by Jean Plaidy
‘I suffered from a surfeit of “You must do this … you must do that”,’ she told them. ‘Depend upon it, my dears, I shall not impose those rigours on you, for if I do you will hate me, and I want you to love me.’
The ladies crowded round her and kissed her cheek, instead of her hand. ‘As though anyone could hate Your Majesty!’ they cried.
The Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre, the youngest of all her ladies and something of a tomboy, picked up a coif and put it on her head, pulled a solemn face and cried in accents very like those of the banished Madame de Noailles: ‘Your Majesty must not allow your ladies to kiss your cheek. No … Your Majesty’s hands are for kissing … not your cheeks!’
‘Be silent! Be silent …’ warned the more sober ladies.
But Antoinette only laughed. ‘You imitate her very well,’ she said. ‘We shall give you a part in the theatricals, my dear.’
‘So we are to have theatricals?’
Antoinette had not thought of them until that moment. Now she decided they would perform a play for the benefit of the Court, and she herself would take the principal part.
‘The Court will disapprove heartily,’ she was told. ‘A Queen to play a part! Versailles will stick its head in the air and declare it does not know what the Court is coming to.’
‘Versailles will do what it likes. We shall give our play at Muette … or perhaps at my dear Petit Trianon. But play we shall.’
The daring little Marquise took the Queen’s hand and, kneeling ceremoniously, held it to her lips.
They all laughed together; and the ladies told each other afterwards that there had never been such an adorable and affectionate Queen of France as Her dearest Majesty.
Then came that day when she must receive certain dowager ladies who had called to condole with her on the loss of her grandfather, and to congratulate her on her accession to the throne.
Her ladies were laughing as usual while they helped her dress in the sombre mourning which the occasion warranted.
‘Now we must remember,’ she admonished them, ‘that this is a very solemn occasion, and these old ladies will doubtless expect me to weep. So do try to compose yourself, my dears.’
‘Oh, yes, Your Majesty,’ they chorused.
Antoinette tapped the cheek of the little Marquise. ‘You especially,’ she said. ‘Curb your high spirits until the departure of the dowagers.’
The Marquise smiled charmingly; two dimples appeared in her cheeks. She was such a delightful creature that the Queen’s smile deepened. It was such a pleasure to choose those she would have about her.
Then began the ritual. It was as formal as any ceremony in the previous reign. Each of the ladies must approach the Queen, fall to her knees, remain there precisely to the required second, must rise and wait for the word from the Queen before she began to speak; and then the Queen must chat with each for a certain time, which must be neither more nor less than the time she chatted with any of the others.
So they came – dreary old ladies in their mourning coifs, looking, thought Antoinette, like a flock of crows, like a procession of gloomy beguines.
She was weary of them. Her fingers impatiently fumbled with her fan.
About her her ladies had ranged themselves, the little Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre immediately behind her so that she was completely hidden by the Queen’s dress with its panniers which spread out on either side of her.
Then, as she was talking to one of the elderly ladies, Antoinette heard a giggle behind her.
That bad child, she thought. What is she doing now to make them laugh? It was as much as Antoinette could do to suppress a smile; and to smile, she knew, would cause grave offence on this occasion when she was receiving condolences for the death of the King.
‘Madame,’ she was saying, ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is indeed a time of deep sorrow for our family. But the King and I pray each day that God will guide us in the way we should go for the glory of France…. ’
She felt a movement at her feet and, glancing down, she saw the little Marquise hidden from the old dowager by the panniers of her – Antoinette’s – dress, sitting on the floor, peeping up at her, pulling her face into such a contortion that, in spite of its round and babyish look, she bore some resemblance to the lady who stood before the Queen.
It was too late to check the sudden smile which came to Antoinette’s lips. She hastily lifted her fan; but there were too many people watching her. Josèphe had seen. Thérèse had seen.
Almost immediately she collected herself; she went on with her speech; but for a Queen – and Queen of France – to laugh in the middle of a speech of thanks for the condolences of an honoured subject was so shocking that her enemies would not allow it to be passed over lightly.
Josèphe and Thérèse went as fast as they could to confer with the aunts. The aunts made sure that the story was circulated in those quarters where it would do most harm.
Provence seized on it. If at any time it should be necessary to prove the lightness of Antoinette such incidents as these should be remembered. Moreover they should be stressed at the time they happened; it would make them all the more effective if it should be necessary to resuscitate them.
The Duc d’Aiguillon’s party saw that it was repeated and exaggerated not only in the Court but throughout the whole of Paris.
She laughed, this chit from Austria, it was said. She dared to laugh at French customs.
For she had made fun of great and noble French ladies. And in doing that, was she not ridiculing France!
Her enemies wrote a song, for that was always the best way of making the people take up a cause for or against a person or a principle. Soon it was being sung in the streets and taverns.
‘My little Queen, not twenty-one,
Maltreat the folks as you’ve begun,
And o’er the border you shall run …’
Antoinette heard it. She was bewildered.
