Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  NINE

  Closer and Closer Now

  SPRING 1769

  “You have so much enthusiasm, so much charme, when we converse about pastoral things—les papillons, les fontaines, les belles fleurs,” Vermond observed one day. By then it was spring. The year 1768 was little more than memory and the crocuses and forsythia of 1769 were beginning to bloom. In another week or two, red and yellow tulips would dot the parterres and perimeters of Vienna’s public parks.

  “It’s because I like butterflies, fountains, and beautiful flowers. Perhaps I am not made for correspondence and for books,” I argued.

  “That does not excuse you from perfecting both your writing and your reading,” Vermond replied. “It is my duty to see that you excel in everything.”

  I lowered my lashes and smiled at him, noting the soft pink that suffused his cheeks. “But when I go to Versailles, you will read to me!” I added gaily.

  Vermond chuckled in spite of himself. “Madame Antonia, the office of ‘reader,’ or lecturer, means that I would serve as your spiritual counselor, not as a nanny; bedtime stories and lurid novels on the order of La Princesse de Clèves would not be the topics of our discourse—rather the word of God, as it is written—”

  I interrupted him with a wave of my hand. “Tant pis,” I sighed with an air of mock resignation. “Too bad.”

  The abbé’s hand flew to his chest. “You know, I almost believed you! Call it blasphemy to say so, but were you not born to wed the future king of France, you could have been an actress.”

  I stifled a giggle. “If my mother heard you, she would send you packing back to Paris on a mule with no provisions but moldy bread and contaminated water.” I recalled the debacle over messieurs Aufresne and Sainville. “And don’t think for a moment that she would hesitate to relieve you of your duties if you do not transform me from an Austrian caterpillar into a French butterfly.”

  Vermond scrubbed a hand through his russet hair. “I hope Your Royal Highness does not believe I would wish you anything other than what you are,” he said with a bit of a glint in his light brown eyes. “With the exception of becoming a proficient and productive student. Therefore”—he cleared his throat—“touching on the subject of the future king of France, kindly recite the history of its queens.”

  Ahh! This I knew. It was right and natural that I should feel an affinity with these women, some of them no older than I when they departed their native lands to be yoked in matrimony to a stranger. If they were ever homesick I was sure they kept the secret locked within their bosoms, knowing it was not only their duty, but an honor, to bear the next king of France.

  I began with Eléanore d’Aquitaine, who introduced tablecloths to the French court and who scandalized her mother-in-law with her extravagant wardrobe, her cosmetics, and her opulent jewelry. “And she bravely rode at the head of the French army on the crusade to the Holy Land. Bare-breasted and in red boots, too!” I had spent weeks trying to imagine the scene. I also tried to picture how she survived day to day, enduring a loveless marriage to her cousin, Louis VII, who had few interests beyond prayer and repentance, when she herself, who so adored music and dancing, was the very image of liveliness and sociability.

  “Well,” sighed my tutor, scarcely concealing his amusement, “you are correct; although you would do well to heed the lessons Queen Eleanor either flouted or forgot. Her own husband imprisoned her for more than fifteen years for daring to meddle in politics.”

  “Ah, but that was her English husband!” I countered. “I am to marry a French king.”

  And so my examination continued as I scampered down the branches of the royal family trees, from the Capets to the Valois and finally to the current reigning dynasty, the Bourbons. “Maria Theresa”—a name I could not possibly forget, as it was also my mother’s—“was the wife of Louis XIV, the Sun King. She was the Spanish infanta and the three-times-great-grandmother of the dauphin, Louis Auguste, my future husband.”

  “And?” Vermond gently nudged.

  I racked my brain. “Oh, ja—I mean oui—a silly phrase. The French peasants were starving for want of bread and she dismissed their hunger, saying, ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.’ But what’s a brioche and why should they eat that, if they have no bread?”

  Vermond laughed. “A brioche is a delicious breakfast bun baked with flour, butter, and eggs. And just a pinch of sugar, so it’s a little bit sweet—like a cake.”

