…it was the same occasion on which Madame du Barry was presented. It was recognized by everyone present that she was tastefully and splendidly dressed. By daylight her face was a little faded and her complexion spoiled by freckles. But it must be admitted that she looked extremely well at night. We reached the card tables in the evening a few minutes before her. When she entered the room all the ladies who were near the door rushed hurriedly forward in the opposite direction in order to avoid sitting near her…. She regarded all this with perfect composure; nothing upset her. When the King appeared at the conclusion of the game, she looked up at him and smiled. The indignation at Versailles was unbounded. Never had there happened anything quite so scandalous, not even the triumph of Madame de Pompadour. It was certainly very strange to see at Court a Madame la Marquise de Pompadour whose husband Monsieur Le Normant d’Étioles was nobody but a tax-farmer, but it was still more terrible to see a woman of the streets presented with pomp to the whole Royal Family. This with many other instances of unparalleled indecency cruelly degraded Royalty, and consequently contributed to bring about the Revolution.
The following day, Madame du Barry attended Mass in the royal chapel, seated in the pew where her powerful predecessor the marquise de Pompadour had warmed the velvet cushions with her panniers; it would be du Barry’s pew from then on.
As Louis’ maîtresse en titre, the comtesse had certain perquisites at court. She could assist at the dauphin’s grand couverts (the meals taken in public view) as well as the grand couverts hosted by Mesdames, and she could sit at the king’s card table. Playing cards and various versions of lotto games after dinner was an enormous nightly diversion at the court of Versailles. But despite the privilege of sitting beside, or opposite, her royal lover during endless hands of piquet or rounds of cavagnole, she was roundly shunned and coldly ignored by the courtiers, both male and female, utterly unwelcome in their midst.
She kept a brave face in public and saved her tears for the shoulder of her paramour. Louis sought to console her with real estate, installing the comtesse in a better suite of rooms at Versailles, relocating her from the late valet de chambre’s apartment to those that had been occupied by the king’s equally dead and exceptionally popular daughter-in-law, the dauphine of France, who had expired from consumption in 1767. Situated directly upstairs from Louis’ private apartments, du Barry’s new suite was connected to his by a secret staircase. Louis conducted his private life in the intimate rooms of the petits appartements. It was where he had his personal library, and where he hosted public gatherings for both friends and frenemies and petits soupers, or little suppers, for his most trusted courtiers.
Now that Madame du Barry, as Louis’ maîtresse en titre, was legitimately able to maintain a constant presence beside him (and he truly despaired of ever spending a moment without her), even the staunchest critics of the romance had to admit, however begrudgingly, that their monarch became radiant by his lover’s side. Like a besotted schoolboy, Louis literally couldn’t take his eyes off of her. And with all the solicitousness of an ardent boyfriend, he made a point of finding his lonely and outcast love a coterie of sympathetic friends. Wisely, he began with a cadre of courtiers who had skeletons hanging in their own closets. Madame de Mirepoix was a compulsive gambler (for befriending du Barry her debts were discharged by the crown). Madame de Flavacourt had herself warmed Louis’ bed. The (married) prince de Condé had his own mistress. And, of course, there was the old duc de Richelieu. Operating on the theory of catching more flies with honey than with vinegar, Louis even invited the duc de Choiseul to the first of the soirees at which Madame du Barry appeared as fresh and glowing and virginal as a Lorrainer milkmaid, angelically, if diaphanously, clad in a youthful white gown, her flaxen tresses dressed with a chaplet of roses. This pastoral manner of dressing was one of the comtesse’s signature styles, and she often appeared in a similar costume when she received visitors in her rooms at Versailles.
One of du Barry’s guests recounted her appearance on such an occasion. “She was nonchalantly sitting, or rather lying, in a big armchair and wore a white dress with pink garlands which I can never forget. Madame du Barry, one of the prettiest women in a court where beauties were legion, was the most seductive of all because of the perfection of her entire person. Her hair, which she often dressed without powder, was of the most beautiful blond, and so abundant that she hardly knew what to do with it. Her wide open blue eyes had a frank and caressing look…. Her nose was adorable, her mouth very small and her skin of a dazzling whiteness.”
