Just as it might be said that Pompadour was able to negotiate the transformation of herself from commoner to favorite with uncommon grace, it can also be said that in bringing a more informal and open manner of expression to Versailles, she foreshadowed what was to be a transformation not only of the court but eventually all of society. Her displays of emotion, her frankness, her loud “forthright” voice, her free laugh, and her familiar language were at odds with standard behavior at Versailles, which according to aristocratic tradition was far more subdued. Ladies only giggled or smothered their laughter and everyone habitually hid or dampened their feelings, even when what was felt was joy. No wonder there was so much intrigue. The atmosphere of constant jockeying for position that surrounds monarchies and indeed every powerful leader was only made more acidic by the fact that anger could not be expressed openly. Hence snide remarks, subtle inferences, small praise, dismissive gestures, indeed every possible form of passive assault characterized the social life of the court.
No wonder that Pompadour’s manner appealed to the king. Often laughing, visibly less calculating, liable to burst out with unpredictable enthusiasm, she must have been like a breath of fresh air to him. The painter François Boucher captured her ebullience well. In portrait after portrait, the spirit that enlivens her rose-cheeked face spills out into the room. Rendered with colors that are vibrant and soft at the same time, her dresses appear less to hang than to ripple, and the same vibrant
energy seems to bless all that surrounds her; whether it is a brocade
curtain, the patterned edge of a chaise-lounge, an elegantly rounded side table, a feathered pen, a clock encased in gold garlands, a compact filled with rouge, the rose pinned to her bodice, a rose at her feet, a rose bush behind her, a statue of a woman holding a child in a garden, a lemon or a beech tree that catches our attention, the eye is dazzled by exuberance.
That Boucher began to paint the marquise when she was still a child seems fitting. She was a good subject for him. There was a strong concordance between her way of being and his way of seeing. Not only did they prefer the same bright pastel colors, they both liked flowers. She was an avid gardener and he embellished canvasses, tapestries, and vases with flowery forms. More significant, they shared a precise time and place in history, positioned between one order and another: the monarchy that was soon to fall and the bourgeois world already on the rise.
You can see the same contradictory directions, resolved into prettiness, in both her life and his art. As frivolous as both the painter and the mistress may seem today, together they invented an ingenuous version of grace, one that allowed them to erase conflicts that otherwise might have erased them. With a single recognizable style, Boucher has painted the grand mythic scenes that belonged to the old order, delicate landscapes, and the more domestic scenes that gently predict a radical shift in values. Similarly, as a young newly married woman, Madame Etioles (as Pompadour was known before her husband was dispatched with an official decree of separation) hosted her own salon, which the philosophes, including Voltaire, attended. For a period even after she was at court, as well as sponsoring Voltaire, she defended the ideas that would one day lead to the Revolution. The lightly congenial manner which allowed her to do so doubtless also made it easier for her eventually to relinquish these ideas, which were not, understandably, as popular at court as they were in Paris.
Yet there was much she did not relinquish. Though she learned proper protocol, she never adopted the rigidly cold manner of court ladies. And just as Boucher included intimate scenes in his repertoire, she retained what was then considered a very bourgeois tone of intimacy with all those who were close to her, including the king. One of the most revealing portraits we have of her, painted by Alexandre Roslin, seems to catch her in a private moment with her brother, the marquis de Marigny. They both wear ornately embroidered silk, she rose and white, he red and gold, and the same mischievous half smile adorns both faces as if the two siblings had been interrupted in the midst of a game. Marigny, who inherited his title from his father (to whom it was given for obvious reasons by the king), holds an architectural model and a compass, while Pompadour holds a box of jewelry. Though Marigny’s model was most probably made to simulate a monumental project they were designing together, the effect of the whole scene, their almost winking expressions, the tea service on the desk between them already used, is informal in an almost modern way.
The air of casual comfort which the marquise exuded must have provided a balm for Louis XV. An intensely private man for a king, he had lost his whole family practically in the space of a week when his mother, father, and brother died suddenly of diphtheria. It is said he was saved simply because his nurse would not allow the doctors, whom she rightly distrusted, to treat him. Growing up unprotected by either a mother or a father in the forbidding court of his great- grandfather Louis XIV cannot have been easy, either. And to make matters worse, after Louis XIV died, there were rumors that the regent, his great-uncle, Philippe d’Orléans, duc de Chartres, had plotted to poison him. Though the rumors were untrue—the regent was always kind to him and the young Louis grew to love him—he was surrounded by those who believed what had been said and cautioned him to be even less revealing than was usual at court.
Now here was Pompadour, who adored him and had stolen his heart, acting in a more intimate manner than anyone dreamed possible at Versailles. When she used affectionate nicknames for the members of her family, it shocked other members of the court; but Louis laughed whenever he heard her call her brother “ Frèrot” and soon adopted silly nicknames for his daughters, calling Madame Adelaide “Locque” as in “rag,” for instance, and Madame Victorie “Coche” as in “ Coach.”
