Madame de Pompadour (21 page)

Withdrawn from the sale, by Marigny, was
Représentations de M. le Lt Général de Police de Paris sur les Courtisanes à la Mode et les Demoiselles de Bon Ton, par une Demoiselle de Bon Ton
.

These books were all bound in calf, or red, blue or citron morocco gilt, with the castles and the griffins of her coat of arms. She had a great love of beautiful morocco, and after her death several choice skins, ready for working, were found among her belongings.

Madame de Pompadour never seems to have sold any of the objects which belonged to her. They accumulated in their thousands, and filled all her many houses to overflowing; after her death Marigny was obliged to take two big houses in Paris which, as well as the Elysée and the Réservoirs, contained her goods until the sale of them began. Furniture, china, statues, pictures, books, plants, jewels, linen, silver, carriages, horses, yards and hundreds of yards of stuff, trunks full of dresses, cellars full of wine; the inventory of all this, divided into nearly three thousand lots, very few lots containing less than a dozen objects, took two lawyers more than a year to make. Few human beings since the world began can have owned so many beautiful things.

THE YEARS 1751–52
saw a change in Madame de Pompadour’s relationship with the King, the outward and visible sign of which was that she moved into a new apartment, positively royal in its dimensions, on the ground floor of the north wing. At the same time we are invited to believe that she gave up sleeping with him. This fact is accepted by all the historians, and all her contemporaries, and is supported by a wealth of evidence, including Madame de Pompadour’s own protestations on the subject. It is nothing if not unusual for a woman, no longer in her first youth, to want everybody to think that her lover has turned into her friend; and yet the Marquise announced the fact, she gave it out as it might be a marriage, or a birth, or some other interesting family event. If she did not actually send
lettres de faire-part
to all her acquaintances, she did to the Pope, written in her own hand. Her friends at Court, primed, no doubt, by her, told everybody. At Bellevue she put a statue of herself as
Amiti
é in a bosquet hitherto dedicated to
l’ Amour
– the Queen, on seeing it, could not repress a catty smile.

But was it true? The funny thing is that nobody ever seems to have asked that question, either at the time or subsequently. Madame de Pompadour was a very honest person, honesty and truth were the foundation of her character; in all her years at the Court she was never known to have told a lie. She was perfectly incapable of dissimulating her feelings, she had not a vestige of the sort of vanity which makes people pretend not to mind when things are going against them. So categorical a statement, coming from her, is a weighty piece of evidence.

The courtiers, valuable witnesses in a case like this, accepted the
amiti
é with interest, but without question. The French pride themselves on second sight where love is concerned (to this day the Parisians know, or believe they know, the very minute two people have stopped sleeping together); all were agreed that friendship had now taken the place of love. They recalled that the King had already lived platonically with one of his mistresses, Madame de Mailly. At the beginning of their affair he only went to bed with her now and then, followed by a quick dash to confession. Certain historians explain everything by saying that, as indicated in Maurepas’ poem, Madame de Pompadour had developed a complaint which made sexual relations impossible; the only evidence for this comes from gossip put about by her enemies who, as soon as it suited them to do so, did not hesitate to accuse her of being the mistress of the Duc de Choiseul. We do know that making love had never afforded her much pleasure, that it tired her and that she often had miscarriages. Some think that Dr Quesnay positively ordered her to give it up. Unfortunately, Madame du Hausset throws no light at all on this most fascinating subject.

It must, however, be observed that the relationship between two human beings is seldom as cut and dried as other human beings like to imagine; the very blaze of publicity in which she left the King’s bed throws a certain shadow of doubt. And Madame de Pompadour’s new bedroom, like her old one, had a secret staircase leading to the King’s.

