A word should also be said about the formidable etiquette which Antoinette would have to learn. The word “etiquette” literally meant “ticket” because of the slip of paper required in order to enter certain parts of the château in order to view the royals doing whatever they happened to be doing. The rituals and ceremonies of etiquette were part of the pageantry surrounding the monarch and every member of his family. Court etiquette originated as an extension of the liturgical rituals of the Catholic Church, particularly from the great monasteries which in the first centuries of the French kingdom and throughout the Middle Ages were instrumental in spreading learning and culture as well as peace and prosperity. Etiquette had become a means of maintaining the respect and the aura of majesty around the person of the monarch and took on a life of its own. As those who have watched the British production of Downton Abbey will recognize a few of the traditions as being endemic not only to Versailles but to stately private homes as well. For that matter, every monastery and religious house had its own customs and rituals which guided everyday behavior. At Versailles, members of the Royal Family were not allowed to pour a glass of water or reach for food. Meals, drinks, and garments had to be handed or served to them, usually on silver trays. Ladies at Versailles walked in a distinctive manner; they never lifted their feet so as not to step on the train of the woman in front of them. Antoinette excelled at what is called the “Versailles glide.” A lady never held hands or linked arms with a gentleman, which was practically impossible anyway because of the wide skirts. Instead, a lady was to place her hand on top of the gentleman’s bent arm as they strolled along. A lady and a gentleman were only allowed to touch each other’s fingertips when promenading together in public.
The King and Queen always had a fauteuil (armchair) to sit on. In their presence, no one else was allowed an armchair, unless they were also a monarch. A chair with a back but no arms was allowed for those closest in rank to the king, such as his brother or children. The tabouret, a padded stool was awarded to those holding the rank of duke or duchess. Lesser ranking nobility would be expected to stand. A lady never sat with her back touching the back of the chair. People who wanted to speak to the King could not knock on his door. Knocking on doors was forbidden; since 1694, people scratched on doors with their little fingers, which caused many people to grow the nail on the pinky finger longer than the others. Only pages were allowed to open doors. If anyone desired to leave a room, they had to wait for the page to open the door. People entered a room according to rank, princes first, then officers of the court, and finally courtiers. The page opened both halves of the tall double door for a prince, but for lower ranked dignitaries, only one side would open. A young lady, even if married, always kept the door open if conversing with a gentleman not her husband or a member of her family. The Queen never sat at the same table with men not part of the Royal Family and she never walked about the palace alone, but always accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting. Such rules Antoinette would try to change or totally ignore when she became Queen.
On May 16, 1770 the Dauphin Louis-Auguste of France married Marie-Antoinette Archduchess of Austria. She spent the previous night at the château of La Muette. The Dauphin was already at Versailles because according to etiquette the bride and groom were not to sleep under the same roof until after the ceremony. There was a family supper with the King, his daughters, and her new ladies-in-waiting; she was also introduced to her new brothers-in-law, the Comtes de Provence and Artois, ages fourteen and twelve. Much to the disgust of Mesdames Tantes, Madame du Barry had been included by Louis XV, which confused and embarrassed the innocent bride. In the morning, the Dauphine left for Versailles at nine. When she arrived at the château, Louis XV received her on the ground-floor in the apartments of his late daughter-in-law, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe; they conversed for awhile. She also met her new sisters-in-law, Madame Clothilde, age eleven and Madame Élisabeth, who was six years old. She was presented with the jewels which by right belonged to every Dauphine. The bride was dressed in cloth of silver and white brocade, covered with diamonds and pearls, with wide hoops which overwhelmed her slender frame.19 The gown has also been shown in pictures as lavender and other colors, from which one can guess it must have shimmered in the various lights. Unfortunately, the bodice did not fit properly, which may have been due to the natural growth of the bride as well as to the fact that Antoinette’s back was slightly crooked so that one shoulder was higher than another. 20 Her later gowns had one shoulder padded. 21 Although every court dress had an open back, with the chemise showing through the lacings, the opening in Antoinette’s gown was wider than etiquette allowed but there was little anyone could do at the last moment. The gown was later made into mass vestments which were lost in the Revolution.
