ON THIS DAY IN THE VERSAILLES CENTURY (1682-1789)

3 April 1776 

On this day, following on from yesterday’s visit to the faisanderie, the Duc de Croÿ goes with the Abbé d’Arvillars to see M Boutin’s pleasure garden.* 

Simon Gabriel Boutin (1720-1794) is the wealthy son of a farmer-general. He has been working for a decade on a pleasure park that features gardens and follies in various styles, including in the new English style. He calls his garden Tivoli, but it is commonly called the Folie-Boutin. Poor M Boutin dies on the guillotine, but his park becomes a public attraction under the Tivoli name and later moves to another location nearby. There are at this date several pleasure parks in the area, a trend started by the Duc de Richelieu in the 1730s.

*Journal of the Duc de Croÿ

Pictured: The Place de l’Europe-Simone-Veil today occupies the original site of the Folie-Boutin.

Credit — CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=438239

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Death of the Writer Vauvenargues on 28 May, 1747

It was on this day 272 years ago that the writer and soldier Louis de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, died in Paris.

Born into a noble but poor Provençal family in 1715, he first sought to make his way in the army. Since his family could not afford to buy a commission for him, he had to start at the bottom as a cadet in one of the royal regiments. By the time France became involved in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), he had become a lieutenant. During the war, he was promoted to captain. During the Siege of Prague in the winter of 1742/43, Vauvenargues suffered severe frostbite and the death of his greatest emotional attachment, a much younger officer named Paul-Hippolyte Emmanuel de Seytres, to whom he would later dedicate two works. In the following year, he contracted smallpox. His health ruined, he retired from the army and moved to Paris.

In the final years of his life, Vauvenargues took up the pen and struck up a friendship with Voltaire. The great author encouraged the younger man to publish a volume of his philosophical writings. It appeared in 1746 under the title Introduction à la connaissance de l’esprit humain, with appendices entitled Réflexions and Maxims. It was the latter that would eventually make his name, albeit posthumously, becoming popular in the 19th century. A sample: “Clarity is the good faith of philosophers.”

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_de_Clapiers,_marquis_de_Vauvenargues

Image: A posthumous engraved portrait of Vauvenargues. Credit — By Charles Amedée Colin (1808-1873) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LucdeClapiers-marquisdeVauvenarges.jpg. Upload: Mathsci, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11272592

It was on this day 300 years ago, on 30 November, 1718, that Charles XII of Sweden, one of the heroes of the Versailles Century (1682-1789), was killed in action. He was only 36.

Charles XII came to the throne early, succeeding his father, Charles XI, in 1697. He was only fifteen at the time. As a young man, we was nordically handsome, with a lush mane and piercing blue eyes. Charles initially reigned under a regency, but only 7 months after his accession he assumed full power.

Charles XII in his youth. Credit — by Michael Dahl — Nationalmuseum, Domaine public, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52121845

Charles XII was a dedicated soldier who soon led Sweden into the Great Northern War (1700-1721), a lengthy and ultimately ruinous conflict. In the early stages, it went well for Charles and Sweden. The young king won a number of brilliant victories and managed to impose the king of his choice on Poland — Louis XV’s future father-in-law Stanislas Lesczcynski — as well as strengthening his position in the Baltics. In 1709, however, he was decisively defeated by Peter the Great at Poltava, in what we now call Ukraine. This defeat was to mark a watershed in the history of eastern and northern Europe: the Swedish empire, which had dominated the lands around the Baltic Sea for 200 years, came to end, and the Russian empire took its place as the regional hegemon.

Part 2.8 is the conclusion of Chapter 2.

A Childhood at Versailles consists of the first 5 chapters of the memoirs of Mme de Boigne (1781-1866), née Adèle d’Osmond, who was a French salon hostess and writer.  She was born in the Château de Versailles and lived at the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette until her family fled to England during the Revolution.  Later in her long life, she married a rich soldier of fortune 30 years her senior, hosted a brilliant salon in Paris, and became an intimate of the last French queen, Marie-Amélie, consort of King Louis Philippe (r. 1830-1848).  Childless herself, Mme de Boigne addressed her memoirs to her grandnephew.  The memoirs were not published until 1907, under the title Récits d’une tante, or An Aunt’s Tales.  They’ve never been published in English, as far as I know, so I’ve decided to translate the first 5 chapters, the ones that take place mainly at Versailles, and post them here on this blog for interested readers to enjoy for free.

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 2.8, the conclusion of Chapter 2, the author recounts the novel-worthy career of Mme de Victoire’s remarkable lady-in-waiting, Mme de Civrac.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter Two, Part 8 (2.8)

I have said that Mme de Civrac was Madame Victoire’s lady in waiting.  Her life is a novel.

Mlle Monbadon, the daughter of a Bordeaux notary, had reached the age of twenty-five.  She was tall, witty, and, above all, ambitious.  Her hand in marriage was sought by a country squire in the neighbourhood whose name was M de Blagnac.  He was a member of the bodyguard.  This man was poor, quite rustic, and incapable of appreciating her merits, but he wished to share the little fortune that she stood to inherit from her father.

The person who put the marriage forward emphasized M de Blagnac’s birth; he was a member of the house of Durfort.  Mlle Monbadon had the genealogical papers brought, and, satisfied by her inspection of them, married M de Blagnac.

