Madame de Pompadour

by Nancy Mitford

  Madame de Pompadour had been truly fond of the little Abbé and was very sorry for what had happened. She told Madame du Hausset that it was all the fault, in the first place, of the Bishop of Mirepoix who had stopped him from getting a pension. If he had had that, and the King had been quite prepared to give it to him, he would never have been made Ambassador but would have been master of the chapel at Versailles – far happier for him and she would not have had all these regrets. Now she was deprived of the pleasure, on which she had counted, of growing old in the company of this charming friend. She added that at the end of his first week in office, she had realized that he would not do.

  The King was only too pleased to see the last of Bernis. He had never liked him and had been very much put off him by rumours, which had come to his ears, that the Abbé was having an affair with Madame Infante. Finally he had been unable to bear the sight of him since a certain incident at Versailles. Bernis, with an almost incredible lack of ordinary manners, took his gun, and went shooting in a little covert under the King’s very windows. The Comte de Noailles and Madame de Pompadour told him that he must never do such a thing again; too late, the King knew about it. For years afterwards when he walked in that place he used to say: ‘These are the pleasure grounds of Monsieur l’Abbé.’

  19

  Choiseul

  THE DUC DE CHOISEUL WAS a very different sort of man from the false and smiling Maurepas, the pompous d’Argenson and the Abbé, his dear little face puckered with worry. To begin with he was an aristocrat, with all the airs and manners of one, and the King felt more at his ease with him than with any other minister he had ever had. He would never have gone shooting under the King’s window. He was always in roistering spirits, had the capacity of explaining a complicated situation in a few pertinent words, did not go droning on about things, never hesitated nor havered and knew exactly what he thought should be done next. When the day’s work was over, he cast aside the cares of state and was ready to enjoy the pleasure of good company.

  In looks Choiseul was very much like Sir Winston Churchill, with bright red hair, bright blue eyes, a turned-up nose and an expression of humorous pugnacity. A dogue (mastiff), said his contemporaries. His friends loved him and were to prove unusually faithful when, having governed France for twelve years, he was disgraced and exiled to Chanteloup, his country home. Women found him irresistible and to his wife he was as God.

  The Duchesse de Choiseul was an heiress, grand-daughter of the enormously rich Crozat, nicknamed le pauvre to distinguish him from his even more enormously rich brother, Crozat-le-riche. Her elder sister, the Marquise de Gontaut, wife of Madame de Pompadour’s great friend, had been the mistress of Choiseul. She died giving birth to the future Duc de Lauzun who was very probably his son. When she knew that she was dying she made her twelve-year-old sister, Louise-Honorine, promise that she would marry Choiseul. Madame de Gontaut had seen that he was one of those people who need a great deal of money. Then she died, easy in her mind about her lover. By the time the marriage finally took place, however, the bride seemed to have become far less rich than she ought to have been, as the result of a law suit between the heirs of the brothers Crozat. Choiseul and Gontaut took the quarrel to the Court of Appeal. At this time Gontaut was in love with a certain Madame Rossignol, and he was for ever saying to Choiseul: ‘Do you think Madame Rossignol loves me?’ While the judge was reading the verdict, which would either make the brothers-in-law immensely rich, or leave them rather poor, Choiseul whispered to Gontaut: ‘Do you think Madame Rossignol loves you?’ and they then went off into such gales of giggles that they did not know which way the case had been decided. It was in their favour.

