Madame de Pompadour (19 page)

The King came up her little secret staircase at all hours, to tell her the news, to have a word with her, as a modern lover would telephone, or for a long session of chat. She never went out, for fear he might come and find her not there; he appeared and vanished again without warning, to the embarrassment of her friends who would suddenly find him in their midst; upon which they would retire unless specially asked not to.

One day he came to tell how, going at an unusual hour to his bedroom, he found a strange man there. The poor fellow, terrified, threw himself at the King’s feet, begging to be searched at once, and explaining that he had lost his way in the palace. He was an honest baker, known to the household, and his story was evidently quite true. The King, as soon as all this was proved, gave him fifty
louis
and told him to forget about it, but Madame de Pompadour could not forget; she was appalled to think that anybody could find his way, unhindered, to the private apartments. When she told her brother the story he merely said: ‘That’s funny, I would have betted anything against the fifty
louis
.’

But the King was always generous to Madame de Pompadour
and
anybody connected with her. ‘Who was it I saw leaving your room as I came in?’ ‘A poor relation of mine, Sire.’ ‘Did she come to beg?’ ‘Oh no, only to thank me for something I had done for her.’ ‘Well, since she’s your relation I would like to give her a small annuity, as from to-morrow.’ He once gave Madame de Pompadour six
louis
for being brave when Dr Quesnay bled her.

The King never could bear Frederick the Great, even when they were allies in the field. Arriving on one occasion with an open letter in his hand he said, sarcastically, ‘The King of Prussia is a great man, he loves culture and, like Louis XIV, he wants all Europe to echo with his munificence towards learned foreigners.’ Madame de Pompadour, and Marigny, who was with her, waited for what would come next. ‘Now listen to this,’ he read from the letter. ‘“There is in Paris a man whose fortune is not equal to his talents … I hope that he will accept this pension and thus give me the pleasure of having obliged a man who not only has a beautiful nature but is also sublimely gifted.”’ At this point in came Gontaut and d’Ayen; the King began all over again, adding: ‘the Foreign Office wants to know whether I will give my permission for this sublime genius to accept the money. Now I ask you all to guess the sum which is involved.’ They variously guessed six, eight, and ten thousand
livres
. ‘Nobody has guessed twelve hundred
livres
,’ said the King, delighted. ‘Really,’ said the Duc d’Ayen, ‘it doesn’t seem very much for such sublime talents!’ The man of genius in question was d’Alembert. Madame de Pompadour very sensibly advised the King to give double the annuity himself and withhold permission for Frederick’s, but he felt that he ought not to reward somebody so irreligious as d’Alembert. He allowed the King of Prussia’s annuity, however.

Louis XV had an extremely morbid side to his nature, which some thought was the result of that terrible week when, at the age of two, he had lost father, mother and brother. The modern psychologist might say that this explanation is not so far-fetched. He was very fond of talking about death beds and horrifying medical details over which in those days no veil of decency was ever drawn; the whole Court knew when the King or Queen had taken a purge and every aspect of the health of women was openly discussed by all.

‘Have you decided where you are going to be buried?’ he once asked the old Marquis de Souvré.

‘At your feet, Sire,’ was the tactless reply.

When the King was in these dark and morbid moods he used to ask Madame de Pompadour not to make him laugh. One day, driving to Choisy, his coach broke down, and he got into that of the Marquise, who was alone with her little friend the Maréchale de Mirepoix. He saw some crosses against the sky, on a nearby hill, and saying that he supposed there must be a graveyard he sent one of his outriders to see if there were any new graves. The man came back saying that there were three graves, freshly dug. ‘Why, it’s enough to make one’s mouth water,’ cried the Maréchale, gaily. But the King looked sad and thoughtful.

This little Maréchale was a great comfort to Madame de Pompadour. She and the tall Duchesse de Brancas were her closest friends; the King, too, was very fond of them. The Maréchale, born Beauvau, was first married to the Prince de Lixin, a Prince of the House of Lorraine; he was killed by Richelieu, in a duel. Then she gave up her rank, in order to marry, for love, the Marquis (later Duc) de Mirepoix. The courtiers thought that this disinterested action marked her as eccentric indeed. Mirepoix was a soldier; not even very rich. Their life was a perpetual honeymoon until, in 1757, he died suddenly on a journey to Provence. The Maréchale was the sister of the Marquise de Boufflers, one of the great charmers of the age, whom we do not meet very much at Versailles because she lived in Lorraine and was the mistress of King Stanislas. Both sisters were excessively gay and treated life as an enormous joke; their contemporaries said they never grew old, since it was for ever springtime in their hearts. But whereas Madame de Mirepoix loved nobody but the Maréchal, Madame de Boufflers was extremely unfaithful, not only to her husband but also to King Stanislas.

