Kate Berridge (10 page)

The rules and honours were so meticulously observed that it was regarded as incredibly serious when, owing to the height of her hairstyle, the particular ceremony of slipping petticoats over the Queen's head became impossible to perform. Martineau writes, ‘When her majesty was pleased to have her head dressed so high that no petticoat would go over it, but must be slipped up from her feet, she used to step inside her closet with her favourite milliner and one of her women. This change gave great offence to the ladies who thought that they had a right to the honour of dressing the Queen.'

The admittance of Marie–a talented commercial modeller–to the very centre of court life would have constituted an extraordinary breach in these well-documented and famously rigid rituals. The inflexible hierarchy at Versailles was calculated to insulate the royal family from contact with other classes, and certainly to preclude the level of intimacy that Marie would have us believe she attained. An observation by Mercier is particularly interesting in light of the court credentials that constitute such an important part of Marie's autobiographical claims. He wrote:

But even more compelling as a challenge to Marie's claims is her absence from the official records of staff at Versailles. The Almanac de Versailles, which runs to almost 200 pages, names every spit-mender and commode carrier, but there is no reference to Marie Grosholtz. More telling is her omission in the administrative records relating directly to Madame Elizabeth. Among sixty-six named roles–including that of Léonard, the coiffeur, who came in when required from Paris–there is no mention of Marie.

However, the lack of records should not be regarded as conclusive proof that Marie was never at court. Conceivably she could have had a limited tenure as an art tutor, and if she was employed on a short-term part-time basis–say for a few lessons–this could account for the lack of a record. For example, we know that in 1782 the King acquired the chateau of Montreuil on the Versailles estate as a gift for his eighteen-year-old sister. She was not allowed to sleep there until she was twenty-five, but she spent her days there. It is conceivable that under Elizabeth rules were less stringent than at Versailles and that Marie gave the Princess lessons there–although household records from this time that appear comprehensive, naming every laundress and furnace attendant and giving details of a botany tutor and a drawing teacher, omit to mention the presence of a tutor in wax modelling on the payroll.

Somehow the lack of references to her, taken with the demands of the exhibitions in Paris, especially for frequent new figures, all lead one to conclude that her official involvement at Versailles, if it ever happened, was minimal. Certainly she could have gone to Versailles as a visitor, because royal-watching was a popular spectator sport and the rank and file were actively encouraged to indulge in this reverential form of sightseeing. This admittance of the riff-raff to the palace grounds amazed English visitors, including Arthur Young: ‘The whole palace, except the chapel, seems to be open to all the world; we pushed through an amazing crowd of all sorts of people to see the procession, many of them not very well dressed.'

The most popular ritual that the public were permitted to watch, and which was a magnet for tourists and locals alike, was the Grand Couvert. This public dining ritual dated back to the time of Louis XIV. Once a week, surrounded by Swiss Guards and with various staff
in attendance, the King and Queen, sometimes joined by other senior royals, would make a meal into a performance. Given the spectacular performances available in Paris, one would hardly think the sight of human beings eating would have had a sure-fire, drum-roll, gasp-and-grip level of excitement for the crowd. Yet the royals performing in public an ordinary activity that was usually private made it extraordinary, and their subjects loved this sedate spectacle.

Part of the interest the ritual held was in the grandeur of the table, decked with magnificent Sèvres china, fine linen, and solid gold and silver tableware, and the awe-inspiring servility of those in attendance, decked in fine livery. Marie sets the scene:

This public dining was, according to Madame Campan, ‘the delight of persons from the country', and, like cramming in as many as possible sightings of rare species on a safari, after a glimpse of the big game that were the King and Queen they would hurry to see the lesser royals' feeding time. The stairs were a veritable stampede as sightseers rushed to view ‘the princes eat their bouilli and then ran themselves out of breath to behold Mesdames at their dessert'. Particularly eagerly sought was the sight of Marie Antoinette actually eating, but people often felt disappointed by the Queen's inactivity at the table. Mrs Thrale seems to have been extremely lucky, for she reported in her diary, ‘The Queen ate heartily of a pie which the King helped her to.' In most accounts not a morsel passes the Queen's lips, and in the best tradition of married couples' dining habits she and her husband ‘did not speak to each other at all'. Mrs Thrale's overall reflection was, ‘It is a mighty silent ceremonious business this dining in public, sat like two people stuffed with straw.'

