Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel

by Juliet Grey

  Once again, I suspect, I have brought the sound of laughter to your lips, but I can assure you my husband is anything but amusing. Even the Neapolitan nobility, vulgar and boisterous as they are, find themselves mortified by the antics of their sovereign.

  I do not ask for your pity. Like a good Hapsburg daughter, I am insinuating myself into the corridors of power. I have, quite by accident, discovered the most intriguing manner of obtaining Ferdinand’s attention, as well as his assent to anything I propose. I have only to peel my kidskin gloves down the length of my forearms with agonizing, tantalizing slowness, and the king goes into raptures. My breasts are nothing to him, but my arms—Mein Gott!

  Nonetheless, my ability to seize a political advantage when I see it (not so very unlike our dear Maman, ja?) cannot compensate for the most miserable marriage in Christendom. If our religion had not said to me, “Think about God,” I would have killed myself rather than live as I did for the eight days that spanned our honeymoon.

  I pity you, Antonia. You still have this to face. And when you have to confront this situation, I shall shed many tears on your behalf.

  Do not forget me, Liebchen.

  Your doting sister,

  Charlotte

  My sister’s letter did more to frighten than to gladden my heart, though I expected nothing less than candor from her. Sugary effusion was not her way. Secretly I remained overwhelmed by the fact that in less than a year, I, too, would be a bride. And would Charlotte’s unhappy fate be mine as well? I had never seen Louis Auguste; the king of France had yet to send a portrait, although he now had more than one likeness of me. Perhaps my husband would not be at all like hers. And yet, among Charlotte’s many talents was the ability to think several moves ahead in any game of chess (a pastime I could never bend my mind to); when she assessed my future, what portents did she see?

  “Do you think this must be what it’s like to be in prison?” I asked Maman. At her insistence we had journeyed to the convent at Marizell. “Why are we here?” I asked petulantly.

  “You know the reason perfectly well. And please do not shift your feet so; stand like a proper young lady. We are here because I made my First Communion at the shrine in the Basilica, and before you go to France, I would like you, too, to kneel before the statue of the Blessed Virgin.”

  But that was a hundred years ago, I thought, sighing heavily.

  She gave me an exasperated look and, clucking with disapproval, continued to unpack her trunk. I was to do the same, as no servants had accompanied us. It was just to be the two of us: Maman and I. The walls of the cell were bare of embellishment, except for a wooden cross mounted on the white plaster above each of the two cots.

  At least the chamber was cool, the thick, stuccoed walls prohibiting the August heat from permeating. It smelled slightly damp and fusty, like a boot that has not quite dried after being left out in the rain. The tiny, barred window was so high that it was useless for providing a view. I thought of my oldest sister, who presided over a convent in Prague. “Do you think Marianne enjoys being an abbess?” I said. How could anyone go from a life at court—so vibrant, so colorful, so gay—to a place so dull, drab, and so dreadfully quiet that the finches in the tree beyond the window seemed to deafen one’s ears with their calls.

  “Of course Marianne enjoys being an abbess,” my mother replied with a note of annoyance. She motioned to me to unlace her stays so she could exchange her corset and petticoats for a coarse shift.

  “Must I do that, too?” Maman nodded mutely and placed her finger to her lips. “But if we must be silent here, then what is the point of our visit? I thought you said we came here to talk, woman to woman.” Frankly, I felt like even more of a child—one in need of special attention, like a stray lamb being returned to the fold.

  When she made no reply, other than to loosen my laces so that I could undress myself, I pressed on. “Do you think the Virgin will bless my marriage to the dauphin? Will she bring me luck, do you think?” The Virgin Mary was Austria’s patron saint. It never made much sense to me that we were all supposed to make good marriages yet at the same time venerate a woman who had never wed. I unrolled my white stockings and tossed them on the floor. A look from Maman and I retrieved the hose and placed them in my wooden trunk. Then I slipped my bare feet into a pair of crudely made brown leather slippers.

