Madame de Pompadour

by Nancy Mitford

  At Choisy Madame de Pompadour commissioned Voltaire to write an opera, in celebration of Fontenoy: Le Temple de la Gloire, in which Louis XV is represented as Trajan. Chez lui les autels de Vénus sont dans le Temple de la Gloire. When this opera was finally given at Versailles, Voltaire, always at his insufferable worst with the King, went too far as usual. Bold as brass, he advanced to where the King was chatting with Richelieu, and said, loudly, ‘Is Trajan pleased?’ He then took the King by the sleeve to tell him something. He had already been invited to supper after the performance, but it was noticed that the King never once spoke to him. Such manners simply did not do at Versailles, and Madame de Pompadour must have suffered to see her friend behaving so stupidly. For let it not be thought that Voltaire was indifferent to royal personages. He was one of the great snobs of history and it was only when he saw that there was no place for him at the Court of his own King – entirely, it must be said, owing to his inconceivable tactlessness – that he went off, first to that of King Stanislas at Lunéville, and then to that of King Frederick at Potsdam. Meanwhile he had been given, and kept through all his vicissitudes, a post and pension at Versailles, as well as that most coveted of favours, a room in the palace. (This he did not keep; there was a chronic housing shortage there and empty rooms were snatched up at once.) As soon as he was in it he began to demand every kind of improvement and repairs to the room itself, adding that in his view the public privies at the bottom of his staircase ought to have a door to them. The King having personally intervened with the Jesuit members, Voltaire was at long last elected to the Académie française.

  All this he owed entirely to Madame de Pompadour, whose attitude towards him, then and thereafter, was beyond praise. She had the rare capacity of understanding a creative artist; she saw that underneath the grimaces, the pushfulness, the frantic giggles, the pretensions and follies of a man like Voltaire lay an inferno of uncertainty and sensibility. She was aware too, and this was perhaps more remarkable, not only of his genius but of his essential goodness, and for that she forgave him everything, even the cruel verses he wrote about her in La Pucelle. In his heart of hearts he was grateful to her, and loved her. When the final accounts were made up he had done her more good than harm: Sincère et tendre Pompadour might well serve as her epitaph.

  While Louis XV was away at the war, Choisy had been extensively altered and redecorated under the supervision of Gabriel; possibly in order to eliminate too many souvenirs of the Maillys who had each reigned there in turn. The King certainly appeared to be haunted by no sad memories now; he proceeded to eat, drink and make love with such excessive enthusiasm that he was soon taken violently ill. The doctor put him to bed, purged him and bled him and gave him emetics, probably in this case the most sensible treatment. He had a high temperature, so it was thought necessary to inform the Queen; a messenger was sent to Versailles and came back with a letter asking if she might visit her husband. He answered that he would be enchanted to see her and that, if she gave herself the trouble to come, she would find excellent food and plenty of religious services in the neighbourhood. He had not been so friendly for many years; she hurried over to Choisy at once, to find him still in bed, though mending fast.

  She was taken round and shown all the improvements, a new, long terrace on the river, the redecoration of the house, the pictures of battles by Parrocel, and bigger and better quarters for the servants; altogether she was made welcome. But – and there was a but – Madame de Pompadour, unlike the writers, dined in the dining-room. The Queen was obviously put out by this; she turned grumpy and only spoke in order to praise the food, having lived long enough in France to be unable to pass over good food in silence. After dinner she suddenly rounded on the Duc d’Ayen, saying he made far too many jokes about his fellow courtiers and that he must be more careful or soon he would not have a friend left in the world. Great was the relief when she ordered her carriage and went back to Versailles.

  A few days later King Stanislas very tactlessly arrived to inquire after his son-in-law, who was not fond of him. The King was up, not dressed, playing cards in his bedroom with a few friends; Madame de Pompadour, in her riding habit, was there. Poor old King Stanislas was clearly given to understand that he was not wanted. He took himself off again with hurt feelings, to his palace at Lunéville, where he led a happy, carefree, opéra bouffe existence. He was now Duc de Lorraine, a compensation provided for him by the Polish treaty.

