Marie Antoinette: The Journey

by Antonia Fraser

  Similarly, the Queen’s household had managed by immemorial custom to build in fantastic elements of extravagance to their own benefit. Bills were sent in for four new pairs of shoes a week, three yards of ribbon daily to tie the royal peignoir (that is, brand-new ribbon) and two brand-new yards of green taffeta daily to cover the basket in which the royal fan and gloves were carried. And these were only minor items. The “right to the candles” (candles were replaced even if unused) brought four of her women 50,000 livres a year each. The extraordinary amount of new outfits ordered annually—twelve court dresses, twelve riding habits and so forth and so on—was in part explained by the privileges of her household to help themselves to these garments once discarded but hardly worn. It was typical of the way things were run that a fresh chicken was provided every night—and subsequently sold by the Queen’s servants—because she had on a single occasion happened to ask for some chicken for her dog.29 Yet for all these extenuating circumstances, the impression given by Marie Antoinette on the eve of the arrival of her brother the Emperor is of someone for whom shopping, like gambling, has become a central compensation.

  The passion of the Queen for her new Jardin Anglais—the eighteenth-century English style of planting being much less formal than the grand planning of seventeenth-century France—was more imaginative. This garden was to ornament the small palace attached to Versailles, known as the Petit Trianon. She had long wanted a country retreat, something to which she had been accustomed in her youth. The idea that the King should bestow the Trianon upon her was actually the suggestion of the Comte de Noailles, Governor of Versailles and husband of the Mistress of the Household. It was approved by Count Mercy who told the Queen to make the request. Louis XVI readily agreed with the gracious words: “This pleasure house is yours.” According to another story, he replied even more gallantly that he agreed on the grounds that “These beautiful places have always been the retreats of the King’s favourites.” The order came through on 27 August 1775.30

  The Queen’s taste encompassed the kind of romantic garden that could be created by the designs of the painter Hubert Robert and the royal architect Mique. Tree-planting became a passion.*40 With gardening in her blood—her father’s love of horticulture was a childhood memory—Marie Antoinette plunged herself into creating a sylvan paradise that would perhaps recall the lost Eden of Laxenburg. Her impatience to see its realization, even if it was deplored by her administrators, was an understandable mark of her enthusiasm: “You know our mistress . . . she likes to enjoy her pleasures without delay.”31

  Contemporaries referred to the Petit Trianon snidely as “Little Schönbrunn,” alternatively as “Little Vienna.” In later centuries Marie Antoinette’s involvement with her “pleasure house” would be the subject of misinterpretation on a scale with her alleged reference to cake. It would be suggested, for example, that she had had the palace built herself before plastering it in “gold and diamonds.” Trianon had in reality been designed and built by Gabriel in the previous reign, and the whole point of its interior was its exquisite simplicity. This desire for simplicity and retreat was in fact the key to the whole enterprise—that and the desire to have something personal to her. Significantly, Marie Antoinette hung family portraits in her boudoir there, including one of her father in a Franciscan habit, and one of her aunt Charlotte of Lorraine in similar religious attire.32

  Of course it was easy afterwards to contrast these expensive activities (not only those of the Queen, although hers were inevitably more visible) with a worsening financial situation. The Controller General Turgot was dismissed in May 1776, as the King and the other ministers increasingly resented the reforms which seemed to represent a usurpation of the royal authority. Although Marie Antoinette was in favour of his dismissal because of Turgot’s attack on her protégé Guines, the will was that of Vergennes and the King.

