The Book of the Courtesans (26 page)

Yet, notwithstanding the fact that almost everything in this chapter of the
story leans toward a modest if not sad end, when Jeanne was just four years old,
Anne’s fate took a happy turn. When she gave birth to a second child by
another lover, she was not abandoned. Instead, Monsieur Billard-Dumonceaux, who
was a man of means, well positioned and somewhat powerful as a paymaster of
Paris and inspector of the army commissariats, summoned the small ménage
to Paris. He put the family in separate lodgings for a few months, but when the
little boy he had fathered died, he decided to move Anne and Jeanne into his
own grand and luxurious home.

Here, what was no doubt a misfortune for her mother would, in hindsight, be
fortunate for Jeanne. Dumonceaux already had a lover, a woman who lived with
him. The identity of this woman can hardly have seemed as auspicious to Jeanne,
then just four years old, as it clearly seems to us today. The mistress of
Dumonceaux’s household was an Italian courtesan, well known in the world of
galanterie
as Madame Frédérique, but known to Jeanne, who
came to love her, simply as Francesca.

Francesca, as it turned out, loved the little girl, too. Jeanne was often
allowed into her bedroom, which with its velvet chairs, taffeta bedcovers, and
scented pillows must have seemed as seductive as the voluptuous courtesan
herself. Jeanne loved Francesca’s toiletries, the golden brushes and
handmirrors, the perfume bottles, her clothing, her jewels; in turn, Francesca
loved dressing the very pretty little girl in beautiful clothes. The details
have not survived, but small garments of lace and velvet come to mind. She was
taught to dance and in other ways entertain the guests who came to the house.
And Dumonceaux, who was a bit pretentious where art was concerned, painted her
as a nymph in the manner of Boucher.

For two years, Jeanne was the adored center of this unconventional household.
But fate took still another turn. Yielding to admonitions from her family to
lead a more respectable life, Anne Bécu married a plain man who, because
he had a small annuity, was able to provide for her. Any reluctance he might
have had over this union was quickly dispelled by the fact that Dumonceaux
arranged a lucrative position for him at the army commissariat in Corsica. In
the same year, Francesca, perhaps wishing to retain her influence over Jeanne,
convinced Dumonceaux to send the child to Saint-Aure’s, a convent designed
to prepare respectable girls for modest employment in the domestic trades.

The change cannot have been easy. The romantic atmosphere Jeanne had grown used
to was absent here. All her pretty dresses were taken from her, replaced with a
plain uniform and a plain black veil that completely hid the golden hair so
often admired by Francesca. But the child had a basically sunny disposition.
And understandably, given the unstable nature of her past, she was good at
adapting to different climates. She obeyed all the new rules she had been made
to learn, recited her catechisms and prayers, kneeled and rose at the right
times, all with an air of insouciance that charmed even the Mother Superior.

Fate, of course, is only one element guiding the course of a life. To every
circumstance there are many possible responses. Even at the beginning of what
would in the end be a nine-year tenure in the convent, Jeanne’s character
had begun to emerge. For the rest of her life, she would be known not only as
beautiful but as charming. The alchemy of this virtue can be observed in her
early years, years filled, as we have said, with constant change, but also
admiration. An effective means to meet, and even at times control, fate was
handed to her young. It remained for her to put her own stamp on the ability.

After she left the convent at the age of fifteen, the narrative of her life
unfolded swiftly. Francesca, whom she rushed eagerly to meet, was not happy to
receive such a beautiful young woman. Jeanne had turned into a potential rival.
No further help could be expected now from either Francesca or Dumonceaux.
Jeanne was forced to find employment. Her mother’s sister knew a
hairdresser who needed an apprentice, so the problem of her support seemed, at
least for a time, solved. Yet, almost too predictably, she and the hairdresser
fell in love. And after they began living together, his mother, who had a
better match in mind, threatened to send Jeanne to Salpêtrière, the
asylum where wanton women were imprisoned.