  As soon as the voyage to Choisy was over, it was time for the annual voyage to Fontainebleau. This word, voyage, simply meant that the King went from one of his houses to another. He was for ever on the move, though long journeys through beautiful France were almost unknown; he gyrated in the same little circle, Choisy, Marly, la Muette, Trianon, and later Bellevue, Crécy, St Hubert and Petit Trianon. The parties which went with him to the small houses were limited to a few close friends; he went for a night or two, to one or another, almost every week. Marly and Trianon were more of a business and more people had the right to be asked. Marly itself only held fifteen, but the outside pavilions held 153 and were always full. Madame de Pompadour never liked Marly where the drawing-rooms were too small to hold such a crowd.

  Twice a year, in July and October, the whole Court moved off, for six weeks at a time, to Compiègne, for army manœuvres, and Fontainebleau for hunting; and that was indeed an upheaval in ce pays-ci. The royal family, courtiers, Princes of the Blood and ministers got on to the road; followed by the state papers, archives and a great deal of furniture, silver and linen. The whole thing entailed enormous trouble and expense. The dates for these journeys were fixed by the King at Christmas and nothing but death could alter them.

  At Fontainebleau, as at Versailles and Marly, Madame de Pompadour was given Madame de Châteauroux’s large and beautiful rooms, on the ground floor, communicating with those of the King by a small staircase. She was, indeed, rather haunted by her predecessor; when, with the curiosity of a true Parisian, she asked the Court hairdresser how he had become so fashionable, he replied, laconically, ‘I used to do the other one’s hair.’ The other had only been dead such a very little time; the Queen still thought of her and was terrified one night by seeing her ghost. ‘As if poor Madame de Châteauroux would be looking for the Queen,’ said the wags.

  Madame de Pompadour settled down to her new existence. She had to make acquaintance with those who were to be friends and enemies, as well as with those who would form the backcloth of faces against which all the scenes of her life would be played from now on – hundreds of courtiers who hung about the King without ever getting to know him. Very sensibly she had brought M. Benoît, her excellent cook; less sensibly, perhaps, she had also brought Madame d’Estrades, from whom she was inseparable. No doubt she felt the need for one familiar face in the new strange land; also she was of an age when everybody must have a best friend, and Madame d’Estrades filled this role. It was to prove an unfortunate choice in the long run, but at the beginning it worked very well. The two of them supped every night with the King and a few men friends, or he with them in Madame de Pompadour’s rooms; he took a fancy to Madame d’Estrades, who was gay and amusing and a wonderful gossip; she would have been quite pretty, says M. de Luynes, had it not been for her pendulous cheeks. For years the King sat between her and Madame de Pompadour at all the suppers; she was on all the voyages and she became a fixture of Court life.

  Another fixture was the Duc de Richelieu, charming, handsome, brave, wicked and corrupt, a traitor in his soul, one of those to whom all is permitted and all forgiven. Madame, the Regent’s mother, said of him: ‘If I believed in sorcery I should think that the Duke must possess some supernatural secret, for I have never known a woman to oppose the very least resistance to him.’ Nor did men oppose much resistance; not nearly enough. When he was a young colonel, in the garrison at Bayonne, he had offered to sell the town to the Spaniards; the Regent came into possession of four letters from him to the Spanish commander and said: ‘If M.
de Richelieu had four heads I have in my pocket enough to cut off each one of them.’ For some unexplained reason he was merely sent to the Bastille where he was allowed his books, his servant, a viola and a backgammon board. After a few days, out he came, back to the Court and more army commands. He went to the Bastille on two other occasions; once at the request of his stepfather who could do nothing with him; and once for killing a cousin of his wife’s in a duel on active service, but he always reappeared at Versailles as if nothing whatever had happened. He had a great hold over Louis XV, and over the Regent: he made them laugh. He never could endure Madame de Pompadour and was soon her declared enemy. He was perfectly odious to her, teased her in every possible way, never laughed at her jokes, praised her suppers or admired her clothes. One night at la Muette, when he knew she was sleeping badly, he banged about overhead, danced and jumped with hardly a pause. He told his friends that mistress though she might be, of King and Court, he would torment little Pompadour and wear her down. At last he made her life such a misery that she begged the King to leave him out of their supper parties and voyages. But the King only laughed, ‘You don’t know Son Excellence, put him out of the door and he’ll come back by the chimney.’ The King had special names for many people and ‘Son Excellence’ had stuck to Richelieu since he was once, for a short time, ambassador at Vienna. Richelieu was Governor of Guyenne. The King once said to him ‘What’s the wine like down there?’ ‘Not bad,’ said Son Excellence, ‘would you like to taste it?’ He sent for some Château Lafite and the King, without much enthusiasm, said it was drinkable. In those days the French preferred Burgundy and most of the claret went to England by sea.

