The Life of Marie Antoinette

by Charles Duke Yonge

  It was not till Christmas that the royal family went out of mourning; but, as soon as it was left off, the court returned to its accustomed gayety- balls, concerts, and private theatricals occupying the evenings; though the people remarked with undisguised satisfaction that the expenses of former years had been greatly retrenched. It was also noticed that many foreigners of distinction, and especially some English ladies of high rank, gladly accepted invitations to the balls, which they certainly would not have done while their presence was likely to bring them into contact with Madame du Barri. Lady Ailesbury is especially mentioned as having been received with marked distinction by the queen, and also by the king, who was careful to show his approval of her entertainments by the share which he took in them; and, as he paraded the saloons arm-in-arm with her, to distinguish those whom she noticed, so that, to quote the words of one of the most lively chroniclers of the day, their example seemed to be fast bringing conjugal love and fidelity into fashion. She even persuaded him to depart still further from his usual reserve, so as to appear in costume at more than one fancy ball; the dress which he chose being that of the only predecessor of his own house whom he could in any point have desired to resemble, Henry IV. He had already been indirectly compared to that monarch, the first Bourbon king, by the ingenious flattery of a print- *seller. In the long list of sovereigns who had reigned over France in the five hundred years which had passed by since the warrior-saint of the Crusades had laid down his life on the sands of Tunis, there had been but two to whom their countrymen could look back with affection or respect- Louis XII., to whom his subjects had given the title of The Good, and Henry, to whom more than one memorial still preserved the surname of The Great. And the courtly picture-dealer, eager to make his market of the gratitude with which his fellow-citizens greeted the reforms with which the reigning sovereign had already inaugurated his reign, contrived to extract a compliment to him even out of the severe prose of the multiplication-table; publishing a joint portrait of the three kings, Louis XII., Henry IV., and Louis XVI., with an inscription beneath to testify that 12 and 4 made 16.

  In the spring of 1775, Marie Antoinette received a great pleasure in a visit from her younger brother, Maximilian. He was the only member of her family whom she had seen in the five years that had elapsed since she left Vienna. But, eagerly as she had looked forward to his visit, it did not bring her unmixed satisfaction, being marred by the ill-breeding of the princes of the blood, and still more by the approval of their conduct displayed by the citizens of Paris, which seemed to afford a convincing evidence of the small effect which even the queen's virtues and graces had produced in softening the old national feeling of enmity to the house of Austria. The archduke, who was still but a youth, did not assert his royal rank while on his travels, but preserved such an incognito as princes on such occasions are wont to assume, and took the title of Count de Burgau. The king's brothers, however, like the king himself, paid no regard to his disguise, but visited him at the first instant of his arrival; but the princes of the blood stood on their dignity, refused to acknowledge a rank which was not publicly avowed, or to recollect that the visitor was a foreigner and brother to their queen, and insisted on receiving the attention of the first visit from him. The excitement which the question caused in the palace, and the queen's indignation at the slight thus offered, as she conceived, to her brother, were great. High words passed between her and the Duc d'Orleans, the chief of the recusants, on the subject; and one part of her remonstrance throws a curious additional light on the strange distance which, as has been already pointed out, the etiquette of the French court had established between the sovereigns and the very highest of their subjects, even the nearest of their relations. The duke had insisted on the incognito as debarring Maximilian from all claim to attention from a prince like himself whose rank was not concealed. She urged that the king and his brothers had not regarded it in that light. "The duke knew," she said, "that the king had treated Maximilian as a brother; that he even invited him to sup in private with himself and her, an honor to which no prince of the blood had ever pretended." And, finally, warming with her subject, she told him that, though her brother would be sorry not to make the acquaintance of the princes of the blood, he had many other things in Paris to see, and would manage to do without it.[2] Her expostulation was fruitless. The princes adhered to their resolution, and she to hers. They were not admitted to any of the festivities of the palace during the archduke's stay, and were even excluded from all the private entertainments which were given in his honor, since she made it known that the king and she would refuse to attend any to which they were invited. But, though their conduct was surely both discourteous to a foreigner and disrespectful to their sovereign, the Parisian populace took their part; and some of them who showed themselves ostentatiously in the streets of the city on days on which there were parties at Versailles were loudly applauded by a crowd which was not entirely drawn from the lower classes. It was noticed that the Duc de Chartres, the son of the Duc d'Orleans, was one of the foremost in exciting this anti-Austrian feeling, the outbreak of which was especially remarkable as the first instance in which the enthusiasm of the citizens for Marie Antoinette seemed to have cooled, or at least to have been interrupted. And this change in their feelings produced so painful an impression on her mind, that, after her brother's departure, she abandoned her intention of going to the opera, though Gluck's "Orfeo" was to be performed, lest she should meet with a reception less cordial than that to which she had hitherto been accustomed.

