Louis XIV now sent the Comte de Tallart to represent him in London. Tallart was one of those Frenchmen who seem to be the nearest thing to perfection that humanity can produce. He was delightful and brilliant and was considered the best company of anybody at Versailles. Portland had seen a good deal of him there and, while never denying that he was a good talker, described him as being too pleased with himself. If Portland had a fault, it was jealousy. King William, whose own ambassador had received so much courtesy from the French, wished to show all possible kindness to Tallart: he sent his yacht, the William and Mary, to bring him from Calais. Tallart soon became a great addition to London life, with his painted coaches, elegant clothes and charming personality; and King William liked him very much. He took the Duke of Ormonde’s town house, in St James’s Square, on to which he built a chapel, and here he kept one of those French embassies which to this day outshine all others. Lord Macaulay once remarked that French embassies to London, enjoying the advantages of good food, beautiful decoration and brilliant entertainment, have been the objects of degrading worship, and certainly the envoys from other lands are inclined to think so. In those days governments did not possess houses in foreign towns, as now; the ambassadors sometimes exchanged with each other (for instance, under Louis XV, the Dukes of Nivernais and Bedford exchanged not only houses but also servants and carriages) but more often they took some available house for the duration of their mission. The exception was the French ambassador to Rome who generally, but not always, lived in the Palazzo Farnese.
Louis XIV had drawn up a set of instructions for Tallart which show an extraordinarily acute knowledge of the English character and way of life. He was to find out which members of society were the leaders of public opinion — they would not necessarily be members of the government or aristocrats. There would be no harm in hobnobbing with the opposition; only of course he must have nothing to do with any Jacobite or he would be discredited. If the subject of King James were to be raised, Tallart was to say that Louis XIV would naturally like to see his cousin back on the throne but only if this was the unanimous desire of the English people.
As much as Portland distrusted Louis XIV, Tallart was convinced of the good faith of King William; but he wrote home saying that he was ‘by no means as powerful as we thought’. Public finances, he added, were in a bad way and the only interest the average Englishman took in the Spanish succession was to know how it might affect trade. He said that Lord Albemarle rose in favour every day. William himself told Portland that he was having a good deal of trouble with the English, who ‘don’t care a fig for foreign affairs and only think of how one party can injure the other. Parliament does more harm than can be imagined by reducing the army estimates’. Presently he went to his beloved Holland, paying Tallart the compliment of taking him.
Towards the end of Portland’s visit, on 22 April, Monsieur gave a dinner party for him at Saint-Cloud. There were twenty guests, including the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d’Effiat. Madame seems not to have been there. Portland sat between Monsieur’s son the Duc de Chartres and the Duchesse de Foix — Monsieur had Chartres on his right and Mlle de Montauban on his left. The food was marvellous — all the early vegetables appearing for the first time. There was a splendid silver-gilt surtout de table, a new invention, much remarked upon, by M. de Launay who had made two for the King.
In June 1698 Portland took his leave of the French King, from whom no foreigner and few French people had ever received so many honours and marks of favour. But Portland’s dreadful sorrow was not lightened thereby, and he went to rejoin William knowing that things could never be the same between them again. Indeed when he had concluded the business with France, he resigned his charges at Court and retired into private life. One is glad to know that William sent for him on his deathbed and died in his arms, while Albemarle stood by. However it was Mary who had the last word: dangling over that strange man’s heart, they found a locket containing her hair.
The Treaty of Loo was the outcome of Portland’s and Tallart’s embassies and it was a striking success for all concerned. The little Bavarian prince was to have Spain and her colonies, while the Dauphin and the Emperor were given various European territories as compensation. Louis XIV seems to have signed the treaty in good faith, since he wrote to d’Harcourt, his ambassador at Madrid, telling him to explain to any Spaniards who might show preference for a French king that it was the only method by which peace could be preserved. This arrangement came to nought, and is now forgotten because the baby who was the lynchpin of it died — poisoned, his father thought, by some Austrian spy. So all was to begin again.
16. THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Ce siècle est devenu immobile comme tous grands siècles; il s’est fait le contemporain des âges qui l’ont suivi.
CHATEAUBRIAND
At the turn of the century the King had reigned for nearly sixty years, had governed by himself for forty and had been married to Mme de Maintenon for seventeen. He was now an old man. He no longer greeted the duchesses with a kiss: he said his face had become too horrid. His grandson was married; his elder children were middle-aged, the Grand Dauphin rising forty and the Princesse de Conti thirty-four. Her life had been disappointing for one so lovely and so romantic: she never had a faithful lover or even very devoted friends. Now she had become pious, rather ailing and as dry as a stick; and officers of the guard were no longer sent away for daring to gaze at her. As soon as the much more fascinating Mme la Duchesse was grown up, she took Marie-Anne’s place as the Dauphin’s favourite sister.
Mme de Montespan had left the Court in 1691; she had long been urged to do so by her own son, du Maine, who coveted her flat. He also appropriated her house at Clagny which was thought embarrassingly near Versailles for her to live there once she had parted from the King. Mme de Maintenon had seen to it that her position should become more and more difficult; her younger children were taken away from her, the Comte de Toulouse, aged thirteen, was sent to the wars and Mlle de Blois put in charge of dreadful old Mme de Montchevreuil. This was the last straw. Athénaïs flew into a rage and told Bossuet to tell the King that she wished to retire for ever. She was taken at her word, as perhaps she had not expected to be; and the very next day du Maine was supervising the removal of her furniture. Quick work, as she remarked ruefully. After the death of the Marquis de Montespan in 1701 she hoped that the King would turn against Mme de Maintenon and marry her. She always declared that she was the one he loved, and that he had only left her for fear of hellfire. But in fact she never saw him again. Plunged in devotion and good works, she spent her last years trying to avoid her old colleague the Devil; she could not sleep alone or in the dark and was terrified of death. Saint-Simon describes her as still perfectly beautiful at sixty, but Madame says her skin was like a piece of paper children had been playing with, her whole face covered with little lines and her hair snow white.
A few months after his mother’s departure, du Maine married one of the midget Bourbons, a sister of M. le Duc. Athénaïs was not invited to the wedding. Du Maine was still the heart, the soul and the oracle of Mme de Maintenon, and the King loved his company; but everybody else much preferred his brother Toulouse who made an honourable career for himself in the Navy, married (for love) a member of the Noailles family and never had any royal pretentions. His country seat was Ram-bouillet — his town house the present Banque de France.
The King’s family life had never been so sunny. It was transformed by the arrival, in 1696, of a bride for the Duc de Bourgogne; she was the twelve-year-old Marie-Adélaïde, the child of that Duke of Savoy who was considered so ridiculous by his fellow-rulers. Her mother was a daughter of Monsieur and Henrietta. There was such a to-do over the arrival of the little princess that Saint-Simon was able to play truant from the Court to achieve a long-cherished project; he took the painter Rigaud to La Trappe. The holy Abbé de Rancé would never allow himself to be painted — Rigaud had to pretend to be an ordinary visitor;
but by dint of staring at Rancé for an hour or two he was able to go away and produce an excellent likeness from memory. That the King did not even notice the absence, without leave, of one of his dukes, was a measure of his interest in the new grand-daughter. He went all the way to Montargis to meet her, and wrote from there to give Mme de Maintenon his impressions of the infinitely important child, future Queen of France. This is the only letter (as opposed to little notes) from Louis to his wife that she did not burn after his death.
‘I got here before five o’clock; the Princess arrived just before six. I went to receive her at her coach. She waited for me to speak first and then she answered very well, with a hint of shyness which would have pleased you. I led her through the crowd to her room, from time to time I had the torches brought nearer so that their light fell on her face and she could be seen. She endured this walk and these lights with graceful modesty. At length we got to her room where the crowd and the heat were enough to kill one. From time to time I showed her to those who came up and I was watching her from all points of view in order to tell you my impression.’