  The Duchess, who is one of the amiable bores of history, fell madly in love with her husband and never looked at anybody else all her life. The only person who doubted the sincerity of her passion was Horace Walpole who said that she displayed it too much for him to believe in it. Choiseul himself was deeply devoted to her. ‘Her virtue,’ he wrote, ‘her charm, her feeling for me and mine for her have brought more happiness to our married life than any amount of money would have done.’ She had to put up with flagrant infidelity; at first it made her miserable, but in time she took the situation philosophically and made friends with her husband’s mistresses. M. de Choiseul had a sister whose lack of fortune had hitherto prevented her from marrying; at the ripe age of twenty-eight she was eating her heart out in the convent of Remiremont, a terrible fate for one who loved society above everything else. As soon as he was installed at Versailles he sent for this sister, and married her to the idiotic and vicious Duc de Gramont; they separated almost at once and the Duchess went to live with her brother – in every sense of the word according to the current gossip. Though not so pretty, and not nearly so nice as her sister-in-law she was more amusing and had more influence with Choiseul. The courtiers soon found this out, so that, while Madame de Choiseul was admired but neglected, Madame de Gramont was disliked but courted. Madame de Choiseul keenly resented the fact that even in her own house she was never now alone with her husband. Madame de Gramont made her feel a fool. One day Louise-Honorine was telling her guests at dinner that exile would hold no terrors for her, on the contrary, she would adore to live in some remote spot quite alone with Choiseul. ‘Yes, but what about him?’ said her horrid sister-in-law, from the other side of the table.

  Madame de Pompadour loved the whole Choiseul family and could never have enough of them. She and the King supped with them three times a week; her own suppers altered very much in character, not more than eight guests of whom three were the Choiseuls. The Duchesse de Gramont amused the King and always sat next to him, Choiseul himself kept the whole table in a constant buzz of jollity and Madame de Choiseul was simply delicious.

  The Marquise could feel at last that she and the King were being adequately supported in their work, and the comfort to her was all the greater because she was hardly ever well now; everything seemed to tire her. As the months went by she put more and more responsibility upon Choiseul. She kept the outward signs of power; the appointments, the rewards, the decorations and the commands were still distributed by her, the state papers still passed through her hands and the work was done in her room, but she ceased to be the moving spirit. Choiseul accumulated an unheard-of amount of ministries and honours; Foreign Affairs, War, the Navy, the Post Office, the governorship of Touraine, the Golden Fleece (he already had the Cordon Bleu) and Colonel-General of the Swiss Guard, a post always hitherto occupied by a Prince of the Blood: in four years all were his. He used to say he was like the coachman in L’Avare, putting his hand to every job and doing whatever was wanted.

  If the war, conducted by him, did not go much better than before, at any rate it went no worse and the prophesied disasters and ruin did not occur. It was hardly his fault that he took over a state near to bankruptcy, the shadow of a navy and a demoralized army commanded by the most incompetent generals France has ever known. He made the necessary financial reforms in an incredibly short time and with a minimum of fuss. In 1758 the budget for Foreign Affairs was fifty-seven millions; out of this came the maintenance of the Bavarian, Wurtemburg and Palatinate armies, all paid by the King of France and very useless on the battlefield, and bribes, or what we should call aid to neutral countries. In 1759, the first year of Choiseul’s administration, the budget was twenty-four millions, by 1763 it was down to eleven millions. This diminution never lost the King a single ally. The Duke also introduced reforms at Versailles. All the hundreds of people who held sinecures at Court were obliged to render an account of how much they got, and for what reason. The King himself had already cut down his expenses in many ways; he now kept only 1,000 horses, had stopped all his private building, and had made economies even in his kitchen. The Marquise had sold most of her diamonds, which she always said was no sacrifice as she had never cared for jewels. They had both sent a huge quantity of silver to be melted down at the Monnaie and had induced the courtiers to do l
ikewise. This served the double purpose of producing bullion and helping the factory at Sèvres, though it ruined the silversmiths. Every morning the King got a list of people who had done their duty by giving silver; they received one-quarter of the value in money and the rest in six per cent Government bonds. Louis XIV had done the same in order to pay for his wars and the sad result is that old French silver is rarer than that of any other country. The Marquise had sold Bellevue to the King and had furthermore given almost her whole capital so that Ecole Militaire could be finished. The days of extravagance were over.