‘But the people love me! Monsieur de Brissac said, when I first went into the city, that all Paris was in love with me.’
It was another lesson she had learned. The people could love one day and hate the next, for the people were a fickle mob.
Chapter V
REHEARSAL FOR REVOLUTION
During that year a new fashion began at Versailles. The King, in his affection for the Queen, was often seen walking with her in the gardens arm-in-arm. Then must the ladies and gentlemen of the Court follow their example, so that husbands and wives who were known to hate each other, even to be notoriously unfaithful to each other, must nevertheless wander through the Galerie des Glaces, through the Cour de Marbre or the Cour Royale, arm-in-arm.
It was pleasant to see the King and Queen so happy together, for it seemed that the longer they were married the stronger grew their affection. It was rare to find such devotion between a King and Queen of France – so rare that many doubted its authenticity.
These doubts were fostered by the Queen’s enemies.
Was it possible, they asked, that one so young and beautiful, so fond of gaiety and pleasure, so frivolous, so ready to listen to flattery, could love a man so gauche, so heavy, so unattractive to women as their Louis?
Louis! The strangest King who had ever sat upon the throne of France. There had been a time when some of his friends had sought to make a normal man of him, and talked to him of charming actresses at the Comédie Française. And what said Louis? Oh, he was not interested. If he had time to spare from his duties, he liked to spend it making locks in his forge or hunting the stag.
And it was to this boor, known to be impotent (for had not his grandfather forced him to submit to an examination, and had it not been one of those secrets which leak out and become common knowledge?) that a frivolous and quite lovely young girl was declared to be a faithful wife!
Is it possible? asked her enemies; and eventually the people in the streets began to ask the same question.
She was so careless of etiquette.<
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They had all heard how it was at her lever. The Royal lever and coucher had been matters of strictest etiquette for generations. The Queen’s chemise could only be handed to her in the bedchamber by the person of highest rank. Thus the lowest servant must first pick it up and hand it to the femme-dechambre, who must then give it to one of the ladies-in-waiting and, if that lady-in-waiting was of the highest rank present, she could then hand it to the Queen. But if, while that lady-in-waiting was about to hand it to the Queen, a lady of higher rank such as Madame de Chartres or one of her sisters-in-law entered, it must immediately be taken from the lady-in-waiting and given to the Queen by the lady who had newly arrived on the scene.
The malicious sisters-in-law did all they could to plague Antoinette and show those about her how careless she was of the dignities appertaining to the throne of France.
The Comtesse de Provence would make a point of coming in at the moment when Madame d’Artois was helping Antoinette into her chemise; then must the ritual begin again with Madame de Provence taking the principal role.
At length Antoinette declared that she found the ceremonies of rising and going to bed too tedious to be borne, and would go to her dressing-room, where she would dress and undress privately.
This was not only flouting tradition, it was depriving certain people of duties which they prized and which gave them special standing at Court.
Mercy’s letters to Maria Theresa were full of anxieties. The Queen’s légèreté was causing consternation, he wrote. Her spirits were too high; she was too fond of riding, too prone to ignore etiquette.
She had started a new fashion, aided by her hairdresser, Monsieur Léonard, who drove to Versailles in some state from Paris every day because she, fearing he might lose his skill if he devoted himself entirely to her, insisted that he continue with his business. He would comb the Queen’s hair, stiffen it with pomade until it stood straight up on her head, then with gigantic hairpins he would dress it into a tower – sometimes as much as three feet in height – and adorn it with decorations of flowers or miniature landscapes, gardens, or houses. Monsieur Léonard delighted in being topical, so that it was his pleasure to illustrate little scenes from Court life and display them on the Queen’s coiffure. Soon all the ladies were following the fashions set by the Queen, and this fashion was ridiculed by the citizens of Paris who had hoped for impossible blessings from the new reign. Pictures were circulated throughout the cafés – pictures of the Queen, her hair towering ridiculously above her head.
Maria Theresa’s letters were reproachful.
‘I cannot refrain from touching on a matter which has been brought to my notice. I refer to the way in which you are dressing your hair. They tell me that from the forehead it rises as much as three feet, and it is made higher by the addition of decoration, plumes and ribbons.’
Antoinette read her mother’s letters and shrugged aside the criticisms. She was after all a Queen now, not a child to be corrected; and, as all the ladies of the Court were following the hair fashions set by herself, they did not seem ridiculous in Court circles – which was, in her estimation, the only place where opinion on such matters was important.
But she was careless indeed, and she had never been able to differentiate between what was important and what was trivial; nor could she realise how easy it was to step from the trivial to the significant. Thus she began to make enemies among those who might have been her friends.
Her brother, the Archduke Maximilian, paid a visit to the Court of France during the month of February. She was delighted to see her brother again and planned many fêtes and balls that she might entertain him worthily.
