Marie Antoinette gives her Mother her First Impressions of the Court and
of her own Position and Prospects.--Court Life at Versailles.--Marie
Antoinette shows her Dislike of Etiquette.--Character of the Duc
d'Aiguillon.--Cabals against the Dauphiness.--Jealousy of Mme. du Barri.--
The Aunts, too, are Jealous of Her.--She becomes more and more Popular.--
Parties for Donkey-riding.--Scantiness of the Dauphiness's Income.--Her
Influence over the King.--The Duc de Choiseul is dismissed.--She begins
to have Great Influence over the Dauphin.
Marie Antoinette herself was inclined to be delighted with all that befell
her, and to make light of what she could hardly regard as pleasant or
becoming; and two of her first letters to her mother, written in the early
part of July,[1] give us an insight into the feelings with which she
regarded her new family and her own position, as well as a picture of her
daily occupations and of the singular customs of the French court,
strangely inconsistent in what it permitted and in what it disallowed,
and, in the publicity in which its princes lived, curiously incompatible
with ordinary ideas of comfort and even delicacy.
"The king," she says, "is full of kindnesses toward me, and I love him
tenderly. But it is pitiable to see his weakness for Madame du Barri, who
is the silliest and most impertinent creature that it is possible to
conceive. She has played with us every evening at Marly,[2] and she has
twice been seated next to me; but she has not spoken to me, and I have not
attempted to engage in conversation with her; but, when it was necessary,
I have said a word or two to her.
"As for my dear husband, he is greatly changed, and in a most advantageous
manner. He shows a great deal of affection for me, and is even beginning
to treat me with great confidence. He certainly does not like M. de la,
Vauguyon; but he is afraid of him. A curious thing happened about the duke
the other day. I was alone with my husband, when M. de la Vauguyon stole
hurriedly up to the doors to listen. A servant, who was either a fool or a
very honest man, opened the door, and there stood his grace the duke
planted like a sentinel, without being able to retreat. I pointed out to
my husband the inconvenience that there was in having people listening at
the doors, and he took my remark very well."
She did not tell the empress the whole of this occurrence; she had been
too indignant at the duke's meanness to suppress her feelings, and she
reproved the duke himself with a severity which can hardly be said to have
been misplaced.
"Duke de la Vauguyon," she said, "my lord the dauphin is now of an age to
dispense with a governor; and I have no need of a spy. I beg you not to
appear again in my presence.[3]"
Between the writing of her first and second letters she had heard from
Maria Teresa; and she "can not describe how the affection her mother
expresses for her has gone to her heart. Every letter which she has
received has filled her eyes with tears of regret at being separated from
so tender and loving a mother, and, happy as she is in France, she would
give the world to see her family again, if it were but for a moment. As
her mother wishes to know how the days are passed; she gets up between
nine and ten, and, having dressed herself and said her morning prayers,
she breakfasts, and then she goes to the apartments of her aunts, whose
she usually finds the king. That lasts till half-past ten; then at eleven
she has her hair dressed.
"At twelve," she proceeds to say, "what is called the Chamber is held, and
there every one who does not belong to the common people may enter. I put
on my rouge and wash my hands before all the world; the men go out, and
the women remain; and then I dress myself in their presence. Then comes
mass. If the king is at Versailles, I go to mass with him, my husband, and
my aunts; if he is not there, I go alone with the dauphin, but always at
the same hour. After mass we two dine by ourselves in the presence of all
the world; but dinner is over by half-past one, as we both eat very fast.
From the dinner-table I go to the dauphin's apartments, and if he has
business, I return to my own rooms, where I read, write, or work; for I am
making a waistcoat for the king, which gets on but slowly, though, I
trust, with God's grace, it will be finished before many years are over.
At three o'clock I go again to visit my aunts, and the king comes to them
at the same hour. At four the abbé[4] comes to me, and at five I have
every day either my harpsichord-master or my singing-master till six. At
half-past six I go almost every day to my aunts, except when I go out
walking. And you must understand that when I go to visit my aunts, my
husband almost always goes with me. At seven we play cards till nine
o'clock; but when the weather is fine I go out walking, and then there is
no play in my apartments, but it is held at my aunts'. At nine we sup; and
when the king is not there, my aunts come to sup with us; but when the
king is there, we go after supper to their rooms, waiting there for the
king, who usually comes about a quarter to eleven; and I lie down on a
grand sofa and go to sleep till he comes. But when he is not there, we go
to bed at eleven o'clock."