  This ebullition against the house of Austria, however, was at the moment dictated rather by discontent with the Home Government than by any settled feeling on the subject of foreign politics. Corn had been at a rather high price in Paris and its neighborhood throughout the winter; and the dearness was taken advantage of by the enemies of Turgot, and employed by them as an argument to prove the impolicy of his measures to introduce freedom of trade. They even organized[3] formidable riots at Paris and Versailles, which, however, Turgot, whose resolution was equal to his capacity, prevailed on the king to repress by acts of vigor very unusual to him, and very foreign to his disposition. The troops were called out; the Parliament was summoned to a Bed of Justice, and enjoined to put the law in force against the guilty; two of the most violent revolters were executed; order was restored, and the wholly factitious character of the outbreak was proved by the tranquillity which ensued, though the price of bread remained unaltered till the commencement of the harvest, the citizens themselves presently making a jest of their sedition, and nicknaming it The War of the Grains.[4]

  In France, one excitement soon drives out another, and the whole attention of the nation was now fixed on the coronation, which had been appointed to take place in June. After some discussion, it had been settled that Louis should be crowned alone. There had not been many precedents for the coronation of a queen in France; and the last instance, that of Marie de Medicis, as having been followed by the assassination of her husband, was regarded by many as a bad omen. If Marie Antoinette had herself expressed any wish to be her husband's partner in the solemnity, it would certainly have been complied with, and their subsequent fate would have been regarded as a confirmation of the evil augury. But she was indifferent on the subject, and quite contented to behold it as a spectator. It took place on Sunday, the 11th of June, in the grand Cathedral at Rheims. The progress of the royal family, which had quit Versailles for that city on the preceding Monday, had resembled a triumphant procession, so enthusiastic had been the acclamations which had greeted the king and queen at each town through which they had passed; and all the previous displays of joy were outdone by the demonstrations afforded by the citizens of Rheims itself. It was midnight, on the 8th of June, when the queen reached the gates; but the road outside and the streets inside were thronged with a crowd as dense as midday could have produced, which followed her to the archbishop's palace, making the whole city resound with their loyal cheers; and which, the
next morning, awaited her coming-forth after holding a grand reception of all the nobles of the province, to meet the king when he made his solemn entry in the afternoon. The ceremony in the cathedral was one of great magnificence; but, in the account of the day which, after her return to Versailles, she wrote to her mother, she does not enter into details, as being necessarily known to the empress in their general character; confining herself rather to a description of the impression which the manifest cordiality with which the whole people had entered into the spirit of the solemnity had made upon her own mind and heart.[5]

  "The coronation was perfect in every respect. It was made plain that every one was highly delighted with the king, and so he deserves that all his subjects should be. Great and small, all displayed the greatest interest in him; and at the moment of placing the crown on his head the ceremonies of the church were interrupted by the most touching acclamations. I could not restrain myself; my tears flowed in spite of all my efforts, and the people were pleased to see them. During the whole time of our journey I did my best to correspond to the earnestness of the people; and although the heat was great, and the crowd immense, I do not regret my fatigue, which, moreover, has not injured my health. It is a very astonishing circumstance, but at the same time a very pleasant one, to be so well received only two months after the revolt, and in spite of the high price of bread, which unhappily still continues. It is a strange peculiarity in the French character to allow themselves to be so easily led away by mischievous suggestions, and then immediately to return to good behavior. It is very certain that when we see people, even in times of distress, treating us so well, we are the more bound to labor for their happiness. The king seems to me penetrated with this truth. As for me, I feel that all my life, even if I were to live a hundred years, I shall never forget the coronation day."

  But all the tumultuous pomp and exultation only made her return with renewed pleasure to her quiet retreat of the Trianon, which, with the assistance of the illustrious Buffon, then superintendent of the king's gardens, and of Bernard de Jussieu, Director of the Jardin des Plantes, and celebrated as one of the first botanists of Europe, she was laying out with a delicate taste that long rendered it one of the chief attractions to all the inhabitants of the district. For the sentiment which she expressed in the letter to the empress, which has just been quoted, was not the mere formal utterance of a barren philanthropy, but was dictated and carried out by an active benevolence. She felt in her inmost heart the duty which she there professed, of exerting herself to promote the happiness of the people, and was far too unselfish to desire to keep to herself the whole of the delight her gardens were calculated to afford. The Trianon was a possession exactly calculated to gratify her taste for innocent rural pleasure. As she said herself, at Versailles she was a queen; here she was a plain country lady, superintending not only her flowers, but her farm-yard and her dairy, taking pride in her stock and her produce. She would invite the king and the rest of the royal family to garden parties, where, at a table set out under a bower of honeysuckle, she would pour out their coffee with her own hands, boasting of the thickness of her cream, the freshness of her eggs, the ruddiness and flavor of her strawberries, as so many proofs of her skill in managing her establishment; and would not fear to shock her aunts by tempting one of her sisters-in-law to a game at ball, or battledoor and shuttlecock. But she probably enjoyed still more the power of gratifying the inhabitants of Versailles and the neighborhood. The moment that her improvements were completed, she opened the gardens to the public to walk in, and gave out-of-door parties and children's dances, to which all the inhabitants of Versailles who presented themselves in decent apparel were admitted. She would even open the dance herself with some well-conducted boy, and afterward stroll among the crowd, talking affably to all the company, even to the governesses and nurses, and delighting the parents with the interest which she exhibited in the characters, the growth, and even the names of the children.

