The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down

by Jesse Browner

  But there is always the rare individual who just has to dissent, regardless of all the seductive inducements to conformity. They just can't help themselves, the impulse to self-assertion is too strong. They just have to wet the bed, so to speak. In Louis XIV's Versailles, self-assertion meant, at great peril, refusing the king's hospitality. Not many had the guts or the imagination for it, but there was one. Not only did this man manage to slip the shackles of the king's hospitality; he also actually managed to raise, from the depths of a perverse and tormented imagination, an alternate universe in which he stood the entire concept of hospitality as ideology on its head and, ultimately, made it work to his own advantage. He didn't really want it this way; if you had asked him, he probably would have claimed to prefer a life of ease and privilege. He just couldn't help himself. With Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, more so than with most, character really was destiny.

  The portraits of Bussy reveal a dashing cavalier straight out of central casting for The Three Musketeers, with his roguish moustache, voluminous wig and gleaming armor, flouncy collar, and wicked smile. In fact, he was all that and more, everything you might expect from such an archetype: a womanizer and adulterer, a willful malingerer, a sardonic wit, inconstant in love and allegiance, a boisterous carouser who usually let his high spirits lead him into indiscretion. He was also a fine writer with a keen eye for telling detail and social power relationships. He was lucky enough to have been born into precisely the wrong century, the one time and place where all his charms and weaknesses were sure to set him apart to his advantage and great peril. A century earlier and he would have been just another swashbuckler in Henri IV's court of scoundrels; a century later and he probably would have ended up sharing a cell with the marquis de Sade.

  He was born in 1618, the third son of a Burgundian nobleman of ancient lineage, and extremely well educated by the Jesuits. His father sent him off to war under Turenne at the age of sixteen, where he shamelessly deserted his first command, though his youth saved him from any unpleasant repercussions. Almost from the onset, plagued by a lack of money to buy a commission, he began writing poetry to make his reputation in society. In 1638, his father transferred his own colonel's commission to him and Louis XIII gave him twelve thousand livres to buy recruits, which he promptly lost. He was a typical young officer, fighting bravely in the summer, loving too well in the off-season, dueling and brawling over women, one of whom, to his distress, turned out to be a beautiful hermaphrodite. His first stay in the Bastille, a mere five months, came in 1641, when he abandoned his troops to pursue a lover and his leaderless men went on a rampage of rape and pillage in the village of Moulins. Bussy quit the service.

  Despite his clear avowal that "I despise marriage because I am the enemy of all constraint," he went on to marry his wealthy cousin Gabrielle de Toulongeon in 1643 and embarked on his first extramarital affair two years later. Racked with guilt, he stayed at home and moped as the French army went on to a glorious victory at Nordlingen in Flanders. In 1645, having outlived all five of his brothers, he inherited the title of comte de Bussy and went on to fight well with the due d'Enghien (the future prince de Conde) in Catalonia, but he abandoned him after the defeat of Lerida. In 1648, he misguidedly kidnapped a rich widow whom he was convinced wanted desperately to be ravished.

  He fought with Conde during the Fronde, participating in the siege of Paris, where he was taken prisoner for six hours. When Conde turned against Louis XTV, Bussy's allegiance to the sovereign caused a vague irritation to his conscience. He briefly considered switching sides but soon came to see that his only chance of getting paid was to stick with the prince, who eventually gave him only half of what he thought he was owed. Enough was enough: like his fellow Frondeur Cyrano de Bergerac, he went over to the king.

  It was a good move. By thirty-five, he was lieutenant general in the light cavalry and gaining glory on the field and in the salons, where his witty contemporary portraits in meter and verse were much admired. The expression rabutinade, still current today, was coined to commemorate his clever wordplay. But Bussy was not the kind of man to press his advantages by cultivating the powerful; he was constitutionally unable to compel his instincts and his ambitions to cooperate with one another. He just couldn't keep his mouth shut or his pen civil. "All chivalry is extinct at court," he tactfully wrote about the dubious mores of the day, "but that is rather the fault of the ladies than of the knights." Of the powerful duchesse de Longueville, he simply said, "She was dirty and smelled bad." In a letter Bussy wrote to his first cousin Mme de Sévigné - and letters in those days had a way of finding a public readership - he described the ugliness of Condé in some detail. Conde, in turn, "would not suffer [Bussy] to walk the streets of Paris while he was there." It was to Bussy that Turenne had said, "His Majesty does not like you."

