Madame de Pompadour (15 page)

The first boy was born, with one pain, in about ten minutes; very inconvenient as it was absolutely vital that there should be witnesses of the birth. The doctor, who was sleeping in the Dauphine’s room, told her she must hold everything, while the Dauphin rushed out in his nightshirt to find somebody. ‘Well then hurry up,’ she said, ‘it’s kicking me.’ A sleepy Swiss guard was very much surprised when the Dauphin seized him by the arm, said: ‘Quick, go in there and see my wife having a baby,’ and went on to look for one more witness.

The King was playing cards at Trianon: a man galloped down from Versailles: ‘A boy, a boy!’ Was he drunk? they wondered. The news was confirmed and the King, overcome with happiness, felt giddy and had to be half carried to the only coach available, that of the Prince de Conti. He cried over the little Duc de Bourgogne, who was tactful enough to look very much like him, and stayed till five in the morning talking to the Dauphine. Then he ordered a Te Deum before going to bed.

The Dauphine never knew whether these babies were boys or girls until they were brought to her with, or without, the Cordon Bleu, a little blue ribbon from which hung a tiny Saint Esprit, first made for the sons of Henri IV. Out of her first five children four were boys. The Parisians thought the younger ones received the most affected names: Duc d’Aquitaine, Duc de Berry, Comte de
Provence
and Comte d’Artois, instead of the customary Bretagne and d’Anjou. ‘It didn’t do d’Aquitaine much good,’ they said – he died at five months old.

Louis XV was one of those fathers who never want their daughters to marry. The eldest, Madame Infante, did so, for urgent reasons of state, when she was thirteen; neither she nor her father was really happy until she was back again at Versailles. She returned in 1749, aged twenty-two, a grown-up lady with a little Infanta of eight at her skirts; the King hardly recognized her, she was far prettier, more intelligent, more a woman of the world than her sisters, whom she found very babyish. Unfortunately she was ambitious and never stopped plaguing her father for a throne. He was so delighted to have her with him again that he would have given her anything in his power; he gave her equal honours with her mother, greatly to the latter’s displeasure, but the throne never materialized and she had to be content with Parma. Today the Parma Bourbons descend from Louis XV, and, through his son-in-law the Infante Philip, in a direct male line from Louis XIV, but they have never put forward a claim to the French throne because of the oath taken by the Duc d’Anjou when he became King of Spain. Through them, the blood of Louis XV flows in the veins of nearly all the royal families of Europe. Madame Infante was a great deal at Versailles after she became Duchess of Parma, and Madame de Pompadour used to complain that she saw very much less of the King when she was there.

Madame Henriette, the twin of Madame Infante, was in love with the Duc de Chartres (later Duc d’Orléans) and he with her, but the King would not allow them to marry for fear of giving too much power to the house of Orléans. He made a great mistake; if Chartres had married her, horrible Philippe-Egalité would never have been born. In spite of his love for the Regent, and the fact that he always got on very well with Chartres, the King felt the traditional Bourbon distrust for the Orléans family. There is little doubt that if the Dauphin had died without an heir, he would have encouraged the Spanish Bourbons to put forward a claim to the throne of France, illegal as it would have been. Sad, and forever ill, Madame Henriette died just before the Dauphin’s smallpox
in
1752; she had been the King’s favourite and his grief at her death was intense.

Then Adélaïde became the adored of her father; she lived, and always had lived, for him alone. At six years old she had refused to be parted from him, and was the only daughter not to be brought up in a convent. She was eleven when war broke out with England; they found her leaving Versailles with a few
louis
in a little bag. ‘I am going to make the English lords sleep with me in turns, which they will be honoured to do, and bring their heads to Papa.’ She was rather like a furious boy, very passionate and attractive, but nothing ever turned out quite right for her.