  There were some who, startled at the unwonted sight of a sovereign so treating her subjects as fellow-creatures, confessed a fear that such familiarity was not without its dangers;[6] but the objects of her condescension worshiped her for it; and for a time at least the great majority of the nation forgot that she was Austrian. She was now nearly twenty years of age. Her form had developed into a rare perfection of elegance. Her features had added to the original brilliancy of her girlish loveliness something of that higher beauty which judgment and sagacity inspire, and which dignity renders only the more imposing; while the same benevolence and purity beamed in every look which were remarked as her most sterling characteristics on her first arrival in the country. And it is not to her French or German admirers alone that we are reduced to trust for the impression which at this time she made on all beholders. We have seen that English gentlemen and ladies of rank were frequent visitors to the French court; and from two of these, men of widely different characters, talents, and turns of mind, we have a striking concurrence of testimony as to the power of the fascination which she exerted on all who came within the sphere of her influence. Burke was the earlier visitor. Indeed, it was in the last months of the preceding reign, while she was still dauphiness, that she had excited in his enthusiastic imagination those emotions which he afterward described in words which will live as long as the English language. It was in the spring of 1774 that it seemed to him that "surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in- glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendor, and joy." No one could be less like Burke than Horace Walpole, a cynical observer, who piqued himself on indifference, and especially on a superiority to the vulgar belief in the merits and attractions of kings and princes. Yet his report of the charms of Marie Antoinette, as he saw them in the autumn of this year, 1775, reveals an admiration of them as vivid as that of the warm-hearted and more poetical Irishman. He saw her, as he reports to Lady Ossory, first at a state court hall,[7] given on the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Clotilde, in the theatre of the palace; and he would have desired to give his correspondent some description of the beauty of the building; "the bravest in the universe, and yet one in which taste predominates over expense;" but he was absorbed by the still more powerful attractions of the princess whom he had seen in it: "What I have to say I can tell your ladyship in a word, for it was impossible to see any thing but the queen. Hebes, and Floras, and Helens, and Graces are street-walkers to her. She is a statue and beauty when standing or sitting; grace itself when she moves." As he is writing to a lady, he proceeds to describe her dress, which to ladies of the present day may still have its interest: "She was dressed in silver, scattered over with laurier roses; few diamonds; and feathers, much lower than the monument." He proceeds to describe the ball itself, and some of the company, which was, however, very select; but at every sentence or two he comes back to the queen, so deep and so real was the impression which she had made on him. "Monsieur is very handsome. The Comte d'Artois is a better figure and a better dancer. Their characters approach to those of two other royal dukes.[8] There were but eight minuets, and, except the queen and princesses, only eight lady dancers; I was not so much struck with the dancing as I expected. For beauty I saw none, or the queen effaced all the rest. After the minuets were French country-dances, much incumbered by the long trains, longer tresses, and hoops. In the intervals of dancing, baskets of peaches, china oranges (a little out of season), biscuits, ices, and wine-and-water were presented to the royal family and dancers. The ball lasted just two hours. The monarch did not dance, but for the first two rounds of the minuet even the queen does not turn her back to him. Yet her behavior is as easy as divine."

  Such was a French court ball on days of most special ceremony, a somewhat solemn affair, which required graciousness such as that of Marie Antoinette to make admission to every one a very enviable privilege; even though
its stiffness had been in some degree relieved by a new regulation of the queen, that the invitations, which had hitherto been confined to matrons, should be extended to unmarried girls. Scarcely any change produced greater consternation among the admirers of old customs. The dowagers searched all the registers of those who had been admitted to the court balls since the beginning of the century to fortify their objections. But, to their dismay, some of the early festivities in the time of Marie Leczinska proved to have been shared by one or two noble maidens. The discovery was of little importance, since Marie Antoinette had shown that she was not afraid of making precedents. But still it in some degree silenced the grumblers, and for the rest of the reign no one contested the queen's right to decide who should, and who should not, be admitted to her society.

  CHAPTER XI. Tea is introduced.-Horse-racing of Count d'Artois.-Marie Antoinette goes to see it-The Queen's Submissiveness to the Reproofs of the Empress.- Birth of the Duc d'Angouleme.-She at times speaks lightly of the King.- The Emperor remonstrates with her.-Character of some of the Queen's Friends.-The Princess de Lamballe.-The Countess Jules de Polignac.- They set the Queen against Turgot.-She procures his Dismissal.-She gratifies Madame Polignac's Friends.-Her Regard for the French People.- Water Parties on the Seine.-Her Health is Delicate.-Gambling at the Palace.