  Maria Theresa was, of course, very much pleased by the appointment of Choiseul. She knew him well and had always known his family – his father had at one time been Austrian Ambassador to France – so she could be quite sure that he would never go back on the alliance. She now sent Madame de Pompadour the famous escritoire. When she first had the idea of giving the Marquise a present, she seems to have asked Starhemberg whether he thought a sum of money or a diamond aigrette would be the best. He replied that in his view the present that would give most pleasure would be one of the new writing tables now so fashionable, upright in design; these could be bought in Paris for about 4,000 ducats. The Empress did not consider this valuable enough; she said it should cost at least 6,000 ducats. She chose, out of her own enormous collection of lacquer boxes, two of the most perfect, and sent them to Paris to be made up and mounted in gold. This was done by the jeweller Ducrollay, Place Dauphine, and here is his bill.

  The miniature of the Empress, surrounded by diamonds, was evidently set in the lacquer. Nobody knows what finally became of this remarkable piece mounted, it will be noticed, not in ormolu but in solid gold. Madame de Pompadour complained that it was really too rich and that she had to hide it for fear of gossip; she removed the miniature and had it framed in silver gilt, and thus it appears in the inventory of her belongings made after her death. But the escritoire itself seems to have vanished for ever.

  Madame de Pompadour asked Starhemberg if she might take the unusual liberty of writing direct to the Empress to thank her for this present. ‘… If to be penetrated with enthusiastic admiration, Madame, for Your Imperial Majesty’s charm and legendary virtues is to be worthy of this precious gift then nobody can be more worthy than I …’ She signed Jeanne de Pompadour, 28 January 1759, instead of her usual signature, Marquise de Pompadour. (Letters to her relations and great friends had no beginnings or endings, they were sealed with her three castles.)

  Frederick, whose spies got hold of a copy of the letter for him, circulated a parody which caused him the most exquisite delight: ‘Beautiful Queen, the gracious words it pleases Your Majesty to write to me are beyond all price. Incomparable Princess, who honours me with the title of bonne amie, would that I could reconcile you to Venus the Goddess of Love as I have reconciled you to my country …’ and so on.

  This did not do much harm to his victim; if anybody suffered it was Maria Theresa who has been said by quite reputable historians to have written ‘chère amie’ and even ‘chère cousine’ to Madame de Pompadour. Of course she never wrote directly to her at all. The parody was rushed from the drum on which it was written to the printing presses in Holland, and sent to all the German states. Various copies went to Paris in the hope that one, at least, would find its way to Versailles.

  Voltaire was now back in Madame de Pompadour’s life, a reconciliation between them having been made by Choiseul, who was a friend of his. In 1760 he dedicated Tancrède to her: ‘Ever since your childhood I have seen distinction and talents developing in you. At all times you have been unchangingly good to me. It must be said, Madame, that I owe you a great deal; furthermore I venture to thank you publicly for all you have done to help a large number of writers, artists and other categories of deserving people … You have shown discernment in doing good because you have always used your own judgment. I have never known a single writer or any unprejudiced person who has not done justice to your character, and this not only in public but also in private conversations when people are much more inclined to blame than to praise. Believe me, Madame, it is something to be proud of that those who know how to think should speak thus of you.’ No woman could ask for a greater tribute from a man of genius.

  On 10 March 1762, Jean Calas, a Protestant draper of Toulouse, suffered the dreadful death of being broken on the wheel. He had been convicted of hanging his own son because he thought he was about to become a Roman Catholic. His guilt was impossible; morally, because Calas was a gentle creature, devoted to his children: physically, because he was weak and old and his son was a hearty young man of twenty-eight; legally, because there was not a shadow of proof – on the contrary it was evident that young Calas, who was given to fits of depression, had committed suicide. Toulouse was one of the most fanatically anti-Protestant towns in France; its Parlement had condemned Calas from religious bigotry.