As for the King, in his early forties, he was becoming rather middle-aged; M. de Croÿ describes him as riding heavily and not looking very well. He was more and more restless, moving off to a different house every week; in 1750 he only spent fifty days at Versailles. He seemed less passionate, neither as easily amused nor as easily bored as he used to be. He was gambling more than ever. A story, told to Dufort de Cheverny by the King’s servants, is not without significance in this context. A certain rich widow of the Paris bourgeoisie, beautiful, elegant, young and well-educated, thought that she would like to replace the Marquise. She made friends with Lebel, who seemed to fall in with her scheme and promised to introduce her to the King. She was to
go
to Versailles on a certain evening, when a little supper would be arranged in the private apartments. The young woman dressed herself up, as may be imagined, in her very best, and went down to Versailles, calling first on some friends in the palace so that she would have a reason to give if anybody should see her coach in the Cour Royale. Punctually at 11.30 p.m., as arranged, she went to Lebel’s room; he complimented her on her looks and her exactitude, but said she might have to wait a little while. Then, greatly to her dismay, he showed her into the King’s bedroom, where the bed was turned down ready for the night, and left her; it was not at all what she had expected. She began to feel more and more embarrassed as the minutes went by, and she waited there nearly two hours. At last in came the King, who spoke to her exactly as if she were a prostitute, and behaved not much better. Accustomed as she was to being treated with the usual deep respect accorded to women at that time, she was very much put out, but of course it was now too late to withdraw, or enter into explanations.

‘I must say you are a great deal prettier than I had expected you to be,’ said the King, ‘you seem altogether most attractive. Get into bed and I’ll come back presently.’ And off he went to his public
coucher
. Now it so happened that she had never in her life undressed herself without the help of a maid; her clothes were, of course, all done up down the back, with hundreds of hooks, very difficult to manipulate alone. However, she struggled out of them as best she could, and got into bed, where she waited another hour. At last the King returned, this time in his nightshirt. He joined her in the bed, looked at her and said: ‘You are certainly very beautiful, but you know it’s now three in the morning, and I’m not as young as I was; I don’t think I shall be able to do you justice. I would like to keep you here all night, but it’s really not possible and I think the best thing will be for you to go back to Paris. Put on your clothes and I’ll see you past the sentries.’

Now if this lady had never undressed herself, still less had she ever dressed herself alone; under the eye of the King she managed somehow, and then he escorted her out into the dark, deserted palace. Of course, as soon as he had left her in its maze of passages,
she
was completely lost, and wandered about for ages before she came to her friends’ flat. She cooked up some story about a carriage accident and spent the few remaining hours of night lying furiously on their sofa.

It is quite clear that what the King did not want was another Madame de Pompadour; he had already got one, he loved her, was used to her and she suited him perfectly. His mistresses, from now until after her death, were pretty little lower-class girls who did their work with no fuss, made no demands on him, had no influential relations or angry husbands, who did not insist upon their children being ennobled and who were content to retire with a modest dowry. These prostitutes, found for him by Lebel, were kept in the Parc aux Cerfs, a small villa in the town of Versailles. Occasionally they were lodged in an attic in the palace itself. They took no other part in the King’s life. The courtiers always said that, if Madame de Pompadour had lived, Madame du Barry, good-natured, gorgeous, illiterate and common beyond belief, would have been treated like this; the King only established her in the palace with him because he was so lonely. Many of the inhabitants of the Parc aux Cerfs had no idea that their lover was the King; they were told that he was a rich Pole, a relation of the Queen’s, indeed they were only told as much because he sometimes arrived in a great hurry, still wearing his Cordon Bleu. They came and went in a fairly quick succession. It is said that the King’s doctor warned him that he was making love too often. ‘But you told me I could, as much as I wanted to, so long as I used no aphrodisiacs.’ ‘Ah! Sire! Change is the greatest aphrodisiac of all!’

