Opposite Engraving of Louis XIV, 1670, by Robert Nanteuil. © Yale University, New Haven. Left Anne Marie Louise WOMEN WRITERS OF d’Orléans, known as La Grande Mademoiselle, c.1666. Right Engraving of Anne of Austria, Queen of France and mother of Louis XIV (1601–66), THE FRENCH COURT 1660, by Robert Nanteuil. Philip Mansel describes the revelations recorded in the memoirs of women at the centre of power in France at some of the most dramatic moments in the nation’s history

The artistic glories of the French court from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries are well known: the Sainte Chapelle, Fontainebleau, Versailles and the Louvre speak for themselves. Its literary achievements are less familiar. Yet the Thereafter more memoirs were written French court, more than any other, was in France than in any other country; the a machine for writing. Official accounts first English memoirs were not written of campaigns and festivals poured from until the seventeenth century, by Lord the presses of the Imprimerie Royale. Herbert of Cherbury and the Earl of For entertainment the king and the royal Clarendon, who had both lived for long household commissioned plays by, among periods in France. Not only the influence others, Molière, Jean Racine and Voltaire of Commynes, but also the need to justify – all of whom were also working court the writer’s acts in the many revolts officials, as gentilhomme ordinaire (Racine and conspiracies against the king that and Voltaire) or valet de chambre-tapissier devastated France between 1559 and 1659, veil has fallen from my eyes, I have known ideas about Louis XIV’s absolutism. (Molière) ‘du roi’ . may explain the popularity of memoirs that all the grandeur, all the vanity and all More reflective and less self-centred The literature of power, however, there. As the historian Albert Sorel later the pomps and pleasures of the world have are the memoirs of one of Mademoiselle’s and memoirs in particular, were the wrote: ‘there is no battle lost which cannot been illusions … we are only actors who correspondents, Madame de Motteville. forms of writing most appreciated at the be won back on paper.’ At their best, these play a role in the theatre. ’ She claimed, She came from the minor nobility and court of France. Independence of spirit memoirs display a grasp of character, the as was by then a standard posture: ‘I am served as one of the four premières or the desire for revenge led courtiers to telling detail, and the dramatic scene, not trying to be an author, not having femmes de chambre of the Queen, challenge the official version of events which any novelist would envy. Indeed, enough skill for that, and the role does not Anne of Austria, widow of Louis XIII and recorded in royal histories. Indeed one of while novelists often borrowed scenes from suit me in any way. ’ Little respect for the mother of Louis XIV. It was a post which the earliest and most prominent women life, memoir writers frequently invented king is evident in her disabused accounts gave her greater intimacy, although memoir writers, a servant of Queen Anne them. of his love affairs; she describes the lesser status, than a lady-in-waiting: in of Austria called Madame de Motteville, Paris was called the paradise of ‘familiarity’ of Cardinal Mazarin’s nieces’ England she would have been called a whose work I used frequently in my life women, since they were so free there, and manners with the king as ‘he did not like dresser or woman of the bedchamber (as of Louis XIV, claimed that ‘the words of nowhere else did so many women write ceremonies’; and, later, the removal of Mrs Masham was to Queen Anne). Her kings and their actions are almost always memoirs. Between 1660 and 1690, Louis sentries to facilitate his access to Madame marriage to a wealthy octogenarian had blamed’ by courtiers. Courtiers writing in XIV’s older, unmarried first cousin Anne de Montespan’s bedroom, although both lasted only two years before he died in private analysed characters, motives and Marie Louise d’Orléans, generally known were married to someone else. She also 1641. There were no children. Above Columbine and Harlequin dance to the events without the constant references to in Amsterdam beyond the reach of the published posthumously in 1524–8 and as La Grande Mademoiselle, was writing describes one of his favourites, the Comte Thereafter her emotions were, as far ‘Greensleeves’ overture God or the king of the official histories. French government) was usually the were more influential in France than her memoirs, at the same time that the de Guiche, during a ball giving kicks in the as is known, centred on the queen. In her in William Simmonds’s French memoir writers fulfil Graham memoir-writer’s intention. Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532). king – with the help of his secretaries – was bottom to the king’s brother, Monsieur, opinion Anne of Austria was both a great Greene’s first requirement for a writer, The first person to write memoirs in By 1643 there had been 120 editions and glorifying his power and campaigns in his ‘qui trouvait tout bon de lui’ (who liked beauty and a great monarch, worthy of as expressed to V.S. Pritchett in 1948: France was called Philippe de Commynes. they had been translated into Italian (the own. Mademoiselle was trying to assert everything he did). In 1670, yielding to ranking with the most famous in history. disloyalty, freedom from accepted A chamberlain and diplomat of Louis first French book to be so), English, Dutch her independence, and to justify both her pressure from the royal family, Louis XIV, Motteville wrote her memoirs ‘to repay the opinions and a taste for treason. The XI who had previously served Charles and German. They were accurate as well rebellion against the crown during the civil having first agreed to her marriage to honour she has done me by introducing pen was, if not mightier than the sword, the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and was as popular. Louis XIV himself would read wars of 1648–52, known as the Fronde, and Lauzun, changed his mind and forbade it. me to her intimacy’ , and claimed she certainly sharper. While often claiming inspired by their rivalry, he wrote in them and, to show his level of practical her love for a younger courtier called the He wept but, according to his cousin, said: was always looking for the exact truth Below in William that they were writing only for their 1489–97 during a period of disgrace at skills as part of his education, set a page in Comte de Lauzun. ‘Kings should satisfy the public’ – a form of when describing events and characters. Simmonds’s family, publication (if not in Paris, then the French court. His memoirs were type. Disillusion was her theme: ‘Since the self-definition which challenges received She recalled of the queen: ‘I have never Opposite Columbine and Harlequin dance to the rtur in 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15 WOMEN WRITERS OF THE FRENCH COURT

Rossline de Suedois’s warning – as most Frenchmen considered another prèmiere femme de chambre, 1828 engraving, of Marie it – of England, where Charles I was Madame de Beauvais: ‘look how beautiful Antoinette, after painting by Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, executed in January 1649, the movement she is. I have never seen her looking so c.1778. © National Trust might have become more revolutionary. beautiful. ’ Clearly his mother was one of Collections. But in Madame de Motteville’s view it the loves of his life. was caused by the private ambitions of a After the queen’s final confession and few great nobles. Some ‘great movements communion, her bedroom overflowed in the world which destroy or establish with people crying, or reading works of empires’ were in reality due to the ‘secret piety. She begged her sons and daughters- intrigues of a few people’ , she wrote. Some in-law to love each other ‘for love of me’ . were women, such as the Duchesse de When told that she was leaving an earthly Longueville or the Princesse Palatine, Anne for a heavenly crown, she said that she de Gonzague, described by Motteville as had always considered her earthly crown the honour of her sex, adroit, intelligent, ‘as mud’ . Louis XIV wept ‘furiously’ and capable of winning the confidence of all fainted. She died on 20 January 1666. sides. For Motteville obedience to ‘the Having finished her memoirs, Motteville supreme and unique power of kings’ was followed her mistress to the grave 23 years part of the divine order. Kings shared the later. The first edition of her memoirs power of God. The people, by contrast, was was published in Amsterdam in 1728; the ‘a wild beast which never grew tame’ . She most recent in Paris in 2003. Lucie Dillon, Marquise was horrified by the barricades the people Later traumas in France would de la Tour du Pin (1770–1853). erected throughout Paris on 26 August produce even more memoirs. Over 3,300 1648 in what she saw as a crazed attempt memoirs covering the years from 1780 to whose principal actors they knew well – necessary to go for the needs of daily life’ , to seize power, and by their insistence 1830, with the changes from monarchy to on their private lives are enhanced by the including pensions, rewards, jobs and on filing through the king’s bedroom on republic to Empire and back to monarchy outsider edge and double identity, which news. It was also a theatre of emotions 9 February 1651 and drawing his bed again, have been published so far. In his they derived from their exile in England and an education in how to control them. curtains to check he had not fled Paris. youth Honoré de Balzac was one of many and their Jacobite blood. Both the mother Like Mademoiselle, she tells stories about According to her, they were converted by ‘teinturiers’ or ghosts of such memoirs: he of the Comtesse de Boigne and the Louis XIV’s affairs: his ‘violent passion’ for the sight of the sleeping 12-year-old and, was, for example, author or part-author father of the Marquise de la Tour du Pin Marie Mancini, his love for Louise de la ‘recovering their feelings of love, gave him of the memoirs of one of his mistresses, descended from the famous Irish Jacobite Vallière, and the attempts of a discarded a thousand blessings’ . Laure Junot, Duchesse d’Abrantes. In family of Dillon (although some said that favourite, the Comtesse de Soissons, to