Unlike Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were going through the motions like jaded circus performers, Louis XV had prided
himself on playing to the audience. His star turn was removing the top of an eggshell with one deft flourish of his fork. As Madame Campan recalled, ‘He therefore always ate eggs when he dined in public, and the Parisians who came on Sundays to see the King dine returned home less struck with his fine figure than with the dexterity with which he broke his eggs.'

Though much seems counterfeit in Marie's claims about her eight or so years at court, her description of the costumes reeks of authority and authenticity. Her memoir is above all a richly detailed costume history. With fashion-plate clarity she supplies details of texture, cut and cloth for each sartorial layer of court society. Thus we can picture the magnificence of the Swiss Guards, in the same costume ‘as that worn by Henry the Fourth, consisting of a hat with three white feathers, short robe, red pantaloons, or long stockings, all in one, slashed at the top with white silk, black shoes with buckles, sash, with a sword and halbert'. She gives us almost stitch-by-stitch detail of outfits for all occasions; you can almost hear the rustle of the panniers and smell the powder as Marie brings court dress to life. A style of dress called
à la polonaise
, in which Marie Antoinette is said to have appeared at her most beautiful, is described as ‘light blue velvet, trimmed with black fur, white satin stomacher terminating in a point; sleeves tight to the arm, also trimmed with fur'. The matching headdress was of ‘blue velvet, with bird-of-paradise feather, and diamond aigrette, hair turned up,
frisé
, gold lama veil, splendid diamond earrings'. We see the King wrapped up for cold weather in leathers and with a ‘grey coat trimmed with dark brown fur with large sleeves lined throughout with fur and called a jura'. She conjures up the glint of diamond shoe buckles on the men, and the women's sparkling bodices, ‘often one blaze of jewels'. We can feel the weight of their heavily embroidered formal dresses for the fêtes, where extravagance was most indulged, with ‘not only the Queen, but many of her subjects, wearing large fortunes upon their persons, comprised in the value of the diamonds by which they were adorned'. Even dressing down was dressing up at Versailles, with real silver thread adding interest to the Queen's elegant green riding habit.

The emphasis on appearances is not incidental detail. Marie Antoinette's status as fashion icon was a dangerous development.
Though the young Queen–powdered, painted and preened to perfection–injected youthful caprice and energy to the court, a more subversive expression of this was her desire to modernize the monarchy by abandoning the stultifying and–to her mind–constraining formality of the old generation. Her physical attributes won her many admirers–including Horace Walpole, who swooned, ‘It is said that she cannot dance in time, but time is at fault!' Less positive was that her good looks primed her for dangerous vanity. Madame de La Tour du Pin relates how, as a newcomer at court, she was given strict instructions not to stand near the windows, where the sunlight would compliment the bloom of her young cheeks, for under no circumstances could the Queen be publicly outshone by younger skin. Such vanity was also in stark contrast with the bearing of the last Queen, the long-suffering Marie Leszczynka, who had spent her dowdy days embroidering altar cloths.

Marie Antoinette's misguided approach to revitalizing the court would see her condemned for extravagance and excess, but more importantly it contributed to the destabilizing of the monarchy. Grace Elliott, mistress of the Duc d'Orléans, described how Marie Antoinette's behaviour upset the old guard: ‘She had imbibed a taste for fashions and amusements which she could not have enjoyed had she kept up her etiquette as a great queen. By this means she made herself many enemies amongst the formal old ladies of the court, whom she disliked, and attached herself to younger people, whose taste was more suited to her own.' Fissures started to crack the bedrock of court society. Older, wiser ministers looked on in dismay.