  Turgot was also disinclined to support French participation in the American struggle for independence. This intervention in America was the brainchild of Vergennes, who viewed it in terms of traditional French hostility to England: what hurt England (that is, an American revolt) helped France. Louis XVI’s agreement was not secured without some heart-searching on the subject of rebellion and monarchy; was it really right to go to the assistance of those who were rejecting their sovereign, King George III? In the end he submitted to Vergennes’ desire, although years later he would complain that the minister had taken advantage of his youth.33

  The fact was that the hideous expense of despatching thousands of French troops and ships to fight in the New World plunged the government still further into the giddy spiral of deficit, just as Turgot had predicted. The incoming financial minister, Jacques Necker, hoped to pay for the war by ambitious borrowing schemes. Even if Mercy clucked over Marie Antoinette’s acquisition of further diamonds “in these circumstances,” the fact was that the personal extravagance of the Queen of France was of very little monetary consequence compared to this vast American venture, masterminded by Vergennes.

  The Emperor Joseph finally arrived in France on his mission to save the royal marriage on 18 April 1777. He came at a time when the Queen’s personal credit had recently been weakened still further. Louis XVI sided with the Governess to the Children of France during his youth, the Comtesse de Marsan, against his wife over a court appointment. It was a question of the Prince de Rohan, who had finally been edged out of his ambassadorial role in Vienna to the delight of Maria Teresa. Of his return to France, Marie Antoinette observed with a certain prescience to her mother: “If he behaves himself as he has done in the past, the result will be plenty of intrigues here.” It was the intention of Rohan to claim that position—Grand Almoner—to which family custom entitled him, when the present incumbent died. It was, however, an intimate post, involving constant attendance on the King (and Queen) at family ecclesiastical functions. Marie Antoinette, furious about the tales that Rohan had told in Vienna, including his relaying of the contents of the pamphlet Le Lever d’Aurore, saw no reason why he should be rewarded. On the other hand, the Comtesse de Marsan, as the Prince’s aunt, claimed that the appointment had long been promised on the word of the King. Louis protested feebly to his former Governess that he had also given his word to the Queen that it would not take place. “Your Majesty cannot have two words,” riposted the Comtesse and hinted that if thwarted, she would publicize the King’s unfair favouring of the Queen.34

  In the end, as so often, it was the Queen who was defeated. Nevertheless she assured her mother that the “bad principles” and “dangerous intrigues” of Rohan would ensure that she personally ostracized him.35 The cut-off was to be as far as possible complete. Rohan would only see the King at his lever, to which he had the Rights of Entry, and at Mass, where Rohan had a professional role. The Queen’s stance over Rohan was one of those seemingly minor decisions, born of hurt pride, perhaps a little provocative towards the Rohan interest but understandable enough, that were to have momentous consequences.

  Marie Antoinette was apprehensive about her brother’s arrival. On the one hand she longed for this contact with home, particularly from the “august” elder brother she “tenderly loved,” in Mercy’s words. There had been no further family visit since the disastrous visit of “the Arch fool” two years previously, and Maria Teresa’s occasional promise—or threat—to arrive in Flanders, close enough for a visit from France, had not materialized. On the other hand, the Emperor, now thirty-six, had a scornful, even brutal style when he chose and had already weighed in with his own critical letters. Mercy told Maria Teresa apropos of the imperial visit that the Queen of France was afraid of being scolded.36

  The Emperor, or rather “Count Falkenstein,” the incognito name under which he travelled, arrived wearing plain grey and was sporting none of his many Orders. It was pouring with rain. In an open carriage, without an escort, Joseph was soaked to the skin. He did not complain. The next day he set off in similarly unadorned style for Versailles. Count Mercy, his
ambassador, could not, however, accompany him as protocol demanded; the unfortunate Mercy was laid low with an attack of haemorrhoids, whose severity became a general talking-point. As a result his house in Paris was besieged by people come to suggest the most diverse remedies; these included a messenger from the Abbess of Panthémont, a sufferer for the last ten years, recommending pills and pomade on the one hand, the avoidance of agonizing coach journeys on the other. She would confide still more if a person of discretion came to visit her in person.37