The younger branches of the royal family were very jealous of their honour. It was so difficult for any member of a lower branch to forgive those higher up the tree; the King they must accept as the eldest son of an eldest son of the royal house. But this frivolous wife of his, who insisted every day on flouting the recognised etiquette of their noble house, angered them all; and Antoinette’s worst enemies became the men and women who were closest to her.
On the visit of Maximilian the three heads of the lower branches of the royal family – the Duc d’Orléans, the Prince de Condé and the Prince de Conti – waited for the Archduke to call on them; but Antoinette laughed with her brother over the formality of her new relations.
‘There is nothing I like so much as to say to them: “So! You have always behaved thus – well, now we will behave thus no longer!” Max! It infuriates them.’
Maximilian lacked his sister’s frivolity and had in its place a little of their brother Joseph’s pomposity.
‘Why should I put myself out to visit them?’ he demanded. ‘I am the guest. Let them come to me.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Antoinette. ‘Let them. Now let us talk about home.’
Her eyes sparkled as she talked of home, but she knew in her heart that she would not wish to go back to Schönbrunn Palace even if she could. She would not want to go back to her mother’s watching eyes and continual scoldings. Why, that would be almost as bad as the disapproval she met at her own Court.
But the matter of her husband’s relatives did not end there. Orléans, Condé and Conti considered they had been insulted. Did they think this young woman – l’Autrichienne, as they called her – could treat them with the lack of respect with which she treated old dowagers in her salon?
She would find it was a very different matter to insult members of the royal house.
Moreover Maximilian complained that he had not been visited by her husband’s relatives and that he thought this was a scurvy way to treat their Queen’s brother.
‘It is indeed!’ cried Antoinette, and forthwith sat down to write impulsively to Orléans.
There was no reply to this letter and it was left to the King to command the return of his offended relatives to Court. The most angry of all was Conti, who craved the King’s indulgence, but declared that he was suffering from an attack of gout which would keep him away from Court for some time.
Mercy of course reported all this to Maria Theresa, and the Empress, feeling old and often very weary, prayed for her daughter and wondered whither her recklessness would lead her. She wrote reproachfully to Mercy and de Vermond, and beneath her reproaches was a plea: Take care of my little daughter.
There were more letters from her mother.
‘There are times,’ Antoinette confided in her dear friend the Princesse de Lamballe, ‘when I put off opening my mother’s letters. They are almost certain to contain some warning against my doing something I want to do, some reproach for something I have done. My mother is the best woman in the world. She loves me as only a mother can, but I fear I give her as many uneasy moments as she gives me; and now it seems that even something which should be as full of pleasure as Max’s visit is turned into depressing failure because of those old uncles, who are determined to make trouble.’
And although she could eventually forget her mother’s criticisms of her hair-styles and her defiance of conventions, there was one continual complaint coming from Vienna which she could not ignore.
It was very important, wrote the Empress, that there should be a Dauphin. Maria Theresa could only be contented when her daughter announced that happy event.
In the streets they were singing:
‘Chacun se demande tout bas:
Le Roi peut-il? Ne peut-il pas?’
It was disconcerting to have one’s intimate life discussed and watched.
She knew that the servants of the bedchambers examined the sheets each morning with the utmost care, and she guessed that while they did so they hummed together that song which the people were singing in the streets.
It was more than disconcerting. It was heartbreaking.
She was relieved though when Conti at length returned to Court and treated her with the deference due to her.
‘That little trouble is over,’ she told the Princesse de Lamballe.
But she had much to
learn yet.
Antoinette had tried to forget her longing for a child in the pleasure she derived from possessing her own little house. There she felt she could live like a simple lady who did not have to worry because she was childless. In the small house she would stay with a few of her friends and tell herself that there was a great deal to be enjoyed in a rustic existence. She would spend whole days there, arriving early in the morning and returning to Versailles in the late afternoon. The gardens were beginning to look very beautiful indeed. She was completing the English garden begun by Louis Quinze and Madame du Barry, with the help of Prince de Ligne who had created his own lovely garden at Bel Oeil.
Often he was with her and her ladies; endlessly they discussed the planting of flowers and what shape the flowerbeds should be.
On Sunday – that day when the people from Paris came to the Trianon to look at the Queen’s gardens – Antoinette, with some of her friends about her, including the Prince de Ligne, sat under the trees talking idly.
The people wandered by, and it was not at the flowers they looked but at the beautiful Queen who seemed more exquisite in her rustic garden than ever before. She was like a dainty shepherdess with her easy manners, her pleasant smile and that dazzlingly fair complexion.
The Queen’s eyes followed the children always. She would not have them disturbed even when they romped in the flowerbeds. ‘For they are happy,’ she said. ‘And it does me good to see happy children in my Petit Trianon.’
Now she was saying to the Prince de Ligne that she would like to build a little village about the Trianons – a model village with a few houses wherein would live families whom she would select; poor people who needed looking after because they could not make a living in the town, people who loved the country and sought the peaceful life. She would like to have her little village – un petit hameau – where everyone lived the perfect rustic existence.