  But all this would have amounted to little more than a stunted military career if Bussy had not continually pushed the envelope of good taste and restraint. In 1658, when Mme de Sevigne's husband had an affair with the famous courtisan Ninon de Lenclos, Bussy urged her to retaliate by committing adultery with himself, her own cousin; her refusal propelled him to write a caustic portrait in which he described her physical defects and accused her of inconstancy and frigidity. The next year, he became embroiled in the Roissy scandal, in which a notorious group of libertines, including a number of known homosexuals, spent a debauched and well-publicized weekend during Holy Week composing and reading filthy poetry about the king and his court. Mazarin exiled Bussy for fifteen months.

  It was at this time that, to distract himself, he began composing the stories that would eventually become the Histoires amoureuses des Gaules, a licentious and libelous look at the loose morals of the Fronde in which the king appears as Theodose, Conde as Tyr-idate, and Mazarin as the Great Druid. The book was offered as a private gift to his lover, the marquise de Montglas, and passed about discreetly, apparently even amusing His Majesty. But Bussy made the mistake of lending it to the notoriously indiscreet marquise de la Baume, who was languishing in the convent where her husband had imprisoned her for her shamelessness. The marquise only had the book in her possession for forty-eight hours, but somehow managed to have it copied in its entirety. The copy eventually found its way to Holland, where it was published in 1665. In April of that year, three months after he had been inducted into the Académie française - two after the opening of Molière's Don Juan - Bussy was arrested by direct order of the king and imprisoned in the Bastille. Mme de Montglas promptly abandoned him and Mme de Sevigne refused to visit (although he drew on her essential good nature to repair their relationship later on). His health broken, he was released thirteen months later and exiled indefinitely to his estates in Burgundy.

  Banishment was a relatively common form of punishment in those days. It might be difficult for us to discern the punitive factor in being compelled to live in splendor on a country estate, spared the enormous expense and stress of life at court, waited upon by an army of servants, and surrounded by the comforts and calm of home, were we not already aware of the unparalleled advantages of life as the guest of the king. Montaigne had lived happily and productively in self-exile, but few had his acquirements. Banishment was simply social death, the end of all ambition and glory, at least for most people. But Bussy was not most people. He soon resigned himself to the fact that this was not to be a short-term exile and embarked on a project that would prove to be unique in the annals of hospitality.

  In the mid-seventeenth century, the only regular mail delivery in France was the thrice-weekly post between Paris and Dijon, some thirty miles from Bussy-le-Grand. Bussy took full advantage of it, launching an epic letter-writing campaign that would result in one of the most glorious correspondences of the century, including many vainly ingratiating pleas to the king and at least 155 letters to Mme de Sevigne. Other correspondents included the famous precieuses Mme de Scudery and Mme Bos-suet. He begged them all for news, gossip, and literary exchanges, and they obli
ged; over the eighteen years of his exile, despite his distance, Bussy became known as a reliable and discerning cultural arbiter, an "oracle" according to one admirer. Charpentier, dean of the Academie, wrote, "We often speak of you, citing the authority of your thoughts and words." He championed the poets Benserade and La Fontaine, and new members of the Académie often sent him their work for his lucid commentaries. In exile - far from the center of power, far from the glories of the court, far from the rigid constraints of the ruling ideology - Bussy seemed to find himself for the first time and attained a level of respect and admiration that had eluded him through decades of public life. Beginning in 1668, he would edit, condense, and reshape the information contained in his correspondence into his Memoirs, which he hoped to present to the king as a glorification of his epoch. He was genuinely disappointed when Louis chose Racine and Bossuet as his official biographers.