A dozen years later, Marie Antoinette, then queen, would scandalize France by dressing in the same manner. Anyone who follows fashion knows that what goes around comes around, and both women patronized the same modiste, the entrepreneurial Mademoiselle Rose Bertin. It is therefore entirely possible that the forerunner of Marie Antoinette’s [in]famous “gaulles” was originally popularized years earlier, when she was still dauphine of France, by none other than her archrival at court!
Jeanne may not have been in love with Louis, but she certainly behaved as though she were, and she most assuredly loved the trappings that came with being his official mistress, including the clout. Like a magpie, she had an affinity for anything that glittered. The knickknacks that cluttered her rooms were made of bronze, marble, and crystal. Her pianoforte was inlaid with Sèvres porcelain tiles and adorned with rococo carvings of gold and bronze. Jewels Louis bestowed upon her in abundance. Among the inventory of her gems were more than 140 large diamonds and some 700 smaller ones, 300 very large pearls, a trio of enormous sapphires, and 7 famous emeralds.
Louis couldn’t do enough for the comtesse du Barry. And no expense was spared. He was renovating Madame de Pompadour’s rooms at the royal châteaux of Marly and Choisy for her. Loath to have her quit his side, he insisted that she accompany him when he reviewed military maneuvers. Imagine JFK with a gushing Marilyn on his arm, visiting the troops at Fort Bragg. The young officers appeared smitten by their monarch, who, hat in hand, would approach her emblazoned coach to speak to her. As minister of war (among his other offices), Choiseul was mortified to see the king abasing himself, flirting with his mistress when he should have been reviewing his troops. The duc was not alone in believing that Louis was behaving like a doddering old fool.
Yet to Choiseul’s chagrin, Madame du Barry seemed to have allies everywhere, even among the officers, which included a du Barry brother and a former client from the rue de la Jussienne. The duc seethed as he watched them treat the maîtresse en titre with the same deference they accorded their sovereign.
The vicious lambastes of the comtesse du Barry and the king continued, purportedly funded by Choiseul and his rejected sister the duchesse de Gramont. The milder of these slurs referred to the monarch as un vieux paillard—an old lecher. From there, the libels became crueler and more inventive. “The rumor is that the young vicomte du Barry [Jean-Baptiste du Barry’s young son Adolphe, who had been given a position at court] is imprisoned at Pierre-Encise because he gave the comtesse of the same name a reason to worry about her health, which she has passed on to the king in the same manner” was one such spurious bit of fiction. Another was “The King’s attachment for Mme. du Barry comes from the prodigious efforts of which she has rendered him capable thanks to an amber concoction with which she daily perfumes her inside.”
And then there were the anti–du Barry poems and songs. Madame de Pompadour had been slandered by anonymously penned snarky verses, and Marie Antoinette would also (eventually) find herself cruelly victimized in them. This one had the audacity and impertinence to address the kingdom in the familiar “tu” form.
France, what then is your destiny
To be dominated by a female
Your salvation came from the virgin [Joan of Arc]
You will perish by the whore.
The lampoons and songs hurt Jeanne terribly. What had she done to incur such vitriol? she wondered. Choiseul’s nephew, the handsome, rakish
duc de Lauzun, had been one of the usual suspects at the rue de la Jussienne. Jean du Barry secretly met with him and informed him that the comtesse had nothing personal against his uncle, but that if Choiseul wanted to play hardball with her, he’d lose, because Louis loved Jeanne far more than he had ever loved Madame de Pompadour.
The warning fell on deaf ears, and the minister’s campaign against Madame du Barry continued. Although Choiseul is on record as being unimpressed with Jeanne’s looks, finding her only “moderately pretty” the first time she came to see him at Versailles, he had the ulterior agenda of promoting his sister’s interests. But some who had no horse in the race remained less than overwhelmed as well. Horace Walpole journeyed from London to Paris to glimpse the royal favorite who was the talk of at least two nations. He saw her in the chapel at Versailles, and was surprised to find her appearance so unprepossessing. “There is nothing bold, assuming, or affected in her manner. She is pretty when you consider her, but so little striking I would never have asked who she was. She was without rouge or powder, almost without having fait la toilette.”
