Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  If one is to consider only the greatness of your position, you are the happiest of your sisters. In Louis of France you will find a loving father who will also be your friend if you deserve it. Love him, trust him, try to decipher his thoughts.

  As to the dauphin I say nothing; you know how highly I subscribe to the opinion that a wife must be completely submissive to her husband and must have no business other than to please him and obey him. The only true happiness in this world is a happy marriage. All depends on the wife, on her being willing, sweet, and amusing.

  There was more—much more—reminding me to remember her in my nightly prayers; to commemorate the date of Papa’s passing every eighteenth of August; and to be wise in my selection of reading material, once again invoking the licentiousness of Louis’s court and their penchant for unsuitable literature.

  Until now you have been sheltered from animosity and gossip. But at Versailles, you will be dancing on the head of a pin, and it will take every ounce of cleverness and strength not to tumble from your perch. This pin may be the most exhilarating, but it can also be the most dangerous ballroom in the world.

  Only a missive from my mother could fill me with such dread when I was already the picture of trepidation. How was I to gain the respect of the French and become one of them if Maman constantly warned me against them? How would I reconcile our good German morality with the debauchery that Maman claimed infested the court of Versailles, gnawing at its fiber like an army of persistent moths?

  She urged me to write to her during the journey. And of course I was to correspond with great frequency after I arrived at Versailles, as she longed to hear of my new life there and how I was managing my husband, as she put it. I was also to place my complete trust in the comte de Mercy and the abbé Vermond, for they had nothing but my best interests at heart.

  At the beginning of every month I will send a courier from here to Paris: In the meantime, get your letters ready so as to dispatch them as soon as he arrives. Mercy will be ordered to send him off promptly. You may also write me through the post, but only touch upon what anyone might know. Tear up my letters; it will allow me to write you more freely. I will do the same with yours.

  Dancing on the head of a pin. Her words sent a shudder down my spine. I reread Maman’s entire letter and caught myself holding my breath at her references to the “petits scandales” of the French court. Would I recognize them enough to avoid them? I refolded Maman’s letter and placed it in my silk purse, then turned my attention to the second item in the packet. My eyes misted over as I recognized the clear strong hand, even though the ink had faded from black to grayish green. At the top of the first page, the title, “Instructions to my children both for their spiritual and temporal lives,” gave a hint of what was to follow. When had Papa written it, I wondered. Had he penned a fair copy for each of us, knowing that someday it would accompany us on the passage from adolescence to adulthood? Did Charlotte, too, receive the same letter before she set off for Naples?

  I herewith commend you to read these instructions twice yearly (at least that was less onerous than Maman’s insistence that I read hers on the twenty-first day of every month!); they come from a father who loves you above everything.

  I pictured my father as I perused his little guide, envisioning his open countenance and jovial mouth with its full, soft lips that so often had kissed me good night, and imagined that his small dark eyes were observing me from a higher plane. I’d lost track of the number of times he’d carried me on his sturdy shoulders, up to bed, or through a field of wildflowers as I wielded my butterfly net in search of elusive prey.

  Remember, my children, to keep your Catholic faith, in your deeds as well as in your souls. This would not be difficult as I believed myself to be a dutiful Christian in every way. But his exhortation to above all, have no particular passion or affection for any single thing would be a harder precept to follow, for I was nothing if not ruled by my passions.

  Like Papa. Did he write those words in the company of his mistress, the Princess Auersperg? Did she emit that high-pitched giggle of hers at his efforts to demonstrate his piety to his numerous progeny? Did she laugh just as hard when he counseled us to have a horror of high play, even as her throat, wrists, and fingers were bedecked with the jewels purchased by his winnings at the gaming tables?