The Maréchale understood the King perfectly, better, perhaps, than Madame de Pompadour, since she was not in love with him, and when he was difficult, or seemed to be attracted to other women, this practical Frenchwoman, who saw life clearly as it is, was always able to reassure her friend. ‘He’s used to you, he doesn’t have to explain himself when he’s with you. If you disappeared
and
somebody younger and more beautiful were suddenly to be found in your place I dare say he wouldn’t give you another thought, but he’ll never be bothered to make a change himself. Princes, above all people, are creatures of habit.’

The King was very difficult: centre of the universe from such an early age, he could hardly have avoided being selfish and spoilt. Sometimes even the Marquise could do nothing with him. Soon after her arrival at Versailles she gave a
f
ê
te champêtre
for him at Montretout, a little house at St Cloud, which she embellished, called her dear Tretout and very soon abandoned for the nearby La Celle. A small number of his favourite friends were invited, the June night was hot and delicious, she looked perfectly lovely in a dark blue dress embroidered with all the stars of the milky way; everything augured well. The party began with a wonderful supper on the terrace, to the sound of music. When that was finished, the Queen of the Night sang a song in honour of her guest; then she held out a white hand to him. The King, who liked sitting on at the supper table, looked the other way; she insisted, however, and led him, preceded by the orchestra, to a little wood. The whole party, wreathed in smiles, advanced two by two as in a graceful minuet; but the King stumped along looking very cross indeed. Who is this shepherd, sitting surrounded by his flock? Why, none other than M. de la Salle! Amazed to see so great a king in so rustic a haunt the honest shepherd recited some lines in his honour; they fell flat. A troupe of villagers now appeared, and one of them handed the King a mask and domino. He did not bother to put them on, never attempted to conceal his yawns and soon went grumpily off to bed.

Needless to say, there was a good deal of crowing over this fiasco at Versailles, among those who had not been invited. The Queen, who, like many meek and holy people, had a catty side to her nature, could not resist dotting the i’s. She pretended to be quite upset about it all and scolded her husband for not being more appreciative of Madame de Pompadour’s kind efforts to amuse him.

Very soon, however, the Marquise knew exactly what sort of entertainment he did like, and such a distressing occurrence does not seem to have been repeated. When she gave rustic fêtes they really were rustic, and she and the King very much enjoyed wedding
parties
for youths and maidens who lived on her various estates. She would marry off several couples at a time, with a feast and country songs and dances; she liked to give dowries and trousseaux to poor girls who otherwise would not have been able to marry.

But the best way to amuse the King was with any sort of building project. ‘After the King’s Mass,’ says Croÿ, ‘we went to the Marquise. The King came and fetched her to walk in the gardens, hothouses and menagerie at Trianon. As the Duc d’Ayen and I were chatting about gardens, a hobby we share, the King asked what we were saying. The Duc d’Ayen said we were talking about country places, and that I had a charming one near Condé which was becoming quite well known … The King asked me about it; I explained that I had a forest and wanted to rebuild my house in a clearing where four rides met at right angles, that I was not sure about the design for it because I wanted a
salon
in the middle which would look out in each direction, with nice bedrooms at the four corners … The King was very fond of building and plans. He took me to see his pretty pavilion in the garden at Trianon and observed that I ought to build something on those lines … He ordered M. Gabriel to give me two plans they had made together, then he asked for pencil and paper and I made a sketch of the site. He put down his own ideas and asked M. Gabriel to go over them with him. In the end it lasted an hour or more and I was quite embarrassed. That evening he talked of it again, and the next day … By dinner time we had visited all the hens, and collected the fresh eggs, and stifled in the hothouses, which were very interesting, then we went back to Trianon, for luncheon [
déjeuner
] with the King.’