The play-table which is alluded to in these letters was one of the most
curious and mischievous institutions of the court. Gambling had been one
of its established vices ever since the time of Henry IV., whose enormous
losses at play had formed the subject of Sully's most incessant
remonstrances. And from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., a
gaming-table had formed a regular part of the evening's amusement. It was
the one thing which was allowed to break down the barrier of etiquette. On
all other occasions, the rules which regulated who might and who might not
be admitted to the royal presence were as precise and strict as in many
cases they were unreasonable and unintelligible. But at the gaming-table
every one who could make the slightest pretensions to gentle birth was
allowed to present himself and stake his money; [5] and the leveling
influence of play was almost as fully exemplified in the king's palace as
in the ordinary gaming-houses, since, though the presence of royalty so
far acted as a restraint on the gamblers as to prevent any open explosion,
accusations of foul play and dishonest tricks were as rife as in the most
vulgar company.
Marie Antoinette was winning many hearts by her loveliness and affability;
but she could not scatter her kind speeches and friendly smiles among all
with whom she came into contact without running counter to the prejudices
of some of the old courtiers who had been formed on a different system; to
whom the maintenance of a rigid etiquette was as the very breath of their
nostrils, and in whose eyes its very first rule and principle was that
princes should keep all the world at a distance. Foremost among these
sticklers for old ideas was the Countess de Noailles, her principal "lady
of honor," whose uneasiness on the subject speedily became so notorious as
to give rise to numerous court squibs and satirical odes, the authors of
which seemed glad to compliment the dauphin and to vex her ladyship at the
same time, but who could not be deterred by these effusions from lecturing
Marie Antoinette on her disregard of her rank, and on the danger of making
herself too familiar, till she provoked the young princess into giving her
the nickname of Madame Etiquette; and, no doubt, in her childish
playfulness, to utter many a speech and do many an act whose principle
object was to excite the astonishment or provoke the frowns of the too
prim lady of honor.
There can be no doubt that, though she often pushed her strictness too
far, Madame de Noailles to some extent had reason on her side; and that a
certain degree of ceremony and stately reserve is indispensable in court
life. It is a penalty which those born in the purple must pay for their
dignity, that they can have no friend on a perfect equality with
themselves; and those who in different ages and countries have tried to
emancipate themselves from this law of their rank have not generally won
even the respect of those to whom they have condescended, and still less
the approbation of the outer world, whose members have perhaps a secret
dislike to see those whom they regard as their own equals lifted above
them by the familiarity of princes.
This, however, was a matter of comparatively slight importance. An excess
of condescension is at the worst a venial and an amiable error; but even
at the early period plots were being contrived against the young princess,
which, if successful, would have been wholly destructive of her happiness,
and which, though she was fully aware of them, she had not means by
herself to disconcert or defeat. They were the more formidable because
they were partly political, embracing a scheme for the removal of a
minister, and consequently conciliated more supporters and insured greater
perseverance than if they had merely aimed at securing a preponderance of
court favor for the plotters. Like all the other mistresses who had
successfully reigned in the French courts, Madame du Barri had a party of
adherents who hoped to rise by her patronage. The Duc de Choiseul himself
had owed his promotion to her predecessor, Madame de Pompadour, and those
who hoped to supplant him saw in a similar influence the best prospect of
attaining their end. One of the least respectable of the French nobles was
the Duc d'Aiguillon. As Governor of Brittany, he had behaved with
notorious cowardice in the Seven Years' War. He had since been, if
possible, still more dishonored by charges of oppression, peculation, and
subornation, on which the authorities of the province had prosecuted him,
and which the Parisian Parliament had pronounced to be established. But no
kind of infamy was a barrier to the favor of Louis XV. He cancelled the
resolution of the Parliament, and showed such countenance to the culprit
that d'Aiguillon, who was both ambitious and covetous, conceived the idea
of supplanting Choiseul in the Government. As one of Choiseul's principal
measures had been the negotiation of the dauphin's marriage, Marie
Antoinette was known to regard him with a good-will which was founded on
gratitude. But, unfortunately, her feelings on this point were not shared
by her husband; for Choiseul had had notorious differences with his
father, the late dauphin, and, though it was perfectly certain that that
prince had died of natural disease, people had been found to whisper in
his son's ear suspicions that he had been poisoned, and that the minister
to whom he was unfriendly had been concerned in his death.