  From almost the moment he landed back at home, Bussy had set about a grand remodeling of his chateau, Bussy-Rabutin, which is still considered among the finest in Burgundy. Every time he opened a correspondence with a new interlocutor, he begged them for a portrait of themselves, "for I wish to have you in my chambers as well as in my heart." He soon had an enormous collection (not necessarily of the highest quality), which he arranged in distinct galleries, each with its own portrait of himself hung prominently at the center. In the Salle des devises he hung paintings of the most glorious chateaux of France, interspersed with allegorical emblems pointedly highlighting the guiding vanities of his self-regard ("Noble in his noble origins"; "His ardor makes me bold"; "I bend but do not break"; "I stoop to rise"). In the Salle des hommes de guerre he hung sixty-five portraits of the great military leaders of France from the Hundred Years War to the Fronde. In the Tour doree he hung portraits, each accompanied by witty and often sardonic commentary, of the most beautiful women of the court, including that of his former lover the marquise de Montglas: "The most beautiful mistress of the realm, she would have been the most lovable if she had not been the most faithless." The Salon des belles-amies featured the royal mistresses of the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, while another gallery held portraits of the kings of France, statesmen, and men of letters - including, of course, his own. His bedroom held portraits of twenty-two family members, including that of Mme de Sevigne and her daughter, Mme de Grignan.

  In this way, Bussy re-created and surrounded himself with every facet of the society and its illustrious members he had left behind. He made himself, in a sense, host to all society. Given the effort he put into it (these galleries can still be seen today, more or less unchanged), it must have been a powerful comfort to him. It was also a lure, as many - including a number of courtiers who would not have been seen dead with Bussy on one of his rare clandestine visits to Paris - journeyed long and uncomfortable distances to see for themselves this by now famous simulacrum of their own world deep in the heart of the provinces. And there can be no doubt that his galleries gave him far more pleasure than the company of the dull and unlettered local gentry - the dreaded bonne noblesse.

  "A man of good sense can build himself a Paris anywhere," he wrote. His was a Paris of the mind, the only kind where a misfit like Bussy was ever likely to be tolerated and entertained. Although no one has ever suggested that Bussy had any screws loose, it is not a great stretch to imagine him wandering his empty hallways, much as he had once strolled through the galleries of Versailles, making refined conversation and formulating nasty asides with all of his admiring peers, who, for once, were in little danger of reporting his indiscretions.

  Bussy was eventually recalled by the king in 1682, but his return to court was far from triumphant. At Saint-Germain, Louis allowed him to embrace his knees, but the long-sought pension was not forthcoming. Bussy waited five months, increasingly aware of being a dinosaur, then returned to Burgundy for good, where he edited his correspondence and, almost unbelievably, found God. He died in 1693 and his correspondence, published four years later, proved enormously popular. It went through fourteen editions in forty years and included the first-ever publication of letters by Mme de Sevigne. Among a number of works that appeared posthumously was an essay dating all the way back to 1649, titled Discourse on Putting Adversity to Good Use.

  There is a relatively simple moral in the triangle of conflicting world views held by Louis XIV, the duchess of Mantua, and Roger de Bussy. The rules of social life are pegged to a sliding scale of necessary compromises, and every decision we make is, to some extent, informed by our willingness to conform to the expectations others have of us. We can allow ourselves to be tractable or obdurate, as we see fit and depending on circumstances. Our decision to act one way or the other will ultimately be based on the relative benefits of the outcome. This holds equally true for guests and for hosts.

