The Book of the Courtesans (23 page)

Her Graceful Curtsies

A king without diversions is a miserable man.—Pascal

Even today the story is being repeated. Long before she met Louis, she
would ride at the edge of the royal forest and watch him as he hunted. It is
said she cut such a graceful figure, dressed in pink, her coach a complementary
blue, the king could not have failed to take note of her. Particularly since
she was as agile at driving a coach as she was at riding. We know this last
because after she became Louis XV’s mistress, the marquise often
accompanied him on his hunts, during which she was admired by many for her
abilities at horsemanship.

She was not born a marquise. Along with a coat of arms and an estate, the
title was given to her by the king a few months after they became lovers. That
she was born a commoner would prove to be an obstruction to becoming the royal
ma"tresse en titre
, yet hardly an insurmountable one. Though her
father, François Poisson, was a steward to the Paris brothers, the
financiers on whom both the king and the economy of France relied, no one in
the family before her had ever been received at Louis XV’s court; apart
from the rarely gifted or most celebrated members of society, this privilege
was reserved for the
nobility.

Yet, despite the odds, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, as she was called then, had
dreamed of this fate for years. She had wanted to be Louis’ mistress since
she was too young to have understood exactly what a lover is. It was in the
ninth year of her life that her mother asked a fortuneteller to reveal her
daughter’s future. The ensuing prediction that Jeanne would one day become
the lover of the king seemed to have impressed the whole family, who thereafter
teasingly called the child “
Reinette
,” meaning, in rough
translation, “Little Queen.”

It has been said by all who witnessed the moment when Pompadour was first
presented to the king at Versailles that her curtsies were flawless. Though to
a contemporary observer this may seem a minor accomplishment, verging on
irrelevance, it was crucial in the eighteenth century, especially at Versailles,
where the list of rules for proper deportment was as arcane as it was endless.
Every move at court was crusted over with manners whose reason for being had
long ago crumbled into invisibility. There was a prescribed way of sitting or
rising. Protocol dictated who could and who could not sit on a chair, who could
have a chair with a back, who might carry a cushion to chapel, and even at what
angle the cushion should be placed (the cushions of princes of the blood could
be straight, whereas those of dukes had to be angled). Ladies in court had a
particular way of walking, with many short steps hidden under their skirts so
that they appeared to glide; the way a woman was greeted, with a movement of
the shoulder or a low curtsy, would reflect precisely how wellborn she was, how
well married and even whether or not she had employed a good cook. Out of no
discernible logic, certain words,
cadeau
, for instance, instead of
présent
, were considered vulgar; only people of a particular rank
were allowed to carry
parapluies
, and no matter what misfortune had
occurred, nothing but a cheerful expression would ever be tolerated in the
public rooms.

Indeed, the separation between private life and public appearances at court was
as distinct and impermeable as that between a stage and a dressing room. What
resulted was a strange double life in which many quotidian events occurred two
times, once ceremonially and a second time in reality. King Louis, for instance,
almost always went to bed twice. The first occasion took place during the
public ceremony called the
coucher
in his state bedroom, where he
never really slept (the fireplace smoked and the location of the room was too
public for him). After his boots were pulled off and someone from the royal
bloodline, designated with the high honor, handed him his nightshirt, he made
the semblance of retiring. But as soon as his courtiers left the room, he rose
anew, took off the symbolic nightshirt, put his boots on again, and went out,
often to search the small town of Versailles or the city of Paris for some
nocturnal amusement, before he finally retired again, this time to the private
room he preferred (if not to the bedroom of his mistress).

A similar redundancy took place in the morning. Rising early and working for
hours in solitude—he even set his own fire to avoid waking the
servants—he had to submit later in the day to a second rising that was
ceremonial, called the
levée
, in the same cold and smoky room
where he had pretended to sleep, during which he would hand the famous garment
back to the lucky prince who had been privileged to give it to him the night
before.