To prevent her daughter’s imprisonment, Anne took the hairdresser to court
with the accusation that he had corrupted a minor. And here we can already find
the evidence of an ingredient essential to the charm by which Jeanne would one
day win the king of France as her lover. She seemed innocent, far too innocent
to the judges to be anything but the victim of a young man’s advances. Thus,
to avoid prison, her lover had to flee to London.

What followed was a period as companion to the wealthy widow of a
fermier
général
,
*
²
which ended because of the many intrigues in the
household she attracted, the somewhat welcome attention of the lady’s two
sons, who were both married, and the unwelcome advances of one of the widow’
s daughters-in-law, who was attracted to Jeanne, too.

Because of the scandal, she was dismissed. But she did not leave empty-handed.
Among the wealthy men Jeanne had met in this château, there were some who
habituated a shop in Paris so famous for its luxurious fashions that it was
virtually a meeting place for courtesans and libertines. For a brief period she
was happily employed at Labille’s “A La Toilette,” a glamorous
place with a heady mix of great ladies, noblemen, officers, courtiers, and
courtesans, all of whom came for the painted fans and feathers, ribboned hats,
and elegant sword knots. But this too would be just one more way station on her
trajectory toward an unlikely destination. Tall and blond, with almond-shaped
blue eyes sparkling from a sweetly delicate complexion, Jeanne was a stellar
attraction among the
grisettes
working for Labille, most of whom
traded their attentions for gifts they received from a clientele that included
wealthy bankers, merchants, and government officials. For a period Jeanne lived
with various lovers, but though she was offered a shop and house of her own
more than once, she kept her independence.

Her resolve did not, however, last for very long. At the public festivities
held to celebrate the placement of a statue of Louis XV in the Place de la
Concorde, she caught the attention of the comte Jean du Barry. Born to a titled
but impoverished family in Toulouse, though the land and manor he had inherited
from his godfather afforded him a respectable income, du Barry lived so far
beyond his means that soon all he had left was debt. At which point, he
abandoned his wife and infant son to cultivate his connections with wealthy men
until eventually he arrived in Paris. But despite these connections, he failed
to win the diplomatic appointment he sought. Thus, he turned to another way to
make his fortune. Possessed of a fascinating charm himself, he became the
procurer for a group of men from the most prominent families in France.
Searching the city for beautiful women,
grisettes
, shopgirls, and
actresses, he could be counted on to provide aristocrats with their mistresses.

In the beginning, he kept Jeanne for himself. She went to live with him in
exchange for a sum of money he paid to her parents. Jeanne herself was pleased
with the luxuries with which he surrounded her, while for a period he preserved
the girl for himself alone. Yet clearly he had other plans. He began almost
immediately to prepare her for her debut in higher society. The fine French
accent she had learned to speak at Saint-Aure’s, and her education
there—she had read Shakespeare and was familiar with Greek and Roman
classics—and the exquisite sense of fashion she had learned at
Labille’s shop served her well, and to this du Barry added a certain
worldliness. She was presented as his mistress at the Opéra, taken in an
elegant carriage to balls and parties, where she mingled and conversed with
aristocrats, poets, and writers. And like so many courtesans before and after
her, while she was trained to appear as if she were a noblewoman, she also
became well versed in erotic arts.

Of the many men to whom Jean du Barry sold Jeanne’s favors in this period,
probably the most important was the duc de Richelieu. He would be a loyal ally
until his own death once she became the king’s lover. Yet ironically, it
was a meeting with the man who was to become her chief enemy at the court that
brought her, almost by accident, into the king’s visual range. (For such
was her charm that for all practical purposes she won him in a single glance.
)

Still hoping for a diplomatic post, and thinking that Choiseul, Louis’
minister of foreign affairs, would not be able to resist her, du Barry sent
Jeanne to Versailles to plead his case. But Choiseul was not attracted to her.
“She was not at all to my taste,” he wrote; rightly suspicious of
du Barry, he dismissed her.