Little did Walpole comprehend the work it took to look so effortless. In her mid-twenties at the time, though officially passing for three years younger, the comtesse spent hours at her toilette, arriving late at her lover’s supper parties or card games in a diaphanous gown with flowers in her cascading blond tresses, as if she had just stepped out of an allegorical canvas. She favored simply constructed gowns in pastel shades that flattered her coloring and youthful spark. She also turned heads and set tongues wagging with another of her fashion statements, wearing men’s clothes to accompany her royal lover when he went riding.
One evening at Compiègne, Louis’ favorite hunting lodge, the king dropped a snuffbox. His mistress gracefully sank into a curtsy to retrieve it from where it lay at his feet. The duc de Croÿ heard him murmur to her, “Madame, it is for me to assume that position and for all my life.” Can anyone imagine a more romantic declaration? After witnessing that exchange, “She is here to stay,” the awestruck duc marveled.
A few weeks later, Louis gave Madame du Barry a villa that had once belonged to the granddaughter of the Sun King. Louveciennes (pronounced “Lucienne”) was a much-coveted property. It was small, as far as châteaux went, but it was beautifully situated, and the comtesse would spend a fortune decorating and furnishing it. After the king’s death, it would become her home and the repository for her memories and memorabilia.
Luckily for us, the eighteenth century, particularly in France, was a great era for journal writers and epistolary correspondents, leaving us with numerous and voluminous firsthand accounts. One of the duc de Croÿ’s journal entries, written in the late autumn of 1769, shows how entrenched at court Madame du Barry had become by then.
I observe that by degrees more and more people are ready to see the countess. She has been given the ‘Cabinet’ rooms which formerly belonged to the late Madame la Dauphine, all of which give her the advantage of being treated as a lady of the court. She with everyone else is present at all the entertainments, and one has become accustomed to it. She has gained much, but she appears to have no aptitude for intrigue. She loves dress and to be seen everywhere, without showing any desire to interfere in state affairs. Her manner to the other ladies seems respectful and she never ventures too far.
The comtesse may not (at that stage) have been involved in court intrigues, but she did hold court in her own salon. It was soon clear that those who wanted to gain the king’s good graces or be certain of remaining in them made sure to visit the maîtresse en titre in her natural habitat at all times of day: as she made her toilette, heard petitions from those who sought her aid (meaning her influence on the king), and hosted her suppers and card parties. Even France’s chancellor, the wily Maupeou and the secular abbé Terray, the equally cunning finance minister, paid court to du Barry. The only high-placed courtier who refused to kowtow to her was the duc de Choiseul. By 1769, their mutual disdain was no longer concealed.
Madame du Barry wanted nothing more than to please her lover and, being a kindhearted soul, was inclined to want to help everyone who sought her assistance, or at the very least to lend a sympathetic ear. The ugly side of this coin was that it exposed her to rumors. In due time, she was sexually linked with the ambitious duc d’Aiguillon. It is not likely that either of them would have risked their position at court to dally with each other. Aiguillon’s star was on the rise, thanks to the comtesse, so he would not have jeopardized it. Instead, he took as a mistress her sister-in-law, the wily and witty Chon, whom Jeanne often used as a ghostwriter. Chon and the duc became the driving force behind the cabal that would eventually lead to the ouster of d’Aiguillon’s rival, the duc de Choiseul.
In the comtesse’s sumptuously appointed salon she entertained petitions in an informal way. Obviously she had no legal or formal right to grant anything. Her immense popularity was due not only to her role at court as Louis’ mistress, but because she was gaining an ever-increasing reputation for charity and compassion. Those who found themselves in unfortunate situations saw in her an angel who might intercede for them with the authorities, including her lover.