Motteville’s masterpiece is her 1831 Chateaubriand, whose memoirs the former was ‘a false Dillon’). alert the queen about his feelings for description of the death of the queen, a are among the greatest of all, lamented: The Comtesse de Boigne deserves Louise. Of the Comtesse de Soissons – one scene comparable to the finest moments ‘There is nobody who has not become, at an English biography as compelling as of Mazarin’s nieces – Motteville wrote: ‘no in better-known memoirs such as those of least for 24 hours, a personage who does Caroline Moorehead’s of Madame de longer being able to please the king herself, the Duc de Saint-Simon or François-René not consider himself obliged to give the la Tour du Pin, Dancing to the Precipice she wanted to keep his favour by all the de Chateaubriand. She spares no details world an account of the influence which (2009). The financial support (stipulated in ways her ambition could inspire in her … of the Queen’s cancer, gangrene, ulcers he has exerted over the universe. ’ their marriage contract) of her husband, ambition, love and jealousy, the three great and abscesses. During the first stages of Some of the best court memoirs General Count de Boigne, who had in my life known a person less avid for passions in the soul, did a lot of work in her his mother’s cancer in April 1663, Louis continued to be written by women. made a fortune fighting for the Maratha glory or applause’ , despite the repeated own soul. ’ Like Mademoiselle, she depicts XIV had visited her eight or ten times a During the Revolution the shock of exile empire in India, had saved the Comtesse’s humiliations she suffered during the During the Louis XIV as weaker, more emotional and day. Other witnesses confirm that he rose and the shadow of the guillotine added family from poverty during her exile in revolts of the Fronde. When she had told less awesome than his reputation suggests, earlier than usual, was present in her astringency to their style. Madame London. Back in Paris, however, she froze her mistress she was writing her memoirs, Revolution the describing him begging the queen’s bedroom at all consultations, treatments Campan, for example, another prèmiere her husband out of her life. The general the queen expressed not indignation, but forgiveness on his knees and in tears, and and bleedings (the usual seventeenth- femme de chambre de la reine – in this retreated to the town where he had been the desire not to be praised more than she being manipulated by the Comtesse de century treatment for all illnesses), case of Marie Antoinette – may have been born, Chambery, and died there alone in deserved: ‘I was constrained to promise shock of exile and Soissons. The king, she wrote, was ‘not devoted most of the day to her, and at inspired to write by her predecessor, 1830. In Paris, however, his fortune helped her seriously that I would tell the truth as always wise nor always just’ . Motteville night would send messengers to obtain Madame de Motteville. The memoirs his wife to run a brilliant salon for 60 years. much against her as in her favour. ’ Her ‘shadow of the also said, unjustly: he ‘was so avid for the latest news. Three years later, in the of Marie Antoinette’s favourite portrait Both Madame de la Tour du Pin love for the queen did not stop Motteville glory that he did not want to leave even final stages, he slept fully dressed on a painter, Madame Vigée Lebrun, are and Madame de Boigne were royalists, calling Mazarin – the queen’s chief guillotine added the crumbs to the queen his mother; he mattress at the foot of his mother’s bed. particularly vivid about her years as an and fought the revolution better with minister and probably her lover – a rogue wanted everything for himself’ . ‘He helped her always with unbelievable emigrée, during which she painted her their pens than their relations did with whose ‘fripponnerie’ (dishonesty) was the astringency to the Motteville had a courtier’s view of application, he helped to change her bed, way from court to court across Europe. their swords. Like those of Madame main cause of the revolts of the Fronde. history. She believed that public events and served her better and more adroitly The most original of these memoirs de Motteville, their memoirs can be as For Motteville, as for Mademoiselle, were driven by personal feelings. The than all her women. ’ Praise indeed since are those by the Comtesse de Boigne and revealing about women’s power, freedom the court was not only a power centre but style of women’s Fronde had been fuelled by popular hatred one of them, Madame de Motteville, is the Marquise de la Tour du Pin. Their and happiness, or lack of them, and about also a market. ‘The household of kings of taxation, royal absolutism and the writing. She also recalls the king saying accounts of the impact of the public the dramas of their times, as the most is like a great marketplace where it is court memoirs hyper-corrupt Mazarin. But for the terrible of his dying mother to the daughter of dramas between 1780 to 1830 – some of detailed works of research. . 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE ’ THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17