The two plots, therefore, to overthrow the minister and to weaken the
influence of the dauphiness, went hand-in-hand, and, as might have been
expected from the character of the patroness of both, no means were too
vile or wicked for the intriguers who had set them on foot. Madame du
Barri was, indeed, seriously alarmed for the maintenance of her own
ascendency. The king took such undisguised pleasure in his new
granddaughter's company, that some of the most experienced courtiers began
to anticipate that she would soon gain entire influence over him[6]. The
mistress began, therefore, to disparage her personal charms, never
speaking of her to Louis ("France," as she generally called him), except
as "the little blowsy,[7]" while her ally, De la Vauguyon, endeavored to
further her views by exerting the influence which he mistakenly flattered
himself that he still retained over the dauphin, to surround her with his
own creatures. He tried to procure the dismissal of the Abbé de Vermond,
who, having been, as we have seen, the tutor of Marie Antoinette at
Vienna, still remained attached to her person as her reader; and whose
complete knowledge of all the ways of the court, joined to a thorough
honesty and devoted fidelity to her best interests, rendered his services
most valuable to his mistress in her new sphere. He sought to recommend a
creature of his own as her confessor; to obtain for his own daughter the
appointment of one of her chief ladies; and, with a wickedness peculiar to
the French court, he even endeavored to imitate the vile arts by which the
Duc de Richelieu had deprived Marie Leczinska of the affections of the
king, to alienate the dauphin from his young wife, and to induce him to
commit himself to the guidance of Madame du Barri. But this part of the
scheme failed. The dauphin was strangely insensible to the personal charms
of Marie Antoinette herself, and was wholly inaccessible to any inferior
temptations; and, as far as the arrangements of the court were concerned,
the success of the mistress's cabal was limited to procuring the dismissal
of the mistress of the robes, the Countess de Grammont, for refusing to
cede to Madame du Barri and some of her friends the place which belonged
to her office at some private theatricals which were held in the palace.
Louis XIV. had taught his nobles the pernicious notion that an order to
withdraw from the court was a penal banishment, and his successor now
banished Madame de Grammont fourteen leagues from Versailles, and for some
time refused to recall his sentence, though Marie Antoinette herself wrote
to him to complain of one of her servants being so treated for such a
cause. She had not, as she reported to her mother, been very willing to
write, knowing that Madame du Barri read all the king's letters; but Mercy
had urged her to take the step, thinking it very important that she should
establish the practice of communicating directly with Louis on all matters
relating to her own household, and that she should avoid the blunder of
his daughters, her aunts, whose conduct toward their father had, in his
opinion, been mischievously timid, and to follow whose example would be
prejudicial both to her dignity and to her comfort.
The aunts too, and especially the eldest, Madame Adelaide, had schemes of
their own, which, they also sought to carry out by underhand methods. The
more conscious they were that they themselves had no influence over their
father, the less could they endure the chance of their niece acquiring
any, though it could not have been said to have been established at their
expense. On the other hand, they had before his marriage had considerable
power with the dauphin, which they had now but little hope of retaining.
They saw also that Marie Antoinette had in a few weeks gained a general
popularity such as they had never won in their whole lives, and on all
these accounts they were painfully jealous of her. They put ideas and
plans into her head which they expected to grate upon their father's taste
or indolence, and then contrived to have them represented or
misrepresented to him, though he disappointed their malice by regarding
such things as childish ebullitions natural to a girl of her age, and was
far more inclined to humor than to reprove her. With the same object, they
tried to induce her to interfere in appointments in which she had no
concern; but she remembered her mother's advice, and on this point kept
steadily in the path which that affectionate adviser had marked out for
her. They even ventured to make disparaging observations on her manners,
as inexperienced and unformed, to the dauphin himself, till he silenced
them by the warmth of his praises alike of her beauty and of her
disposition; and they were so afraid of any addition to her popularity
with the nation at large, that, when the city of Paris and the states of
Languedoc presented her with an address, they recommended her to make no
reply, assuring her that on similar occasions they themselves had never
given any answers. Luckily, she had a better adviser, who on this occasion
was the Abbé de Vermond. He told her truly that in this matter the conduct
which the older princesses had pursued was a warning, not a pattern: that
they had made all France discontented; and at his suggestion Marie
Antoinette gave to each address "an answer full of graciousness, with
which the public was enchanted."