After luncheon they walked to the Hermitage, Madame de Pompadour’s little house on the edge of the park, and went over the gardens, hothouses and menageries of that pretty place. On the way they saw some partridges; the King said to d’Ayen, ‘Take the gun from that keeper and shoot a cock.’ D’Ayen took the gun and shot a hen, and this amused the King very much. After this day spent together the King would always ask Croÿ how the plans for his house were going, and even referred to himself as M. de Croÿ’s architect.

MADAME DE POMPADOUR WAS ONE
of those people who like to acquire houses, expend energy, taste and knowledge in embellishing them, live in them for a while, and then go on to something new. Her first house of her very own was Crécy, which she always loved and in whose neighbouring village she took a particular interest; then came Montretout, quickly exchanged for the slightly larger La Celle, and then the Hermitage at Versailles. This little rustic one-storied pavilion was to her what the Petit Trianon later became to Queen Marie-Antoinette; she used it as a summer house and spent happy days there alone with the King. ‘A certain Hermitage,’ she wrote to Madame de Lutzenbourg, ‘near the Gate of the Dragon, where I pass half my life. It is sixteen yards by ten, nothing above, so you see how grand it must be; but I can be alone there, or with the King and a few others, so I am happy.’ Mademoiselle Langlois, of the Musée de Versailles, has recently discovered this little house which was supposed to have disappeared; Mesdames had it after Madame de Pompadour’s death and disguised it by adding a storey; it is now a convent. The great point of the Hermitage was its wonderful garden, all arranged for scent so that one heavenly smell led to another; it could be visited blindfold for the scent alone. Here she had fifty orange trees, lemons, oleanders single and double, myrtle, olives, yellow jasmine and lilac from Judea, and pomegranates, all in straight avenues with trellised palisades leading to a bower of roses surrounding a marble Apollo. Shrubs and flowers were brought to Madame de Pompadour from all parts of the French empire, chosen for the scent; she specially loved
myrtle,
tuberoses, jasmine and gardenias. Labour was so cheap that flowers in the gardens were renewed every day, as we renew them now in a room; in the greenhouses at Trianon there were two million pots for bedding out.

The Hermitage was very simply decorated, the hangings were all of cotton and the furniture of painted wood; it was meant to be rustic, a farm house. It was such a success that she soon built two others, one at Compiègne designed by Gabriel, which has utterly disappeared, pulled down nobody even knows when or by whose orders, and one at Fontainebleau. The Fontainebleau Hermitage belongs now to the Vicomte de Noailles and is the only habitation of Madame de Pompadour’s which she could visit today without grief. She never much liked her rooms in the palace there, and lived a great deal in this little house. The King would pretend he was going out hunting, leave the palace early in the morning booted and spurred, and spend the whole day with her, sometimes cooking their supper himself. People who liked to carp at her love of building used to say that she only had this Hermitage in order to offer the King a boiled egg from time to time. She had here one of the farmyards of which she was so fond, cows, goats and hens, and a donkey, whose milk was supposed to be particularly good for her.

The Réservoirs at Versailles (designed by Lassurance) was only intended to be an overflow from her rooms in the palace, she never seems to have slept there. It is still called the Hôtel des Réservoirs, and still bears her coat of arms, but it has been enlarged and completely spoilt.

The only house of any size that Madame de Pompadour built was Bellevue (1750); all her other châteaux already existed when she bought them and were altered by her. Bellevue was the finest flower, inside and out, of eighteenth-century domestic architecture; its destruction was a terrible loss to France. (The royal houses which disappeared during the Revolution were not pulled down, burnt or looted by a furious mob. The government, hard put to it for money, to keep off the invading Austrians and Prussians, sold them all to speculators who disposed of them piecemeal; Chantilly and the Bastille were used as quarries for many years. It
was
at this time that rich English collectors acquired the treasures of French art which so greatly embellish our museums and country houses.) Bellevue was built on that wooded bank which hangs over the Seine between Sèvres and Meudon, and a beautiful view indeed it must have had of the clean, sparkling and unspoilt city of Paris, with no blocks of flats, no
Electricité de France
, above all no rusty Eiffel Tower, to dwarf the domes and spires of the many churches. She employed her favourite architect, Lassurance, and, once the designs were approved, she left him to get on in his own way; when it was finished she stepped in and added her, entirely personal, touches. She had a horror of common or banal objects, or ones that were often copied, with fashionable motifs; if a piece of furniture was to please her it must be unique of its sort; the same applied to all her upholstery and hangings, always specially woven for her.