Return to text.
*61Now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
Return to text.
*62Meaning literally “cabbage of love” although chou has moved to have a secondary meaning of “darling” or “sweetheart.” It is unconvincing to cite Marie Antoinette’s use of this endearment as a proof that Louis Charles was Fersen’s son as has been suggested; leaving aside the unlikelihood of Marie Antoinette making an allusion to her child’s bastardy in this manner, Maria Josepha’s reference makes it clear that this was simply a pet name given to a beloved child.
Return to text.
*63The respective points of view of Queen and Cardinal were put later by their acolytes, Madame Campan, and the Cardinal’s Vicar General, the Abbé Georgel; both writers, although not necessarily present at the crucial scenes in the affair, received the confidences of their employers at first hand immediately afterwards.2
Return to text.
*64The contemporary equivalent would be a signature by Queen Elizabeth II of “Elizabeth of Great Britain.” People remote from royal circles might not realize that her usual signature is “Elizabeth R” (for Regina); but someone in public life, let alone a courtier, would react at once.
Return to text.
*65It was well put by a modern historian, Sarah Maza, in “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited” (1991), that although the total innocence of Marie Antoinette was obvious, standard accounts of the affair viewed her as guilty “because large numbers of people wanted to believe in her guilt.”11
Return to text.
*66The fullest and most impartial study remains The Queen’s Necklace by Frances Mossiker, first published in 1961, where the various contemporary accounts are compared side by side.
Return to text.
*67It cannot be known for certain what happened to the stones. Some of them may have been acquired by the Duke of Dorset and remained in his family, according to tradition, in the form of a tasselled diadem. It used to be claimed that twenty-two of the most fabulous brilliants were made into a simple chain, worn by the Duchess of Sutherland; this chain was exhibited in the Versailles Exhibition of 1955. But it was pointed out by Bernard Morel in a study of the French Crown Jewels that the diamonds of the so-called Sutherland Necklace were for the most part “irregular in shape,” which did not accord with a contemporary drawing of the “Cardinal’s Necklace,” including annotations about the weights. Boehmer and Bassenge eventually went bankrupt. The case that their legal heirs brought against Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort, heir to the Cardinal de Rohan, dragged on until 1867. The Rohan family finally paid off this “debt of honour” towards the end of the nineteenth century.16
Return to text.
*68Saint-Priest, whose memoirs were written in old age (he died in 1821 aged eighty-six) and were not published until 1929, told a story of the Queen deliberately manipulating her husband. She offered to send Fersen away, confident that Louis XVI would refuse.17 There is no confirmation of this. If this scene had really taken place in private between husband and wife, Saint-Priest could only have heard about it third-hand from Fersen, passed on by the Queen; but Fersen, as all his contemporaries including Saint-Priest agreed, was legendarily discreet; such a tasteless confidence would be quite uncharacteristic.
Return to text.
*69For connoisseurs of the “What-might-have-been” (or Counterfactual) school of history, it is interesting to speculate on the possible results of Louis XVI’s death in March 1789. He would have left a young child as his heir, and at this stage Marie Antoinette’s strong claim to act as Regent, according to precedent, might have been allowed. It is at least possible that things would have gone better.
Return to text.
*70The words, which inspired innumerable popular engravings, may be apocryphal, but the sentiments were for real.
Return to text.
*71The memoirs of the Marquise (later Duchesse) de Tourzel, and her daughter Pauline (later Comtesse de Béarn), are crucial testimonies to the life of the royal family from this time forward, since in their different ways they were so intimately involved.
Return to text.
*72Nor is it plausible that Fersen marched among the women in order to find out what was going on and warn the Queen; he never mentioned this—surely vital—detail in his account to his father of the events of Versailles on 5–6 October; the evidence rests solely on the Souvenirs of the Comtesse d’Adhémar, published years later.39
Return to text.
*73The Marquise de Tourzel’s narrative is thus a first-hand source; Madame Auguié related everything to Madame Campan the next day, which makes the latter’s relation of events another good source even if she was not personally present.41
Return to text.
*74The London Times had as its headline the next day, “The Attempt to Murder the Queen,” with which Marie Antoinette would have agreed; the more lurid but inaccurate story in the Morning Post had the Queen being paraded around with a noose about her neck, to symbolize her humiliation.44
Return to text.
*75Writing her memoirs as an old lady for her descendants, Pauline Comtesse de Béarn recalled the King’s instruction gratefully: “It is thanks to him that I can beat you today, my dears.”13
Return to text.
*76The term, taken from the disused convent where the Jacobin Club met, was beginning to be used for the revolutionary wing of the National Assembly.
Return to text.
*77Easter Communion had been obligatory since the fourth century and is still today a precept that must be fulfilled “during paschal time” by members of the Catholic Church.6
Return to text.
*78A berline de voyage was the eighteenth-century version of a modern touring coach.