  I frowned, furrowing my brow. “Well it’s a silly thing to say, then. ‘Let them eat cake.’ She should have gone out among the people and fed them. It’s what I would have done.”

  April 27, 1769

  Your Excellency:

  You are much wished for here, comte de Mercy. I confess that no one awaits your return to Austria with more impatience than myself, for I am sorely in need of your talents.

  Her Imperial Majesty has had the goodness to inform me that Your Excellency will devote some of his evenings to Madame Antonia. Nothing could be more useful at the moment, and I observe with pleasure that Her Royal Highness appreciates the benefit of your sagacity and experience of the world. “Austria could not have a finer ambassador,” she has informed me.

  Lesson plans were at first a challenge, but over the past several weeks I believe that my pupil and I have found our stride. I began with the history of France, but I merely employed it as a background on which I could work up all the objects it is necessary to know in the ordinary course of life. Excepting the history of recent times, I only called her attention to the important facts, especially those epoch-making occurrences in our habit or in the French government. When I came to a position that would have been embarrassing to a prince or princess (grain shortages in the countryside, for example), I always waited after explaining the circumstances, and made her say what she would have done in their place. I had to lay stress on this and I had the pleasure of remarking that she often gave the right view.

  I come now to the subject that has produced no end of consternation—that of Madame du Barry. Her Imperial Majesty has learned of Louis’s new paramour, and moreover, of the woman’s immediate and overwhelming influence on the king. After a battery of imprecations (“gutter trollop,” “mercenary vixen,” “blond harridan”), the empress launched into her greatest concern; namely, that an influential royal mistress does not bode well for Austrian interests, particularly as those interests are embodied in the person of the virginal future dauphine, who will be compelled to contend with the maîtresse en titre for the king’s attention, regard, and favor. Madame Antonia’s rank, the empress acknowledges, may well be overshadowed by the grim reality of a conniving and alluring woman in Louis’s bed—a woman who is already gathering about her a devoted coterie of courtiers with their own interests at heart.

  I seek your counsel because the very existence of Madame du Barry renders our collective task that much more challenging. How are we (or perhaps the burden must be shouldered alone by your humble and ill-suited servant) to prepare the archduchess to become a formidable rival of the king’s favorite? As a celibate man of the cloth I am hardly equipped to discuss with a girl of thirteen such thorny matters as the ramifications of her future grandfather’s adulterous liaison with “a woman of low birth and even less breeding,” in the words of the empress. Nor does Her Imperial Majesty, who fully ascribes to the teachings of our Mother Church on the subject of adultery, wish her daughter to know of the king’s paramour. Your wisdom and worldliness on this score would be highly beneficial to all concerned.

  Finally, although I admit my initial reluctance to act as Madame Antonia’s confessor, feeling on sturdier ground as her lecturer, I can only assure Your Excellency that my original disinclinations for that function have been greatly diminished by the goodness and singular confidence shown me by Her Royal Highness. I began by hearing her confession during the Christmas fêtes and from the vantage of being privy to her inmost thoughts, I can state with certainty that she wishes to do good in the world
and to please God and her elders. Additionally, and not to be discounted, to a charming face she unites every grace of deportment. As the matter currently stands, I am quite convinced that the French court and the kingdom will be enchanted with our future dauphine.

  Your Excellency’s very humble and obedient servant,

  Abbé Jacques-Mathieu de Vermond

  There was great pomp and ceremony on the exceptionally sunny day in May when Monsieur Ducreux’s formal portrait of me was dispatched to Louis XV of France. By then we had decamped to Schönbrunn for the summer months, although Maman often left us to attend to affairs of state at the Hofburg.