After Madame Adélaïde came Mesdames Victoire, Sophie and Louise, not very interesting characters; Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire survived the Revolution and died in exile. There was no question of any of them marrying. The magic of Versailles worked as strongly upon the royal family as it did upon the nobles; to leave its precincts seemed the most dreadful of fates, no crown on earth could compensate for it. A child of France, as they were called, would never have been allowed to marry a subject. The King went to Madame de Pompadour one day in a great rage because he thought he had noticed that a certain young man was in love with Madame Adélaïde who, at seventeen, was exceedingly pretty. This young man soon found himself back on his estates. Madame de Pompadour told her maid that no death would be cruel enough, in the King’s view, for somebody who seduced one of his daughters.

To all outward appearances, the Marquise was on excellent terms with these girls, but they really wanted to get their father away from her. As they grew up they began to have a good deal of influence with him, and but for Madame de Pompadour would have been very powerful indeed. Bigoted, and, like their mother and brother, led by the Jesuits, they were almost more shocked by her friendship with the
philosophes
than by her relationship with their father. Among themselves they called her ‘Pom-pom’, not an unfriendly little name, and probably were charmed by her when she was there; nevertheless they intrigued against her whenever they saw an opportunity. As for her, with her usual warmth, she
encouraged
the King to see more and more of his daughters, always arranged for one or other of them to join the
voyages
, and sat them next to him at meals. She spoke and wrote as if she loved them all dearly. In any case they soon found out that it was useless to cross swords with the Marquise; the King always took her side in the last resort. They had their real revenge after she was dead, when they moved into her two favourite houses and altered them out of all recognition.

Like the King, Madame de Pompadour loved her own family. She was very lucky in her brother. The Marquis de Marigny, a charming and clever man, entirely devoid of ambition, was the exact opposite of the grasping relations who have so often blackened favourites such as Madame de Pompadour in the eyes of posterity. He always refused honours until he felt he had earned them; greatly to her annoyance he always refused the heiresses to whom she hoped to marry him.

‘He writes to me’, she said, angrily, to her maid one day, having just read a letter from him, ‘because he doesn’t dare say it to my face. I had arranged a marriage for him with a certain nobleman’s daughter; he really seemed quite in favour of it and I had given my word to the family. Now he tells me he has heard that the father and mother are arrogant, and the daughter spoilt, that she knows all about the proposed marriage and has spoken of it in terms of the utmost contempt, and that she despises both of us, me even more than him. He says he knows that this is all quite true. Yes – well, perhaps, but these people will be my deadly enemies from now on; he should have thought of it sooner.’ She was very angry indeed with Marigny. However, she arranged another good marriage for the little girl, whose conduct in a very short time forced her to admit that her brother had been quite right.

Shy, modest and unassuming, Marigny saw all the dangers of his position and was fully conscious of its ridiculous side. Indeed this seems to have preyed on his mind almost too much and to have made him too surly and grumpy to the courtiers, who positively detested him. They were furious enough when he was made a Marquis, but his Saint Esprit was almost more than they could
endure.
‘Here comes Marinière, with his Cordon Bleu.’ Though devoted to the King, he never cared for Versailles, he was a real Parisian and his life and pleasures were centred in the capital. Very rightly and wisely he refused various ministries proposed to him by his sister, who, as she became more and more involved in politics, would have liked to have his support. He pointed out that it would be sheer folly for him to be in charge of a government department; the moment anything went wrong, she would be doubly blamed. All he wanted was to inherit the post which Tournehem occupied, Intendant of the King’s Buildings; he felt, and rightly, that he would make a success of this job. Indeed, he made a resounding success of it; Marigny’s administration is an important chapter in the history of French art.

In 1749, Madame de Pompadour, realizing that a talented and energetic young man should be given something better to do than kick his heels at the Court, conceived the idea of sending him to study art in Italy. It was clever of her to think of it, and rather original, for unlike the English at that time, Frenchmen seldom travelled; Croÿ says that in all his life he only knew two well-bred men who had been abroad for pleasure (though every artist who could do so, went sooner or later to Italy). She chose, as companions for her brother, the artist and engraver Cochin, the architect Soufflot and the Abbé Leblanc, an art critic, famous in his day; the four of them set off, primed with good advice from her and followed by more good advice which arrived by every post.

