Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antionette

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  She remembers her husband, lying naked and unashamed upon his bed. She is proud of him, weary from a day of plowing. She thinks of the straight furrows of turned earth he has left in his wake; she is proud of how she has sewn a straight seam today and hemmed a sheet.

  And where is Artois? He could never penetrate into this place. Here I am safe from his frivolity. How often my mother has said the French are a frivolous race. They do not know that to have proper fun, all etiquette must be suspended. To do that, one must live with people one trusts.

  I do not trust Artois. To have fun in France, one uses cynicism, like a rudder on a boat, to steer the course. Or luck. Luck has brought me here. I sought excitement and found privacy.

  I think I will come to these secret chambers again, if I can find my way back. I will describe this collection of small rooms to the Dauphin, who is my friend and who helps me get what I want. I have tried always to make him welcome, have never shunned him, but sometimes I am filled with irritation and impatience, for which dancing and laughing and teasing someone else are the only release. Now there is gambling too.

  The Dauphin has his forge; he does carpentry and hauls paving stones and performs other heavy labor along with workmen. With such work—but it is really play, for there is no necessity for it—he exhausts himself. Why should I not have a place to play, or rest, some private rooms that none enter except by my invitation?

  It is time to return to my lawful bed, but I take with me a new desire—for privacy and for an imaginative realm of my own designing. I shall occupy these rooms, and my guests will be people of talent—painters, composers, actors, singers. Here we will be snug in our delights.

  What was it I saw in the starshine on a small, dull table near a window? There was just enough light to discern the color of the bowl—blue. And red was there too. I believe the bowl was full of apples.

  THE CHEVALIER GLUCK

  I am to have a new diversion. At last my old music master, le bon Gluck, will visit me at Versailles.

  Until his arrival, Monsieur Leonard, my hairdresser, will dissipate the boredom. Curious, how my hairdresser has become one of the people I most look forward to seeing. Leonard has a certain insolence at times, but that makes him interesting, and he counterbalances his acid with the sweetness of flattery and fun. He has an interesting countenance: a long French nose, slightly crooked here and there, shiny, like a bony worm in the middle of his face. My Gluck will recognize in Monsieur Leonard a fellow artist.

  Monsieur Leonard is creating something like a confection—or is it a towering nest for a bizarre bird—atop my head. I can scarcely reach the top of my coiffure! At his elbow, Leonard has an arsenal of aids: extra braids and curls, jars of stiffening agents, latticeworks to be concealed as scaffolding for the towering hair. Combing my natural hair straight up and stiffening it with pomade, he builds a steep cliff straight up from the forehead. High up in this hairy tree trunk, he will embed embellishments. His case overflows with fruits of all sorts, animals, especially monkeys, jeweled flowers, carriages, a herd of cows, a sailing ship larger than two hands with all its miniature masts, lines, and canvas sails. I have asked for something musical to plant in my coif today, in honor of the chevalier.

  Wigless, his cheeks like bright apples, in blows Gluck! With Leonard holding up a large section of my stiffened hair (like a ridiculous rein for a horse), I rise to embrace my old friend, who has aged and whose body has grown stout and as round as his head.

  “Madame la Dauphine,” he exclaims in rapture.

  He embraces me tenderly, kissing my cheeks over and over, as I do his. Then from inside his coat, he suddenly produces a little dog.

  “What’s this?” I ask, laughing as the dog begins to bark at me.

  “Mops!” he exclaims. “Have you forgotten beloved Mops? Hush,” he whispers, “they’ll never know I’ve brought you the little Austrian fellow.”

  Alas, Mops does not recognize me, nor I him. There have been so many puppies between him and me and our childhood time together. But I lift him up in both hands, high over my head, and say, “His voice has changed from soprano to baritone.” I place him on the floor, and one of my ladies, without needing direction, promptly produces a leash to lead him away. “But you, my chevalier, are exactly the same, only grown more dear.”

  “My little princess of the keyboard,” he says fondly.