  The painter had in fact executed two portraits, but Maman detested the first—in which I look flat as a board, laced into a teal blue gown embellished with ecru ruffles. My hair, lightly powdered, is styled off my forehead in the mode that Sieur Larsenneur had fashioned for me; but my neck, accentuated by a ruched choker, looks unnaturally long when compared with the expanse of bosom revealed by the gown. Perhaps if I had had something delectable and alluring to show for all that skin, the image would have been more attractive. In my view, the artist had represented my face rather accurately, but the balance of the composition conveyed the image of a physically immature child—hardly the message Maman wished to send to France.

  Appalled by Ducreux’s maiden effort and livid at him for wasting precious time, my mother refused to accept the portrait. I was to sit for the painter again. And this time he was cautioned in no uncertain terms to create the image of a nubile bride.

  On May 13, the commission was unveiled, its protective white drape removed for all to ogle. Well! I was surprised to see that I looked quite the young lady. This time, the pose reflected an angular jawline. Did I ever look like that? I wondered. Pearls were entwined in my powdered coiffure. Even my dress, silver watered silk with accents of royal blue and pewter gray, was a markedly more mature choice than the barely embellished deep blue gown I had worn in Monsieur Ducreux’s previous effort. Standing beside Maman and the diplomats involved in arranging my marriage—the marquis de Durfort, the duc de Choiseul, and our ambassador, comte de Mercy—I regarded the second portrait. This time around, my doppelgänger’s gaze was direct and confident. I stifled a giggle with my fingertips. I would marry me, I thought!

  It fell upon the marquis to transport the canvas to Versailles—along with the portraits that Monsieur Ducreux had painted of the rest of the imperial family. Maman had no intentions of giving the impression that she was overtly anxious for my formal marriage proposal, although that was precisely how she felt. Yet Louis of France could never be allowed to suspect as much. My mother pretended that my portrait was merely one of many, a gift from the Hapsburgs to the Bourbons.

  But there was not a person involved—not in the Mirror Room at Schönbrunn or in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace at Versailles, who did not see through the ruse.

  A month later, the marquis returned, bearing with him the document that fulfilled all my mother’s hopes and dreams for the Hapsburg Empire: King Louis’s official request, dated the seventh of June, 1769, for my hand in marriage on behalf of his grandson, Louis Auguste, dauphin of France.

  Although she imbibed but one celebratory sip, Maman commanded that hundreds of bottles of Alsatian wine be brought up from the palace cellars. The melodious sound of tinkling crystal resonated throughout Schönbrunn’s lofty ceilinged rooms; by nightfall there would be nary a minister or ambassador, footman or maid, nor a single one of the fifteen hundred court chamberlains, who was not a bit tipsy.

  I wished to see the document that spelled out my destiny, imagining that it would have a great golden seal affixed to it, or that it would be embossed with a lily, the royal insignia of France, bound in white ribbons to denote the House of Bourbon.

  But the formal request for my hand was none of these things. Was it inauspicious that such vital news be conveyed in nothing more momentous than an ordinary letter? After such lengthy (and in truth ongoing) negotiations for my hand and improvements to every other body part, I suppose I had expected a fanfare of trumpets and something on the order of a royal proclamation or decree. I imagined that flags representing our two houses might be flown from some lofty vantage, announcing the royal union to all and sundry.

  But the modest form of the offer in no way diminished my mother’s relief. Her voice quavered with emotion—and something else: victory. “Oh, my little one,” sighed Maman. She beckoned me into her arms and I found myself both grateful and confused at her rare display of affection. So tightly did she envelop me that the stiff ruching of her bodice prickled my cheek. Finally, after all I had undergone to become worthy of the title of dauphine, the goal was to become a reality. Louis had viewed Monsieur Ducreux’s likeness of me and approved of the result.

  Through the hot tears welling in our thankful eyes, Maman’s private salon—the Millions Room—became a blur of red, white, and gold. Even the crystals in the massive candelabrum above our heads seemed to wink with joy.