Disappointed as she may have been, Jeanne must have resolved that the trip she
had made not be entirely in vain. The king would soon be leaving mass and going
to dine, and like all Parisians, she knew that the public was allowed to watch
him as he walked there. Hence she made her way to the state apartments and
managed to find a place at the front of the crowd, which was pressed against
the royal balustrades, waiting to see their king pass by.

The public was there so often, observing him every time he went to mass or sat
down to dine, that the king could easily have failed to turn in her direction.
Unless—and this of course is pure conjecture—a certain kind of
charm is not only figuratively magnetic but literally so. As absurd as the
proposition may sound, it often does appear that very charming people have the
power to draw the attention of those in whom they are interested into their own
orbits. Whatever the explanation, Louis did turn toward her, and he was
immediately struck by what has been described by many of those who knew her as
the radiance of her presence.

Three centuries later, we are still speculating what it could have been, once
the king turned, that moved him so at the sight of this woman. Of course, she
was uncommonly beautiful, but so were many of the women who surrounded him.
Like his great-grandfather, the lustful “Sun King,” Louis XV was a
famously amorous man. He liked to make love with his
ma"tresse en
titre
, whoever she was, at least twice a day. Moreover, in addition to
occasionally spending a night with the queen, he had other, more transitory
lovers. While she was still living, Pompadour, who had a more fragile nature
and was literally worn out by his appetites, sought to protect him from public
scandal by establishing a house called Le Parc aux Cerfs.
*
³
His valet, Lebel,
picked out the beautiful women who were housed there while they waited for
royal visits.

Though he did not bring Jeanne to the Parc aux Cerfs, this must have been the
destination Lebel thought the king eventually intended when Louis asked that he
bring her to him. Not only was she born a natural child to a seamstress in the
provinces, but she was a prostitute living with the notorious Jean du Barry.
When finally she came to Versailles as Louis’
ma"tresse en titre
,
this caused some controversy. Lebel tried to warn him about her past, but Louis
was so in love that no one could dissuade him.

In part, his ardor can be explained by what he said to the duc de Richelieu.
“She is the only woman who can satisfy me,” he told him. Yet this
does not solve the mystery so much as locate it. What it was he needed and what
it was she gave him are two questions still unanswered. We know that Jeanne was
skillful in bed. But skill, especially for a king, used to the best of
everything, is never satisfying by itself. Can anything be worse than clinical
manipulation where desire is concerned? It was not only her body that he wanted.
Apparently long after she had moved into the palace, he had an almost
insatiable wish for her company. True, the king must have been lonely. The
queen, who had not satisfied him sexually in years but whom he loved, had
recently died. Pompadour, his great friend for years, even after they were no
longer lovers, was gone, too. Still there were countless women, noble and
otherwise, who would have been happy to accompany him anywhere.

Since love is, of course, mysterious, it would be hubris to pretend to
understand the chemistry between these two. If we are tempted to conjecture, it
is only because the moment when Louis turned his head has been so well
described, a moment that, if it was not love at first sight, certainly
contained a powerful premonition of love. Were we to paint the famous scene,
the focal point of the canvas would have to be Jeanne’s smile. Louis was
amazed that she had smiled at him at all. An expression that, under the
circumstances, was somewhat brazen.

But where swaying the powerful is concerned, of the two virtues that are most
efficacious, cheek and charm, the latter is by far the more important. And
Jeanne’s smile, as it so happens, was known to be exceedingly charming. In
an instant, she managed to convey the impression when she smiled that she was
innocent, almost virginal. Yet it was by no means innocence alone that drew the
king. At the same time that she seemed fresh, untouched, pure, she made no
attempt at all to conceal what in fact she knew. Sexual knowledge is evident
not only in bed but in the way a woman carries herself anywhere, the expression
in her eyes, her gestures. Jeanne’s considerable background in matters of
the flesh would have been evident in her least movement, including the subtle
shift that occurs as a smile passes over a face.