The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  “We both want Count Fersen’s happiness, Mrs. Sullivan. France is grateful for his service—a service that my husband needs now more than ever. For a man of Count Fersen’s ability and achievements, matters of state must always come before personal considerations.”

  My words were cold and formal, the words of a queen. I was certain, however, that Eleanora Sullivan could guess the feelings that lay behind them. I was telling her that I would not let Axel go.

  I rose and smiled, I hoped graciously. The interview was over. Eleanora Sullivan also rose, and curtseyed deeply.

  “I hope you know, your highness, that you are breaking his heart,” she said, then left, her heavy-footed tread loud on the parquet floor. When she had gone, and I heard the door close behind her, I clutched the dogs and wept as if my own heart would break.

  May 4, 1784

  When Axel came to tell me that he was at last leaving for Italy with King Gustavus he found me on the grounds of the Petit Trianon, in the area set aside for the cottages I am building there. Four of the cottages are nearly complete and ready to be occupied, and I was giving instructions to the painters to paint crooked black lines on the plaster walls, to look like cracks. I want the cottages to look charmingly weathered, as if they had been there for a hundred years. I had Louis-Joseph with me, walking unsteadily along, holding my hand. He loves coming to this little hamlet and visiting the white lambs and white goats in their pens. Only here do I see him smile.

  Of course I have not told Axel about Eleanora Sullivan’s visit to me or her revelation about Margaretta von Roddinge. I thought we were so close that there would never be anything we couldn’t talk about. I was wrong. I don’t know what to say about his marriage, or possible marriage. It is as if the entire subject lies outside the closed circle of our love. Perhaps that is how he sees it as well. I have never asked him about the other women in his life, though he has talked of them from time to time. He knows that I have no lovers. That I am his, body and soul, for life. He fully understands my marriage to Louis, a blend of duty, good will and affection. It may be that he looks on Margaretta von Roddinge the same way I look on Louis, as someone with whom he can fulfill his family’s expectations and share affection and children. But his heart, like mine, will remain in another realm entirely, a realm we share together.

  Nothing could have been more tender than our leavetaking. He could hardly tear himself away from me, and promised to write often from Venice and Florence and Rome, sending couriers to Versailles with his letters. He stayed on until evening and we supped together upstairs in the Petit Trianon, relaxing before the fire in the room we have shared so often, the room I keeponly for him and never use except when he is with me.

  We stayed up most of the night, loving and talking of many things—but not of his plans for the future. I worry a little. Will Margaretta steal him from me? I am nearly thirty years old, no longer the beauty I once was. The tensions and sorrows of my life are there to read on my brow and in the lines beneath my eyes. My body is too ample. The corsets I once shunned, I need now. Axel says he sees only loveliness when he looks at me, and I believe him.

  He promises to ride in a gondola in Venice on a moonlit night and dream of me.

  June 11, 1784

  Eric has come to me to beg me to use all my influence to have Amélie released. He says she is suffering terribly, that her small dark stone cell is full of rats and that she is not given enough to eat. She is not allowed to wash and her clothes are torn and filthy. He says the children cry when they see her, and are upset for days afterwards.

  I know she deserves to be punished yet I intend to talk to Louis, to see whether a milder prison can be found for her.

  I have had no letters from Italy.

  August 23, 1784

  I have not yet said anything to anyone but I believe I may be pregnant again.

  September 9, 1784

  We have made the long journey to Fontainebleau and I am sick to my stomach every day. There is no doubt that I am going to have another child. It cannot be Axel’s baby as I had my monthly flow as usual after Axel left for Italy.

  Louis is very happy and as a sign of his good will he has arranged for Amélie’s imprisonment to be less harsh. Her food ration will be increased and Eric will be allowed to take food to her each week. He is also allowed to take her some bedding and new clothes. She is taken with the other prisoners to the scullery once a week where she can use the water in a common trough to wash herself.

  November 7, 1784

  I am still so sick I can barely bring myself to write in this journal. I was never so ill with Mousseline or Louis-Joseph. I feel tired and dread having to undergo the lengthy daily court ceremonies. Even sitting through mass is an ordeal for me, and I become very irritated with Louis and Charlot who tease each other and talk loudly throughout the celebration.

  January 3, 1785

  Dr. Sundersen says it will only be a few short weeks before my baby is born. I am very large and can only wear my loose-flowing tunic-style gowns, the ones I call my “Aristotle” gowns. I look absurd in court gowns. I am so large I might be having twins, only there are no twins in my family or Louis’s that I am aware of.

  Our holidays were somewhat spoiled by all the criticism of me. In Paris it is being said openly that I have created a “Little Vienna” on the grounds of the Petit Trianon and that I have spent millions of francs on my little hamlet. It was expensive, I admit, to divert the stream that runs the mill, and to create the lake. But the eight cottages were not very costly and I have built them, along with the barns and orchards and animal pens, as an act of charity. Eight peasant families were brought here to live in the cottages, but three of the families moved out almost immediately complaining that the chimneys were clogged and that they could not grow grain in the poor earth.

  The hamlet is not yet a complete success but we have harvested many sacks of oranges and my two prize cows, Brunette and Blanchette, give rich milk which Louis-Joseph drinks greedily. The ground is fallow now but will be planted in the spring and by fall there will be grain to grind in the mill. Or so I hope.

  February 16, 1785

  I have a large bundle of letters from Axel, who is glad about my having another baby and hopes it will be a boy.

  “Gustavus is enraptured with Italy,” he writes. “He talks of nothing but how warm it is in Florence now and how cold it would be if we were in Sweden. He cannot quite believe that it rarely snows in Florence and never snows at all in Rome. We are going south to Rome soon and will stay there several months before going on to Naples.”

  I am dismayed. It sounds as though Axel will be away for a long time. I need him.

  Thankfully I have had no further visits from Eleanora Sullivan.

  April 1, 1785

  I cannot say enough about my dear new son, my big healthy bouncing boy. After being sick so much during my pregnancy I expected a long and painful labor but he surprised me by being born quickly and easily—God be thanked!

  He is taking the wetnurse’s milk greedily and almost never cries. His body is perfect, round and pink and soft. Thank

  The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette 195

  heaven I am capable of having a healthy son. Now if poor little Louis-Joseph were to die (everyone whispers about it) there would still be an heir for France.

  April 20, 1785

  Joseph sends me congratulations on the birth of my little Louis-Charles but says nothing of his violations of Austria’s treaty with France. Joseph is so aggressive, so unlike our mother who was wise and content with the large domain she inherited from her august father. Joseph always wants more. Now he covets some lands in the Low Countries and our ministers are threatening to go to war over this.

  The ministers seek out Louis every day or so because of some crisis, either the constant lack of money in the treasury or a diplomatic issue like this trouble caused by Joseph, or some other difficulty. Louis goes hunting to avoid them, so they come looking for me. They came this a
fternoon.

  April 22, 1785

  I dislike meeting with the ministers because I cannot possibly understand all of France’s treaties and interests abroad, and because the ministers all hate and resent me, they do their best to make me feel ignorant. But I see through this (how could I fail to, after all these years?) and stand firm. I ask them to explain, slowly and clearly, what the problem is and what our choices are. Then I say, I am going to consult my husband. Then I wait awhile, summon the ministers and give a reply.

  It is all a pretense, of course. I would gladly consult my husband but he will not listen. He runs away or puts his hands over his ears. You decide, he tells me. And the worst of it is, the more I do decide, and the more adept I become at standing up to the ministers, the more excuse Louis has to leave everything to me.

  I cannot extricate myself from this dilemma, and it weighs heavily on me.