When Marie Antoinette brought in the couturier Rose Bertin and the hairdresser Léonard, the introduction of these two Parisian style-makers to Versailles irrevocably altered the distribution of power at court. Prince de Montbary lamented the admission of ‘people of a class who were strangers to the court, but who had a reputation for their talents. Little by little the mixing of the classes became considerable.' Their admission signified the calamitous innovation of the Queen becoming a style-setter for the masses. Madame Campan witnessed this development: ‘The skill of a milliner, who was received into the household in spite of custom which kept persons of her description out of it, afforded her the opportunity of introducing
some new fashion every day.' There is a sense of two eras: before and after Bertin. ‘Up to this time the Queen had shown very plain taste in dress; she now began to make it a principal occupation, and she was of course imitated by others.'

Most serious was the way in which dress started to function differently. Instead of being an integral aspect of the display of power and encoding unchanging values, it was now contrived to be ephemeral. Whereas traditionally the dress and bearing of the Queen were designed to emphasize her difference from her subjects, suddenly it was desirable to copy her as a fashion icon. She was a model for the new, an originator of trends rather than a dignified reinforcement of the status quo. In this reversal, the power lay with Léonard and Bertin, who became the undisputed rulers of the kingdom of fashion, and the Queen one of their most illustrious subjects. As one courtier who witnessed the hairdresser's reception at court put it, ‘Léonard came and he was king.'

Illustrating the new balance of power is an incident that happened when the royal party were en route to Notre-Dame one day in the spring of 1779. The King and Queen's carriage passed up the Rue Saint-Honoré, where the crowds lining the street included Rose Bertin and her staff, who had gone on to their showroom balcony to get a better view. Recognizing her beloved Bertin, Marie Antoinette waved at her and pointed her out to the King, who then doffed his hat and waved, too. This seemingly inconsequential gesture of the King and Queen waving to the leading fashion designer of the day seems to encapsulate the enormity of social change, and the reversal of deference. That Marie was close by is likely, but whether she witnessed the incident we can only guess.

The readiness to copy the Queen should not be underestimated at this time. Sometimes there was a subtext to new trends of which those who followed them were happily oblivious. Notably in 1781, following the birth of the Dauphin, the Queen's hair loss posed a delicate problem for Léonard. At first he tried to convince her that her preferred high headdresses, which required healthy long hair to attach them to, were passé and that ‘the middle class has long made them its own and now even humble folk are beginning to wear them.' She took some convincing, because, as the Queen said, ‘they suited me so
well.' He therefore marketed a new look as making her look younger; but she was still stubborn. He finally resorted to straight talk: ‘Your Majesty was saying that you were attached to your hair, as I can well imagine, but unfortunately your hair is no longer attached to Your Majesty. Before a fortnight is past it will all have fallen out, unless this day we apply the infallible remedy of scissors.' Two weeks later on the streets of Paris and in the fashionable gardens of the Palais-Royal every woman in the know sported a new hair-do–
coiffure à l'enfant
–completely unaware that their new-look shorter style was a testament far more to diplomacy than to design and cutting skill.

The new fashion industry helped by the Queen not only made the fortunes of Léonard and Bertin. The shift in perception of royalty was a vital development for Curtius and Marie, allowing them to take representation of royalty in daring new directions. The royal family was the centrepiece of their Palais-Royal exhibition, and its members the most talked-about figures. The fact that Rose Bertin supplied the costumes for the wax figure of the Queen also added great interest: it gave more women the chance to study every detail of exclusive couture design, and meant they could emulate royal fashion by going off and buying cheaper versions of the trimmings. As well as designing the Queen's wardrobe, Bertin was responsible for dressing one of a number of wax dolls that were sent each month from her workshop. These were used to carry information on the latest designs, fabrics and trimmings to the provinces and abroad. As Mercier described the wax doll's travels, ‘The precious mannequin attired in the newest fashion is dispatched from Paris to London, and from thence is sent to shed its graces round the whole of Europe. It travels north and to the south; it goes to St Petersburg and to Constantinople; and all nations, humbly bowing to the taste of the Rue Saint-Honoré, imitate the folds turned by a French hand.' The
poupées
of Saint-Honoré were world famous. It was said that during wars the ships carrying them were granted safe passage. One of the most radical aspects of the waxworks was the way that the full-size model of Marie Antoinette was in effect a giant wax doll, a bigger version of these miniature dolls whose every trimming was vital information in the ever-powerful fashion industry.