Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  On October 22, 1781 the long-awaited heir to the throne of France was born to Louis XVI and Antoinette. The birth of the Dauphin Louis-Joseph brought unprecedented popularity to the Queen as well as increasing her political clout. While Antoinette was not involved in politics at the time, being the mother of a future king made her more dangerous to the enemies of the crown, and therefore a target for increasingly lurid calumnies. Nevertheless, the first days of Louis-Joseph’s short life were those of unmitigated bliss for his parents. The King had ordered that the crowd was not to be allowed in the Queen’s room while she was giving birth, a break with tradition that many resented, but people still massed in the rooms, stairwells, and galleries nearby. Present in the room were Monsieur, the Comte d’Artois, the Mesdames Tantes, as well as the Queen’s ladies: Mesdames de Lamballe, de Chimay, de Mailly, d’Ossun, de Tavannes, and de Guéménée. It had also been decreed that Antoinette should not be told the sex of the child until she was out of harm’s way. However, Antoinette thought that everyone’s restrained silence meant that the child was a girl. Louis, having seen his son washed and dressed before being handed over to the governess, Madame de Guéménée, could not contain himself and said to Antoinette with tears in his eyes: “Monsieur le Dauphin requests permission to enter.”11 The child was brought; he was strong, healthy, and reputedly quite beautiful for a newborn; Antoinette kissed her baby boy with tears of happiness, then handed him back to Madame de Guéménée, saying: “Take him, he belongs to the State; but I shall have my daughter.” Those present later described the scene at Versailles as being one of infectious joy, as friends, enemies and strangers embraced each other with tears. While Louis’ brothers tried to look happy in spite of themselves, feeling themselves disinherited, their sister Madame Élisabeth laughed and wept with happiness. The archbishop wished to adorn the baby with the cordon-bleu, but Louis XVI declared the he must be made a Christian first. The afternoon of the day of his birth, the baby was baptized Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François in the chapel of Versailles by the Cardinal de Rohan, the Grand Almoner. He was presented with both the cordon-bleu and the Cross of St. Louis, followed by a solemn Te Deum, and fireworks in the Place d’Armes.

  In Paris the raptures of the court were echoed by people of all stations, and indeed throughout all France. When Monsieur Croismare, lieutenant of the guards, announced the news of the birth at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, the citizens embraced one another in the streets. The joy caused by a small boy, whose birth indicated to the people that the monarchy would continue, shows that most of the French people were happy with having a king; they were not groaning with misery under an oppressive tyrant as some would later portray them. Versailles was flooded with gifts from the various guilds and fifty market women of Les Halles came to pay their respects wearing their best black silk dresses. There was dancing in the streets as a universal holiday was declared in France. When the President of the Court of Accounts and the President of the Court of Aid came to pay their compliments, the latter said to the Dauphin, “Your birth is our joy; your education will be our hope; your virtue our happiness.”12 In years that followed, Louis XVI cultivated a vegetable garden at Versailles in which he worked in with his oldest son, Louis-Joseph. He felt it important for his heir to have an appreciation for how the food in France was grown. Later, at the Tuileries, his second son Louis-Charles also had a little garden.

  Although Antoinette had tried to breastfeed Madame Royale herself, for the Dauphin they had found a healthy peasant mother to be the nurse. She was from Sceaux and her legal name was already “Madame Poitrine” or “Mrs. Chest.” She swore like a trooper, in spite of the prim lace caps she was given to wear; as she nursed the royal child she sang an old lullaby, “Malbrouk s'en va-t'en guerre.” What may have originated as an Arab tune, brought to Europe by the medieval crusaders, had been known in France for quite some time. Known to us today as “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” or “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow,” the song was named after one of France’s greatest enemies, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), whose military exploits under James II, William III and Queen Anne were infamous. Written in 1722 when Marlborough died, it began triumphantly with “Marlborough, he’s gone to the war, I don’t know when he’ll be back.” The Queen heard the tune being sung by Madame Poitrine, and began humming it herself. Soon the entire court, even the King, was singing Malbrouk. It rapidly spread to Paris, where the song was sung everywhere, as an expression of the people’s joy over having a Dauphin. To commemorate the national exultation, Antoinette built a small tower in her gardens at Trianon, called the tour de Malbrouk. The Dauphin Louis-Joseph often played there before he died at age seven in 1789. Later, the verse Madame à sa tour monte (“My Lady climbs into her tower”) was used to mock Antoinette as she was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple Prison in 1792. As Louis-Joseph grew he displayed a precocious intellect far beyond his years; he was slender, frail and delicate, with chestnut hair and vivid blue eyes.

  Before and after Louis-Joseph’s birth, the Queen suffered miscarriages but then on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1785, she gave birth to Louis-Charles, the Duc de Normandie. There is a legend that at the moment the attending accoucheur, Monsieur Vermond, brother of the Abbé Vermond, announced that the birth was imminent, saying “La Reine va accoucheur” a crown from the moulding of the bed decoration fell down and shattered on the ground.13 Louis-Charles was a robust and husky little lad, resembling his papa; a “peasant child,” his mother described him. Others said he looked like Louis XV, as well as the King’s mother, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe.14 He had golden hair, blue eyes and plump rosy cheeks. Antoinette called him her chou d'amour. He was mischievous and curious, with a tendency to be high-strung, just like his mother.