  The absence of Count Mercy had the effect of underlining the intimacy that King, Queen and “Count Falkenstein” now enjoyed for the next six weeks. It was true that Joseph insisted on being lodged in a hostelry in the town of Versailles, where he slept on a wolf skin. Rising early on the first morning, he visited the menagerie before 8 a.m. and admired a female elephant. Later in the day the Emperor commented jovially to the Duc de Croÿ that since there was a male elephant in the Austrian menagerie, “we could make a marriage.” Croÿ resisted the temptation to point out that there could be another more important match. The Emperor had remained unmarried since the death of his second wife Josepha; there were rumours (as it happened, unfounded) of the Emperor’s interest in the thirteen-year-old Madame Elisabeth as a third wife.38

  Joseph II’s determination not to be involved in the time-wasting and costly rituals of Versailles meant that he was able to enjoy the best of the informal life of the Queen—and the King. His relationship with the Queen began with a long, wordless embrace. Thereafter, on 22 April, she took him for a walk alone in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, having dined with merely two ladies in attendance. Marie Antoinette then received her first lecture, the topics of which included the unsuitability of her friends and her mad passion for gambling, as well as her neglect of the King.

  In many respects the Emperor did not abrogate the natural harshness of his tone. His savage mockery of the Queen’s use of rouge was intended to show his total contempt for the Versailles way of life: “A little more!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Go on, put it under the eyes and the nose, you can look like one of the Furies if you try.” His reaction to one of the Queen’s towering headdresses showed more wit. The Emperor told his sister drily that he thought the fabulous plumed creation “too light to bear the burden of a crown.”39

  What made all this endurable from the point of view of Marie Antoinette was the genuine warmth that Joseph demonstrated towards her, a warmth lacking perhaps from the maternal relationship. As Mercy told the Empress, Joseph had struck the right note to get the Queen to promise amendment. Given the fifteen-year gap in their ages, it was an attitude that was quasi-paternal, quasi-amorous. To the Emperor, who no longer had a daughter—or any child—living, she was “my dear and charming Queen” and “my little sister.” But the long-widowed Emperor also said jokingly that if Marie Antoinette had not been his sister, he would have liked to have married her in order to have the “pleasure of her company.” In a confidence, Joseph revealed that he had forgotten how sweet existence could be until he entered his sister’s life again.40

  The fact was that Joseph, unlike Maria Teresa, was thoroughly captivated by Marie Antoinette. A few years later she had become “this sister, who is the woman I love best in the world.” It was a fact acknowledged by another sister, Maria Carolina, after he had visited her in 1784: “He spoke about you with such tenderness that we have great reason to be jealous of you, because without flattery I believe that you are his darling.” Of course this only proved his good taste, added the Queen of Naples hastily.41

  The Emperor’s reports at the time to his brother, the Archduke Leopold in Tuscany, were more outspoken. He began by describing their sister as a delightful young woman who had not yet found her proper role. Many of her pleasures were in fact perfectly appropriate, but dangerous insofar as they distracted her from the sober reflections in which she badly needed to indulge. After studying Marie Antoinette he came to the conclusion that she was good-natured and honest, a little thoughtless due to her age, but fundamentally a decent, virtuous person. She was also intelligent with good instincts, so long as she trusted them, and did not listen to the advisors who were her weakness because they preyed on her love of amusement.42 The Emperor meant the Polignac set.

  The “Reflections” that the Emperor left behind with his sister, written the day before he departed on 31 May, were on the contrary extremely tough, like his mockery of her fashionable appearance. “What are you doing here in France,” wrote the Emperor, “by what right should one respect you, honour you, except as the companion of their King?” He went on to list all her faults extensively and unsparingly, beginning with her lack of “tenderness and pliancy” towards her husband when in his presence. Did she not show herself “cold, bored, even disgusted”? There was her attendance at opera balls in Paris or race meetings in the Bois in place of a solid programme of serious reading. On and on went the Emperor, culminating with the following: “It is time—more than time—to reflect and construct a better way of life. You are getting older and you no longer have the excuse of youth. [She was twenty-one.] What will become of you? An unhappy woman and still more unhappy princess.”43