The first and most famous occupant of the Parc aux Cerfs, who lasted there longer than any, was an Irish girl, Louise O’Murphy, commonly known as ‘La Morphil’ or ‘La Morphise’. She was one of five or six sisters who, in spite of the fact that several of them were pock-marked, were all prostitutes. When their father, an Irish cobbler, was told that Louise was now the King’s mistress, he exclaimed: ‘Ah me, among all my girls not one is virtuous.’ A ravishing beauty, Boucher’s favourite model, we can still see her lovely round, angelic face in many of his compositions, nymph, goddess, saint and shepherdess (more sheep than shepherdess,
Michelet
says unkindly); the Queen saw it every day of her life among the Holy Family in her private chapel. As the first appearance of ‘La Morphil’ coincided with Madame de Pompadour’s move into the new flat, a great deal of interest was taken in her; at one moment she was expected to supplant the Marquise.

‘La Morphil’ never appeared at Court, though the Duc d’Ayen was allowed to meet her as a great favour, but went quite openly about her occasions in the town of Versailles, simply dressed and pretty as a peach; she always went to the Parish Church on Sunday. She inhabited the Parc aux Cerfs for several years and had one or two babies; her downfall was caused by saying to the King: ‘What terms are you on now with the old lady?’ meaning Madame de Pompadour. He gave her one of his freezing looks, and she never saw him again. She was married off, with a good dowry, to an officer from Auvergne who was soon afterwards killed at the battle of Rosbach; their son, General Beaufranchet, was present at the execution of Louis XVI.

Nineteenth-century historians, so easily shocked that it is impossible not to suspect them of hypocrisy, pretend to think that Madame de Pompadour differed in no way from the prostitutes of the Parc aux Cerfs and that furthermore she acted as manageress of this establishment, procuring the girls for it and making all the arrangements. According to them, she was not only a whore but also a procuress. The truth is that she accepted the Parc aux Cerfs as a necessity, but had nothing whatever to do with it. However, she did prefer its inhabitants to any other sort of rival; these uneducated children, she very well knew, would never endanger her position in the King’s heart. ‘It’s his heart I want,’ she said, over and over again. She was too honest not to see the facts as they were, and she spoke quite openly on the subject.

‘The King does pick up the most extraordinary expressions,’ she said to Madame du Hausset, ‘for instance
il y a gros
’ (meaning a big bet, probably).

‘He picks them up from those young ladies,’ said the maid.

Madame de Pompadour laughed, and said, ‘
Il y a gros
.’

No doubt Carlyle, Lord Macaulay, Michelet, the Duc de Broglie and so on would have found even this shocking enough; but they
had
never been in love with Louis XV. Given all the circumstances it is hard to see how else she could have behaved.

We only know of one occasion when she was actively concerned with these pleasures of the King. She sent for Madame du Hausset, who found her alone with him, and said: ‘I want you to spend a few days at a house in the Avenue de St Cloud, where you will find a young woman about to have a baby. You must take charge of the household; preside, like a goddess in a fable, over the birth; be present at the christening and give the names of the father and mother.’

Here the King began to laugh, saying: ‘The father is a very good sort of fellow.’ ‘Loved by all,’ said Madame de Pompadour, ‘and adored by those who know him.’ She took a diamond aigrette out of a little cupboard, and showed it to the King; ‘I thought it should not be too grand.’ ‘How good you are,’ he said, kissing her. Her eyes filled with tears and she laid her hand on his heart, saying: ‘That’s what I want’; whereupon they all began to cry. Presently the King spoke of godparents for the baby, saying: ‘Better get two people out of the street, so as not to attract attention, and give them a few
livres
.’

‘Oh, give them a
louis
,’ said the Marquise, ‘or it will really seem too little.’ The King said: ‘Do you remember the cab driver? I wanted to give him a
louis
but the Duc d’Ayen said we should be recognized if I did.’ Perhaps they had another little cry after this touching reminiscence. He then gave fifty
louis
to Madame du Hausset, saying: ‘Look after the mother, won’t you? She’s a good girl, though not particularly brilliant.’