  “Now let me sit down again, while Monsieur Leonard transforms me into something so otherworldly you will think we live on the distant moon.”

  “Monsieur, your talent is apparent,” Gluck proclaims. He has dispensed with Leonard as adroitly as I dispensed with Mops. Now Gluck will focus all his attention on me, as though Leonard and his busy arms were no more than a hairdressing machine, a sort of spindle winding and stretching hair.

  Gluck stretches himself luxuriously. “Ah, to breathe French air,” he says. “The freedom of it!”

  “I have never felt particularly free here,” I remark in a low voice, even though I know that all my secrets are safe with my hairdresser. The Others have discreetly retreated to the corners of the room, or hover just outside, should I call them.

  “My dear Antoine—”

  “Toinette,” I correct him.

  “My dear Toinette, the Empress has whipped the Chastity Commission into a perfect frenzy. There is no privacy; she has a secret army, well paid, of emissaries and spies. Her knowledge of private matters has inspired terror in the court.” Gluck’s eyes glitter with delight. “Isn’t that preposterous?”

  “How do you account for my mother’s strictness?”

  Leonard gives a too-hard tug to my hair and meets my eyes in the mirror, as though to warn me not to betray too boldly my relish for all things that speak of home.

  “Upbringing! Her mother, the mother of our Empress! Elisabeth Christina, your mother’s mother’s grief at not having a child until nine years after her marriage has thrown this long shadow known as the Chastity Commission.”

  (I shudder to think what would happen to me should my maternity be so delayed.)

  “And then the mishandling and death of the infant Leopold and your grandmother’s obsessive fear that something might occur at her court to displease the Deity. What did the French ambassador write of his stay in Vienna, during those days of your mother’s growing up?”

  “Pray tell me.”

  “The French ambassador said, ‘I have led such an amazingly pious existence in Vienna that I have not had so much as a quarter of an hour of liberty.’ He swore, ‘I would never have come here if I had known what would be required of a foreign ambassador in piety and abstinence.’”

  “But surely my mother has not been as severe as her mother?"

  “Au contraire, I have heard Casanova grumble. Oh, there is plenty of money and plenty of luxury to be enjoyed at the court of Vienna. But the bigotry! The Empress has made any pleasure of the flesh extremely difficult.”

  I do not wish to seem to criticize my mother, not even to Gluck, but I cannot stop myself from saying, “Yet she demands that I wink at the behavior of…of…”

  Here Leonard suddenly snaps open a little fan, which he places against my hair, as though testing its decorative appeal, but the fan is painted with ears, displaying numerous real earrings; as a discreet signal between us, the fan is to be deployed when my loyal hairdresser feels I should remember that Others are always listening. Just in time, I do not say “She demands that I wink at the behavior…of the King.”

  “…of the du Barry,” I say. Certainly I may speak ill of that woman in my own boudoir.

  “Recently,” Gluck continues, “the Empress wrote the Archduchess Maria Carolina that she has learned—from her spies—that her daughter the Queen of Naples says her prayers carelessly. Our Charlotte lacks proper veneration, proper attention to the meanings of the words. She must pray with deeper feeling. Oh, the Empress knows everything. The Empress warns Charlotte in just so many words that her whole day will be bad, after a careless beginni
ng in her prayers.”

  I cannot help but shudder. At least so far the manner of my private praying has not been criticized.

  Leonard folds up the fan. Conversationally, we are on safe ground again. As our own private joke, Leonard hitches a bronze bell at the apex of my hair to say we are all under the rule of the church.

  “No bell,” I say, shaking my head. The whole stretch of hair wobbles precariously.

  “Sit still, please, my charming Madame la Dauphine.”

  Leonard squats to lower his head so it is beside my own; now he can see how my coiffure is progressing from my own point of view. The squat causes him to pass gas. The Chevalier Gluck laughs. The three of us laugh—comrades of like minds. With an impassive face, an attendant holds out a Meissen tray with two cups on it, one filled with chocolate, one with coffee, to the chevalier. The tea service is one of my favorites with a deep midnight blue band around the rims of the cups.