  Having jettisoned the costly trappings of empire—yards of black brocade richly embroidered, with an embellishment of gemstones around the neckline—Maman didn’t seem nearly as formidable. The woman who stood before me, strapping leather sandals to her pale and slightly callused bare feet, could have been any dowager of a certain age, with tired eyes and a treble chin. I looked more closely at her feet, noticing for the first time the blue veins beneath her nearly translucent skin, and a yellowed, ingrown toenail. A shiver descended the length of my spine. I was not so sure I liked to witness the empress of Austria appearing so vulnerable. I saw then, in a fleeting instant, that my country’s insuperability lay indeed within my hands; it had never before seemed as apparent to me.

  “It is not about luck, Antonia; it is about faith,” Maman said simply.

  Like my pug Mops when he got a beef bone, I refused to shake off my present train of thought. Perhaps I thought it would bring back the Maman I was used to: formidable but familiar. “If Marianne had not been a cripple, would you have brought her here too, before her marriage?”

  “Your eldest sister chose the religious life, Antonia. Now cease the impudent questions at once.”

  I didn’t believe her. Maman was not the sort of mother to cheerfully allow one of her daughters to embrace God, instead of the prince of somewhere or other, solidifying a new alliance for the Austrian empire. You, fortunate Hapsburg, marry did not apply to becoming a bride of Christ. Marianne was nearly seventeen years my senior; she would be thirty-one in October. I was too little when she’d left for the nunnery in Bohemia to remember much about her. I wondered how many babies she would have had by now if she had not been born with a deformity of the spine. I wished I had known her.

  “And don’t say ‘cripple,’ ” Maman added. “It is an ugly word.”

  The long white shift was scratchy against my skin. Had it been woven of nettles? The idea of wearing it for a whole week seemed like torture. Even my detested corsets were preferable.

  For one week, my mother and I subsisted on water and brown bread with thick, chewy crusts, like the pilgrims we were. If any of the nuns knew that their visitors were the empress of Austria and her youngest daughter, they did not say a word. For that matter, they did not say a word at all. I don’t know whether they had taken vows of silence, or whether they had nothing to say to us. I could not tell from their placid expressions whether they were happy, or even if they thought about happiness. When did they stop feeling such pain in their knees? I wondered every time we knelt on the cold slate floors. After only one day of repeated genuflection, my legs were purple with tender bruises.

  With the exception of the communal meal, Maman and I were left to ourselves. Every evening, as we lay upon our hard cots, Maman lectured me on my religious obligations, which I was not to neglect, even as dauphine of France. She made me promise before the cross that at the court of Versailles, I would attend Mass twice daily, and always carry my Bible—the one Papa had given me, bound in white leather with my initials engraved in gilt.

  But didn’t the royal family of France attend Mass twice a day as well, I wondered aloud.

  “Yes, of course, little one. But they don’t mean it. Just like the Neapolitans,” she added dismissively. “However, the French court is the most urbane in Europe. There, gossip takes precedence over God. You must develop the resilience of a willow and the sturdiness of an oak, resisting the temptations to become as frivolous and jaded and lazy as the lot of them.”

  Every day at Marizell, although I should have much preferred to stroll through the convent gardens, we visited the shrine inside the dark and dreary basilica and kn
elt before the silver grille that Maman herself had donated to the sisters. Behind the bars and ornate scrollwork—as though she were in jail—the wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin had rested in her niche since the twelfth century. And every day that week Maman and I offered her a silent prayer, eyes shut tightly, heads bent so low that our lips touched our raised, clasped fingers—fingers that clutched our rosaries. I think Maman prayed for peace throughout our empire, for Catherine the Great and “the Devil” Frederick of Prussia to keep behind their own borders, and for Our Lady to give me a bosom that would please the dauphin of France.

  I prayed that he would love me.

  ——

  After our return from Marizell the months seemed to fly by. Since the arrival of Louis’s formal request for my hand I had begun to tick off the days on a calendar. It was now 1770, the year of my marriage. The short days of winter would soon lengthen into spring. In no time at all it would be Easter. The seasons were changing, yet my body was not, much to Maman’s consternation. Although I had turned fourteen the previous November 2, Générale Krottendorf remained elusive. Twice a day at Mass my mother prayed for her arrival, numbering it among her orisons for the security of the Hapsburg empire.