  But what happens when we must deal with people to whom these rules are meaningless, who are incapable of flexibility or compromise, such as the three main protagonists of this chapter? Because hospitality is all about control, when things go sour it tends to bring out the worst in everyone, perfectionists and rebels alike, turning hosts into tyrants and eccentrics into dissidents. We all know at least one person - an overly formal host or an antisocial guest - who will not or cannot alter his or her behavior to accommodate the comfort level of others. Do we engage such misfits in a battle of wills, seeking to bend them against their natures and insisting that they conform to our standards when they are under our roof, or do we allow our guests to be themselves, even when their selves are prickly, aggressive, or unsociable? If you are an intolerant host who imposes rules of behavior, the danger of creating dissidents in your midst - people who are constitutionally or temperamentally compelled to forgo your hospitality - is quite real. If, on the other hand, you allow your guests free rein to act out their idiosyncrasies, you risk undermining the control that, as we have seen, is so crucial to good hospitality.

  It is a fine wire to walk. It is also just as pertinent to someone hosting a modest dinner party on a Saturday night as it is to any autocrat in a powdered wig. If, like Louis XIV, we play tyrant as host, we can afford to be as inflexible as we wish. Most of us would be glad to be shot of the duchess of Mantua but, unlike Louis, very sorry to lose the company of Roger de Bussy. Since we are more likely to be forced into the role of host as tyrant, however, we may find ourselves compelled to compromise. We may have to admit a few stuffy duchesses if we wish to retain our Bussys. In weighing the degree of control that we will be willing to exert over our guests, we will inevitably have to ask ourselves this question: Is one Bussy worth a house full of duchesses who won't sit down?

  CHAPTER V

  THE COCKENTRICE

  And as for the Dwkys coort, as of lords 8c ladys 8c gentylwomen knyts, sqwyers 8c gentylmen I hert never of non lyek to it save King Artourys cort.

  John Paston, letter from Bruges, 1468

  My wife and I both work at jobs that are demanding and intellectually stimulating, but comparatively low-paying. Anywhere else in the country we might be considered very well off, but there is nowhere else in the country that we could practice our professions. In New York City, we get by. When it comes to matters of hospitality, we do all our own work: the shopping, the cooking, the serving, the cleanup. For large parties, we may occasionally hire a couple of students from Columbia University to tend bar and scrub glasses, but that is the fullest extent of our extravagance.

  I tell myself that I like it that way, and I think it's the truth. I would, of course, be perfectly happy if I never had to wash another fork again, but doing the dishes is a price I happily pay to maintain full and absolute control. Nothing could induce me to entrust my guests to a mercenary. A caterer may be and probably is the better cook; he will surely go to more trouble than I do to present his fare elegantly; he almost certainly has a more refined appreciation of wine and how to select it; he may smile more than I do over the course of an evening, and will speak more pleasingly and offer more subtle flattery to my guests. B
ut he is not the host - he is not me - and he can never hope to give the guests what they really want or to secure for the host the less tangible rewards of hospitality. Most important, being greedy of praise, I couldn't possibly tolerate having to share it.

  The catered dinner party is theater in a language I do not speak. It violates almost every rule of hospitality. I find no magic, no transcendence, no vision of Utopia, no intimacy there. This is not because there is something intrinsically inferior about a catered dinner, but because such an affair requires host and guest alike to surrender an essential element of their humanity. Hospitality is a song of himself that the host sings to his guests. It is also communication, a reciprocal conversation of the deepest intimacy. You could argue that having an event catered gives the host more freedom and focus for that conversation. I say it is all of a piece; anyone can relax when someone else is doing all the work. It is the ability to see to everything personally and still show your guests how pleasant and honorable it is to serve them that communicates your concern for them. How can you have this conversation when you are speaking through a spokesperson, your caterer? For whom does the caterer speak? Is he advertising your generosity or his own talents? When Colin Cowie caters a wedding, who is the star? At a catered event, the host may be singing a beautiful song, but his face is veiled and you suspect that he is lip-synching.

  This is what weddings are all about: the creation of a language that avoids affective human intercourse and seeks to project an abstracted idea about the host - power, status, wealth, influence, patronage - rather than the reality of the host himself. The proof of this, in my experience, is that the only people who ever truly enjoy a wedding are those intimately connected to the newlyweds' families, who can override the disembodiment of the emotional experience. The rest of us have to submit to it and content ourselves with poached salmon and oldies dance tunes.