  “Ah, coffee!” the chevalier exclaims. “And have you heard the ‘Coffee Cantata’ of J. S. Bach, dear Toinette?” When I reply that I have not, he continues to explain that when coffee first came to Europe, and the people in the German areas began to drink it for breakfast instead of beer, coffee was thought to be a morally corrupting substance—far too stimulating. “Bach’s cantata told the story of a father so concerned about his daughter’s new practice of drinking coffee that he promised she could marry the man of her choice, if she would only give up her dangerous coffee habit.”

  “And how does the story of the ‘Coffee Cantata’ end?”

  “I believe the clever ingenue finds a way to have both coffee and the chosen husband. It’s most amusing. You would love it, and I can rehearse the whole of it here—after an opera of my own composing is produced.”

  Leonard grabs his own tankard of coffee and swigs it down. Then he rolls his eyes about in his head and gestures wildly around my face with his hands, aping the behavior of a man gone mad on coffee.

  We talk and talk. From the old days together in Austria, we review the triumph of the performance of Il Parnasso Confusio, for which Gluck composed the music, and also of how my brother Ferdinand and I danced in Il Trionfo d’Amore as shepherd and shepherdess, with little Max dancing Cupid, for the wedding of my eldest brother.

  “And how fares my brother Joseph?” I ask, wondering if as emperor ruling with our mother, he is as tied to work as she is.

  “He worries about you,” Gluck answers and then rushes on to praise the performances years ago of the four Archduchesses Elisabeth, Amelia, Josepha, and my Charlotte. I must assure his success here.

  Finally, it is long past the completion of my toilette. I inform the chevalier, as I will the entire court, that the Chevalier Gluck is to be admitted to my presence “at all times.” I have not had such pleasure, such depth of pleasure, for a long time. One by one, with the pronouncing of their names, the images of my family and of our happy times together have risen before my eyes. My music master is much more than a diversion; he has given me a life-restoring whiff of home.

  As a final touch to our meeting, Leonard takes from his bag of ornaments a hair clip shaped like a spinet and pins it high up—two feet from my forehead—in my towering coiffure. All those who look at me this day will know that today my friend Gluck, a composer and musician of great distinction, arrived at the Court of Versailles.

  “Perhaps you recall?” I ask, unable to let Gluck leave me, “that Franz Xaver Wagenschon painted me at the spinet keyboard before I left home. I was practicing, and you were due to arrive for my lesson. I was wearing a blue dress, as I am today.” I stand and slip out of the great dust jacket that always enswaddles anyone who is being powdered. “This dress too is trimmed in mink, like the one in the painting.”

  “I have admired the painting in the Red Room many times,” Gluck replies seriously. “Each time, I have thought of how I miss you and of how glad I shall be, someday, to come to Paris and to make music for you and with you once again. Many times, your mother and I have stood before that portrait of you together and sighed deep sighs. The painting depicts the red curtain and red furniture in the room, as well as other paintings, rather dim, on the wall behind you.”

  “I hope I do not disappoint you today.”

  “You are as beautiful as ever. More so, for now you are a woman. Monsieur”—he suddenly addresses Leonard—“in that painting of which we speak, the archduchess, known to you as Madame la Dauphine, was depicted in her natural hair, fair and blond. A single, simple braid, with pearls twisted along it, crossed her head. But your tower is quite à la mode, and I am touched”—he drags himself heavily to his feet—“that the two of you have conspired together to crown this happy reunion with a barrette of a spinet.”

  He is taking his leave, though I can scarcely bear to let him go. I must return to a day full of formality but devoid of feeling.

  “And in the painting,” I say, “one can almost read the notes on the page of the music book. The notes are painted so as to resemble not exactly notes, but the impression that a score makes on the eye, when seen from a distance.”

  Like the family member he is, Gluck reaches out to pat my hand. First it is just a pat, and then he runs his fingertips over the tips of my fingers.