  Inside my little purse I carried the gold watch and chain that had been Papa’s, one of the few personal possessions I had been permitted to take with me to France. And it was all I had left of him, save this letter—the thoughts of a doting father who loved life and all it offered, even as he (puzzlingly) instructed me to take two days in every year to prepare for death, as though you were sure that those two were the last days of your life; and thus you will accustom yourself to know what you ought to do under those circumstances, and when your last moment arrives, you will not be surprised, but you will know what you have to do. At the age of fourteen and on the brink of my future, his morbid advice seemed superfluous, a storm cloud on an otherwise sunny afternoon.

  Had Papa done as much? I wondered. He had written these lines as a healthy man in the prime of life, when the idea of dying was no more than that. Death had taken him unawares, much like a hawk taking down a field mouse. In those terrible final moments, there had not been time for reflection and repentance.

  I read on:

  The companions we select are of great importance, for frequently we are drawn by them in spite of ourselves into temptations, which would never have otherwise assailed us. Friendship is one of the joys of life, but we must choose our friends wisely and not lavish affection carelessly.

  I thought again of the Princess Auersperg. Did Papa regret lavishing affection carelessly on his paramour? And if he had, was it because he saw how much his affair pained Maman? Had he ever paused to consider her feelings? I studied his list of precepts. Was Francis of Lorraine encouraging his children to heed his words rather than follow his deeds? As much as I loved Papa, in that moment I despised his hypocrisy. But if I were to apply Papa’s words of caution to my own life, how would I know a true friend in a court filled with people vying for my attention and favor? I, too, was too hasty with my trust.

  As we left Vienna the procession behind my berline clip-clopped at a surprisingly sluggish pace for a journey of such momentous import. My entourage was so large that I would arrive at the center of a town while my cavalcade of diplomats and secretaries, courtiers and cooks, laundresses and stable grooms, snaked along the rutted roads for a mile behind me. We traveled from dawn to dusk, pausing to change horses every few hours and finally stopping for the night at a prearranged destination along our route. Lambach; Nymphenburg (my favorite place-name!); Augsburg; Riedlingen; Donau-Eschingen on the river Danube at the edge of the Black Forest; and Freiburg. Often I would be asked to say a few words to the local dignitaries who were puffed up with pride that one of their own would someday be queen of France. Maman would have been proud of me for never neglecting to thank our hosts for their hospitality and generosity. Townspeople and villagers carpeted the modest public squares with colorful spring flowers; ruddy-cheeked girls with wide eyes and flaxen hair offered me gifts of marzipan and other confections. We filled every local inn to capacity, delighting the tavern keepers who could barely keep up with the flow of beer my train consumed; we commandeered entire castles and manors, displacing their lofty tenants, who were only too honored to offer us their kitchens and wine cellars. We traveled with our own linens, quilts, and bolsters; so at least any fleas we transported would be our own! My ladies were considerably fatigued by the end of each day, an exhaustion that accumulated with each passing sunset, but they lacked my youth and curiosity—not to mention my nervous stomach, which would turn a little fillip every time I despaired of making a gaffe. I would lie wide awake, trying to count the number of French knots in the embroidered tester above my head, cradling Mops in the crook of my arm and wondering what the next day would bring, even if, for more than a fortnigh
t, the routine was much the same. Sunny days were a fragrant joy, but, being May, we encountered a good deal of rain, which engendered no end of grumbling from my women of honor because they could not open the windows of the coaches without chancing the ruin of their garments. Particularly susceptible was the Countess von Waldheim, who suffered from a horror of being shut inside. She would begin to mutter incessantly “I am dying!” and gasp for air like a carp, fishing about her purse for a vial of vinegar-water.

  On the sixth of May, two and a half weeks after we kicked up the dust between the cobbles of the Hofburg courtyard, we arrived at the Abbey of Schuttern on the Austrian frontier. Here, my nerves nearly got the better of me. I had enjoyed my progress through our empire, proud to be a Hapsburg archduchess despite being addressed as “la dauphine” at every destination. These fields, these woods, these farms and villages, these cities and towns filled with learning and laughter—all of these were ours. My mind was crowded with silly questions I daren’t pose to anyone, not even to the abbé Vermond. Would the trees look different on the other side of the border, in France? Would the sky be another shade of blue?

