Madame de Pompadour (16 page)

THE KING’S MISTRESS
was a traditionally unpopular figure in France. She was also a convenient scapegoat. The French could thus love their monarch, while laying his more unpopular actions at her door. (Marie-Antoinette, who doubled the role of wife and titular mistress, suffered in her turn from this long established attitude.)

After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, Madame de Pompadour became more unpopular every day. The public was displeased by the treaty and indeed, considering the splendid victories of French arms during the past years, it did seem rather unprofitable. Louis XV said he was a king, not a shopkeeper, and refused to make various demands suggested by his ministers. The only advantage it brought to France was a not very exalted establishment for Madame Infante whose husband received the duchy of Parma. ‘As stupid as the Peace,’ said the Parisians, and blamed Madame de Pompadour.

Only those who have known what we call now a bad press can realize what a perpetual source of irritation it is, nearly always, to its victim. Nowadays the victim can at least answer back, with a dignified letter to
The Times
, or a less dignified libel suit, or he can hire a publicity agent. But the bad press of the eighteenth century was impossible to combat, taking, as it did, the form of horrid little poems and epigrams passed from mouth to mouth, posters, pamphlets and leaflets, all anonymous. Hundreds of these were directed at Madame de Pompadour, they were called the ‘Poissonades’; dull and dirty, they are untranslatable, since they nearly all depend on a play of words round her maiden name. Most of them originated
at
Court, with courtiers too stupid to realize that in thus attacking the monarch they were casting opprobrium on their own way of life. M. Berryer, the chief of police, a devoted friend of Madame de Pompadour, was crossing the state rooms at Versailles one day when he was rudely stopped by a group of courtiers who asked him how it was he could not run to earth the authors of the libels. ‘You ought to know Paris better,’ they said. He gave them a sharp look and said he knew Paris like the palm of his hand, but was not so much at home at Versailles. The Parisians lapped up the Poissonades, added to them and eagerly distributed them; the King was not spared and the two names were bandied about with evil intent. Nothing they could do was right. If they entertained they were wasting money, if they did not it was her fault because she wanted to prevent him from meeting other women. When they built the house at Bellevue, they were abused by half the public for spending too much, and by the other half for building such a wretched little house, smaller than that of a
fermier général
.

Each taxpayer felt that her houses, furniture and works of art were paid for out of his own pocket, and to make matters worse, her taste was for small things of an impermanent nature. Instead of great monuments like those of Louis XIV, the King’s money was being frittered away on such toys as little wooden pavilions in the forest, built and furnished with amazing elegance, surrounded with large groves of exotic trees, and aviaries of tropical birds, visited once or twice and then taken down again so that the next year it was impossible to see where they had been. Croÿ describes a visit to Trianon with the King, who showed him the hothouses, the rare plants, the hens (which he specially liked), the charming pavilion, the flower and the vegetable gardens; all arranged so prettily. Croÿ is full of admiration, but deplores the fact that Madame de Pompadour should have given the King ‘an unfortunate taste for expensive little things which cannot last’. This view was shared by the public. Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living.

* * *

When the Marquise first arrived at Versailles she had four implacable enemies there, the Duc de Richelieu, the brothers d’Argenson (the Marquis and the Comte), and the Comte de Maurepas. The last three were ministers, of bourgeois antecedents, sons of ministers in the government of Louis XIV. The Marquis d’Argenson, already out of favour, was sent away in 1747, more through the influence of Madame Infante than that of Madame de Pompadour. He was not disgraced, since he was allowed to resign, but he left the Court and would never have been heard of again had he not kept a diary. Unfortunately for Madame de Pompadour, since it is largely devoted to envenoming her memory, this diary is far the wittiest and best written of the memoirs of her contemporaries. However, d’Argenson overdoes it and the reader ends by hardly believing a word he says. He is one of those diarists who are fond of prophesying and whose prophecies never seem to come true. The King is getting tired of her, she has completely lost her looks: old, yellow, faded and withered, her teeth have gone black, her neck is all scales, her bosom a terrible sight, she is spitting blood: the King cannot bear to go near her, she disgusts him, he will send her away and go to live with his family. Everything she touches turns to ruin, and so on. At the same time the other diarists, who, after all, lived at Versailles and saw her every day, entirely contradict him; they record that never has she been prettier, gayer, or the King more in love, and everything she does is delicious and delightful.