  Yet even as the time drew nearer, the fact of my impending marriage remained little more than a hazy illusion. True, I had seen the clothes I would wear as dauphine of France, fingered the sumptuous fabrics and admired the colorful jewels; but this lavish trousseau was represented by dolls, which I continued to regard as playthings.

  Because my handwriting remained so abysmal, and my attentiveness to any form of written communication equally lackluster, the abbé Vermond had instructed me to write daily, maintaining a journal (in French, bien sûr) of my thoughts and impressions.

  These musings might be private, but they were not secret, as I had to show him the journal every day to prove that I was fulfilling the assignment. “However, your thoughts shall go no farther than my eyes,” the abbé assured me.

  January 21, 1770

  A ring arrived for me today, a gift from the dauphin. He writes that he hopes his modest present pleases me. It does indeed, and it fits my finger perfectly, even over my glove, which is how I would wear it in France (I wonder how he knew the size). It is a sapphire, very rich in hue, surrounded by a ring of small diamonds. When I turn my hand to the window to catch the light, the ring sparkles in alternate shades of orange, green, and blue, and makes tiny rainbows on the opposite wall. However, I do wish that Louis Auguste had sent me his portrait as well as the ring, because I should like to match his charming gift to a face and a body. Is he tall? Does he powder his hair? What color eyes does he have? Will he love me?

  • • •

  February 6, 1770

  The Countess von Lerchenfeld is dead. She fell ill before Christmas and her health had declined steadily since. I am made quite miserable by her passing, for I was not an easy pupil and I think she would have been happier had Maman allowed her to continue as the Mistress of the Robes to my older sisters. Annelise, the countess’s waiting woman, discovered her cold body this morning when she brought the breakfast tray. I was gladdened to hear that she went peacefully and is out of pain. She is with God now and I am sorry that I gave her even a moment’s displeasure. Her task was a hard one and I will strive to be a better pupil for the abbé Vermond.

  • • •

  February 7, 1770

  Sound the trumpets! Finalement, la Générale est arrivée!

  Before long, the entire Hofburg had the news. It had buzzed from room to room, from the kitchen to the stables, from the royal wardrobe to the ministerial offices, like a bumblebee in a rose garden. Maman embraced me with tears in her eyes, declaring that she was now the happiest woman in Europe.

  I was no longer a girl, but “half a woman” in my sister Charlotte’s words. The consummation of my marriage in mid-May would make me wholly a woman, and then, within another year’s time, a mother—the culmination of everyone’s greatest wish, not least my own, for I could not wait to have children to coddle and cuddle and cradle.

  But in all the excitement of Générale Krottendorf’s first visit, my mother, as well as our maidservants, omitted to inform me about the pain. Why did they neglect to mention that my stomach would feel as pinched as if I had ingested poison, and my back would feel as though I had spent the night sleeping on the floor? And that every few hours the blood-soaked rag between my thighs that made me walk like a waddling duck would need to be exchanged for a clean one?

  Still, I felt that I had finally succeeded in Maman’s eyes. She swanned about the state rooms wearing a beatific smile, my hand tightly clasped in hers, demanding that everyone curtsy to the future dauphine. “We are so proud of her,” she kept exclaiming, in a tone that managed to be both imperious and maternal. And then, with an abruptness that startled me, “You will sleep in my chamber from now on,” she declared. It sounded more like a command.

  I shuddered. “With you?”

  “Who else? We have much to discuss, and the time has finally arrived.” To my questioning glance she replied, “They are not the sort of subjects one speaks about in the light of day or in the state rooms of a palace.”

  Her boudoir terrified me. After Papa died, Maman had her beautiful draperies removed; sunny yellow damasked silk was ripped down and replaced with grim black velvet panels that puddled to the floor like liquid gloom. This suffocating cocoon, smelling of camphor, became my bedroom for the next two months. Poor Mops was left to his own devices in my apartments; he must have wondered where I’d gone off to every night.