The wedding party then convened in the apartments of the king where the procession was formed. The groom and his bride, their fingertips touching, processed to the Royal Chapel and to the high altar, followed by the Louis XV. They knelt together on a cushion placed on the steps of the sanctuary. The Archbishop of Rheims, Monseigneur de la Roche-Aymon, Grand Almoner, blessed them with holy water, and then blessed the thirteen pieces of gold and the wedding rings as well. Then the Dauphin took the ring and placed it on the fourth finger of the Dauphine, invoking the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. She gave him his ring in the same manner. The archbishop pronounced the nuptial benediction, and Mass began, with the choir chanting the motets of Ganzargue. At the Our Father a canopy of silver brocade was held over their heads and remained throughout the Communion and final blessing. As mass was concluded, the parish registry was presented to Louis XV at his prie-dieu for the King to sign. After the ceremony, a lightening storm struck. To quote Rocheterie:
….But despite the splendour of the celebrations and the promising aspect of the future at that moment, certain obstinate pessimists could not help regarding the rumbling of the storm as a menace from Heaven ; and the superstitious recalled that the young wife, in signing the marriage register, had let fall a blot of ink which had effaced half her name. 22
It should be kept in mind that the new Dauphine was not used to signing her name “Marie-Antoinette.” She was used to writing plain “Antoine” and must have hesitated before writing the rest of her new name just long enough to make the inkblot. Madame Campan, who was at the time the Reader to the Mesdames Tantes with the name of Mademoiselle Genet, recorded the impression the new Dauphine made on the French Royal Family in her memoirs:
The Dauphiness, then fifteen years of age, beaming with freshness, appeared to all eyes more than beautiful. Her walk partook at once of the dignity of the Princesses of her house, and of the grace of the French; her eyes were mild, her smile amiable. When she went to chapel, as soon as she had taken the first few steps in the long gallery, she discerned, all the way to its extremity, those persons whom she ought to salute with the consideration due to their rank; those on whom she should bestow an inclination of the head; and lastly, those who were to be satisfied with a smile, calculated to console them for not being entitled to greater honours.
Louis XV was enchanted with the young Dauphiness; all his conversation was about her graces, her vivacity, and the aptness of her repartees. She was yet more successful with the royal family when they beheld her shorn of the splendour of the diamonds with which she had been adorned during the first days of her marriage. When clothed in a light dress of gauze or taffety she was compared to the Venus dei Medici, and the Atalanta of the Marly Gardens. Poets sang her charms; painters attempted to copy her features. One artist’s fancy led him to place the portrait of Marie Antoinette in the heart of a full-blown rose. His ingenious idea was rewarded by Louis XV. 23
As Antonia Fraser notes in her biography of Antoinette, the wedding of the Dauphin Louis-Auguste and “the Daughter of the Caesars” was the “finest royal wedding that anyone had ever seen; indeed, the King thought so himself.”24 Expectations for the young couple were higher than ever. The event was not only opulen
t but enchanting, with the palace illuminated by lanterns and shining from afar. All the court was assembled in finest array, and the climax of the festivities was a ball, to be held in the new Versailles opera house, built for the occasion, despite the specter of bankruptcy that yawned in the shadows like a bottomless abyss. The wedding dinner took place there on May 16, the day itself, as the new Dauphine had one of her first experiences of the grand couvert, that is, dining in public. As at every wedding, mishaps occurred, although in the case of Antoinette’s wedding, as in just about everything in her life, the mishaps turned out to be cataclysmic. Thunder, rain and lightning on the night of the wedding postponed the fireworks display at Versailles. In Paris a fireworks display was held on May 30 in which an accident caused a stampede and hundreds of people were killed. Horrified, Louis and Antoinette gave their spending money for a month to relieve the injured and the survivors of those killed; the Dauphine visited as many of the afflicted in their homes as she could. 25