  And what must the Benedictines have thought of the bustling riot of sound and color and chaos that had descended upon their contemplative life of order and ritual? The modest cell in which I was to spend my final night on Austrian soil was a hive of activity. Father Barthlem, the abbot, greeted me clad as any of the monks under his jurisdiction, in a simple brown cowled robe belted with a length of cord. Although we spoke but briefly, I saw such tenderness in his mien and a sense of utter contentment with his life, surrounded as he was by hundreds of guests for whom wealth and privilege was their raison d’être, and who cared little for spiritual nurturing, that it moved me nearly to tears.

  One such person was a très distingué Frenchman, presented to me by the marquis de Durfort. His white periwig, fashioned into a pair of tight, sausagelike rolls beneath each ear and tied into a queue at the nape of his neck, sat high off his imposing forehead. I had seen heads like his—proud, veering on disdainful, reeking with self-importance—in picture books of Roman antiquities.

  He introduced himself with a bow, touching the blindingly white froth of lace at his throat. “Madame la dauphine, je suis très honoré de faire votre connaissance. Je suis le comte de Noailles, envoie extraordinaire de la cour de Versailles et de son très grand majesté, Louis Quinze.” With a pompous flourish, King Louis’s Envoy Extraordinary, the comte de Noailles, drew a lorgnette from the pocket of his watered silk coat and peered at me down the length of his aquiline nose. I certainly hoped he liked the view.

  The comte and the marquis exchanged a few words; I strained to overhear them, but like so many French, they scarcely opened their mouths when they spoke. From their gestures, it became apparent that the marquis deferred to the comte, who was, for the specific events of the next few days, the more senior diplomat. The comte de Noailles would be acting for Louis in the same capacity as that of my countryman, Maman’s Envoy Extraordinary, Prince Starhemberg.

  “You are comfortable, I hope,” the comte de Noailles inquired stiffly, turning his attention back to me.

  “Oui, monsieur le comte. Je suis très confortable,” I assured him.

  At this, the comte put away his lorgnette and pressed his lips together grimly. “Ah, bon,” he said. “Good.” The men resumed their conversation. I heard the word remise mentioned more than once, and saw the comte de Noailles furrow his brow into a frown. At length, Louis’s envoy addressed me again. “I will see you then in two days, perhaps,” he said tersely. Followed by the marquis de Durfort like a dutiful spaniel, the comte withdrew from my presence with another bow, this one less florid than his first.

  My stomach seized.

  Perhaps?

  May 5, 1770

  Your Imperial Majesty:

  Perquisites of political office notwithstanding, I have had no greater honor in my life than that of escorting your youngest daughter to her destination, as well as to her most illustrious destiny. Over the last two weeks she has made you, and the empire, proud with her grace and gracious manners. Universally she is thought a great beauty and the embodiment of charm and delight. In fact she has utterly beguiled the French entourage, although my counterpart, Philippe de Noailles, would seem unmoved by the sun were it to shine only upon his person.

  And, I regret, even as I hasten to inform you, that on behalf of his king and country whom he feels have been grossly insulted, he has continued to balk at the precedence of your august majesty’s name and that of the Emperor Joseph before that of his own sovereign on the formal documents connected with the dauphine’s remise. I fear that the comte’s refusal to accept, let alone countenance, these arrangements vis-à-vis the remise have resulted in an impasse that at present is insurmountable. The dauphine will remain on Austrian soil until the issue has been resolved.

  The chain of couriers is in place, ready to proceed with the requisite haste. I await your instructions.

  Imperial Envoy-Extraordinary,

  George Adam, Prince Starhemberg

  May 6, 1770

  My dear Prince Starhemberg:

  I have been under the impression, after speaking with Choiseul some weeks ago regarding the identical issue, that it had been fully resolved. And now I learn that, like Sisyphus, we have pushed the boulder nearly to the mountain’s summit only to see it roll back to the base, bringing us with it.