  A bed had been brought into Maman’s chamber for me. I was close enough to hear her snore. As I lay shivering in my white linen nightdress, staring at the plasterwork on the ceiling with open-eyed terror, I was treated to a nightly diet of lectures designed to improve my moral fiber and to prepare me for my future role. These one-sided conversations were accompanied by a lengthy list of precepts. To be certain I would remember them, Maman had taken the trouble to write them down for me. She extracted my promise to reread these regulations for my conduct every month, lest I forget to apply them to my daily life.

  “You must always present the appearance of acquiescing to your husband in all things, Antonia. Remember, you will enter the House of Bourbon as an honored guest.”

  “Oui, Maman.”

  “And never give the impression—or God forbid, say aloud—that ‘we do such and such better in Vienna.’ ”

  “But I would never—”

  Maman ignored my protest. It was evident that she didn’t trust me. “At the same time, do not forget that you are, first and foremost, a daughter of Austria. Your sister Charlotte has that booby of a husband wrapped around her little finger, and the interests of her homeland always take precedence over the Neapolitans’.”

  I wondered how I was supposed to be the servant of two masters. Charlotte was cannier than I; I lacked her guile, as well as her alluring forearms.

  “And you are not to read novels or similar treatises of a morally repugnant nature. Such books may be all the rage among the French, but their principles are already corrupted and past redemption.”

  Read novels? I had no intention of reading anything. I hated to read, much to the continued consternation of the abbé Vermond.

  “Vermond will approve your reading material,” my mother continued.

  “But if monsieur l’abbé is to accompany me to Versailles as my ‘reader,’ then why do I need to read anything at all?”

  Thus went our nocturnal conversations. And every night she expressed her grave concerns regarding my susceptible nature.

  “You are too eager to please, Antonia.”

  “Oui, Maman.”

  “That is exactly what I mean.”

  Although the room was dark I was certain she was frowning, her forehead furrowed with worry. But resignation was overpowered by resolve. In her view there was so much more to impart and so little time remaining. Maman not only lectu
red me nightly on the subject of my character, but was anxious to ensure that my body as well as my mind would obey her instructions.

  “Always allow your husband to take the lead. But if he does not do so, then you must be prepared to school him.”

  “School him in what, Maman?” How was I supposed to follow as well as lead?

  “The promptings of the heart,” she replied euphemistically.

  “But what if we do not love each other the way you and Papa did?”

  Maman sighed heavily. Her breath hung like a storm cloud in the suffocating air of the chamber. “Don’t be obtuse, Antonia.”

  “But I don’t know what to do,” I protested. Did the arrival of Générale Krottendorf signify that my body was supposed to feel certain stirrings? Desire, perhaps? All I knew was that the birth of a son, an heir to the throne of France, was the most desirable thing in the world to Maman, or for that matter to King Louis.

  During those interminable sleepless nights in Maman’s boudoir, as time crept inexorably toward my wedding day, her lectures assumed a more graphic tone. “You must view my union with your father as the exception and not the rule. Passion is not only rare but it is as fleeting as beauty. More important is a mutual respect between spouses. It is of far greater importance to be good than to be comely. If you and your husband can learn to look into each other’s hearts, your marriage will be far more successful than if you merely regard each other’s faces.”

  Then she explained where babies come from. To the consternation of my mother, the soul of pragmatism, I was alternately repulsed and frightened. Dying in childbirth was not uncommon. And what was supposed to go … where?

  “Antonia, don’t be ridiculous. It is the most natural thing in the world. Your body will tell you exactly what to do.”

  But what if I didn’t know how to listen to it? If there had been a note of tenderness in Maman’s words—some semblance of sympathy—I could have borne it better. But her voice was gruff, exasperated. After all, she had given birth sixteen times, so for her, nothing could have been more routine. With my coming she had even killed a pair of birds with the proverbial single stone, summoning her dental surgeon to extract a painful tooth while she endured the pains of labor. In the dark, I examined my body with tentative, fleeting palpations. No bosom, yet. Still. I suppose I had expected it to mushroom overnight after Générale Krottendorf made her maiden appearance. That’s what happened to Charlotte. She had gone from coltish girl to voluptuous woman in a matter of weeks.