Marie Antoinette (19 page)

Looked at from the angle of Marie Antoinette, the important point was that both men, although not in favour of abandoning the Austrian alliance altogether, were anxious to keep it on a purely defensive level. In particular, they feared the expansionist nature of Joseph II, once his mother succumbed altogether to her failing health. A letter from Vergennes of December 1774, at a moment when Maria Teresa was believed wrongly to be dying, expressed this worry about the “restless and ambitious spirit” of the Emperor. In their suspicion of Austria, Maurepas and Vergennes found a convenient identity of view with their sovereign. And all three men looked warily on the Habsburg Queen.

Maurepas’ intimate status was conveyed by the fact that he occupied the Du Barry’s old apartments at Versailles. In time he would even be allowed to use the secret staircase that joined the royal apartments to that of the favourite, if for a very different purpose. Symbolically, the Queen’s apartments were now considerably further away from those of the King. It was not until the summer of 1775, at the urgent insistence of Mercy, that a long subterranean staircase linking the two was constructed.
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Up until that time Louis had been condemned to make his sporadic marital visits by going through the so-called Oeil de Boeuf antechamber (named from its ox-eye window) in which courtiers lounged speculatively.

What theoretical powers did Marie Antoinette have, in order to combat the insidious propaganda of the King’s advisors? The fact was that there was no agreed official role for a French queen. The status of the French royal female was generally low: a reflection of the fourteenth-century Salic Law by which no woman could ascend to the throne. In contrast women had succeeded to the thrones of Spain, England and Hungary, whatever the powers of the queens concerned, whatever their subordination to their hutx1ands. This obviously lifted up the position of princesses because they were capable of inheritance. Certainly there was a tradition in the Habsburg family, from which Marie Antoinette sprang, of strong female rulers, either as Regents appointed by their close male relatives (as Margaret of Austria had ruled the Netherlands) or Queens Regnant such as Isabella of Castile and, of course, Maria Teresa.

What were the other possibilities for royal women? Motherhood could lead to an improvement in status. Maria Carolina, in her marriage contract, was promised a place in the Council of State when she produced a male heir. Her first son, following two daughters, who was greeted with unselfish joy by Marie Antoinette, was born in 1775 and a second in June 1777. Altogether the Queen of Naples, emulating her mother in fertility, would undergo eighteen pregnancies, but it was the birth of the heir that was crucial. Given that an official position for the Queen in the French King’s Council of State was unthinkable, there was obviously no such clause in Marie Antoinette’s wedding contract. It was true that a widowed Queen of France could be Regent for her young son, as had happened in the case of three foreign-born princesses, Catherine de’ Medici in the sixteenth century, Marie de’ Medici and Anne of Austria in the seventeenth. In France the powers of the mother (as opposed to the wife) were acknowledged. So far, however, Marie Antoinette had not even managed to take the first step up this particular ladder of power.

In the absence of a more formal structure, unofficial influence was the proper sphere of the female and the French court was well used to it. But it was the influence of the mistress not the wife. Throughout the long reign of Louis XV, the mistress had been a force to be reckoned with, whether it was the intelligent, tasteful Pompadour or the Du Barry, who was so much less gifted that the Prince de Ligne said of her that she would have to use important documents as curling papers “in order to get them into her head” (the Du Barry had particularly long thick hair of which she was inordinately proud). The last consort, Maria Lesczinska, trained by her father to be intensely grateful for her position, had made one little venture at a political action nearly fifty years earlier, and had thereafter subsided into a formal, pious, secluded life. She was, however, seen—by the French—as a model of a queen.

The role designed for Marie Antoinette by Count Mercy was intended to be more like that of the mistress, taking advantage of the unique advantage she did have—personal access to the monarch in a period when this was a crucial element in all court intrigues. The fact that she was not fulfilling the most significant function of a mistress was an irritating weakness in such calculations. However, it did at least mean that the “indolent” King showed no penchant for other women, a palliative seized upon by Maria Teresa. In the meantime Marie Antoinette was supposed to infiltrate herself into the confidence of the King, while being careful always to wait for
him
to consult
her
, as Mercy emphasized (not an easy mission to fulfil). There was some difference of aim between Mercy and the Emperor Joseph. Whilst Mercy saw Marie Antoinette as playing her part in these court intrigues, Joseph was more interested in his sister exerting a notional “German” influence. But the method of operation was to be the same: her access to the King was to be used.

The Queen did have other weapons at her disposal. She had considerable patronage. Here she was on safe ground, with the custom of the country behind her. Even if particular appointments of hers were criticized, there was nothing unusual in her making them. When her mother protested at members of the Queen’s household being rewarded, Marie Antoinette pointed out that it was expected of her, and her supporters would otherwise miss out. Furthermore, showering people she liked with benefits was exactly suited to the temperament of Marie Antoinette, where political infighting was not. This lack of any real interest in politics—the game for its own sake—was an aspect of her character that struck all those who knew her well. The Comte de La Marck said that she had “a repugnance for the whole subject common to women,” ignoring the fact that the Queen’s close female relations felt no such repugnance. It was certainly a cause of despair among her Austrian advisors that she remained fundamentally uninterested, “both by principle and inclination,” in Vermond’s words, except where questions of personal distaste or gratitude were concerned, as with Aiguillon on the one hand (where she succeeded because the King agreed with her) and Choiseul on the other (where she failed because he did not).