Return to text.
*79Both these royal dressing-cases survive, one in the Louvre and one in a private collection; originally the latter belonged to Madame Auguié, sister of Madame Campan, to whom it was given by the Queen. The sheer weight of such a dressing-case on the knee, let alone when carried, is the remarkable feature to a modern observer, apart from its luxuriousness—but the Queen of France, accustomed to the daily ritual of being dressed at the hands of others, was not expecting to handle it herself.
Return to text.
*80These posting-stations, where the exhausted horses were changed for relays of fresh ones, were of vital importance in any journey in eighteenth-century France. The postes existed, every fifteen miles or so, along the main routes; if travellers intended to deviate to the byways, arrangements had to be made in advance for fresh horses to be found.
Return to text.
*81The story that the Queen and Malden, having taken a wrong turning, wandered about the rue du Bac on the Left Bank of the Seine, having crossed the river from the Tuileries by the Pont Royal, is implausible; this would have needed not one but a whole series of wrong turnings, to the right, then out on to a quai and over a bridge, without their realizing what was happening.
Return to text.
*82Not out of a foreigner’s lack of knowledge of the city; Fersen had been living in Paris on and off for many years.
Return to text.
*83Today a plaque at the modern gendarmerie at Sainte-Menehould commemorates the site of the former poste from which Drouet and Guillaume “launched the pursuit of the King Louis XVI.”
Return to text.
*84Today at Varennes a plaque on the clock tower commemorates the arrest. The town also has a museum with a room dedicated to Louis XVI, which includes memorabilia such as a silver soup tureen left behind. The town’s position on the Argonne front during World War I means, however, that mine warfare is also remembered here and there is a memorial to the many American soldiers who fell in the campaign in 1918. There is still a Hôtel Le Grand-Monarque. At the time Varennes was presented with a tricolour flag in recognition of its services to the nation.23
Return to text.
*85It seems to have be
en—not inexplicably—a recurring dream of the little boy about this time, since the Marquise de Tourzel recounts a somewhat similar dream en route at Dormans; in this case the wolves were threatening his mother, and he had to be shown the Queen in order to be reassured.30
Return to text.
*86The name, like that of the Jacobins, derived from the former convent in which their meetings were held.
Return to text.
*87Since 1954 this portrait has been kept in the Queen’s room at Versailles, having been preserved by Tourzel descendants.
Return to text.
*88Although Queen Charlotte’s hair did turn white overnight at the first madness of King George III when she was forty-four.7
Return to text.
*89Paul et Virginie, first published in 1788 to universal admiration, concerned two young people brought up together in a state of innocence on an idyllic island (which was based on Mauritius). Rediscovering each other as adults in tragic circumstances, Paul and Virginie were finally united in “the celestial paradise” after death, of which the earlier paradise of their youth had only been a prefiguration. It is easy to see how the plot might appeal to Marie Antoinette’s sensibilities.
Return to text.
*90This correspondence ended up in Sweden, the most probable explanation being that the Queen gave it to Fersen for safety.12
Return to text.
*91Two other visitors to the fireworks were Emma Hamilton and her husband Sir William, ambassador to the Neapolitan court; they were received by the Queen who took the opportunity to send a letter to Maria Carolina.16
Return to text.
*92Not only were the Spanish Bourbons related to the French, but as the daughter of Madame Infante, Queen Maria Louisa was Louis XVI’s first cousin; also the King of Spain’s sister was married to the Emperor Leopold.
Return to text.
*93Other people also gave a political twist to their dogs’ names; the witty Prince de Ligne called two of his Turgot and Mirabeau because “I always think of hunting dogs when I hear the names of ’those Economists.’”31
Return to text.
*94This general term for a revolutionary activist—meaning literally without breeches—referred to the typical costume of baggy trousers, short jacket (carmagnole) and wooden sabots of the working class, whether small tradesman, labourer or vagrant.
Return to text.
*95This scene at Mass was subsequently the subject of a picture by the painter Marie Antoinette favoured, Hubert Robert.
Return to text.
*96There were many accounts of this time by survivors; one person, however, who never mentioned her experiences during the next few days was Madame Royale, an unusual omission—her account of Varennes is very full—presumably indicating that it remained too painful to contemplate.
Return to text.
*97Royalist pilgrims will not, however, find the Temple today. Napoleon did in 1808 what Marie Antoinette had wanted Artois to do: had it knocked down, specifically to avoid the creation of a hallowed site.
Return to text.
*98Its universal use had been decreed by the Assembly in March; not only was the guillotine considered a swift and thus humane instrument of justice, but it was also a symbol of the new equality—in this case equality in the face of death.10
Return to text.
*99This was certainly not impossible; many of the prostitutes were raped before being killed, as were even some of the very young girls, although Madame Bault’s testimony makes it mercifully unlikely that the Princesse was still breathing at the time.
