois Grands Divertissements de Versailles.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Blunt, Art et Architecture en France. For a discussion of Versailles and the theory of the baroque, see pp. 130–142, 302–311.
2. Sharing with Jupiter
Has naught of dishonor
And doubtless it can only be glorious
With the King of the Gods to be rivalrous.
3. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
4. Mme. de Caylus.
5. When Mortemart perceived
Montespan had conceived
He sang with his theorba,
“Alleluia.”
A theorba is an obsolete form of lute.
6. Mademoiselle.
CHAPT
ER SIX
1. Quoted in Michel de Decker, Louis XIV, p. 119.
2. Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV.
3. Memoirs of Madame de Montespan (London, 1754).
4. Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV.
5. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
6. Mitford, The Sun King, p. 55.
7. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
8. Mademoiselle.
9. Madame.
10. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 61.
11. Ibid., p. 63.
12. Marquis de Saint-Maurice, Lettres sur la Cour de Louis XIV.
13. Ibid.
14. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 116.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Charlie Steen, chapter 4 in The Reign of Louis XIV, ed. Sonnino.
2. Ibid.
3. Saint-Simon.
4. Mme. de Maintenon. See General Sources.
5. Mme. de Lafayette, quoted by Mme. de Sévigné. See General Sources.
6. With regard to the names of Athénaïs de Montespan’s children by Louis XIV, to avoid confusion, I refer to them by the titles which they were eventually given, e.g., the Duc du Maine. However, their titles were not officially bestowed until the children had been formally legitimated, though they were used prior to the conclusion of the legitimization process.
7. Quoted in Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
8. Mme. de Maintenon.
9. The quotation is widely attributed to Ninon de Lenclos.
10. Saint-Simon.
11. Mme. de Maintenon.
12. Bossuet, Oeuvres et Correspondance.
13. Mme. de Sévigné.
14. Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
2. Ibid.
3. Mme. de Caylus.
4. Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
5. Quoted in Beaussant, Louis XIV, Artiste.
6. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
7. Attributed in numerous works to Abbé Testu.
8. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
9. Ibid.
10. Quoted in Dunlop, Louis XIV, p. 217.
11. Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
12. Colbert, in a 1671 letter to the Duc de Chaulnes, then Ambassador of Rome.
13. Time, which destroys all, respecting your power,
Allows me to clear the years of this work,
Every poet who yet wishes to be immortal,
Must acquire your approbation.
There is no beauty in my writings,
Of which you do not know the least traces,
Oh! Who knows like you the beauties and the graces,
Words and looks, all is charm in you.
14. Hoffmann, Society of Pleasures, p. 58.
15. Letter to the Comte d’Olonne, 1656, quoted in Recueil de Textes Littéraires Français, XVIIe Siècle, eds. Chassang and Senninger, p. 49.
16. Williams, Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV.
CHAPTER NINE
1. This anecdote is mentioned in many sources, and the case is discussed in detail in Guitton, “Cas de Conscience pour un Confesseur du Roi: Madame de Montespan,” in Nouvelle Revue Theologique (Louvain, 1955).
2. Mme. de Maintenon.
3. Couton, La Chair et L’Ame.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
CHAPTER TEN
1. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 165.
2. Ibid., p. 194.
3. Ibid., p. 215.
4. Roche, La Culture des Apparences, p. 59.
5. Berthelée, Inventaire des Documents des Archives Municipales de Mont-pellier.
6. Mitford, The Sun King, p. 64.
7. Lewis, The Splendid Century, p. 41.
8. E. Bergler, The Psychology of Gambling (New York, 1958), quoted in Dunkley, Gambling: A Social and Moral Problem in France 1685–1792, pp. 5–6.
9. Quoted in Petitfils, Madame de Montespan.
10. Mme. de Sévigné.
11. Ibid.
12. The one limps and walks with a cane
The other is strong and rotund
The one is thin to the furthest point The other bursts with embonpoint.
13. This study is quoted in Roche, La Culture des Apparences.
14. Mitford, The Sun King, p. 58.
15. Capefigue, “La Marquise de Montespan.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. The chambre des filles was distinct from the formal posts of dames d’honneur and dames d’atour given to noblewomen who attended on the Queen and other female members of the royal household. It referred particularly to the young unmarried women who attended on Madame, the wife of Monsieur, but also included young women who attended court, hoping to make their way in society and, aided by their families, to find a suitable husband.
2. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 209.
3. La Vallière was common,
La Montespan a peeress
La Ludres was a canoness,
All three were all for one.
It is the greatest of potentates
Who assembles all estates.
The joke here is that Louis’s choice of mistresses represents all three estates — Church, aristocracy and commoners — the divisions of French society from which its parliaments were drawn.