  Madame Sophie, the youngest, was born on July 9, 1786 during the Diamond Necklace scandal when Antoinette was under excruciating stress. Baptized Sophie-Hélène-Béatrice, she was the last royal child to be born at Versailles but not the last royal child to die there. She was never really healthy and died in June 1787 at eleven months old. In her grief, Antoinette turned to her deeply spiritual sister-in-law Élisabeth for consolation. “She might have grown up to be a friend,” said the Queen, who was feeling that the number of her enemies was increasing.15 But as her sorrows grew, so did her faith, and she turned to religious devotion.

  In October of 1793, when on trial for her life, Antoinette was accused by the revolutionary tribunal of sexually abusing her eight-year-old son, Louis-Charles. When the Queen failed to answer, she was badgered for a response. She rose to her feet and faced the crowded courtroom, saying: “Si je n'ai répondu, c'est que la nature se refuse à répondre à une pareille inculpation faite à une mère. J'en appelles à toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver ici.” “If I do not respond, it is because nature refuses to answer such a charge made to a mother. I appeal to all the mothers who are here!” 16 The spectators, especially the women, applauded the Queen and hissed at the revolutionaries, who had overplayed their hand. The infamous charge elicited disgust even from those deeply committed to the Revolution. Whatever else her faults may have been, Antoinette was a devoted mother. As Maxime de la Rocheterie writes: “There is not a letter to Marie-Antoinette’s friends, not a letter to her brothers, which does not abound in details of the health and a thousand incidents in the life of her dear little ones. She goes to see them at every hour of the day and night....”17

  To the governess Madame de Tourzel, who took the place of Madame de Polignac in the summer of 1789, she gave detailed instructions concerning the care of each of her children, saying:

  I have always accustomed my children to have great confidence in me, and, when they have done wrong, to tell me themselves; and then, when I scold them, this enables me to appear pained and afflicted rather than angry. I have accustomed them to regard ‘yes’ or ‘no’ once uttered by me as irrevocable, but I always give them reasons for my decisions, suitable to their ages....18

  Antoinette and Louis d
ecided early in the Revolution never to allow themselves to be separated from their two surviving children. However, after the King’s death, little Louis-Charles was taken away from his mother in August 1793 and infamously brutalized by his captors. In the fall of the year, the Queen was removed from the Temple prison to the Conciergerie, away from her fifteen-year-old daughter Madame Royale, whom she never saw again. When interrogated in prison as to whom she regarded as her enemies, the Queen replied: “My enemies are all those who would bring harm to my children.”19 In her last letter she wrote to her sister-in-law: “I feel profound sorrow in leaving my poor children: you know that I only lived for them and for you, my good and tender sister....My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell! Farewell!”20

  “Dauphin Louis-Joseph of France”

  “Madame Royale with her nurse”

  “Churching of Marie-Antoinette at Notre Dame de Paris after birth of Dauphin Louis-Joseph, 1781.”

  “Dauphin Louis-Charles, Louis XVII”

  “Gabrielle de Polignac, Royal Governess, in Court Dress with Flowers”

  1 5 Marie-Antoinette and Friendship

  Portait charmant, portait de mon amie

  Gage d'amour par l'amour obtenu

  Ah viens m'offrir le bien que j'ai perdu

  Te voir encore me rappelle à la vie.

  —“Portraint charmant” by Marie-Antoinette

  In her last letter, Antoinette wrote to her sister-in-law Madame Élisabeth: “Happiness is doubled when shared with a friend....”1 In those words are expressed the value she placed on friendship as being intrinsic to her happiness. In this she was participating in the eighteenth century’s “cult” of friendship, which idealized friendship as the highest and purest of relationships.2 Indeed, the Queen had a great capacity for friendship, although she was not always prudent in her choice of companions. Some of her friends were ladies of virtue and sterling character, such as the Princesse de Chimay and the Duchesse de Fitz-James. There were others, however, like Madame Dillon, mistress of the Prince de Guéméné, who was always asking for money, and Madame de Polignac, herself indifferent to honors but weak when it came to the importunities of her family and friends. In some cases, especially in regard to Madame de Polignac, the friendship spilled over into girlish infatuation on the part of the Queen. Her enemies seized upon it to feed the false rumors that Antoinette had lovers of both sexes. No serious biographer of the Queen gives credence to the scandalous stories. Nevertheless, in Dena Goodman’s collection of essays much is made of the Queen’s friendships with women, especially in Terry Castle’s essay, where it maintains that not only was Antoinette a homosexual but people who are interested in her are also latent homosexuals. Such a contention tells us nothing about Antoinette but plenty about the obsessions of such writers who insist upon making unfounded pseudopsychological claims.3

  The French court itself, after years of being ruled by Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, was the sort of setting that overshadowed innocent relationships with tawdry connotations. Antoinette, with her beauty, naiveté and sentimentality, was the perfect target for every sort of calumny. In an age famous for florid and exaggerated expressions, the Queen was especially gushing and emotional when revealing her feelings. It speaks of the loneliness and isolation that she experienced as a young girl, sent away from home to a foreign land. To some extent, her emotions remained fixed at age fourteen, with all the intensity of early adolescence, as can be seen in the lyrics she wrote for a song, “Portrait Charmant”:

  Portait charmant, portait de mon amie

  Gage d'amour par l'amour obtenu

  Ah viens m'offrir le bien que j'ai perdu

  Te voir encore me rappelle à la vie.