  The King’s two other cronies, the Duc d’Ayen and M. de Coigny, both loved the Marquise and became her true friends. They were much younger than Richelieu, about the King’s age, and their fathers, Maréchaux de Noailles and de Coigny, were still alive. Both were married, but their wives lived in Paris and hardly ever appeared at Court. The King very rarely invited husbands and wives together; it did not make for sparkle. The Abbé de Bernis was on this voyage to Fontainebleau, though not at the suppers, because there was a strict rule that priests never ate with the monarch. He brought Moncrif to see Madame de Pompadour, who made his conquest, a triumph for her as he was such a faithful member of the Queen’s set.

  Madame de Pompadour did not forget, or in any way modify her behaviour to old friends and relations now that she was so grand. She begged Madame de La Ferté d’Imbault to come and settle at the Court, she said she knew that the King would like her. But Madame de La Ferté d’Imbault declined for reasons of health. Perhaps she did not care for the idea of being sponsored by her hitherto so humble little friend. Certainly she flew into a rage when somebody suggested that Jeanne Poisson would soon be playing a part in the destinies of France – never heard such rubbish in her life, she said. Like most people at this time she regarded the liaison as a fancy of the King’s which was unlikely to last very long.

  Madame de Pompadour had her father to stay at Fontainebleau and, in spite of the fact that he was a real fish out of water there, she was perfectly natural with him; the idea that she might be ashamed of him never crossed her mind. The King gave him a property called Vandières, and though Poisson himself said that nothing would induce him to change his name, at his age, Abel was henceforward known as M. de Vandières (avant-hier, said the wags). In 1750 the King gave Poisson another estate, Marigny. Again the old boy refused to change his name, but Abel became M. de Marigny and in 1754 was made a Marquis. To save confusion I will call him Marigny from now on.

  Madame de Pompadour’s Uncle Tournehem received the important post of Intendant Général des Bâtiments du Roi, the equivalent of our Ministry of Works, with the understanding that it would go to Marigny at his death. The young man already thought of nothing but art and architecture and his sister encouraged this bent by every means in her power. He was her constant companion and came to all her little suppers, where he was given a high place at her table – quite wrongly from every point of view, since in France relations of the host always go to the bottom of the table. A certain nobleman, furious at sitting below this proletarian hobbledehoy aged twenty, complained to the King. He got no satisfaction whatever, the King merely observing that when he condescended to sup with his subjects they were equal in his eyes.

  Madame de Baschi, Le Normant d’Etioles’ sister, did not live at the Court with Madame de Pompadour, but constantly paid her visits. On one occasion, when the King was inviting no women but the wives of ministers to Marly, Madame de Pompadour said that she counted as a minister of state and would bring Madame de Baschi as her wife. The King laughed very much and allowed her to come.

  The courtiers, always on the look out for any sign that the King might be cooling off his mistress, began to say that she would bore him to death with her family; she never seemed to talk of anything else. But he was not bored, quite the contrary, and he shrieked with laughter when she called her brother ‘Frérot’ in front of him. It was against Court etiquette to use any diminutive, or the second person singular, in the King’s presence, even brothers being obliged to say vous to each other. He had certainly never heard such a word as ‘Frérot’ in all his life. He himself called Abel petit frère and soon became extremely fond of him. The fact is that the King liked family life, and could hardly have enough of it. The courtiers, who saw him so regal and terrifyingly aloof, could never understand this. As for the bourgeois idiom of his mistress, he thought it quite delightfully funny, and very soon he was heard calling his daughters by the most outrageous nicknames: ‘Loque’ for Madame Adélaïde, ‘Coche’ for Madame Victoire, ‘Chiffe’ for Madame Louise. Madame de Pompadour had nicknames for everybody all her life; her friends, her pet animals, even her houses were continually called by new names when she spoke or wrote of them.