  “Easter, he says.” My mother had released me from her embrace. A determined finger pointed to the formal commitment from France. “Louis proposes that the wedding should take place next Easter.” Her eyes were dry now; no hint of sentiment remained, and Maman was once again every inch the empress. “Which would fall in the middle of April, would it not, monsieur l’abbé?” She directed her attention to my tutor, who commended her swift calculations.

  “April? Why, that’s nearly a whole year away.” I felt tugged in two directions: happy that Maman’s great plans for me would indeed bear fruit, yet secretly pleased that my departure for a distant kingdom to reside among strangers for the rest of my days would not, after all, be an imminent one.

  But Maman appeared displeased by Louis’s forestalling of the great event even as he confirmed my formal betrothal to the dauphin of France—heavens, he’d even sent her a fine set of Sèvres porcelain to commemorate the alliance! But she did as she always managed to do in such circumstances: turn the situation to her advantage.

  She regarded the troika of men in whose trust she had placed my transformation and the success of her empire’s foreign policy: the patient, russet-haired abbé; Louis’s outspoken and impetuous minister, the duc de Choiseul; and our suavely elegant ambassador, the comte de Mercy.

  “My fondest hope and my deepest fear,” she began, “realized and recognized. Vermond, the archduchess’s French remains deplorable and her proficiency with the written language far worse. Her moral character wants significant improvement as well; she is far too impressionable and naïve—une vrai ingénue—to navigate the hornets’ nest that passes for the Bourbon court. The alliance rests on slippery terrain as it is, but it will founder in the mire of political intrigue if she does not develop the skills and the confidence not merely to hold her own but to dominate—and all without appearing to do so. In a manner of speaking, to be a king, you have to learn to be a king.”

  The men gravely nodded their concurrence.

  “Ten months purchases us much time,” she said, with a surreptitious glance at my nonexistent bosom and a note of panic in her voice. “You will be that much more prepared to kneel at the altar beside your husband and, upon a certain unhappy event, ascend the throne of France.” She added sternly, “Make no mistake, Antonia, you still have much to learn.”

  Maman lowered her hand, an indication to kneel before her, as though I were about to receive a benediction. She made the sign of the cross and kissed me gently on the forehead. “I expect great things from you, little one,” she said, and her tone made it impossible to offer any contradiction. “You will not disappoint me.”

  I knew, even as I softened my knees into a curtsy and left the Millions Room, its heavy door shut behind me by a silent pair of footmen, that her words were not in fact a blessing. They were a command.

  June 21, 1769

  My esteemed Brother:

  Permit me to formally tender my thanks for the honor that the house of Bourbon ha
s bestowed upon that of the Hapsburgs. May the uniting of our ancient and noble lines in the persons of my daughter Maria Antonia and your grandson Louis Auguste bring continued peace to our respective realms and the added blessing and benefit of an heir to the throne of France.

  The acknowledgment that I am sending my youngest daughter into the care of the best and tenderest of fathers is a great consolation. In you she will find all the generosity, wisdom, and nobility proper to a monarch. Antonia has applied herself with diligence to the preparations for her future role. In her, a fond and devoted mother trusts you will find all the effervescence and ebullience of youth united to an open heart and a trusting mien. I am certain you will comprehend me when I caution you: Her age craves indulgence.

  Maria Theresa

  TEN

  Big Changes

  July 28, 1769

  My beloved Toinette:

  So! It has come at last—the formal commitment from Louis of France for your hand in marriage to his grandson. Please do not be surprised that this news fills me with more dread than delight. For as much as it would gladden my heart, and those of all Austrians, to see you preside over the most sophisticated court in Europe, I cannot endorse with any degree of enthusiasm the state of holy matrimony. I despair for myself, knowing now that your turn will come soon enough.

  I hope that your husband will honor you and not have an eye for every rustling petticoat that crosses his path. May his table manners be exemplary and his gustatory pleasures not extend to rising from his chair in the royal box at the opera house to toss bowls full of steaming macaroni onto the alarmed heads of the aristocracy.