Would Pompadour’s graciousness have led her to alter her habit of familiarity had the king disliked it? Above all else, she wanted to please him. But this question cannot be answered, if only because it betrays an ignorance of the nature of what passes between lovers who are, as Louis and Pompadour were supposed to be, meant for each other. Each one’s idiosyncrasies, as well as virtues, are aligned fortuitously with the other’s needs and desires. Thus, even being in the presence of the beloved is a delightful gift. And in the case of Pompadour, who wanted to give more than carnal pleasures to her lover, this alignment allowed her to perceive and respond to the king’s needs, at times even before he himself knew what he lacked.
She would, for instance, watch his complexion carefully. Whenever his face grew liverish and yellow, she knew that he was bored. Boredom had to be a serious condition for him. Confined for years to his nursery, he would have associated dullness with the loss of his parents, as well as the danger that reputedly surrounded him. Whenever Pompadour saw this color arise, she was on alert to divert him. Here, too, the lovers’ propensities were aligned. She read widely and loved the theatre, painting, and architecture. Though among these literature was the only interest Louis did not share with her, he benefited greatly from what she read. Her library included a wide range of material, everything from history to Voltaire’s philosophy to Racine’s plays to paragraphs culled by censors from the court’s mail to the police reports that were the equivalent of tabloids today. After her death, her brother Marigny sold her library, which contained at her death 3, 525 volumes. (He withheld only one book from the sale, Représentations de M. de Lt. Général de Police de Paris sur les Courtisanes à la Mode et les Demoiselles de Bon Ton par une Demoiselle de Bon Ton.) She could recite whole speeches from a number of plays she knew by heart, and told Louis tidbits gleaned from less elevated sources with great comedic skill. She was known to be funny.
Let us recall that since those who make us laugh tread a thin line, perilously close to what might offend, humor requires a certain gracefulness. And the other meaning of grace, which is generosity, plays an important role in this respect, too. Witty remarks which proceed from a generous nature are more likely to be well poised, balanced carefully between kindness and candor. The wish is to tell the trut
h without wounding, or at least without inflicting a wound that is too grave.
Which calls to mind the fact that Pompadour was not always allowed to be funny. Understandably, given the losses Louis suffered during his childhood, he was subject to morbid moods, periods when he brooded on death, which might be sparked off by the slightest stimulus, even the sight of a cemetery from the window of the royal coach as the lovers traveled through the countryside. We can only guess that Pompadour must have tried to divert him from this preoccupation because eventually she was forbidden to try to make the king laugh on the occasions when he was dominated by such a mood. To have the patience to allow her lover to retain his gloominess would be hard for a woman who was by nature giving; yet clearly Pompadour was capable even of this.
Pompadour’s generous nature, which above all she aimed at the king, may explain why Louis was known to open his purse strings more graciously with her than anyone else at his court. The gifts that she gave him in return were more than token; it was not only because she understood his nature but because she possessed considerable skills of all kinds that she was able to amuse him so successfully. Using the men and women of the court who had talent as actors or dancers, altogether she organized 122 performances of 61 different plays. And since she herself had been trained to act and sing by teachers from the Comédie-Française, more often than not she also played the major female parts. Once, she even took on the leading masculine role. It was after seeing Pompadour perform the role of the prince in The Prince de Noisy that Louis leaped onto the stage and embraced her, saying, “You are the most delicious woman in France.”
Because of her theatrical success, plans for a theatre to be built at Versailles were drawn up. Though it was only finished after her death, during the rest of her life, all of which she lived at Versailles, she and the king had many conferences with the architect, the famous Gabriel, over the design. One of the activities that usually proved to keep the king from turning yellow was architecture. He loved to watch buildings as they went up and rooms as they were decorated, redecorated, and then decorated all over again. His interest started young, and perhaps it was also connected to loss. Soon after Louis lost his immediate family, the regent moved the seat of government to Paris, taking the young king with him to the Tuileries Palace. By the time the court returned, Louis was fourteen years old, and so enamored of Versailles that he spent days wandering around the property admiring its architecture and Lenôtre’s famous gardens. History has bequeathed us a legendary scene of the young king lying for hours on the floor of the Hall of Mirrors while he focused his attention on the ceiling.
Louis and Pompadour spent a great deal of time making the rounds between one royal palace or another, as well as visiting the many houses that Pompadour had steadily acquired during her reign. Thus, in addition to her hand in the constant building at Versailles, she supervised the redecorations at Fontainebleau, Choisy, and Marly, and she also spent considerable time supervising work at her own houses—among them, the Hermitage at Versailles, her house at Crècy, a house called Montretout, another called La Celle, as well as Province, Bellevue, and the Hôtel d’Evreux, which would one day become the Palais Elysée (currently the official residence for all the presidents of France). She embellished each house with great care, arranging for fifty orange trees here, painted decorations by Loo there; a series of painting by Boucher linked together with garlands of wood carved by Verberckt adorned one room at Bellevue; walls of white and gold or bright pastel enamel in colors invented by the Martin family were everywhere; and all her houses were well ornamented by objects that she chose or even commissioned, an ormolu lantern decorated with flowers of Vincennes china, screens of amaranthus wood, Dresden candlesticks, a dovecote on a column. The list is very long. After her death, it took lawyers one year simply to make an inventory.