  When Voltaire heard this story he worked himself into a frenzy of rage. It offended him in his deepest feelings, as a crime committed in the name of God. Calas was dead and could not be brought back to life, but his widow and remaining children were in the greatest distress: their wordly goods had been confiscated; two young girls taken from their mother and shut up in convents; and one son banished. Voltaire set to work to get the verdict reversed and the family rehabilitated; in the conduct of this case he appears at his very best. Not only does an extreme goodness inform every step he took but also a knowledge of the world in which he had hitherto seemed deficient. He needed, and sought the help of his many highly placed friends. Madame Calas was a tiresome person, so timid that she gave the impression that she would really prefer the whole matter to be dropped. Voltaire never lost patience with her; he lent her money; made his Paris friends look after her; wrote letters for her to send off at a suitable time; he sometimes complained of her but was never cross with her. Many of his correspondents were on his side and helped as much as they could; some behaved like comfortable, selfish, rich people the world over. The exiled Bernis, the Ducs de Choiseul and de Villars all wrote saying: ‘Don’t get so excited – magistrates never sentence people to death for their own amusement – no smoke without fire.’ Choiseul, however, came round to Voltaire’s way of thinking in the end. (It is interesting to note that, to begin with, the line-up of opinion was much the same as when, nine years later, the King was trying to suppress the Parlements and reform the Constitution: Voltaire, the philosophes, the more enlightened Magistrates and the King against practically the whole of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. That Louis XV died before his plans could be implemented is one of the tragedies of history.)

  Voltaire’s timing in the Calas affair was faultless. When the right moment came, not too soon, he sent somebody to explain the matter to Madame de Pompadour. Her feelings are expressed in a letter to the Duke of FitzJames:

  Yes indeed, M. le Duc, the story of poor Calas makes one shudder.

  One should pity him for being born a Protestant but that’s no reason for treating him like a highwayman.

  It seems impossible that he should have committed the crime of which he was accused; it would be too unnatural.

  However, he is dead, his family is blighted and his judges are unrepentant.

  The King, in his goodness, has suffered over this business and all France is crying out for vengeance.

  The wretched man will be avenged but can’t be brought back to life.

  These people of Toulouse are too fanatical to be good Christians. May God convert and give them a little humanity.

  Adieu, M. le Duc, I am your sincere friend.

  La Mse. de Pompadour, Versailles, 27 Aug: 1762.

  The Toulouse Parlement fought every inch of the way but public opinion was now against it. Madame Calas and her daughters went to Versailles, were presented to the Queen and made much of by the courtiers. The King was too shy to see them. However, on 1 March 1763, he called a Council and decided that the affair should go to the Cour des Requêtes. There was an o
utcry against this move – the Crown seemed to be overruling the Law – but Louis XV took no notice and finally the judgment against Calas and his family was quashed; no one was ever broken on the wheel again in France. The King gave a handsome sum of money to Madame Calas. Madame de Pompadour had done all she could to bring this about and Voltaire forgave her for befriending Crébillon.

  But the Marquise had begun to have doubts about the philosophes. ‘What has come over our nation?’ she wrote during the defeats of the Seven Years’ War. ‘The parlements, encyclopédistes and so on have changed it utterly. When all principles have gone by the board, when neither King nor God are recognized, a country becomes nature’s pariah.’ All the years she had spent at Court had made her more royalist than the King.

  Frederick soon discovered that Madame de Pompadour and Voltaire were writing to each other again and began to use Ferney as a post office for Versailles. Choiseul was anxious to make peace, if it could be an honourable one, and he told Voltaire to see if Frederick could not be persuaded to reduce his demands and those of his English allies. ‘Tell the King that, in spite of our set-backs, Louis XV is still in a position to wipe out the state of Prussia. If peace be not made this winter we shall be obliged to take this decision, however dangerous.’ He added that France would be prepared to pay an indemnity.

  Frederick pretended not to be interested in these overtures; Choiseul would soon be sent away, he said – he had already been minister for two years, a record at the French Court. Choiseul, thoroughly nettled, declared that he hated politics worse than death and lived only for pleasure; exile held no terrors for him. He had a beautiful house, a charming and faithful wife and delicious mistresses; there were only two ways in which anybody could harm him. The first would be to make him impotent and the second to oblige him to read the works of the philosopher of Sans-Souci. Frederick’s reply was that peace would be signed – yes, by the King of England in Paris and by himself in Vienna. After this the letters became so acid that Voltaire stopped forwarding them; he saw that both sides would very soon round on him in their fury if he continued to be the go-between.