  We have come this far, and to have the fate of Europe stalled by the petty complaints of a pompous bureaucrat is intolerable. While it is neither in my policy nor my nature to make concessions of any sort, disaster may be averted within a matter of hours. It will take the secretaries that much time to make a fair copy of everything: Insist that they do so, yielding two versions of the documentation, one in which Louis takes precedence and the other according that status to Joseph and myself.

  I place my faith and trust in your ability to resolve this calamity; the remise must proceed as planned tomorrow.

  Maria Theresa

  FOURTEEN

  The Remise

  MAY 7, 1770

  “I suppose Your Royal Highness must be very excited about this afternoon,” Countess von Waldheim inquired politely. I forced a smile and resisted the impulse to deride it as one of the silliest questions I had ever heard. Mops, who was resting against my chest as Sieur Larsenneur tugged and teased and pomaded and powdered my hair, sneezed mightily, enveloped in a bergamot-scented cloud of orris root. My pug knew the truth, for he could feel the rapid beating of my heart against his dense tawny coat.

  Who was I—Maria Antonia or Marie Antoinette? Archduchess or dauphine? We had reached the Rhine, the watery boundary that separated Austria from France, Hapsburg from Bourbon. In the center of the river, near Kehl, lay a tiny island, the Ile des Epis, named for the spiky cylindrical flowers of wild wheat that grew there in abundance—or so I was informed by the abbé Vermond. My very own atlas, I called him. However, by the time we arrived, all traces of wildness had been tamed and turned to artifice, courtesy of my future grand-père. The island was dominated by a five-room wooden pavilion, constructed for the sole purpose of my handoff, or remise, from the Austrians to the French. When the formalities were over, the structure would be dismantled and all the splendid treasures within it returned both to the royal storehouses and to their rightful owners, the prominent citizens of Strasbourg, on the French side of the Rhine.

  The friseur had completed his handiwork and removed the cloth that protected my rose-colored robe à l’anglaise. Mops began nosing about the striped underskirt; I hoped that no one would notice that my lap was already frosted with dog hair.

  Two of the pavilion’s rooms were located on the Austrian side of the island, and another two, identical to the Austrian chambers, were situated on the other side of the imaginary dividing line, in France. The center salon was considered neutral territory, and it was there, in the salle de remise, where I would first set foot on French soil, nev
er to retreat or look back, toward my homeland. I tried not to think of Orpheus making his fateful descent into Hades.

  Outside, the torrential rainstorm created a curtain of sound; I was grateful to be inside the wooden pavilion, despite the dampness. A bevy of imperial courtiers had watched the preparation of my coiffure, glancing and gossiping as they sipped their coffee and chocolate, and picking daintily at sweet rolls that resembled the cinnamon bun queue of Mops’s tail. From time to time the aristocrats would shift their position to avoid ruining their silks and velvets, when an occasional splash from above revealed gaps in the roof. I imagined they would tell their children and grandchildren about this day; yet what would they recall of it? That the dauphine wore pink and was caught biting her nails by the Countess von Waldheim? That she poured the coffee for her entourage and was relieved to be able to speak to them in her native German? The palpable anxiety in the room reminded me of our family performances at the Hofburg and at Schönbrunn, as we prepared, behind the painted scenery in the theater, to dance or sing for our guests.

  As he was the only one of my train who was familiar with the makeup worn at the French court, Sieur Larsenneur applied my rouge, dabbing my cheeks with carmine and deftly blending the powder from a small splotch on each cheek into a pair of perfect circles. The doll-like circles were an essential element of the toilette for women of the highest rank; as rouge was costly, its predominance was an indication of great wealth and status. The addition of a heart-shaped smudge of lip rouge completed the picture. I was deemed too young and my flawless complexion pale enough to forswear the creamy foundation of white lead favored by older courtiers. I appraised my reflection in a hand mirror. A stranger gazed back at me—older, more sophisticated, yet equally anxious about what lay ahead, a future for which no amount of rouge could prepare me.