The public, understandably angry at the expense, complained. As did various ministers at court, especially Maurepas, who blamed the naval defeats he commanded on expenditures, the cost of which he implied should have gone to buy battleships. But the marquise’s appetite mirrored Louis’ need for divertissement and so the incessant building continued.
As for what remains from this period of decadence, we can only be grateful, for we have all inherited it. There is, to begin with, the simple matter of a patronage that produced so much. Pompadour was generous in her support of the arts, giving a sinecure to Voltaire at Versailles, and continuing his pension even after, feeling spurned by the king, he wrote verses maligning her; sponsoring a play by Crébillon and making certain not only that it was performed at the Comédie-Française, but that it was a success there. By the time of her death she owned hundreds of paintings, all of which had been paid for, a fact which many in the royal family and the aristocracy could not claim. Perhaps the years when she was young and her father was out of the country, a time during which she and her mother lived in poverty, gave her a sensitivity to the material needs of artists that those who are born to abundance sometimes lack.
In this she had combined two attributes of the Graces, the ability of the muse to inspire art and the generosity to support it. In addition to many other artists, she made certain that Boucher, her own official painter, was well housed and fed while suggesting projects to him and winning him many commissions. At her request, the king established the now famous factory at Sèvres for the production of porcelain vases and china for which Boucher produced many designs. And through her brother Marigny, who by her influence with the king had been made the Superintendent de Bâtiments (or as we would say it today, Beaux-Arts), she saw that Boucher was appointed director of design for the manufacture of Gobelins tapestries.
Working with her brother again, she initiated and supervised many of the monuments that characterize the city of Paris as we know it today, which would hardly be the same without the restoration of the Louvre, or the building of the Ecole Militaire, or Gabriel’s designs for the Place de la Concorde and Soufflot’s for the Panthéon. And though she died before its completion, it was her vision that gave us one of the prettier buildings at Versailles, the Petit Trianon.
By the light of this legacy, we can perhaps see that within Pompadour’s understanding of her lover lies an understanding of human nature. A nature that responds well to what she left us, hungering not only for the bread but for the grace, too, that is our common birthright.
KLONDIKE KATE
Satiety
(THE SIXTH EROTIC STATION)
NOW THAT HE’S flush and has his own rooms and his own claw-footed tub, he can bathe to his heart’s content, before he puts on the shirt he paid to have starched and ironed, and the shiny leather shoes and new wool suit he bought for himself on his last trip to San Francisco. He wants to look his best when he goes to the Palace Grand Theater. He’s been planning this night for months, ever since his claim came in. Though he’s seen it a hundred times, he does not want to be late for Kate’s show. But even so, just as he starts to leave, when he notices a bit of dirt under his thumbnail, he stops to scrub it out. Although she has never complained at all about his grubby appearance whenever he came in tired from the digs and sat drinking with her, she might feel differently now that she is going to take him upstairs.
He is glad to see the show again because it gives him time to anticipate and dream, to build up to a private finale. Though he doesn’t fool himself. She has to have known for a while how much he thinks of her, and yet, kind as she always was when he told her all his troubles, he knows she has another regular man, more sophisticated, more of her world. As one more time he watches the extraordinary grace with which she dances, all that gauzy fabric whirling around her, his longing has a different quality now that he knows his desire will soon be met.
He stays in the back of the theatre almost shyly until he sees her nod, and then, looking at the gold watch he has recently bought for himself, he waits for fifteen minutes, just like she told him, before he heads up the stairs toward her sanctuary. The room is as he imagi
ned it, only being real and right there before his eyes—something he can touch and feel and smell— even better. The walls are red and gold; the red bedspread matches the walls, and all the littler things, the picture frames, the vases, the satin-covered chair, show her knowledge of fine things, a knowledge he hopes to have someday for himself. And the way she invites him in is fine, too, making him comfortable and yet at the same time giving him the sense that everything she does is a cut above the ordinary.
What a sense of satisfaction he feels now as slowly she lays her lovely robe over the bedpost. And while he moves across the room to her he marvels at the fine lingerie she is wearing, which she tells him came all the way from France. All the refinement of the room seems to be in her body, the way her skin feels against his. And she amazes him in still other ways. Perhaps he should have guessed at the skills she had. After all, he said to himself when he reflected on it later, anyone who can keep two hundred yards of chiffon flying above her head ought to be able to elevate just about anything. She can tease weight itself past gravity, he thought. But it is not just the mechanics of what she does that has impressed him. He has all he longed for now, even what he never quite understood before that he wanted. It is not just that she had made him happy. He is laughing to find himself lighter than air. And she has given him a deeper pleasure, too; as if reaching into the center of who he is, she has mined the gold that was deep inside.
The Book of the Courtesans Page 19