Return to text.
*100Others were tracked down and restored to France over the following two centuries; as late as 1976 the great Sancy diamond, which Marie Antoinette (and Maria Lesczinska) had worn in parures, was returned, thanks to an act of public-spirited generosity; with the Regent diamond, it is now in the Louvre.
Return to text.
*101Now in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
Return to text.
*102This room has been recreated in a display at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, which has some of the original artefacts including Madame Elisabeth’s bed and dressing-table.
Return to text.
*103There is also a story of Marie Antoinette seeking to console herself by sending for her erstwhile official draughtsman Redouté to paint the cactus known as the night-flowering cereus; if true, the cactus must have been acquired elsewhere than in her apartments; perhaps it was Redouté, able to maintain his position as an official draughtsman despite his royalist past, who brought or sent in the botanical drawing.29
Return to text.
*104These were surely traditional Christian sentiments, rather than Louis XVI forgiving Marie Antoinette at the last minute for her affair with Fersen.
Return to text.
*105It was a point that Trotsky would later make against holding a trial of Tsar Nicholas II: putting the deposed monarch in the dock was to envisage the possibility at least of his innocence.36
Return to text.
*106Hence the persistent tradition that country houses in the U.S., as for example in Maine, were prepared for the arrival of Marie Antoinette.
Return to text.
*107Turgy implied that there was a salutation then and there, not in his Recollections of 1818, but in an interrogation of an impostor in 1817. But of course he could just as easily have tested an impostor with a false incident as with a true one.6
Return to text.
*108There is a replica of a cell at the Conciergerie today. It shows the back of a black-clad figure, in a veil, reading a book, watched by a guard standing extremely close and peering over the screen. Tourists flock in and there is a susurration of the name in many languages and accents: “Maree Antoinette . . . Maria Antonietta . . . Maria Antonia . . . Marie.” Relics include a small beflowered water jug and a white linen napkin. The official notice, printed in French, English and German, refers to Marie Antoinette as “a brilliant but carefree and extravagant personality,” an image singularly at variance with the sight of the hunched widow.
Return to text.
*109The English royal family bought some of the belongings of the former King and Queen of France. As tends to happen when new regimes need money—Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Soviet Government come to mind—other more stable royal families benefited.
Return to text.
*110But Madame Bault, interviewed in old age by an early biographer of Marie Antoinette, Lafont d’Aussone, struck him not only with her good memory but also with her grand manner: “You would have thought you were dealing with a grand old countess, not a concierge’s widow.”6
Return to text.
*111This move has been doubted, but there are two good reasons to suppose it did take place; first, the records remain in the National Archives of the work that was done, together with the police order to do it. Second, Rosalie stated that the Queen remained only “forty days” in the former Council Chamber, which fits this scenario.7
Return to text.
*112It was believed by some after the Restoration that the Abbé Cholet gave the Queen a final Communion on the night of 12 October (the Abbé Magnin being ill) and that this was something permitted by Bault.15 This seems a great deal more improbable than accounts of Masses and Communions under the Richards’ regime, since security in the new cell was so much greater, with Marie Antoinette on the verge of trial. However, with this pious story, as with the romantic one of Fersen’s last love-making in the Tuileries, one cannot help hoping that it was true.
Return to text.
*113Meaning, literally, no more than the former regime, although the words ancien régime have come to have a weightier meaning.
Return to text.
*114But the “last letter” never reached Madame Elisabeth. It was intercepted and given to Robespierre; it was unknown until 1816. It is now in the Archives Nationales showing the countersignature of Fouquier-Tinville, with thr
ee other signatures later. A note validates Marie Antoinette’s handwriting (“conforme à l’autographe”).30
Return to text.
*115The French Bourbon pretenders to the throne today, headed by the Comte de Paris, are thus descended from Maria Carolina via Queen Amélie, not Marie Antoinette.
Return to text.
*116DNA testing in 1993 had already showed that the most celebrated claimant, Karl Wilhelm Naundorf, who died in 1845, was extremely unlikely to be descended from Marie Antoinette.
Return to text.
*117In 1993 the title The Ghosts of Versailles was used as an opera composed by John Corigliano and with a libretto by William M. Hoffman, in which Marie Antoinette is the ghost and Beaumarchais falls in love with her, planning to revise history by rescuing her. This is not the only opera to touch on the life of the Queen, for Marie Antoinette and Fersen, composed by Daniel Börtz with a libretto by its director Claes Fellborn, was first performed in Stockholm by the Swedish Folk Opera in 1997. There have also been films and historical novels in abundance.
Return to text.
*118Born a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt and thus descended from Marie Antoinette’s friend Princess Louise, Alexandra was a fourth cousin, four generations removed, of the French Queen; both traced descent back to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, George II, whose granddaughter married the Emperor Leopold I.
Return to text.
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends