Marie Antoinette

by Antonia Fraser

  The immediate problem was to arrange a bride for King Ferdinand of Naples, he who was expecting the speedy arrival of a young wife. Maria Teresa swung into action once more. In a letter to Charles III of Spain a month after Josepha’s death she outlined her bloodstock: “I grant you with real pleasure one of my remaining daughters to make good the loss . . . I do currently have two who could fit, one is the Archduchess Amalia who is said to have a pretty face and whose health should promise a numerous progeny, and the other is the Archduchess Charlotte who is also very healthy and a year and seven months younger than the King of Naples.” Maria Teresa left it up to the Spanish King as the boy’s father to choose as long as “the association of my house with Your Majesty’s” was preserved.7

  It was true that where Charlotte was concerned, Maria Teresa said she felt a rival obligation to Louis XV and his house. Charlotte happened to be Louis XV’s god-daughter, and his granddaughter Maria Louisa of Parma also thought Charlotte would be an excellent choice to marry the heir to the French throne.8 Charlotte was only two years older than Louis Auguste, the former Duc de Berry, whose father’s death in 1765 made him the new Dauphin of France; that was not an impossible gap. Not only was she “healthy,” she was also known to be vivacious and intelligent. But the King of Naples was not to be fobbed off; he was declared by his father to prefer the much younger Charlotte to Amalia. Whatever the claims of the French, the deal was done with the Spanish. That meant that Amalia could in turn be allotted Louis XV’s grandson, Don Ferdinand of Parma.

  From Amalia’s point of view it was a devastating decision, since she was violently in love with Charles of Zweibrücken. But this German princeling was not considered of sufficient stature by Maria Teresa. Not only was Don Ferdinand six years Amalia’s junior, but he was only a duke, so that she would be a mere duchess while her younger sister Charlotte would be a queen. Yet the match suited the Empress’s strategy and was not to be avoided. It was a ruling in direct contrast to Maria Teresa’s treatment of Marie Christine, and left Amalia permanently embittered. As for Charlotte, her name—her new name, Maria Carolina—was simply substituted for that of the dead Josepha in the marriage treaty that had already been drawn up. It was a sensible solution, as all concerned except the unfortunate Amalia were agreed.

  By 2 November 1767—Antoine’s twelfth birthday—death and disease had robbed Maria Teresa of all the other available Archduchesses. Certainly Charlotte’s disappearance in the direction of Naples meant that there was no longer any question of her making that mooted French royal marriage. The possible consequences of the union of the forceful, highly-sexed Maria Carolina to the future Louis XVI, in place of the gentler Marie Antoinette, must remain for ever in the domain of historical speculation. It was thus the rapid fall of a series of dominoes that made Antoine the focus of her mother’s attention. For the first time the Empress properly contemplated the material she had to hand in the shape of her fifteenth child. It had to be said that in many respects, she found it distinctly unpromising.

  To the Empress’s critical eye, the girl’s appearance was satisfactory enough, and where it was not, it could easily be fixed. Her teeth, for example, were noticed to be in a bad state, and crooked; but wires were beginning to be used to straighten unsightly teeth, in a system known as the “pelican,” invented by a Frenchman who was later the royal dentist. Three months of this treatment gave Antoine the required, regular teeth.9 Her large, well-spaced eyes, a subtle blue-grey, were slightly short-sighted. But the consequent misty look was not unattractive, and for the rest, lorgnettes could be brought into play; fans often elegantly included them.10

  Of her advantages, her hair was fair: a light ash colour that would probably deepen with the years, but that now set off her pink and white complexion to good effect. It was also as thick as Maria Teresa’s had once been. On the other hand Antoine had an uneven hairline. Together with a high forehead, which was considered to be a Lorraine trait and was unfashionable by the standards of the time, this made for difficulties.11 The long neck was a definite asset but the nose was slightly aquiline; fortunately this was not a period when short noses were admired to the exclusion of all others. Antoine’s nose could be described as a distinguished one, suited to an archduchess—or a queen.

  There was, however, nothing to be done about the notorious Habsburg lip, a projecting lower lip visible in Habsburg portraits down the centuries. The effect given was that of a slight pout in a girl, a rather more disdainful attitude in a woman. It was something that Marie Antoinette came to sigh over; that haughty hochnä sig (literally high-nosed) look, which she felt, as it were, did not correspond to the character of the inner woman. At this time, it was simply a matter of getting artists to avoid portraying her in profile. Sculptors obviously had more of a problem, which is why it is much easier to comprehend the reality of Marie Antoinette’s appearance—if not her allure—from the busts.

  Where Antoine’s figure was concerned, one shoulder was higher than the other but that could be corrected by the proper use of corsetry or concealed by padding.12 The Archduchess was skinny and flat-chested in an age when a proper feminine bosom was considered an essential attraction; she was also not very tall. But since she had not yet reached puberty, it was hoped that both bosom and height would follow.

  For all these minor faults, the general effect was very beguiling. Madame Antoine had a “smile sufficient to win the heart” and that smile indicated her general wish to please. The eighteenth-century French philosophes, in their encyclopedias, in the entry under “Woman,” listed “this art of pleasing, this desire to be pleasing to everyone” as one of the prime feminine traits; it was certainly one possessed by Antoine—in competition for attention, perhaps, with her more gifted elder sisters—from an early age.

  Similarly she fitted in the Encyclopédistes’ category of prettiness rather than beauty, as in the distinction drawn between beau and joli: “The beautiful is grand, noble and regular—we admire it; that which is pretty is fine and delicate; it pleases.” It was a distinction that Antoine’s French tutor, the Abbé de Vermond, would also make. “One can find faces that are more regularly beautiful,” he wrote of his pupil. “I do not think it would be possible to find one that is more delightful.” As for Maria Teresa, not given to flattery where matters of state were concerned—as Antoine’s character and appearance had now become—she commented that her daughter had the gift to win people to her, due above all to her “affability.” Madame Antoine could not—could she?—fail to inspire love within marriage.13

  The trouble was that this affable little creature had managed, it seemed, to avoid more or less the unpleasant experience of education, other than in the arts where her skill in dancing and her taste for music added to her general aura of grace. The sheer irritating inconvenience of this discovery, considering the august fate that the Empress now designed for Antoine, would be almost amusing—until one ponders on the lifelong consequences for Marie Antoinette of her youthful illiteracy.14

  In August 1767, in another painful development for Antoine during this melancholy year, Maria Teresa had separated the two youngest Archduchesses Charlotte and Antoine, who up until this moment had been raised together. This separation was not connected to Charlotte’s future prospects—Josepha was at that point still the designated bride for Naples. It was partly the consequence of their bad—or at least mischievous—behaviour, teasing and tricking the governess. It was also partly due to the perceived failure of this governess herself. “I shall now treat you as a grown-up person,” Maria Teresa told Charlotte.15 The implication was clear. Antoine was left behind to be the child.

  Countess Brandeis was a kindly, not very bright woman who lavished affection on little Antoine, the affection that was perhaps lacking from her imperial mother. She petted and spoilt Antoine who adored Brandeis in return. It seems fitting that her earliest surviving letter—a New Year greeting when she was eleven or twelve—was written to her “dearest Brandeis” and signed “your fai
thful pupil who loves you dearly, Antoine.”16

  The trouble was that Antoine’s “dearest Brandeis” carried through her spoiling to the extent of neglecting any kind of serious instruction. When periodically the Empress demanded to see her daughter’s work, how much easier to get Antoine to trace something written out by the governess than actually teach the girl how to do it herself! It was also a convenient way of placating that stern taskmaster Maria Teresa. Even the drawings allegedly by the Archduchess’s hand probably owed a great deal to the helpful Brandeis.17

  In 1768 “dearest Brandeis” was removed in favour of Countess Lerchenfeld, cleverer and also tougher, who had acted as Mistress of the Robes to the elder Archduchesses. Inevitably Antoine disliked her and continued to mourn for Brandeis. This combination of a late beginning and a personal aversion to her teacher did not do much to remedy her educational situation.