If not political by temperament, Marie Antoinette was generous and loyal—good qualities in a royal person but expensive ones. The household of a Queen of France traditionally consisted of about 500 people all paid for by the Minister of the Royal Household (
Ministre de la Maison du Roi
) at a cost of 4 million livres. These ranged from its official Mistress, the Comtesse de Noailles, down to the footmen who turned the royal mattress because it was too heavy for the women to manage. They included the numerous functionaries, who generally worked in a quarterly rota in squads of four, for the stable and the kitchen as well as the bedchamber. Looked at with a twenty-first-century eye, this is a vast establishment; it needs to be considered, however, from an eighteenth-century perspective. The King’s household was even larger—that was only to be expected. But the respective households of his younger brothers and their wives were almost as large as the Queen’s, the Mistress of the Household and the Mistress of the Robes for the Comtesse de Provence receiving the same financial reward, for example, as those for Marie Antoinette.

In general, the royal system, which had been established long before the arrival of Marie Antoinette, was incredibly lavish. And there were many, many people, mainly but not entirely noble, with a vested interest in continuing it. In addition, it was not as if the rest of the world adhered to a different standard of life. The Spanish ambassador had at least seventy servants, the English ambassador over fifty; at the château of Chantilly, an amazed English visitor watched a supper party given by the Prince de Condé at which eight people were waited on at table by twenty-five attendants. As Thomas Jefferson wrote of the French and their lifestyle: “The roughnesses of the human mind are so thoroughly rubbed off with them that it seems as if one might glide through a whole life among them without a justle [
sic
].”

It was theoretically to smooth out roughnesses, then, that Marie Antoinette had, for example, a Grand Almoner, a First Almoner, an Almoner in Ordinary, four almoners who rotated quarterly, four quarterly chaplains, four quarterly chapel boys, down to two chapel summoners. Of course the effect of such gross overmanning was the reverse of smooth and it was also very expensive. All these people, like all the other courtiers, watched each other perpetually to see that no extra advantage was being taken, no privilege neglected. The Queen’s trainbearer, to take only one example, had to be of noble birth; otherwise the First Gentleman Usher, who had to provide a place for him in his coach, could not tolerate the association. The trainbearer also had to surrender the train to a page when the Queen entered the chapel of the
private
apartments of the King, although he was entitled to carry it in the State Apartments and the Gallery of Mirrors. He was also in charge of her cloak, although he had to hand it to an usher or equerry if she actually wanted to put it on . . . Woe betide the trainbearer who overstepped the limits of his role, committing crimes like carrying the train into the chapel, or handing the Queen her cloak himself.

This honeycomb of privilege and payment was well described in her memoirs by the Queen’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, Henriette Campan, née Genet.
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One of the few intelligent women that Marie Antoinette liked and trusted, Madame Campan was three years senior to her mistress, having begun her career as Reader to the Mesdames Tantes when she was fifteen. In a period rich for the first time in female testimonies, that of Madame Campan stands out not only for her intelligence and education but also because she had access to the Queen and the court over a long period at a particular intermediate level where much information could be gathered.

Shortly before the death of Louis XV, Henriette had been married off to a widower, François Campan, the son of Pierre Campan, Marie Antoinette’s librarian. The junior Campan proved to have been reluctant to remarry; his rapid disappearance abroad meant that Henriette had plenty of time to concentrate on court affairs, her single child, Henri, being born ten years later when she was in her early thirties. Apart from being daughter-in-law to the Librarian, Henriette Campan had a sister in the Queen’s household, Adélaïde Auguié, known to Marie Antoinette as “my lioness” because of her exceptional height, and another sister, Julie Rousseau, also in royal service.

Madame Campan, while defending Marie Antoinette for following the existing structure of a Queen’s household, was critical of her where an innovation of 1775 was concerned. The Princesse de Lamballe was made overall Superintendent of the Household, that is to say, superior to the Comtesse de Noailles and the Duchesse de Cossé, Mistress of the Robes. In theory this was a revival of an ancient post. But since the post itself had been abolished as being too powerful, its reappearance marked an unfortunate decision by a Queen determined to give the Lamballe “greater personal consideration.”

Nor was the Princesse de Lamballe’s handling of her post diplomatic. She interfered with the running of the household, but did not issue the requisite invitations for lavish suppers, for which her stipend was intended, on the grounds that it was beneath her status as a Princess of the Blood to solicit others. The other Princesses of the Blood took offence at this. Lamballe was only the widow of a prince of legitimated royal descent, so it could be argued that if the post was to be re-created, it should have gone to someone with a superior claim: Mademoiselle de Clermont, for example, the daughter of the impeccably royal Prince de Condé, whose aunt had been the last incumbent.

It was ironic that the Queen, while generously determined to please her friend, was also beginning to tire of her. Was the Princesse de Lamballe, with all her devotion and her famous sensitivity, becoming, to put it delicately, somewhat of a bore? She certainly did not provide the kind of amusing society to which Marie Antoinette was beginning to turn in compensation for the other deficiencies in her life. The new favourite, Yolande de Polignac, was a far more fascinating and seductive character. Yet by the rules of Versailles, the post of Superintendent, once given, could not be withdrawn. The Princesse de Lamballe continued disconsolately to haunt Versailles and to insist on such prerogatives as putting the Queen’s breakfast on her bed, while the Queen’s feelings of sentimental friendship for her demonstrably waned.

Comtesse Jules de Polignac, as she was known, had been born Yolande de Polastron, of an ancient but poverty-stricken family, and when very young had married Jules de Polignac, who was similarly noble, similarly poor. She was now twenty-six, but her particular freshness of appearance, giving an impression of “utter naturalness,” was undiminished; Yolande with her cloud of dark hair, her big eyes, her neat nose and pretty pearly teeth was generally likened to a Madonna by Raphael—even if the Duc de Lévis thought her rather an insipid Madonna. People enjoyed themselves in her company; her manner was gently pleasing and she had a delightful laugh.