Thus in the first year of her marriage, by her kindness of heart, guided
by the advice of Mercy and the abbé, to which she listened with the
greatest docility, she had won general affection, and had made no enemies
but those whose enmity was an honor. She was, as she wrote to her mother,
perfectly happy, though, had she not wished to make the best of matters,
she was not, in fact, wholly free from disappointments and vexations, some
of which continued for years to cause her uneasiness and anxiety, though
others were comparatively trivial or temporary, while one was of an almost
comical nature.
She had conceived a great desire to learn to ride. Her mother had been a
great horsewoman; and, as the dauphin, like the king, was passionately
addicted to hunting, which hitherto she had only witnessed from a
carriage, Marie Antoinette not unnaturally desired to be mistress of an
accomplishment which would enable her to give him more of her
companionship. Unluckily Mercy disapproved of the idea. It is impossible
to read his correspondence with the empress, and in subsequent years with
Marie Antoinette herself, without being forcibly impressed with respect
for his consummate prudence, his sound judgment in matters of public
policy, and his unswerving fidelity to the interests of both mother and
daughter. But at the same time it is difficult to avoid seeing that he was
too little inclined to make allowance for the youthful eagerness for
amusements which was natural to her age, and that at times he carried his
supervision into matters on which his statesman-like experience and
sagacity had hardly qualified him to form an opinion. He was proud of his
princess's beauty; and, considering himself in charge of her figure as
well as of her conduct, he had made himself very uneasy by the fancied
discovery that she was becoming crooked. He was sure that one shoulder was
growing higher than the other; he earnestly recommended stays, and was
very much displeased with her aunts for setting her against them, because
they were not fashionable in Paris. And when the horse exercise was
proposed, he set his face against it; he wrote to Maria Teresa, who agreed
with him in thinking it ruinous to the complexion, injurious to the shape,
and not to be safely indulged in under thirty years of age[8]; and, lest
distance should weaken the authority of the empress, he enlisted Madame de
Noailles and Choiseul on his side, and Choiseul persuaded the king that it
was a very objectionable pastime for a young bride.
There was not as yet the slightest prospect of the dauphiness becoming a
mother (a circumstance which was, in fact, the most serious of her
vexations, and that which lasted longest): but the king on this point
agreed with his minister, and after some discussion a compromise was hit
upon, and it was decided that she might ride a donkey. The whole country
was immediately ransacked for a stud of quiet donkeys.[9] In September the
court moved to Compiègne, and day after day, while the king and the
dauphin were shooting in one part of the woods, on the other side a
cavalcade of donkey-riders, the aunts and the king's brothers all swelling
Marie Antoinette's train, trotted up and down the glades, and sought out
shady spots for rural luncheons out-of-doors; and, though even this
pastime was occasionally found liable to as much danger as an expedition
on nobler steeds, the merry dauphiness contrived to extract amusement for
herself and her followers from her very disasters. It was long a standing
joke that on one occasion, when her donkey and herself came down in a soft
place, her royal highness, before she would allow her attendants to
extricate her from the mud, bid them go to Madame de Noailles, and ask her
what the rules of etiquette prescribed when a dauphiness of France failed
to keep her seat upon a donkey.
She had also another annoyance which was even of a less royal character
than being doomed to ride on a donkey. She had absolutely no pocket-money.