4. The Duchesse de Valentinois, Diane de Poitiers, was the famously imperious and avaricious mistress of Henri II.
5. Quoted in Richardt, Le Soleil du Grand Siècle.
6. Truc, Madame de Montespan.
7. Ibid.
8. The Duc du Maine’s letters are discussed in Hastier, Vieilles Histoires, Etranges Enigmes, pp. 39–49. The existence of the little book is not mentioned by either Saint-Simon or Mme. de Sévigné, and there is a degree of controversy as to its authorship. Most people assume that it was dictated by La Maintenon, but Louis Racine claimed that his father, the great writer Jean Racine, was responsible.
9. Pevitt, The Man Who Would Be King, p. 249.
10. Lewis, The Splendid Century, p. 244.
11. Abbé de Choisy, Mémoires.
12. This pun on the Marquise’s name renders it as “Madame Now” or, as we might put it, the woman of the moment.
13. Bussy-Rabutin. See General Sources.
14. From a contemporary pamphlet entitled Le Passe Temps Royal, ou, Les Amours de Mlle de Fontanges (The Royal Pastime, or the Loves of Mlle. de Fontanges).
The first French newspaper, Renaudot’s Gazette was founded in 1638 and was soon followed by the Mercure Français and the Mercure Galant. Since the press was censored, these newspapers tended to be rather innocuous in their references to the court, focusing on politely gossipy stories about high society. To cater to more lurid tastes, a burgeoning pamphlet industry provided information about politics, wars, the Church and criminal or sexual scandals, often with woodcut illustrations. Since the pamphlets were produced irregularly and often anonymously, they were harder to trace and were therefore far more satirical and disrespectful in tone than the mainstream press. As a gesture of caution, well-known figures were disguised with pseudonyms, just as Madame de Sévigné disguised the characters in her letters, but these aliases were so flimsy that the real identity of the subjects was usually obvious. It is suggested that one of the reasons Louis was so exigent in his demands to the Dutch after their defeat in the wars was his outrage at the portraits of him produced in the pamphlet press.
15. Charming object, gift worthy of the skies
Your beauty comes from the hand of the Gods And is it not an image of Parnassus
You shall see in the story I trace
Since my verses present so much grace
That to be offered to the tamer of humans
Accompanied by a word from your mouth
And presented by your divine hands.
16. Chaise de commodité literally means “chair of convenience,” i.e., a lavatory.
17. Once at the court I was viewed as an equal,
Mistress of my King, I defied a rival,
Never did favor take such swift leave
Never was fortune so swift destroyed,
Oh, that distance is short
From the home of the court to the horror of the grave.
18. Quoted in Davet, Mademoiselle de Fontanges.
CHAPTER TWELVE
All quotations in this chapter relating to La Reynie’s investigation of the Affair of the Poisons are taken from Ravaisson, Archives de Bastille, t. IV à t. VII.
1. This English translation of La Fontaine’s riddle is taken from Mossiker, The Affair of the Poisons.
2. Davis and Farge, A History of Women in the West.
3. Mme. de Sévigné, Selected Letters, p. 196.
4. Quoted in Niderst, Les Français Vus par Eux-Mêmes.
5. Cited in Lebigre, L’Affaire des Poisons.
6. Mme. de Sévigné.
7. The Duchesse de Bouillon’s cheeky remarks were quoted with delight by many contemporary commentators, including Mme. de Sévigné, though it is suggested that the duchess polished them for posterity after her interrogation.
8. Petitfils, L’Affaire des Poisons.
9. Briggs, Communities of Belief.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Keith Thomas observes in Religion and the Decline of Magic that “acceptable evidence for the literal reality of ritual devil-worship, whether in England or on the Continent, is extremely scanty.” One of the principal discussions of Madame de Montespan’s involvement in black magic occurs in Francis Mossiker’s The Affair of the Poisons. Mossiker’s interpretation of witchcraft practices in seventeenth-century France is based on Margaret Murray’s elaboration of the story of the pre-Christian witch cult suggested by Jacob Grimm in Deutsche Mythologie (1835), and yet the conclusions Murray drew from this were almost totally groundless. It is extraordinary that so many writers seem to have accepted such evidence as proof that the Black Mass occurred, let alone that Madame de Montespan was involved in it, when most historians of the subject concur that the evidence is dubious.
13. Quoted in Louis XIV, Oeuvres.
14. Mme. de Caylus.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. Mme. de Sévigné.
2. From “The Diary of Samuel Pepys,” 13 January 1662. Quoted in Stephen Coote, Samuel Pepys: A Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000), p. 85.
3. Mme. de Maintenon.