Pompadour’s presentation to Louis XV at the court of Versailles was equally
symbolic. He already knew her well. The king had noticed her on his hunts, but
too shy to speak with strangers, he never approached her (though occasionally
he would send a gift of game to her house). The opportunity to meet arose at an
elaborate costume ball given at the palace to celebrate the dauphin’s
wedding. Since Louis’ last mistress had died, more than one woman at the
ball tried to position herself to catch his eye, a difficult task, since it was
a costume ball and he entered disguised as one of several yew trees. No one
knows exactly when the yew tree turned back into a king. But suddenly everyone
could see him laughing with Pompadour, who, dressed as the goddess Diana, was
also unmasked. Later in the evening, after Pompadour went to a second
celebration at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, when the king had dispatched
his duties, he followed her there and took her into a private room, where they
dined and spent the night together.

By the time she was presented to the king at Versailles, she had been his lover
for several months. Indeed, for several days she had been settled in her own
apartments just above the king’s private rooms, to which they were
connected by a small staircase and which he must have already climbed, given
his reputed appetite, several times since her recent arrival.

Nevertheless, the ceremony had to be daunting for her. When just one low curtsy
was a formidable feat for a woman dressed in elaborate courtly attire, protocol
required that she execute three. And once the king dismissed her, which he did
with a cold nod, she was expected to leave his presence by walking backward, a
not wholly unreasonable requirement except for the long train of her dress, an
item court fashion dictated that she must wear, and which she had to kick out
of her way while receding. Miraculously, she pulled off these difficult
maneuvers with a faultless grace that caused some admiration.

Though the achievement must be attributed to her natural virtues, she had
received instruction. In preparation for her arrival at Versailles, Louis had
dispatched two trusted men to teach her the protocol of the court, the hundreds
of rules, manners, gestures, phrases, replies she would need to study and learn
over three months. Was the king smiling to himself when he appointed the
abbé Benois as a tutor to his mistress? Louis was known not only to enjoy
a good laugh but to have a sense of humor along these lines, as when once he
read a sermon on chastity aloud to Mademoiselle de Mailly, one of the royal
mistresses who had preceded Pompadour. Benois consulted with another cleric
before accepting this employment, but eventually he decided that since he had
not introduced the lovers, he was not responsible for their union. He spent
three months with his charge and after that remained a lifelong friend.

Though Pompadour’s audience with the king was successful, the trial was not
over yet. Her social graces would be put to the test again immediately by her
presentation to the queen. Leaving the council chamber, she had to proceed back
to the antechamber called
Oeil de Boeuf
and cross it to reach the
queen’s chamber, all the while followed by a crowd of spectators who had
been anticipating these events with great relish. Among all the activities at
court—gambling, the hunt, romantic liaisons, balls, ceremonious
events—gossip ranked very high. Everyone, including the queen, knew that
the young woman was Louis’ mistress. And knowing that she was a commoner
too, many hoped for a memorable mistake.

Contemptuous of the bourgeois, the aristocracy felt threatened by the rise of a
class that was gaining both wealth and power while the landed nobility,
frittering away their riches at court, had allowed their estates to deteriorate.
Those who were not born with titles were regarded as inferior. And to some it
was an especially annoying affront to have a member of the bourgeoisie made
into the official mistress, or
ma"tresse en titre
, an entitlement
never before given to a commoner. Although those who became close to Pompadour
were almost always won over by her considerable charms, some, the duc de
Richelieu in particular, would remain steadfast enemies. The duke’s
acerbity toward her may well have been partly motivated by his own insecurity
over bloodlines. He had not received his title directly from his father, but
instead diagonally through his uncle. The lineage and hence his blood was
thought less than pure, and thus, as with many whose legitimacy is in some way
questionable, he turned an avidly scornful scrutiny toward the legitimacy of
others.

In her first meeting with the queen, Pompadour acquitted herself well, with
only one small mistake; as she kissed the hem of the queen’s skirt, a
bracelet fell off her arm. But the queen was kind to her. Instead of dismissing
her with a curt compliment about the style of her dress, as the crowd had
expected her to do, the queen asked after a mutual friend, one of the few
aristocrats the Poisson family knew. Understanding the kindness of the royal
gesture, the newly titled marquise responded with a warm and grateful
ebullience, assuring the queen not only of her love and respect but of her
desire to please her. Though Pompadour’s exuberance broke an unwritten law
against abundant displays of emotion at court, the queen was gratified.