  The reason the Queen accepted all of this gratefully, reading and rereading the “Reflections,” was because she now believed—and would continue to believe—that she enjoyed the protection and understanding of her brother. Quite as important as the criticisms made by the Emperor of his sister, and in many ways more so, were the intimate lectures given to Louis XVI. On arrival Joseph had judged Louis as “rather weak but no imbecile,” but unfortunately there was “something apathetic about both his body and his mind.”44 He set out to remedy this in the most candid manner. On 24 May the King’s Journal recorded: “Walked alone on foot with Emperor.” Five days later there was another walk, just the two of them.45 Whatever the Emperor said to his brother-in-law on these two crucial occasions can only be deduced, but it is clear that he broke to him not so much the “Facts of Life” as the “Facts of a King’s Life.”

  In the end it was not in fact a case of phimosis, the overtight foreskin mocked by Les Nouvelles de la Cour. Even if that had been a factor contributing to the King’s psychological disinclination to complete the sexual act, it need not continue to do so. In the latter half of 1775 there had in fact been considerable discussion of the possibility of an operation, as Marie Antoinette reported to her mother, the birth of the Duc d’Angoulême in August no doubt contributing to the urgency. But by 15 December she confided to Maria Teresa: “I doubt very much that the King will decide to undergo it [the operation].” The new Savoyard ambassador, the Comte de Viry, heard similarly of the King’s reluctance. Marie Antoinette reported that the doctors disagreed, hers being in favour, and the King’s own doctor—“an old blatherer”—opposing it on the grounds that it would do as much harm as good. In the meantime she would hold her peace on the subject.46

  In January 1776, Moreau, a surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, was pronouncing the operation unnecessary and a few months later Marie Antoinette was increasingly sure that the surgeon was right. One year later, on the eve of the arrival of the Emperor, the Saxon envoy, Baron Goltz, heard that the King had definitely declined to undergo the operation, either because of the possible harmful consequences or because he had become indifferent to the whole matter.47 Once again the birth of the Duc d’Angoulême made the problem of the succession less urgent from the purely Bourbon point of view, while remaining just as crucial to the Habsburg interest.

  So there never was an operation.*41 Joseph II described the true situation in graphic terms to his brother Archduke Leopold: “Imagine, in his marriage bed—this is the secret—he has strong, perfectly satisfactory erections; he introduces the member, stays there without moving for about two minutes, withdraws without ejaculating but still erect, and bids goodnight. It’s incredible because he sometimes has night-time emissions; it is only when he is actually inside and going at it, that it never happens.
Nevertheless the King is satisfied with what he does.” As Louis XVI confessed to the Emperor, all this was done in the name of duty, never for pleasure.

  “Oh if only I could have been there!” wrote the Emperor furiously to the Archduke. “I could have seen to it. The King of France would have been whipped so that he would have ejaculated out of sheer rage like a donkey.” Joseph concluded with a reflection on his sister’s lack of “temperament” in this respect, meaning lack of sexual appetite leading to lack of sexual initiative. It underpinned her virtue in which from personal observation he strongly believed; it was a virtue that arose “less from forethought than an inborn indisposition” towards it. The King and Queen of France were “two complete blunderers.” In short, there was nothing wrong with Louis XVI, other than laziness, apathy, and the inevitable consequences of this situation being “ill handled.”48

  It was in this way, thanks to the outspoken orders of the Emperor, that Louis XVI did at last stop being “two thirds of a husband” to Marie Antoinette, seven years and three months after their marriage. The crucial nature of the Emperor’s intervention in this sensitive but hitherto insoluble matter was made clear by the fact that both King and Queen subsequently wrote to the Emperor thanking him and “attributing it,” the consummation, to his advice. The King also wrote again in December 1777. As the Emperor told Leopold, this advice had been quite basic.49