Yet another, subtler disaster for Antoinette occurred at the grand ball on the night of May 19. Even at a ball, or I should say, especially at a ball, etiquette reigned. The dancers danced the minuet according to precedence: the royal family first, then the Princes of the Blood, followed by the dukes, the counts, and on down the ranks of the nobility. The minuet was a dance of complicated movements which had to be learned and practiced from childhood in order to master it; it was one of the last outward signs of nobility which separated the upper class from the rising bourgeoisie. Madame de Brionne, a former mistress of Choiseul and his fellow Lorrainer, connived with Comte Mercy the Austrian ambassador to honor the Dauphine by allowing Madame de Brionne’s daughter to dance immediately after the Princes of the Blood. Now Madame de Brionne had married a distant Lorraine relative of Antoinette’s father, which made her daughter, the fifteen year old Anne-Charlotte de Lorraine de Brionne, Antoinette’s cousin. Louis XV consented to the dance only to be faced with nearly two hundred courtiers threatening to boycott the ball, as word circulated that an obscure Lorraine relation was to take precedence over the great houses of the French nobility. Although the full boycott did not materialize, the ladies having spent too much on their gowns to forgo such an occasion, many refused to dance and others left early. The Dauphin’s youngest brother, the twelve-year-old Comte d’Artois, danced the minuet twice, before and after Mademoiselle de Brionne, in an effort to cushion the perceived insult to the nobility of France, but the harm was done. It was seen as an effort of Antoinette to put her own relations ahead of the French people. This was ridiculous, since Antoinette had little to do with Madame de Brionne’s project, through which that lady hoped to gain in social standing. However, in a letter to her mother, the Dauphine showed that she innocently approved of Mademoiselle de Brionne’s dance, and thought of it as honoring her dead father, Francis of Lorraine.
However, as pointed out by Thomas E. Kaiser in his article “Ambiguous Identities,”26Antoinette mistakenly continued to support and advance the Brionne family in other affairs, ahead of those who saw themselves as more worthy of her interest due to rank. In doing so she was also favoring Choiseul, whom she credited with the happiness of being Dauphine, and later Queen, of France. To favor Choiseul in itself displeased both Louis XV and Louis XVI, since the former minister had been dismissed by Louis XV, and Louis XVI saw the choiseulistes as his enemies. At any rate, she alienated potential allies due to her favors for the Lorraine-Brionne family, who only repaid her by shameful behavior. The Brionne son and heir, the dreadful Prince de Lambesc, whom Antoinette had showered with favors, in 1780 rode his carriage through a Eucharistic procession, injuring a priest and several other people. In 1785, Madame de Brionne herself betrayed the Queen by supporting Cardinal de Rohan during the Diamond Necklace fiasco. At Antoinette’s trial, the Brionne family continued to haunt her, for she was asked if she planned to annex Lorraine to Austria, her favor for Lorrainers being well-known.
People often forget that in spite of France being an absolute monarchy there was much over which the sovereign had no control. For instance, when choosing members of the nobility for various court offices, the King or Queen traditionally could not choose whomever they wanted but had to make the appointment according to heredity and prestige. When fourteen-year-old Antoinette arrived in France the lady singled out to be her guide was not a warm, motherly person but the one who was next in line for such an exalted office. It was Anne-Claude-Louise d'Arpajon, Vicomtesse de Noailles, who had been the first lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Marie Leszczyńska and was therefore a stickler for etiquette. The Polish Queen had been strict about etiquette since she was the daughter of a dethroned king and later a neglected wife so she enforced the rules in order to maintain respect. Madame de Noailles tried to maintain the same standards in the household of the young Dauphine but to no avail. As Madame Campan shrewdly describes in her memoirs:
While doing justice to the virtues of the Comtesse de Noailles, those sincerely attached to the Queen have always considered it as one of her earliest misfortunes not to have found, in the person of her adviser, a woman indulgent, enlightened, and administering good advice with that amiability which disposes young persons to follow it. The Comtesse de Noailles had nothing agreeable in her appearance; her demeanour was stiff and her mien severe. She was perfect mistress of etiquette; but she wearied the young Princess with it, without making her sensible of its importance. It would have been sufficient to represent to the Dauphiness that in France her dignity depended much upon customs not necessary at Vienna to secure the respect and love of the good and submissive Austrians for the imperial family; but the Dauphiness was perpetually tormented by the remonstrances of the Comtesse de Noailles, and at the same time was led by the Abbé de Vermond to ridicule both the lessons of etiquette and her who gave them. She preferred raillery to argument, and nicknamed the Comtesse de Noailles Madame l’Etiquette.27
Antoinette rebelled against the stringency of the etiquette, which she did not think was necessary, and as Queen she changed some of the rules. She also chose people for offices not from the usual noble families but based upon her liking of them and whether she thought them capable. It would amaze us how much resentment she caused among the nobles, resentment which her enemies put to work against her. Nevertheless, Madame de Noailles and her husband were loyal monarchists and died on the guillotine during the Revolution.