  “Ah, I can feel the calluses. You have been practicing the harp.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for you. Where there is a lack of other connections, of meaningful moments, in our lives, music can often fill the gap.”

  I feel as though I may weep, so thoroughly does my old master understand. Instead, I straighten myself and banish the tears. Serenity is a quality that earns respect—I know this truth well. My poor friend the Princesse de Lamballe has almost made herself ridiculous, crying on every occasion.

  “My dear chevalier,” I say. “My mother has written me of the Parisian resistance to your Iphigénie. Let me assure you that it shall be presented there, and lavishly. Paris will be at your feet.” I beam at him and recall how our lessons used to end: with reassurances about my intention to practice; smiling, I pronounce the old words from childhood again: “I promise.”

  THE HALL OF MIRRORS

  In the faint starlight, all about me are the large, beautiful garlands of painted or woven flowers: in the wallpaper, in the hangings around my bed, on the screens, and in the upholstery of the chairs. My bedchamber is a pink bower. The scalloped edge of the canopy over my bed suggests the bed is a basket of flowers. Would I love it any more if this were a real garden displaying the beauty of nature instead of that of artifice? Only if it were at Schönbrunn in Austria.

  Here at Versailles, sleep does not come. Slipping on a dressing gown, I arise and walk about restlessly. I consult the portraits of my mother and my brother Joseph positioned above the mirrors. What do the Empress and the Emperor of Austria think is more beautiful—art or nature? My mother looks mildly amused. She says there is no need to choose. I do not consult the portrait of the Dauphin, my husband. It is his absence, the total absence of ardor in his constitution that galls my soul.

  Something soft and furry winds itself around my ankle; I hear purring. It is a black and white kitten, one of the new favorites of the King. Chaconne, the King has named him, a dance form similar to a saraband. I pick up kitty Chaconne and cuddle him to my breasts. Together we walk from my chamber into the Peace room, which forms the southwest corner of the château, and then into the Hall of Mirrors, which faces west. I see the slipper of the new moon riding low on the horizon. I turn to see if it is reflected in the mirror opposite the window.

  But what I see there is an image of Louis XV, looking at me. Quickly, I check to see if the reality of the reflection is in fact standing close to the window, also looking over the gardens at the moon.

  “Your Majesty,” I say, with a deep curtsy, still holding the soft kitten against my bosom.

  “Ah, it is the cat’s wet nurse,” he says playfully. “How is my daughter?” Already his more decorous tone has shifted keys. “How
is the always charming Dauphine?”

  “I was unable to sleep.”

  “The attentions of my kitten awoke you?”

  “It was the beauty of my room, with its new spring hangings, the floral ones. It was too exciting to sleep there. No doubt I’ll soon become accustomed to the spring decor.”

  “Excited by beauty?” He slowly walks toward me. “From the beginning, I recognized the Dauphine as a rare and spontaneous creature.”

  “I hope, also, that I exhibit patience.”

  “Yes,” he replies. “That, and more. But your patience with my grandson does not go unnoticed or unappreciated by me.” Because he looks in the mirror to see our dual reflection, I too turn to see us.

  “We are informal this evening,” I say sweetly.

  “Lit only by the shine of the sky,” he replies. “Usually the room blazes with thousands of candles, doesn’t it? The chandeliers are in their glory, the torchères illumine the faces of the dignitaries. What did you think when you first saw the Hall of Mirrors?”

  “On the morning you first escorted me to Mass, we passed through this great hall quickly. I was too much in awe of Your Majesty to regard it carefully.”

  “But our progress through the state rooms went more slowly. We admired the ceiling paintings, the gods in their chariots—Mercury pulled by two little French cocks. Rather far-fetched, I always thought. Allegorically appropriate, I suppose. Those paintings in the mythic state rooms are easier to see, not so high above us as these.”

  “What do these paintings depict, Your Majesty?”

  Indeed, they are high above us, a great swirl of rich, dark colors of overwhelming complexity.

  “They are all of Louis XIV, my great-grandfather.” He sighs. “The history of my immediate predecessor.”