We can imagine how he watched her, in the flickering light of those torches, like a clever old fox with eyes that missed nothing. It was love at first sight. He goes on to tell Mme de Maintenon that he has never seen such grace or such a pretty figure; she is dressed fit to be painted (no doubt her French mother had seen to that); her eyes are bright and beautiful, her complexion perfect; she had masses of black hair, luscious red lips; white, most irregular teeth (which were to make her short life a martyrdom), pretty hands, rather red as little girls’ hands are, and she is thin, which is also of her age. Her curtsey very poor, very Italian and there is something altogether Italian about her look; but she pleases. He can see that all are enchanted with her. She is like the first picture they had — not a bit like the others. He will write again after supper when he expects to have noticed some more touches. He hopes he will be able to keep up a certain attitude he has adopted until he gets home, which he is longing to do.
Later in the evening he is still more delighted. They have had a public conversation together, during which she gave nothing away; in other words she was perfect. Monsieur is in a dreadful temper and is now pretending to be ill. (Monsieur was, in fact, furious because his grand-daughter was to take precedence over Madame, who since the death of the Dauphine, had been the first lady in the land. He may also have realized that the King was determined to keep the little girl away from what he regarded as the bad influence of the Court of Saint-Cloud.) The King goes on to send Mme de Maintenon a thousand we don’t know whats, because, in accordance with her policy of mystifying posterity, she has here erased two lines. He ends by saying that when the time comes for this princess to play her part she will do so with dignity, poise and charm.
Mme de Maintenon wrote to the Duchess of Savoy, when she had seen Marie-Adélaïde, saying that the King and she herself were in transports of joy at receiving such a treasure. Indeed she now came into her own with a future Queen of France to educate. The little girl was good, but not easy material, astonishingly like that other descendant of Monsieur’s who came to marry an heir to the throne, Marie-Antoinette. She was fascinating, spoilt, wilful and proud. Owing to Mme de Maintenon’s loving care of her the nobility of her nature blossomed with womanhood — in Marie-Antoinette’s case it never appeared at all until brought out by cruel misfortune. Mme de Maintenon and Marie-Adélaïde had a perfect relationship, more intimate than that of most mothers and daughters. ‘Ma Tante’ and ‘Mignonne’ they called each other. The cynics at Versailles to whom human goodness was inclined to be suspect, and who had watched Mme de Maintenon for a lifetime in all her apparent hypocrisy, said that ‘Mignonne’ was servile to ‘Ma Tante’, that she had seen the way to the King’s heart through his old wife and had, with the innate cunning of her race, regulated her behaviour accordingly. Certainly she had been primed before leaving home; she wrote to her grandmother: ‘I do as you told me about Mme de Maintenon.’ But the respect and confidence of the next sixteen years, such difficult years for any young woman, could hardly have been built on an untruth; and there is no doubt at all that she loved the old lady. She was an affectionate little thing, fond of the King and of her grandfather, Monsieur, not so fond of Madame; even less of her father-in law, the Dauphin (who never cared for children) and of her aunts the Princesses not at all, and they were furiously jealous of her. While she and Bourgogne were still in the schoolroom they were indifferent to each other. They met every day, often dining with Mme de Maintenon, but were never allowed to be alone before the consummation of the marriage which took place when Marie-Adélaïde was fourteen, two years after their wedding. On their wedding night they were put into bed together as part of the ceremony and the Dauphin jokingly told Bourgogne to kiss his wife; but her lady-in-waiting, Mme de Lude, who had been given strict orders by the King, sent the bridegroom packing. The Duc de Berri, pert and forward at eleven years old, said scornfully that nothing would have got him out of that bed.
