Authors: Antonia Fraser
Marie Antoinette
NAN A. TALESE
Doubleday
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO
SYDNEY AUCKLAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
• A SMALL ARCHDUCHESS
CHAPTER FOUR
• SENDING AN ANGEL
CHAPTER FIVE
• FRANCE’S HAPPINESS
CHAPTER SIX
• IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE WORLD
CHAPTER SEVEN
• STRANGE BEHAVIOUR
CHAPTER EIGHT
• LOVE OF A PEOPLE
CHAPTER NINE
• IN TRUTH A GODDESS
CHAPTER TEN
• AN UNHAPPY WOMAN?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
• YOU SHALL BE MINE . . .
CHAPTER TWELVE
• FULFILLING THEIR WISHES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
• THE FLOWERS OF THE CROWN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
• ACQUISITIONS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
• ARREST THE CARDINAL!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
• MADAME DEFICIT
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
• CLOSE TO SHIPWRECK
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
• HATED, HUMBLED, MORTIFIED
PART FIVE
• THE AUSTRIAN WOMAN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
• HER MAJESTY THE PRISONER
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
• DEPARTURE AT MIDNIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
• UP TO THE EMPEROR
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
• VIOLENCE AND RAGE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
• THE TOWER
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
• UNFORTUNATE PRINCESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
• THE HEAD OF ANTOINETTE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
• EPILOGUE
FOR HAROLD
THE FIRST READER
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Et in Arcadia Ego:
even in Arcadia death is lurking. Madame de Staël, thinking of the “brilliance and gaiety” of Marie Antoinette’s early life in contrast to her later sufferings, was reminded of Poussin’s great picture on the theme of the omnipresence of death: the revelling shepherds in the forest glade brought up short by the sight of a tomb with this menacing inscription. Yet hindsight can make bad history. In writing this biography, I have tried not to allow the sombre tomb to make its presence felt too early. The elegiac should have its place as well as the tragic, flowers and music as well as revolution and counter-revolution. Above all, I have attempted, at least so far as is humanly possible, to tell Marie Antoinette’s dramatic story without anticipating its terrible ending.
My concern, as the subtitle of the book indicates, has been to trace the twofold journey of the Austrian-born French Queen. On the one hand, this was an important political journey from her homeland to act as an ambassadress—or agent—in a predominantly hostile country where she was nicknamed in advance
L’Autrichienne.
On the other hand, there was her journey of personal development from the inadequate fourteen-year-old bride to a very different mature woman, twenty odd years later.
In the course of tracing this journey, I have hoped to unravel the cruel myths and salacious distortions surrounding her name. Principal among them must be the notorious incident which has Marie Antoinette urging the poor, being without bread, to eat cake. This story was first told about the Spanish Princess who married Louis XIV a hundred years before the arrival of Marie Antoinette in France; it continued to be repeated about a series of other Princesses throughout the eighteenth century. As a handy journalistic cliché, it may never die. Yet, not only was the story wrongly ascribed to Marie Antoinette in the first place, but such ignorant behaviour would have been quite out of character. The unfashionably philanthropic Marie Antoinette would have been far more likely to bestow her own cake (or
brioche
) impulsively upon the starving people before her. On the subject of the Queen’s sex life—insatiable lover? voracious lesbian? heroine of a single romantic passion?—I have similarly tried to exert common sense in an area which must remain forever speculative (as indeed it was in her own day).
Biographers have their small private moments of perception, the importance of which was recognized by the Goncourt brothers, admiring biographers of the Queen in 1858: “a time of which one does not have a dress sample and a dinner menu, is a time dead to us, an irrecoverable time.” Lafont d’Aussone, author of an early post-Restoration study (1824), found an ear of wheat made out of silver thread on the floor of the Queen’s former bedroom at Saint Cloud during a sale and pocketed it. Two hundred years after the death of Marie Antoinette, I found the experience of being asked to don white gloves to inspect the tiny swatches in her Wardrobe Book at the Archives Nationales both appropriate and affecting, the pinpricks made by the Queen to indicate her choice of the day’s costume being still visible. I had, however, no desire to emulate Lafont d’Aussone’s act of pious theft—if only because two gendarmes stood close behind my chair.
The Baronne d’Oberkirch, writing her memoirs just before the deluge, gave an unforgettable vignette of the aristocrats returning from an all-night ball at Versailles in their carriages, with the peasants already doing their rounds in the bright morning sunshine: “What a contrast between their calm and satisfied visages and our exhausted appearance! The rouge had fallen from our cheeks, the powder from our hair . . . not a pretty sight.” Such a vision seems to sum up the contrasts of the
ancien régime
in France—including the Baronne’s innocent assumption that the peasants were calm and satisfied. Certainly the wealth of female testimonies to the period and to the life of Marie Antoinette gave special immediacy to my researches. The women who survived felt an urgent need to relive the trauma and record the truth, a compulsion often modestly disguised as a little gift to their descendants: “c’est pour vous, mes enfants . . .” wrote Pauline de Tourzel, an eye-witness to some of the horrific incidents of the early Revolution, at the start of her reminiscences. Probably no queen in history has been so well served by her female chroniclers.