D’Argenson, scribbling furiously away in the country, was no menace to Madame de Pompadour in her lifetime, but the other two politicians were. Maurepas was the first to show his claws. He was a minister of thirty-one years’ standing, at this time Minister of the Marine, and he had enormous influence with the King, who had, of course, known him from a child. He was a most entertaining, lively fellow, who roared with laughter, especially at his own jokes; except for the Duc de Richelieu, he amused the King more than anybody. Writing in his journal the best account we have of Madame de Pompadour’s presentation at Court, he adds: ‘She is excessively common, a bourgeoise out of her proper place, who will displace everybody if she is not soon herself displaced.’

It was his aim to see that this should happen, as quickly as
possible.
But, so far from her being displaced, he found her daily becoming more powerful. She was nearly always present when he saw the King; she would not hesitate to burst in, when they were working together, with some such request as the cancellation of a
lettre de cachet
issued by Maurepas. Should he venture an objection, the King always took her side: ‘Do what Madame suggests, please.’ None of the mistresses had liked Maurepas but none had dared to treat him in such a way. ‘M. de Maurepas,’ she said, on one occasion, ‘you are turning the King yellow. Good day to you, M. de Maurepas.’ The King said nothing, and Maurepas was obliged to gather up his papers and go.

His revenge was to heap ridicule on her, to imitate her bourgeois ways as soon as her back was turned, and to invent Poissonades. He was an accomplished rhymester; all the most spiteful and beastly of these were attributed to his pen. Madame de Pompadour was determined to get rid of him, but Maurepas, quite well aware of this, was not at all alarmed; he thought himself indispensable to the King. This was a misapprehension under which each of Louis XV’s ministers suffered in turn; it is very curious to see how little they seem to have understood the circumstances of their predecessors’ exits. The King was too shy, he hated any form of embarrassment too much, ever to hint that somebody was displeasing him. He would let matters go on until, having had enough, he would strike with a dreadful swiftness; a letter of dismissal and banishment, couched in freezing terms, would be delivered to the unsuspecting offender.

In 1749, more and more hateful verses were being whispered round the Court until finally Madame de Pompadour, sitting down to supper, found, in her napkin, the famous quatrain:

Par vos façons nobles et franches
,

Iris, vous enchantez nos cœurs
;

Sur nos pas vous semez des fleurs

Mais ce ne sont que des fleurs blanches
.

The disgusting implication of this rhyme, that Madame de Pompadour suffered from
fluor albus
, whether true or not, was
perfectly
clear to all who read it and the Marquise, usually rather philosophical about such things, was thoroughly upset. Dr Quesnay went to the King and said the whole affair was preying on her mind and making her ill; indeed she now had a miscarriage, followed by one of her attacks of fever. She told the King that she was thoroughly frightened, Maurepas would murder her, she said, as, some thought, he had murdered Madame de Châteauroux. But the King still hesitated to dismiss him. He was fond of Maurepas, old friend of all his life; he enjoyed working with him, and thought him good at his work. Above all, he loved his jokes. Madame de Pompadour made a temporary alliance with Richelieu over this affair; Son Excellence hated the minister even more than he hated the mistress and for the same jealous reasons.

Together they composed a memorandum, which they gave to the King, accusing M. de Maurepas of allowing the navy to become dangerously weak. They had not entirely invented this; as early as 1745 the Duc de Luynes says that many people considered Maurepas responsible for the fall of Louisburg, whose garrison he was supposed to have kept short of ammunition. He was also accused of an act of gross negligence – it was said that three ships of the Compagnie des Indes were captured by the English, because Maurepas had omitted to tell them the route which could safely have been taken.