For all the rigid court etiquette (which applied only to the king, the royal family, and the courtiers), Versailles was in fact an oddly democratic palace. What we might consider riffraff had access to Madame du Barry’s rooms, because the château was open to the public, as long as the visitors were properly dressed. Men had to be wearing a sword and a hat—and entrepreneurial vendors rented them outside the palace gates.
The comtesse was able to use her position to save lives. She famously became involved with the case of the destitute comte and comtesse de Louesne, who, facing eviction from their château, stood their ground and killed a bailiff and a mounted policeman. For these murders they were sentenced to death by beheading, and even their daughter’s entreaties could not induce Louis to clemency.
Madame du Barry then tried her best. She prostrated herself before her lover, yet he remained unmoved. But the comtesse proved just as inflexible, refusing to rise until Louis granted her boon. Finally, with all that was at stake—the outcome of a major judicial decision already in the balance, two lives already lost, and two more perhaps to follow—the king was the first to blink.
Brimming with love, he told his mistress, “Madame, I am delighted that the first favor you should ask of me should be an act of mercy.” As a direct consequence of du Barry’s plea, Louis spared the lives of the Louesnes, an act that brought many of the nobility who had previously shunned and disdained her flocking to her side. She had obeyed her instincts and at the same time was able to seize an opportunity to turn a nationally notorious situation to her advantage. Had the comtesse du Barry been compassionate, canny, clever, or a combination of all three?
Among other unfortunates whom she interceded for early in her tenure was a mother charged with infanticide because she failed to register the stillbirth of her child, thus saving an already distraught, and innocent, woman from being executed for murder.
If the Louesnes incident was any indication, the king could deny his love nothing. With gifts of real estate and clemency came an allowance. Every month 200,000 livres was paid to her by the court banker. In 1771, two years after she became Louis’ maîtresse en titre, the sum was raised to 250,000 livres. And yet she always overspent, no matter how much she received. She gave generously to her mother and her aunt, but that wasn’t where the lion’s share of her money went. Given her passion for fashion, the comtesse was perpetually in debt to her dressmakers—first Madame Sigly, and later Mademoiselle Rose Bertin, the same modiste who would transform Marie Antoinette into a fashionista. Jeanne’s dresses cost more than a thousand livres apiece, and were invariably embellished with gemstones and costly lace. One particular bodice was covered entirely with diamonds that had been fashioned into flowers, ribbons, and bows, and cost the king a whopping 450,000 livres. Not content to let the bodice speak for itsel
f, she accessorized it with a diamond necklace of ostentatious proportions. Even in the rococo age, for Madame du Barry, excess was never enough. She was also mad about jewelry. The comtesse was the only woman at court to wear stones of more than one color at a time. Whether such a fashion was considered daring, outré, or vulgar, she didn’t seem to care.
Additionally, Madame du Barry’s household was so large that it couldn’t all be accommodated at the palace of Versailles, and some of her retinue had to be housed in her hôtel (the word for a mansion, not a hostelry) in the rue de l’Orangerie in the town. Her former procurer had a difficult time getting his invoices reimbursed as well. Jean-Baptiste du Barry had an understanding with the king (although Louis hated the unpleasant reminder of Jeanne’s provenance) that the gowns, jewels, and carriages the comte had provided for her and had continued to fund before she became the king’s property, so to speak, would be repaid.
In mid-May 1770, the youngest archduchess of Austria, Marie Antoinette, came to France to marry Louis’ grandson, the shy and shambling dauphin Louis Auguste. Dinner on the day before the wedding was held at the royal hunting lodge of La Muette on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. The twenty-seven-year-old maîtresse en titre dressed with the utmost care for this special event. Her gown was constructed of silver tissue spun with gold, and embellished all over with rubies. Even her detractors had to admit that she was the most beautiful woman in the room. By comparison, despite her freshness and wholesome prettiness, Marie Antoinette was just a charming little girl.
At first the fourteen-year-old dauphine was intrigued by the vibrant Madame du Barry, inquiring of her dame d’honneur the comtesse de Noailles what the beautiful woman’s role was at court. Taken aback by the question, the head of the dauphine’s household diplomatically informed her that the lady’s job was “to amuse the king.”
Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Page 22