The wedding ring placed upon Antoinette’s finger by Louis-Auguste came to have a strange history. In 1771, while washing her hands, the ring came off and disappeared. Shortly after the birth of her first child in 1778, a small package was sent to Antoinette by the Curé of the church of the Madeleine in Paris, containing her ring and a message, saying: “I have received under the seal of confession the ring which I send to your Majesty; with an avowal that it was stolen from you in 1771, in order to be used in sorceries, to prevent your having any children.” Antoinette never sought to discover the identity of the pathetic person who had tried to use witchcraft to render her infertile.28
“Antoinette and Louis in their wedding clothes.”
3 The House of Bourbon
“I am convinced that if I had to choose a husband from the three brothers, I would still prefer the one heaven gave me: his character is steadfast and although he is awkward, he is as attentive and as kind as possible to me.”—Marie-Antoinette to Maria Theresa, 15 December 1775
In her letters to her mother, Antoinette writes fondly of her “two families,” meaning the Habsburgs and the Bourbons1 In spite of the warm way she describes Louis’ family to her mother, referring to the Mesdames as “my aunts” and Louis’ siblings as “my brothers and sisters,” in keeping with the manner of the times, the Bourbons were a peculiar lot to her. The King’s overt womanizing had triggered a backlash in his devout family and among many of the courtiers, so that they tended to retreat into Jansenist prudery and preoccupations with death. The expulsion of the Jesuit order and the rise of enlightenment freethinking, encourage
d by the late Madame de Pompadour, caused many of the more conservative courtiers to mistrust the Austrian alliance and the Archduchess whom La Pompadour had plotted to bring to France. For her part, Antoinette regarded with suspicion and scorn anyone who was against the Austrian Alliance, while she respected and promoted those such as Choiseul, who had brought about the Alliance, in spite of his freethinking tendencies. In taking this course of action, she often found herself at odds with her husband, who detested Choiseul. It was no more than a child’s way of seeing everything in black and white, and an attempt to promote Austrian interests as she had been bidden to do by her family. Along with politics, there were a thousand petty intrigues, jealousies and internecine rivalries within the Royal Family itself; although on a certain level they loved each other. The rivalry between Louis and his brothers was especially intense, as Antoinette would come to discover. On more than one occasion, Antoinette was known to have given thanks to God that she had married Louis and not Provence or Artois, who both were known to have tempers, although they were considered better looking than Louis, especially Artois, and a great deal more charming. But looks and charm are not everything. She obviously valued Louis’ character, which contradicts the rumor that Antoinette was shallow.
A word must be said about the baptismal customs of the French Royal Family, particularly under the Bourbons. While most of the children were baptized privately the day of their birth, their formal christening ceremony was often postponed until they could walk and talk. During the reign of Henri IV, three of his children, including the future Louis XIII and the future Queen of Spain, were christened in an elaborate public ceremony, at which there were three fonts, several bishops, and numerous wax tapers, tapestries and silver tissue.2 At private royal baptisms, the princes received their title, which represented the apanage or the lands and territories they would someday govern, with the exception of a child who was born a Dauphin. For the first few years of his life, Louis XVI was called nothing but “Berry”, the Duc de Berry being the title he received on the day of his birth. At his christening a few years later, which he shared with his brothers and sisters, he formally received his Christian name of “Louis-Auguste.”3 The princesses would initially be called Madame la Première, or Petite Madame or Madame Royale, etc. until they in turn received their Christian names at their christening. This was to change under Louis XVI and Antoinette, whose children were born, baptized with water and christened with the holy oils all on the same day, receiving their Christian names and titles, too.4 The custom of being formally and officially baptized within hours and days of birth, dressed in pure white, spread throughout France and all ranks of society.
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