  The standard of instruction for princesses in the eighteenth century was not particularly high. But although Antoine’s ability to write must be seen in that context, it was well below what was the acceptable norm. “She has acquired the habit of writing inconceivably slowly,” was Vermond’s comment, the blame being distributed between her own idleness and the faults of her writing-masters.18 Yet the question of her writing, her snail-like pace, the blotches, the misspellings, could be resolved, as indeed to a large extent with time it was. Reading, and Antoine’s lack of ability in that respect, was a far more serious deficiency. As a result of her inadequate teaching, Antoine developed a real fear of the subject because of her failure at it—and with fear came its frequent concomitant, guilt.

  It is notoriously impossible for those whose chief pleasure is reading to understand the mentality of those to whom it seems at best an arduous task. Maria Teresa was not herself an omnivorous reader—but either by nature or via adversity, she had developed a character that could achieve what it needed to do. Other members of the imperial family were distinctly bookish, including the new Emperor Joseph who would tell his sister that he thought two hours a day should be set aside for her reading. Quite apart from the Habsburgs, there was the French royal family . . . At roughly the same age as Antoine was encountering Mozart, Louis Auguste was making an address to the celebrated British historian David Hume, an experience that marked him for life with an enthusiasm for Hume’s works.19 In particular he admired the character of Charles I about whom Hume had written so vividly and so magisterially.*10 It was a significant difference.

  The real betrayal in Marie Antoinette’s education was that she was never encouraged to concentrate. This ability, comparatively easy to inculcate in childhood, was generally held to be lacking in Marie Antoinette the adult, even by her admirers; her conversation tended to be disjointed “like a grasshopper,” wrote a member of her intimate circle. Madame Campan, the First Lady of the Bedchamber, who knew her so well, was eager to point out that the problem was not actually lack of intelligence. What Marie Antoinette knew, she knew—or rather what she had been properly taught. She was good at Italian, for example, because she had a good teacher in Metastasio.20 But this area of knowledge was certainly not very wide.

  Her enemies ascribed her lack of concentration to capriciousness, which, by the time they encountered her, it had probably become. But it originated in an upbringing that Marie Antoinette told her foster-brother Joseph Weber had been inadequately supervised. One of the favourite maxims that Weber remembered her repeating on the importance of education had a sad ring of truth: “To be a king, you have to learn to be a king.”21 The same might be well said of a queen, whatever her graces, whatever her charms.

  The young Dauphin of France, prospective bridegroom of this pleasing but uneducated child, was in quite a different way not particularly promising material. Somehow his life had got off to an unlucky start. His mother was bowed with grief during her third pregnancy, thanks to the death of her second child, the infant Duc d’Aquitaine. It was, however, the death of the eldest boy, the Duc de Bourgogne, in 1761 that left the seven-year-old Louis Auguste with a permanent inferiority complex. Bourgogne’s death was long-drawn-out and agonizing. Yet according to the inexorable etiquette of Versailles, Louis Auguste was moved into the apartments of his dead brother on the very day of his death.

  His parents made no secret of their lamentations at the death of the favourite (whom Maria Josepha had called that special pet name, her chou d’amour). The man in charge of Louis Auguste, the Duc de Vauguyon, Governor of the Children of France from 1758, also took the opportunity to lecture him on his inadequacy for the role once played by his incomparable brother. Perhaps Vauguyon thought this was for his pupil’s spiritual good; but the result was a terrible lack of self-confidence in the unwilling supplanter. It was all very well being taught the maxim, “Firmness is of all the virtues the one most necessary to a king,” but his upbringing was hardly qualified to help him put this firmness into practice.22 The death of his father, the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand, in 1765 meant that Louis Auguste, now Dauphin, was only a heartbeat away from the throne of France.

  What he lacked in confidence, the Dauphin certainly did not make up for in physical attraction. He was heavily built, his weight increasing further as time passed. There was some kind of gene of fatness in this branch of the Bourbon family, which may have been glandular in origin. His father had been enormously fat. Maria Josepha’s father Augustus III had also been obese, while the prodigious physique of her grandfather Augustus II had been saluted with the cognomen “the Strong”; at least one of her brothers, Clement, was extremely fat. Wherever the inheritance came from—possibly from the meeting of two similar genes—there was no doubt that Louis Auguste, his nearest brother the Comte de Provence and his younger sister Clothilde all had what would now be called a weight problem. Clothilde was actually nicknamed “Gros-Madame.” They also all had enormous appetites.