Just as it might be said that Pompadour was able to negotiate the
transformation of herself from commoner to favorite with uncommon grace, it can
also be said that in bringing a more informal and open manner of expression to
Versailles, she foreshadowed what was to be a transformation not only of the
court but eventually all of society. Her displays of emotion, her frankness,
her loud “forthright” voice, her free laugh, and her familiar
language were at odds with standard behavior at Versailles, which according to
aristocratic tradition was far more subdued. Ladies only giggled or smothered
their laughter and everyone habitually hid or dampened their feelings, even
when what was felt was joy. No wonder there was so much intrigue. The
atmosphere of constant jockeying for position that surrounds monarchies and
indeed every powerful leader was only made more acidic by the fact that anger
could not be expressed openly. Hence snide remarks, subtle inferences, small
praise, dismissive gestures, indeed every possible form of passive assault
characterized the social life of the court.

No wonder that Pompadour’s manner appealed to the king. Often laughing,
visibly less calculating, liable to burst out with unpredictable enthusiasm,
she must have been like a breath of fresh air to him. The painter François
Boucher captured her ebullience well. In portrait after portrait, the spirit
that enlivens her rose-cheeked face spills out into the room. Rendered with
colors that are vibrant and soft at the same time, her dresses appear less to
hang than to ripple, and the same vibrant

energy seems to bless all that surrounds her; whether it is a brocade

curtain, the patterned edge of a chaise-lounge, an elegantly rounded side table,
a feathered pen, a clock encased in gold garlands, a compact filled with rouge,
the rose pinned to her bodice, a rose at her feet, a rose bush behind her, a
statue of a woman holding a child in a garden, a lemon or a beech tree that
catches our attention, the eye is dazzled by exuberance.

That Boucher began to paint the marquise when she was still a child seems
fitting. She was a good subject for him. There was a strong concordance between
her way of being and his way of seeing. Not only did they prefer the same
bright pastel colors, they both liked flowers. She was an avid gardener and he
embellished canvasses, tapestries, and vases with flowery forms. More
significant, they shared a precise time and place in history, positioned
between one order and another: the monarchy that was soon to fall and the
bourgeois world already on the rise.

You can see the same contradictory directions, resolved into prettiness, in
both her life and his art. As frivolous as both the painter and the mistress
may seem today, together they invented an ingenuous version of grace, one that
allowed them to erase conflicts that otherwise might have erased them. With a
single recognizable style, Boucher has painted the grand mythic scenes that
belonged to the old order, delicate landscapes, and the more domestic scenes
that gently predict a radical shift in values. Similarly, as a young newly
married woman, Madame Etioles (as Pompadour was known before her husband was
dispatched with an official decree of separation) hosted her own salon, which
the
philosophes
, including Voltaire, attended. For a period even after
she was at court, as well as sponsoring Voltaire, she defended the ideas that
would one day lead to the Revolution. The lightly congenial manner which
allowed her to do so doubtless also made it easier for her eventually to
relinquish these ideas, which were not, understandably, as popular at court as
they were in Paris.

Yet there was much she did not relinquish. Though she learned proper protocol,
she never adopted the rigidly cold manner of court ladies. And just as Boucher
included intimate scenes in his repertoire, she retained what was then
considered a very bourgeois tone of intimacy with all those who were close to
her, including the king. One of the most revealing portraits we have of her,
painted by Alexandre Roslin, seems to catch her in a private moment with her
brother, the marquis de Marigny. They both wear ornately embroidered silk, she
rose and white, he red and gold, and the same mischievous half smile adorns
both faces as if the two siblings had been interrupted in the midst of a game.
Marigny, who inherited his title from his father (to whom it was given for
obvious reasons by the king), holds an architectural model and a compass, while
Pompadour holds a box of jewelry. Though Marigny’s model was most probably
made to simulate a monumental project they were designing together, the effect
of the whole scene, their almost winking expressions, the tea service on the
desk between them already used, is informal in an almost modern way.