  She was indeed a change from the women of the Court, who, with certain notable exceptions, were self-conscious, artificial, preoccupied with their rank and privileges, and very dull. The French aristocrats, since they were also courtiers, had nearly all adopted the muted tones and careful behaviour of that profession. Breezy, eccentric noblemen, so common in England, where they led an independent life on their own estates, were almost unknown in France. Certain members of the royal family were an exception. The Comte de Charolais was a ripsnorting oddity; he dressed like a gamekeeper and ordered his coachman to run over any monks he might see on the road, but he could afford such vagaries as he was a cousin of the King’s.

  Madame de Pompadour never became a courtier in her manners. There was no nonsense about her. She gave herself no airs; on the contrary she hardly bothered to change her bourgeois ways at all. Her loud forthright voice, using a language which would seem much more familiar to us than the almost Racinian idiom of the Court, never altered its tone or lessened its emphasis. Her laugh, an enchantment, says Croÿ, rang out freely, very different from the discreet and smothered giggles to be heard in the galleries and ante-chambers when the King was about. Her maiden name, thought so despicable by the courtiers, the subject of so many bad jokes, seemed quite all right to her; in fact both she and her brother were proud of it. On one occasion Marigny was seen paying respectful attentions to a certain lady; when asked who she was, he replied: ‘She bears a name to eclipse all but the greatest; born Poisson, married to a Poisson, she will end a Poisson.’ The courtiers were furious and told each other that ‘Marinière’ was really too embarrassing. Whenever a fine piece of celadon or porcelain in the shape of a fish came the King’s way, he would buy it and have it mounted in ormolu for Madame de Pompadour; she signed her own engravings with a huge baroque fish, and Marigny took fishes as his coat of arms. But all these piscine decorations must have seemed rather natural to the French, accustomed as they were to the Dauphin’s dolphins splashing about the palaces.

  As soon as the King was dressed in the morning he went down to Madame de Pompadour’s rooms where he stayed until it was time for Mass;
on non-hunting days he would have a bite of something, a cutlet or a wing of chicken at dinner (our luncheon time), and stay the whole afternoon, chatting, until at six he went off to work with his ministers. The Court was at Fontainebleau on purpose to hunt, and Madame de Pompadour, who rode, as she did everything else, very well, sometimes went out with Mesdames, the Princesses. The royal family was quite civil to her, except the Dauphin, and he sulked for many a long year.

  Members of the Queen’s little set, even the Duc and Duchesse de Luynes, were soon forced to admit that, given the painful though not surprising circumstances, Madame de Pompadour’s behaviour was perfect. She was exceedingly polite, never said horrid things about people or allowed them to be said in her presence; at the same time she had high spirits and was excellent company, gay and amusing. Whenever she could do a good turn to anybody she did it and she put herself out to any extent to please the Queen. The Queen was fond of flowers, so was she. They were one of her passions in life, and very soon the hothouses of all the royal gardens were reorganized under her supervision. As soon as flowers in profusion filled her rooms they filled the Queen’s rooms too. The poor lady had never received so much as a bunch of daisies before. The Duc de Luynes says it was a pity Madame de Pompadour made it so obvious that they came from her, and that this rather took away from the Queen’s pleasure. Unfortunately both women were but human. The Queen had no desire whatever to be a real wife to her husband, but she was jealous of Madame de Pompadour, who, on her side, though infinitely good natured, was not always very delicate; she was too open and straightforward to include tact among her virtues.

  While she was at Fontainebleau she found out that the Queen was tormented by her gambling debts which were enormous; she was not very good, it seemed, at cavagnole. If she did have a little win she spent it all on charity. Madame de Pompadour made the King pay up, a thing he had never yet done for his wife. He really could afford to. He had been winning such enormous sums at piquet, that the men who had lost to him had to be given until January to pay. The Marquise seemed to take a genuine interest in the Queen’s affairs, listening with breathless attention when a lady-in-waiting expounded upon some detail of the royal health. When she was herself not well and unable to go to a tedious charity bazaar organized by Her Majesty, she sent her deepest apologies, with a louis for the cause, saying over and over again how dreadfully disappointed she had been. Nobody else ever bothered about the Queen’s feelings in this way; she had no influence whatever with her husband and therefore the courtiers neglected her.