For many generations the princes of the country had been accustomed to dip
their hands so unrestrainedly into the national treasury, that their
legitimate appointments had been fixed on a very moderate, if not scanty,
scale; so that any one who, like the dauphin and dauphiness, might be
scrupulous not to exceed their income (though that scruple had probably
affected no one before) could not fail to be greatly straitened. The
allowance of Marie Antoinette was fixed at no higher amount than six
thousand francs a month; and of this small sum, according to a report
which, in the course of the autumn, Mercy made to the empress, not a
single crown really reached the princess for her private use.[10] Nearly
half of the money was stopped to pay some pensions granted Marie
Leczinska, with which the dauphiness could by no possibility have the
slightest concern. Almost as much more was intrusted to the gentlemen of
her chamber for the expenses of the play table, at which she was expected
to preside, since there was no queen to discharge that duty; and whether
her royal highness's cards won or lost, the money equally disappeared,[11]
and the remainder was distributed in presents to her ladies, at the
discretion of Madame de Noailles. Had not Maria Teresa, when she first
quit Vienna, intrusted Mercy with a thousand pounds for her use, and had
she not herself been singularly economical in her ideas, she would have
been in the humiliating position of being unable to provide for her own
most ordinary wants, and, a matter about which she was even more anxious,
for her constant charities. Yet so inveterate was the mismanagement in
both the court and the government, that it was some time before Mercy
could succeed, by the strongest remonstrances supported by clear proofs of
the real situation of her royal highness, in getting her affairs and her
resources placed upon a proper footing.
In spite of all the efforts of the cabal, the king's regard for her
increased daily. He had not for many years been used to being treated with
respect, and she, not from any artfulness, but from her native propriety
of feeling, which forbade her ever to forget that he was her husband's
grandfather and her king, united a tone of the most loyal respect with her
filial caresses. She called him papa, and even paid him the tacit
compliment of grounding occasional requests on considerations of humanity
and justice, little as such motives had ever influenced Louis, and rarely
as their names had of late been heard in the precincts of the palace. She
even induced him to pardon Madame de Grammont; insisting on such a
concession as due to herself, when she demanded it for one of her own
retinue, till he laughed, and replied, "Madame, your orders shall be
executed." And the steadiness she thus showed in protecting her own
servants won her many hearts among the courtiers, at the same time that it
filled her aunts with astonishment, who, while commending her firmness,
could not avoid adding that "it was easy to see that she did not belong to
their race.[12]" And how strong as well as how general was of respect and
good-will which she had thus diffused was seen in a remarkable manner at
some of the private theatricals, which were a frequent diversion of the
king, when the actor, at the end of one of his songs, introduced some
verses which he had composed in her honor, and the whole body of courtiers
who were present showed their approbation by a vehement clapping of their
hands, in defiance of a standing order of the court, which prohibited any
such demonstrations being made in the sovereign's presence.[13]
It, however, more than counterbalanced these triumphs that, before the end
of the year, the cabal of the mistress succeeded in procuring the
dismissal of the Choiseul, and the appointment of the Duc d'Aiguillon as
minister. For Choiseul had been not only a faithful, but a most judicious,
friend to her. If others showed too often that they regarded her as a
foreigner, he only remembered it as a reason for giving her hints as to
the feelings of the nation or of individuals which a native would not have
required. And she thankfully acknowledged that his suggestions had always
been both kind and useful, and expressed her sense of her obligations to
him, and her concern at his dismissal to her mother, who fully shared her
feelings on the subject.
And, encouraged by this victory over her most powerful adherent, the cabal
began to venture to attack Marie Antoinette herself. They surrounded her
with spies; they even spread a report that Louis had begun to see through
and to distrust her, in the hope that, when it should reach the king's own
ears, it might perhaps lay the foundation of the alienation which it
pretended to assert; and they grew the bolder because the king's next
brother was about to be married to a Savoyard princess, of whose favor De
la Vauguyon flattered himself that he was already assured. Under these
circumstances Marie Antoinette behaved with consummate prudence, as far at
least as her enemies were concerned. She despised the efforts made to
lower her in the general estimation so completely that she seemed wholly
unconscious of them. She did not even allow herself to be provoked into
treating the authors of the calumnies with additional coldness; but gave
no handle to any of them to complain of her, so that the critical and
anxious eyes of Mercy himself found nothing to wish altered in her conduct
toward them.[14] And throughout the winter she pursued the even tenor of
her way, making herself chiefly remarkable by almost countless acts of
charity, which she dispensed with such judgment as showed that they
proceeded, not from a heedless disregard of money, but from a thoughtful
and vigilant kindness, which did not think the feelings any more than the
necessities of the poor beneath her notice.