‘Don’t imagine that because I am young my advice is worthless. After living here for four and a half years, I have as much experience as a woman of forty.’ She begged him not to make jokes about the various royalties he would meet, or at any rate not to write them to her, as their letters would surely be opened. ‘Be agreeable to everybody’ was the burden of her song. Poisson also wrote saying: ‘Listen to your sister, she may be young but she is very sensible.’ Madame de Pompadour wrote to the Duc de Nivernais, now French ambassador in Rome, where his chief occupation seems to have been trying to keep the works of French writers off the Index. She always called him
petit époux
(little husband; he had been her husband in a play). ‘My brother leaves in about six
weeks
– I ask your friendship for him – he deserves that of anybody who appreciates good qualities … He is not at all stupid, but he is too frank, so truthful that sometimes he seems unsympathetic. Curiously enough, this virtue does not pay, at Court. I have suffered from that, and have made a resolution never to tell anybody the truth as long as I live – I only hope I can keep it. My brother is going with a certain Soufflot of Lyons, a very gifted architect, Cochin whom you know, and I think the Abbé Leblanc. Good night,
petit époux
.’

Nivernais replied: ‘… One thing is lucky for him [Marigny]: they love frankness here, rather as we love that stuff from India which we can’t make at home. So I guess he will have a great success. I can’t say the same for poor Abbé Leblanc; French abbés are not liked in Rome, where they are treated as an enormous joke.’ He ended this letter with a P.S. saying that the King ought to go to Rome for Holy Year (1751); after all, there were precedents as Charlemagne and Charles VIII had both done so.

Marigny was received everywhere in Italy, saw all the reigning princes, had success with the women and made an excellent impression. People put themselves out for him to any extent; Madame de Pompadour writes that this would be quite understandable in
ce pays-ci
where they might need her help one day, but was most unexpected and gratifying abroad. But the object of this tour was not to see reigning princes and flirt with Italian beauties; it was to become conversant with classical art.

French architecture had been very little dented by either the baroque or the rococo, and it was now moving to a new and even greater severity of line. Madame de Pompadour liked everything that was new and she foresaw that furniture and interior decoration would slowly but surely follow the architecture; she told her brother to bear this constantly in mind and study all the classical remains that he could find. Cochin says that the Italian journey of M. de Marigny and his companions marked a turning point in French art; the turning point in fact from the style of Louis XV, all curves and arabesques, to what we call the style of Louis XVI, but which is also that of a long part of the reign of Louis XV, all straight lines and angles. From the acanthus leaf to the laurel. It is a pity that Madame
de
Pompadour did not live long enough to direct this new trend, and that it should have fallen into the incompetent hands of the uneducated Madame du Barry and feather-brained Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Towards the end of the tour, Madame de Pompadour wrote, ‘They say that M. de Tournehem is going to resign when you return, but I hope not. I would do everything in my power to stop him; for one thing it would kill him and then you are really too young, not yet twenty-five, and although you are beginning to know a great deal I think you should be at least twenty-eight or thirty before taking on such a job.’ Hardly, however, had he returned than Tournehem died; so the problem resolved itself and Marigny became director of the King’s buildings. He found that Tournehem had left a flourishing charge. He had put order into the finances, introduced a system of inventories, reformed many abuses, and founded a museum in Paris by opening the royal collections in the Luxembourg to the public. Thanks to M. de Tournehem’s probity and hard work, Marigny was able to develop his new department unhampered by administrative worries.

Poisson’s old age was very happy, owing to his daughter. He thoroughly enjoyed being a country squire, with enough money to indulge the family passion for building. Madame de Pompadour thought of many little ways in which to please him, and wrote to him regularly; she and her daughter Alexandrine were the light of his life. He hardly ever went to Versailles, except to see her act, but he often accompanied the Court to Fontainebleau and Compiègne. In Paris he and M. de Tournehem lived together, and Madame de Baschi kept house for them; when Poisson was at Marigny, M. de Tournehem constantly sent him news of Reinette and Alexandrine.