Of course he answered this memorandum with the plausibility of an old hand at the political game; nothing had been his fault. The money, he added – with a dig at Madame de Pompadour – which should have been used for building ships, seemed to have gone into other channels. One morning, the Marquise ordered her sedan chair and, accompanied by Madame d’Estrades, she went to call on him. ‘Nobody shall say that I send for the King’s ministers.’ Then, very sharply, ‘When will you find out who it is that writes these poems?’ ‘As soon as I do find out, Madame, I shall of course inform His Majesty.’ ‘You are not very respectful, Monsieur, to the King’s mistresses.’ ‘On the contrary, Madame, I have always respected them whoever they may be.’

The Court was naturally buzzing with the news of this unaccustomed morning call, and that evening, at a party, somebody said to Maurepas that he seemed to have had an interesting visitor.
‘Yes,’
he replied carelessly, for all to hear, ‘the Marquise. It won’t do her any good, I’m not lucky to the mistresses. I seem to remember that Madame de Mailly came to see me two days before her sister took her place, and of course everybody knows that I poisoned Madame de Châteauroux. I bring them all bad luck.’ These rash words were immediately reported to the private apartments; Maurepas had gone too far. Next morning at the King’s
lever
he was in wonderful form, never had he talked more brilliantly and never had the King laughed so much at his sallies. He announced that he was going to Paris that afternoon for a wedding.

‘Enjoy yourself’, said the King, as they parted. He himself was going to Madame de Pompadour’s house at La Celle, near St Cloud, with a few friends, including Richelieu. The next morning at eight o’clock Son Excellence was seen leaving for Paris, in such tremendous spirits that the onlookers wondered if some misfortune had not befallen M. de Maurepas. Also at eight o’clock the Comte d’Argenson, who had received a note from La Celle in the middle of the night, went to wake up Maurepas, sound asleep after his wedding party. One look at d’Argenson’s face told the Minister what had happened. The wretched man, who lived but for society, politics and the life at Court, rubbed his eyes and read the following note: ‘M. le Comte de Maurepas, having promised to tell you myself when I have no further use for your services, I request you herewith to resign your ministry. As your estate at Pontchartrain is too near, I request you to retire to Bourges during this week, without having seen anybody but close relations. Send your resignation to M. de Saint Florentin. Louis.’

Smiling, imperturbable as ever, Maurepas got up, dressed and went his way. He knew his master well enough to know that this was final. Ministers who lost their jobs at that Court were always exiled, since the King did not care to see their gloomy, reproachful faces, with an implied, ‘I told you so’, when things went wrong. Nobody had ever been recalled. Maurepas, luckier than most, did return to Versailles; some twenty-five years later Louis XVI made him Prime Minister and was not well-advised in doing so.

The Duc de Nivernais, Madame de Pompadour’s
petit époux
, was married to Maurepas’ sister, and a few months later (1749) he
wrote
from Rome to the Marquise: ‘… May I be allowed to describe his condition, without society, with nothing to occupy him, in a country which is literally a desert, where the air is unhealthy most of the year and where the roads are impassable from November to May … You know quite well how delicate Madame de Maurepas is; not a single day that she doesn’t suffer either from colic of the stomach or from sharp pains in the head, where she very likely has a growth such as killed her father. Should she get a fever, she would certainly be dead before a doctor could arrive from Paris. She and her husband have this prospect ever before them; it goes to my heart to think of it; surely I can touch yours, and that of the King, always so good and understanding. All we ask, and it seems not unreasonable, is that His Majesty should allow him to live on his estate at Pontchartrain, to be understood that Paris would be out of bounds – his punishment would still be terrible enough …’ (Two more pages on these lines).

The Marquise merely replied that this letter did not surprise her at all; it was what she would have expected from such a nice person. In fact the King had been more thoughtful and merciful than he might have been in this matter. He had chosen Bourges because Maurepas’ greatest friend and close relation, the Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld, was Archbishop there, and the Maurepas went to live with him. Four years later they were allowed to return to Pontchartrain, both in perfect health.