Circumstances to which she contributed only indirectly enhanced her
popularity and weakened the effects of the mistress's hostility.
Versailles had not been so gay for many winters, and the votaries of mere
amusement, always a strong party at every court, rejoiced at the addition
to the royal family to whom the gayety was owing. Louis roused himself to
gratify the young princess, who enlivened his place with the first
respectable pleasures which it or he had known for years. When he saw that
she liked dramatic performances, he opened the private theatre of the
palace twice a week. Because she was fond of dancing, he encouraged her to
have a weekly ball in her own apartments, at which she herself was the
principal attraction, not solely by the elegance of her every movement,
but still more by the graciousness with which she received and treated her
guests, having a kind smile and an affable word for all, apparently
forgetting her rank in the frankness of her condescension, yet at the same
time bearing herself with an innate dignity which prevented the most
forward from presuming on her kindness or venturing on any undue
familiarity.[15]
The winter of 1770 was one of unusual severity; and she found resources
for a further enlivenment of the court in the frost itself. Sledging on
the snow was an habitual pastime at Vienna, where the cold is more severe
than at Paris; nor in former years had sledges been wholly unknown in the
Bois de Boulogne. And now Marie Antoinette, whose hardy habits made
exercise in the fresh air almost a necessity for her, had sledges built
for herself and her attendants; and the inhabitants of Versailles and the
neighborhood, as fond of novelty as all their countrymen, were delighted
at the merry sledging-parties which, as long as the snow lasted, explored
the surrounding country, while the woods rang with the horses' bells, and,
almost as loudly and still more cheerfully, with the laughter of the
company.
Her liveliness had, as it were, given a new tone to the whole court; and
though the dauphin held out longer against the genial influence of his
wife's disposition than most people, it at last in some degree thawed even
his frigidity. She ascribed his apathy and apparent dislike to female
society rather to the neglect or malice of his early tutors than to any
natural defect of capacity or perversity of disposition; and often
lectured him on his deficiencies, and even on some of his favorite
pursuits, which she looked upon as contributing to strengthen his shyness
with ladies. She was not unacquainted with English literature, in which
the rusticity and coarseness of the fox-hunting squires formed a piquant
subject for the mirth of dramatists and novelists; and if Squire Western
had been the type of sportsmen in all countries, she could not have
inveighed more vigorously than she did against her husband's addiction to
hunting. One evening, when he did not return from the field till the play
in the theatre was half over, she not only frowned upon him all the rest
of the entertainment, but when, after the company had retired, he began to
enter into an explanation of the cause of his delay, a scene ensued which
it will be best to give in the very words of Mercy's report to the
empress.
"The dauphiness made him a short but very energetic sermon, in which she
represented to him with vivacity all the evils of the uncivilized kind of
life he was leading. She showed him that no one of his attendants could
stand that kind of life, and that they would like it the less that his own
air and rude manners made no amends to those who were attached to his
train; and that, by following this plan of life, he would end by ruining
his health and making himself detested. The dauphin received this lecture
with gentleness and submission, confessed that he was wrong, promised to
amend, and formally begged her pardon. This circumstance is certainly very
remarkable, and the more so because the next day people observed that he
paid the dauphiness much more attention, and behaved toward her with a
much more lively affection than usual.[16]"
We do not, however, find in reality that the severity of her admonitions
produced any permanent diminution of his fondness for hunting and
shooting; but the gentleness of her general manners, and the delight which
he saw that all around her took in her graciousness, so far excited his
admiration that he began to follow her example. He said that "she had such
native grace that every thing which she did succeeded to perfection; that
it must be admitted that she was charming." And before the end of the
winter he had come to take an active part both in her Monday balls, and in
those which her ladies occasionally gave in her honor; "dancing himself
the whole of the evening, and conversing with all the company with an air
of cheerfulness and good-nature of which no one before had ever thought
him capable.[17]" The happy change in his demeanor was universally
attributed to the dauphiness; and, as the character of their future king
was naturally watched with anxiety as a matter of the highest importance,
it greatly increased the attachment of all who had the welfare of the
nation at heart to the princess, whose general example had produced so
beneficial an effect.