  Oui les voilà ses traits, ses traits que j'aime

  Son doux regard, son maintien, sa candeur

  Lorsque ma main te presse sur mon coeur

  Je crois encore la presser elle-même

  Non tu n'as pas pour moi les mêmes charmes

  Muet témoin de nos tendres soupirs

  En retraçant nos fugitifs plaisirs

  Cruel portrait, tu fais couler mes larmes

  Pardonne-moi mon injuste langage

  Pardonne aux cris de ma vive douleur

  Portait charmant, tu n'es pas le bonheur

  Mais bien souvent tu m'en offres l'image.4

  Translation:

  Charming portrait, portrait of my friend

  Token of love, by love obtained

  Ah come and give me back the good I have lost

  To see you again brings me back to life.

  Yes here they are, her features, her features I love

  Her sweet looks, her bearing, her ingenuousness

  When I press you to my heart

  I think I still embrace her herself.

  No you don't have to me the same charms

  Silent witness of our tender sighs

  By recounting our fleeting pleasures

  Cruel portrait, you make my tears fall.

  Forgive me for my unfair language

  Forgive the cries of my bitter woe

  Charming portrait, you are not happiness

  But so often you give me the image of it.5

  "Portrait Charmant" was written by the Queen for one of her close friends, perhaps Madame de Lamballe. It would be unwise to interpret the lines in terms of contemporary American culture, so colored by Puritanism yet ready to see sensuality where it does not belong. In the existence the Queen tried to design at Petit Trianon, life was beautiful, love was pure, everything was rustic, pristine, and natural, a place for small children to play in innocence. In her letters she was always covering everyone with kisses, completely unaware of any double entendres, of any sordid misinterpretation.

  Why did Antoinette have such a need for close friendships? In the vast palaces where she was born and brought up, amid a many-peopled court, where she often went for ten days at a time without seeing her busy mother, the Archduchess Antoine’s closest family member was her sister, Maria Carolina, three years her senior. Maria Carolina was bossy but very motherly and extremely protective of her little sister. When Antoine was about twelve, Carolina married and the two sisters never saw each other again. Later, Antoinette, far away in France, separated from her mother, who was always highly critical of her anyway, tried to find a friend, a “big sister” to take Carolina’s place. Antoinette was accused of having friends too young and silly and when she defended herself by saying most of her friends were older people she has been accused of lying.6 However, most of her circle were older, some much older, than herself. Both of her closest friends, Madame de Lamballe and Madame de Polignac, were a few years older and, especially Madame de Polignac, were highly maternal. The Queen seemed to grow in emotional maturity and balance after she herself became a mother and had to fight for the survival of her family.

  The fact that her marriage had so many difficulties getting started, and that her husband Louis XVI, although a worthy man, was known to be moody, the Queen gravitated to her girlfriends for emotional support. Louis XVI had high regard for Madame de Polignac and encouraged his wife to befriend her, seeing her as someone who could guide Antoinette into her wifely and motherly duties. Throughout her life, Antoinette had many friends from all walks of life, including artists, musicians, and theater people; her maid Madame Campan describes the Queen as being “too much in an equality with the people of the court.”7 In the last few years, she grew closer to her pious sister-in-law Madame Élisabeth; it was to Élisabeth that the Queen, about to die, expressed her last thoughts and her restrained agony. “I had friends,” she wrote. “The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them.”8

  Several of Antoinette’s friends were in her service, and had come to greet her at the French border with Madame de Noailles in May, 1770. It should be noted that a post at th
e royal court, or even at a lesser princely or wealthy bourgeois household, were salaried positions. Although the modern view is that women had no professions available to them outside the nunnery or motherhood other than prostitution, the reality is that Versailles, and any number of other palaces and great households, functioned only because of the women who worked there. At Versailles, many ladies wielded power and influence solely through their duties in the Queen’s household, or even in the households of one of the princesses, and were able to have their own income.9 The higher positions demanded intelligence, discretion and the social graces, for a lady-in-waiting often had to appear in public with her mistress, or mingle at parties and balls. If the lady were unmarried, the Queen, or whoever her patroness was, would help arrange a marriage for her. If she were married and a mother then the Queen might arrange marriages for her children. Pensions in old age were usually provided for those who had served faithfully. At any rate, an office at court was an honorable way in which many women were able to supplement their income, or even provide for their families.