  Notoriously clumsy, the Dauphin cut an unfortunate figure at court dances; he had a tin ear so that his singing caused general shudders. His clear “Saxon” blue eyes—unlike the sparkling black “Slavic” eyes of his grandfather Louis XV and his youngest brother the Comte d’Artois—were myopic, causing him to peer at courtiers and fail to recognize them; more often he kept his head down so as to avoid the confrontation altogether. Ill equipped for formal life at Versailles, the Dauphin took refuge in a profound passion for hunting, a traditional royal occupation. From the age of nine onwards he recorded his exploits in a hunting journal which constituted a sportsman’s log (such as the young Louis XV had kept for seven years), rather than a conventional record of day-to-day events.23

  The Dauphin was, however, intelligent, naturally studious and well instructed by the rote-learning methods of the time. He liked literature and the “sublime melodies” of Racine. Above all, he had that love of history that was inculcated at David Hume’s visit.24 He was pious too, in an unquestioning way that seemed appropriate enough to a future King of France; in a country where Church and crown had uneasy relations, a simple approach to religion was probably the most helpful one. Given all these factors, given that the Dauphin would be routinely capable of the marital act like any other husband—surely he would be?—there seemed to be no reason why marriage negotiations between French Prince and Austrian Archduchess should not proceed.

  Yet these negotiations were not plain sailing. On the French side it had never been a question of Maria Carolina versus Marie Antoinette; Louis XV held one archduchess to be much like another. At Versailles it was more a question of an Austrian marriage—any Austrian marriage. The dedicated hostility of many members of the French court to such an alliance took the form of suggesting a rival candidate, in the shape of Maria Josepha’s niece, Princess Amelia of Saxony. The Dauphine’s brother, Prince Xavier of Saxony, took an active role in promoting the match. Amelia’s elder brother Frederick Augustus could be united at the same time to Gros-Madame Clothilde. It was a double marriage, which would have much empowered the House of Saxony, while not of course equalling in pres
tige an alliance with Austria. Indeed, Louis XV’s pro-Austrian minister Choiseul referred to Amelia and Frederick Augustus derogatively as “those Saxon things.”25

  It was to be some time, however, before Choiseul was able to feel that he had seen off the pretensions of the Saxon things altogether. Louis XV was extremely fond of his “Pepa,” as he called the widowed Dauphine Maria Josepha, and had the habit of spending time cosily in his daughter-in-law’s apartments (formerly those of the Pompadour and thus close to his). He was in no hurry to put an end to Pepa’s hopes for her children, while having, finally, no intention of gratifying them. The Dauphine died in March 1767 “universally regretted by the whole world” in the words of the official announcement.26 Yet still Louis XV held back from any public acknowledgement of the Austrian match, although it was always his private intention to go for a marital alliance that accorded with his own (and Choiseul’s) pro-Austrian foreign policy.

  The new French ambassador, the Marquis de Durfort, who arrived in Vienna in February 1767, was told to deliver an ambiguous message. As Maria Josepha, with her own agenda, had pointed out, the best way to ensure the goodwill of Austria was to keep the court in a state of expectation, rather than settle the matter. Durfort, however, found that it was not so easy to deliver an ambiguous message to the Empress, when what she wanted to hear was rather different. Received every Sunday at court, he found himself drawn into the Empress’s inner circle and subjected to a barrage of charm; as Durfort wrote, no one knew better than the Empress “how to make herself mistress of hearts.” He also admired her for her active and hard-working way of life. Durfort believed that whatever her talk of retiring as a widow, Maria Teresa had a natural taste for domination, which would always prevent her doing so.27

  Durfort was certainly powerless to evade the Empress when she told him in a meaningful way that she had all the French royal portraits from her half-French daughter-in-law the late Isabella of Parma . . . What could Durfort say in reply? Gallantly, he volunteered that his master the French King for his part would definitely love to possess all the Austrian royal portraits. Maria Teresa was quick to put an artist at Durfort’s disposal. Unfortunately by this time Durfort had received a reproof from France: things were moving too fast. The French ambassador was left explaining uncomfortably to his master that he had not been the initiator of all this.28