In a book written in English about a French (and Austrian) subject, there is an obvious problem to do with translation. Nor does it have an easy solution. What is tiresomely obscure for one reader may be gratingly obvious to another. On the whole I have preferred to translate rather than not in the interests of clarity. With names and titles I have also placed the need for clarity above consistency; even if some decisions may seem arbitrary in consequence, intelligibility has been the aim. Where eighteenth-century money is concerned, it is notoriously difficult to provide any idea of the modern equivalent so on the whole I have avoided doing so. However, one recent estimate equated a pound sterling in 1790 to £45 in 1996; there were roughly 24 livres to the pound in the reign of Louis XVI. As ever, it has been my pleasure and privilege to do my own research, except where individuals are specifically and most gratefully acknowledged. The references are, with equal gratitude, listed in the Notes and Sources.
I wish to thank H.M. the Queen for permission to use and quote from the Royal Archives, and also Lady de Bellaigue, Keeper of the Royal Archives, Windsor. I thank the Duke of Devonshire for permission to quote from the Devonshire Collections and Mr. Peter Day, Keeper of the Collection, Chatsworth; also Dr. Amanda Foreman and Ms. Caroline Chapman who supplied me with references to the 5th Duke’s Collection. Ms. Jane Dormer gave permission for me to quote from Lady Elizabeth Foster’s (unpublished) Journal; Dr. Robin Eagles let me read his D.Phil. thesis “Francophilia and Francophobia in English Society 1748–1783,” Oxford, 1996 (since published). Jessica Beer was invaluable in helping me to set up research in the Hofburg, Vienna, and accompanied me on expeditions into the scenes of Marie Antoinette’s childhood; Christina Burton did useful Fersen research in Sweden; Fr. Francis Edwards S.J. directed me towards canonical references; Professor Dan Jacobson supplied material about the early Judaic history of the Scapegoat; Cynthia Liebow was at all times a highly able enabler in Paris; Katie Mitchell pointed me towards Genet’s feelings for Marie Antoinette; Mrs. Bernadette Peters, former Archivist, Coutts Bank, researched their archives there for me; Mlle. Cécile Coutin, Vice Présidente de l’Association Marie-Antoinette, supplied information about Marie Antoinette’s compositions and the 1993 commemoration; Mr. J. E. A. Wickham, M.S., M.D., B. Sc., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.R., gave advice on phimosis. I am much indebted for conversations, advice and critical comments to Dr. Philip Mansel, M. Bernard Minoret, Dr. Robert Oresko and Dr. John Rogister. Professor T. C. W. Blanning read the manuscript for errors, the remaining ones being, of course, my own.
The Vicomte de Rohan, Président, Société des Amis de Versailles, was a distinguished guide to the secrets of Versailles. I wish to thank Doktor Lauger, Press Attaché to the President of the Austrian Republic, for access to the room in which Marie Antoinette was born, and Mag. Christina Schütz, IIASA, Laxenburg, for my visit there. The Austrian Tourist Board was helpful with current information about Mariazell; as were Gendarme Klein of the Varennes-en-Argonne Gendarmerie, Madame Vagnère of the Sainte Ménehould Tourist Office and the Gendarmerie at Sainte Menehould with information relevant to the flight to Varennes.
A host of people assisted me in a variety of ways: Mr. Arthur Addington; Mr. Rodney Allen; Dr. L. R. I. Baker; Professor Colin Bonwick; Mrs. Anka Begley; Ms. Sue Bradbury, Folio Society; Professor John Beckett; Dr. Joseph Baillio; Dr. David Charlton; Dr. Eveline Cruickshanks; Professor John Ehrman; Mrs. Gila Falkus and my god-daughter Helen Falkus to whom the possibility of this project was first confided; Mr. Julian Fellowes; Mme. Laure de Grammont; Mr. Ivor Guest; Mrs. Sue Hopson; Dr. Rana Kabbani; Mrs. Linda Kelly; Dr. Ron Knowles; M. Karl Lagerfeld; Ms. Jenny Mackilligan; Mr. Ben Macintyre; Mr. Bryan Maggs of Maggs Bros.; Mr. Alastair Macaulay; Mr. Paul Minet, Royalty Digest; Mr. Geoffrey Munn of Wartski; Mr. David Pryce-Jones; Mrs. Julia Parker D.F. Astrol.S.; Professor Pamela Pilbeam; Mrs. Juliet Pennington; Mrs. Renata Propper; Professor Aileen Ribeiro; Lord Rothschild; Sir Roy Strong; Mme. Chantal Thomas; Lord Thomas of Swynnerton; Mr. Alex M. Thomson; M. Roland Bossard, Château de Versailles, Chargé d’études documentaires; Mr. Francis Wyndham; Ms. Charlotte Zeepvat.
The staff of the following libraries deserve thanks: the British Library; in Paris the Archives Nationales and Mme. Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, and the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Public Record Office and Dr. A. S. Bevan, Reader Information Service Dept.; the Victoria and Albert Museum Library; in Vienna, the Hofburg Haus-Archiv. My publishers on both sides of the Atlantic—Nan Talese, Anthony Cheetham, Ion Trewin and my excellent editor Rebecca Wilson—were extremely helpful; as were my agent Mike Shaw and my assistant Linda Peskin at her magic machine. The incomparable Douglas Matthews did the index.
Members of my family were as usual highly supportive, in particular my “French family,” Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni and Jean Pierre Cavassoni, while my brother Thomas Pakenham supplied an interesting botanical reference. I am also much indebted to my daughter Flora Fraser; with her knowledge of the eighteenth century and its sources, she guided me in particular at Windsor. Lastly, like everyone who has studied Marie Antoinette in the present time, I owe an enormous debt to Liliane de Rothschild. Her unrivalled mixture of erudition and enthusiasm has been a constant inspiration during the five years I worked on this book; in her own words:
Vive la Reine!
ANTONIA FRASER
Feast of All Saints 2000