In all his long life the King never loved anybody as much as he loved Marie-Adélaïde. He took her for a walk every day, when the tiny creature looked as if she were coming out of his pocket, and spoilt her totally. At Versailles she had her own private zoo, the Ménagerie, in a building by the canal which has now disappeared, so of course she liked Versailles better than all the other residences. She also had her own little theatre where she put on plays with her friends. She asked if she could go to Marly, for the usual two day visit, quite alone with the King and this unheard-of treat was arranged. She lived in Mme de Maintenon’s room which the King used as a sort of office. Nothing was forbidden; the word ‘no’ was never used. She opened his letters, rummaged about among his state papers and is always supposed to have dispatched many a military secret to her father when, having changed sides once again, he was fighting against the French. There is no hint that she did so, however, in her dull little letters to him and her mother; when she mentions the war it is to beg him to stop it; but the letters are mostly concerned with the appalling toothaches from which she suffered. By the time she was grown up her manners were more or less under control; as a child they were giddy indeed and it is quite understandable that those who were not entranced by her, Marie-Anne de Conti, for example, and Mme la Duchesse, should have found her unbearably irritating. She could never be still for an instant, even at meals when she would sing, hop and dance on her chair, make frightful faces and put her fingers in the sauce. In a carriage she jumped about like a little monkey, first on one person’s lap and then on another’s. She tutoyed the Dauphin to make him laugh — such a thing had never been known in good society. She could be naughty in rather a horrid way. She was dreadful to Mme du Lude for no reason at all; Mme du Lude was a charming, beautiful person whom everybody liked and who had wonderful manners. The King knew exactly how to treat Marie-Adélaïde when she was impossible; Mme de Maintenon had shown him a better method of forming a young nature than the terrorizing that had made the Dauphin so dull. For instance, when Marie-Adélaïde made loud jokes about the appearance of a very ugly officer at the King’s supper, the King abashed her, saying in an even louder voice: ‘To me he is one of the best looking men in my kingdom since he is one of the bravest.’
She went to Saint-Cyr three days a week for her lessons; she wore the school uniform and was called Mlle de Lastic. She was never naughty there but good and clever. The day before her wedding, when she was twelve, she came to show them all her wedding dress, so thickly embroidered with silver that she could hardly stand in it. She loved Saint-Cyr and was greatly loved in return, much more, at this time, than she was at Versailles. Mme de Maintenon saw to every detail of her day, even ordering her dinner: a typical menu was crayfish soup in a silver bowl, twisted bread and wholemeal bread, freshly-made butter, fresh fried eggs, a sole in a small dish, redcurrant jelly, cakes, a carafe of wine and a jug of water.
The King in his new-found piety now only a
dmitted virtuous men to his Council and as a result public affairs were by no means flourishing. Neither Beauvilliers, Chamillart, nor Torcy would have dreamt of feathering their nests like Colbert, of insulting the King and practically raping the duchesses like Louvois, or of quarrelling with and intriguing against each other like the two of them. (Beauvilliers actually refused his salary, a thing which had never been heard of before — it must be said, however, that his nest had already been feathered by Colbert, his father-in-law.) But they were not in the same class as their predecessors and a very poor advertisement for integrity in public life. The King was quite contented with them. As he grew older and more authoritarian, he preferred to rule with second-rate advisers whom he thought he could control. When Louvois died, in 1691, he actually seemed rather pleased, saying to James II: ‘I’ve lost a good minister but your affairs and mine will be none the worse for that.’
The army had gone downhill since the days of Condé, Turenne and Louvois. Vauban’s favour had declined since he had gratuitously advised the King against the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and had spoken to him about the state of the peasantry. There was a serious shortage of first-class general officers; Mme de Maintenon said: ‘I don’t know if our generals will frighten the enemy — they terrify me.’ Louis XIV was not unaware of this situation and realized that now, if ever, was the time to keep the peace. When the Treaty of Loo was invalidated by the death of the Bavarian heir, he entered into another treaty with William III by which the Spanish empire was to be partitioned; the Netherlands, Spain itself, and the American colonies were to go to Austria, while France was only to have Naples, Sicily and Milan. This moderate arrangement shows that the King dreaded another conflict. It came to nought through the folly of the Emperor Leopold who claimed the whole inheritance and would not hear of any partition.