  Meanwhile, on this matter of Joseph’s breaking the treaty, I have decided that France should give way on this issue of the Dutch lands. We will not threaten war—but I will write to Joseph and tell him that he must pay the Dutch a large compensation and that if he breaks other treaty promises I will tell the generals to take our troops to the borders and be ready to attack. I hope this will not be necessary as we have no funds to pay the troops. Our enemies do not realize this, but unless new loans are raised, France cannot even afford to defend herself, much less attack.

  June 1, 1785

  Count Mercy cautions me that someone has been reading my journal again and passing on information in it. He thinks there are spies in my household. Ever since Amélie’s arrest he has been more worried than ever. I must not write any more until I have found a more secure hiding place. The count was very angry at me for being careless in writing too candidly of things that could endanger the safety of my brother’s government and also that of France.

  December 16, 1785

  At last I feel I can write safely in this journal again. I have found a new and more secure place to keep it. It has been six months since my last entry, but I have been jotting down short messages on scraps of paper and hiding them in a big yellow Chinese jar that no one ever looks in or lifts up to clean because it is too heavy.

  I am now going to list the most important of these messages:

  First, two hundred of my servants have been dismissed in order to reduce the expenses of my household. Some of those dismissed were caught stealing things. Second, I am pregnant again. Third, we have had a great deal of rain, far more than usual. Fourth, there was a terrible balloon crash in the Channel between France and England, the waterway we call the Sleeve. Everyone was shocked and grieved. These are the most important things.

  February 2, 1786

  I read Axel’s most recent letter with dread. “Dearest little angel,” he wrote, “I will be returning to Stockholm with Gustavus in May. I must attend to family matters that I have been neglecting for far too long.”

  What could he mean, except that he intends to marry Margaretta von Roddinge? I am heartsore.

  He will marry her, they will settle down together. He will grow to love her and I will become only a lovely dim memory. They will have children and he will become a devoted husband and father. I will never see him again.

  April 24, 1786

  It does me good to walk through the hamlet at the Petit Trianon and help with the spring planting. My belly is very big with the new baby, who is due to be born in three months, but I can still walk in the ploughed fields with my peasant tenants and throw out the seeds. The air is full of the scent of apple blossoms, and I remember how, as a child, mother took me in her arms and walked with me in the palace orchards when the trees were in full bloom. Under the eaves of the cottages swallows have built their nests and the baby birds are just starting to hatch out.

  Everywhere there is new life, growth, expansion. But inside the palace, all is rot and decay. My apartments, which I redecorated before Louis-Joseph was born, are still beautiful and striking, yet if I look closely I can see, even there, peeling paint and bare patches where gilding has been scraped off with a knife to be sold. Scratched floors and chipped furniture have never been repaired. Carpets are stained. A musky odor hangs over everything, especially when it rains.

  My apartments are quite livable, as are the grand salons and reception rooms, but most of the hundreds of rooms in the great palace of Versailles are all but in ruins, full of mold, with rats running over the marble floors and mice chewing on the brocaded sofas and carved table legs. Holes in the roof let in all the winter rains. Each year more rooms have to be abandoned. Palace officials and servants have to find expensive lodgings in the town, and landlords take advantage of them shamefully. Something should really be done about all this sad decay but without enough money for repairs, nothing can be undertaken.

  May 21, 1786

  The word whispered throughout the court this spring is bankruptcy. No one has any money, everyone is borrowing from everyone else. The servants’ wages are unpaid, so they think they are justified in stealing furniture and curios and objets d’art, even the lace trimmings from gowns. All the gold curtain tassels have been gone for years. Steel shoe buckles and steel buttons are coming into fashion, not only because they are “republican” and therefore stylish, but because the servants have stolen most of the gold buckles and jeweled buttons. The thieves cannot be found and punished, there are far too many of them. Thievery is an unpleasant fact of life, and spreads mistrust and suspicion.

  Despite all the bankruptcies and complaints about lack of money, the court is lively, there is a frenzy for new fads, new styles and colors. Sophie and Loulou amuse me by showing off the new gowns with ruffs at the neck in the style they call “Henry IV” after the cynical Renaissance king. Louis’s pet zebra, a gift from the King of Senegal, has been made the emblem of fashion and his black and white stripes are on everything from hats to stockings. Charlot has a zebra-striped balloon which draws crowds when he sails in it over the palace rooftops.

  André has created whimsical hairstyles called African Zebra and Hedgehog and Fat Goose to match the revived color Goose-Droppings that everyone is wearing.

  It is all very amusing. We cannot be anxious and gloomy all the time. Besides, I must keep a positive attitude for the sake of the little one I am carrying inside me. I secretly hope it will be a girl this time, a pretty blond angel like my Mousseline, who is temperamental but beautiful. I wait in hope.

  ELEVEN

  March 6, 1787

  God help me, but there are times when I wish I were dead.

  More nasty vicious unsigned letters have been sent to me, and I could not help but read them. People are so wicked, so monstrous! When will they stop trying to torment me? I am only trying to help Louis, to do my best.

  March 17, 1787

  This accursed Assembly of Notables—it should be called an Assembly of Nobodies, Stanny says, and I agree with him—is proving to be a miserable failure. I am being blamed, as usual, for wrecking it, but the truth is, the delegates themselves are to blame. It was the controller-general Calonne who urged that a gathering of “notables” from all over France meet in Paris to promote reforms. He organized it, and he tried to influence its discussions. When the notables rebelled and were reduced to arguing and squabbling, Louis dismissed Calonne. It was his idea, I had nothing to do with it, no matter what Calonne himself says.

  I wish someone would come to my defense. It is not my fault that France can no longer raise loans or that Louis is running out of officials to appoint. He has nightmares that the English fleet will invade our shores and conquer us. He cries out in his sleep, “I surrender! I surrender!” When this happens, Calonne is not there to comfort him, or all the Notables. I comfort him. I reassure him. And the next day I meet with the ministers, at Louis’s insistence, because he cannot bring himself to meet with them as he should. I am the only one he trusts. I cannot let him down.

  April 6, 1787

  The Assembly of Notables limps on
, and I limp on too, though the demands of my four children are often too much for me. My littlest one, my tiny Sophie, I can hardly bear to write about. She was so small and weak when she was born that Dr. Sundersen shook his head and patted my arm in sympathy. No words were necessary. I knew he thought she would soon die. Yet to everyone’s surprise she managed to suckle, and she is still here, though tiny and feeble.

  I sit beside Sophie’s cradle at night and rock her and sing to her, and sometimes Louis-Joseph climbs up into my lap and nestles against me. Louis-Charles, my healthy son, delights me with his strength and vigor, yet he fears the dark and cries out for me at night. And Mousseline sometimes needs soothing and comfort as well, even though she is going on nine years old and very much a young lady.

  I need sleep. I am often worn out during the day. Dr. Boisgilbert says my body has been overtaxed with four pregnancies. Yet peasant women often have ten or twelve pregnancies by the time they are my age, nearly thirty-two, and still have the strength to till the fields and harvest the crops alongside the men. I think I am overtaxed from worry.

  May 26, 1787

  Yesterday the new principal minister, Archbishop Loménie de Brienne, dismissed the Assembly of Notables and sent them home. They were very angry and I’m sure we have not heard the last of them. The real question is, can the new government raise new loans?

  June 12, 1787

  It has been raining for a weekand I have not been able to go out. All my usual vexations irritate me. Sophie refuses to nurse.

  June 15, 1787

  Sophie still will not nurse and cries a lot. I stay with her. June 17, 1787

  All I can do is pray. Please, dear lord, don’t let my little girl die.

  June 23, 1787

  Two days ago we attended the funeral mass for Sophie and buried her in the lemon grove at the Petit Trianon, next to the stone I put there in remembrance of my miscarried baby all those years ago.