Packing a small bag in addition to the portfolio in which she enclosed the genealogical parchments, she set off in a stage coach with her husband, and arrived in Paris.  Her first visit was to Chérin; she handed the papers over to him, and asked him to examine them scrupulously.  A few days later, she came back to collect them and obtained the assurance that the affiliation of M de Blagnac with the Lorge branch of the house of Durfort was thoroughly established.  She had a certificate to that effect delivered to her, and began to have herself called Blagnac de Civrac.  She wrote to the old Maréchal de Lorge to ask an interview of him.  She very modestly said that she was only passing through Paris, and she believed that her husband had the honour to be related to him.  As distant as the connection might be, it was such a great honour and source of happiness that she did not wish to return to her provincial obscurity without having claimed it.  If she dared to push her claims as far as being received just once by Mme la Maréchale, her gratitude would be beyond measure.

A Childhood at Versailles consists of the first 5 chapters of the memoirs of Mme de Boigne (1781-1866), née Adèle d’Osmond, who was a French salon hostess and writer.  She was born in the Château de Versailles and lived at the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette until her family fled to England during the Revolution.  Later in her long life, she married a rich soldier of fortune 30 years her senior, hosted a brilliant salon in Paris, and became an intimate of the last French queen, Marie-Amélie, consort of King Louis Philippe (r. 1830-1848).  Childless herself, Mme de Boigne addressed her memoirs to her grandnephew.  The memoirs were not published until 1907, under the title Récits d’une tante, or An Aunt’s Tales.  They’ve never been published in English, as far as I know, so I’ve decided to translate the first 5 chapters, the ones that take place mainly at Versailles, and post them here on this blog for interested readers to enjoy for free.

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 2.4, the author describes the court within the court of Louis XVI’s aunts, whose leader was Madame Adélaïde, the eldest surviving daughter of Louis XV.  

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 2, Part 4 (2.4)

The little court of Mesdames the King’s aunts was a court within the court, referred to as the Old Court.  Its habits were very regular.  The princesses spent the whole summer at Bellevue, where their nephews and nieces constantly came for impromptu family dinners. A courier would arrive a few minutes ahead to announce them. When the courier was Monsieur’s, later Louis XVIII, the kitchen would be warned, and the dinner would be more ample and carefully presented. For the others, no warning was given, not even for the King, who had a large appetite, but was not nearly as much a gourmand as his brother.

At Bellevue, the royal family dined with everyone who happened to be there.  With the people attached to Mesdames, their families, and a few regular guests, the number generally came to twenty or thirty persons.

The following events occurred this week in different years of the Versailles Century (1682-1789).  I’ve culled them mostly from the English, French, and German wikipedias.  Occasionally, I draw on wikipedias in other Romance languages and hope that I correctly understood them.  I welcome gentle correction in the comments, either here or on the Versailles Century page on Facebook.  As often as possible, I provide a link to an article in English for further reading.

29 January, 1712

It was on this day 305 years ago that the Congress of Utrecht opened. Its aim was to negotiate an end to the War of the Spanish Succession, which had been raging for nearly a decade. The British and French had already stopped fighting in late 1711 and agreed on certain preliminaries. The Congress dragged on for more than year, finally resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The Austrians made a separate peace with France in 1714.

Original English and Spanish copies of the Treaty of Utrecht, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This is of particular note to Canadians and Americans. By its terms, France ceded Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the shorelands of Hudson’s Bay to Britain. This cession spurred the emigration of the Acadian people from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, then still a French possession, where they later became known as the Cajun people.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Utrecht

30 January, 1735

It was on this day 287 years ago that the island of Corsica, hitherto under the rule of the Republic of Genoa, first declared its never-to-this-day-realized independence. The Genoese, unable to reassert control, called on Louis XV for military aid. French interference continued for more than 30 years, until Genoa finally formally ceded Corsica to France in 1768 by the Treaty of Versailles. Nonetheless, it was not until the Battle of Ponto Novo in the spring of 1769 that France was able to establish full control over the island — just in time for one Napoleone Buonaparte to be born a French subject that summer in Ajaccio, Corsica’s capital.

An ancient Genoese tower in Corsica, courtesy of Pierre Bona — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10590372.

Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corse 

31 January, 1773

It was on this day 245 years ago that Frederick the Great decreed that the former Polish province known as Royal Prussia would henceforth be known as West Prussia. The former Ducal Prussia would in contrast be called East Prussia. Frederick had acquired the re-named province in the First Partition of Poland in September of the previous year. It was an important strategic and practical acquisition because it joined Ducal Prussia to Pomerania. Prussia, Russia, and Austria had agreed the partition amongst themselves and then forced the Polish diet to ratify it. Although this re-drawing of the map was accomplished peacefully, it must be said that it was a historic crime against Poland. Worse was yet to come.

Courtesy of Skäpperöd at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia(Original text : :image:K0nigl+herzoglPreussen.png), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6101262

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Prussia

1 February, 1733

It was on this day 285 years ago that Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died. He had been the rival of Louis XV’s father-in-law, Stanislas Leszczynski, for the Polish throne in the first decade of the 18th century. Augustus prevailed with Russian help. After his death, Stanislas hurried to Poland and was once again elected king by the Polish diet. This touched off the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738). To make a long story very short, Louis XV failed to support his wife’s father militarily, and the Russians again helped the Saxons. Augustus II’s only son was in the end duly crowned Augustus III. As fate and politics would have it, however, Augustus II and Stanislas were both great-grandfathers of the last 3 kings of France. How? Augustus III’s daughter, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe, married the Dauphin Louis, the son and heir of Louis XV. The young couple produced the future Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X.

A copy of an original 1720s portrait of Augustus II by Louis de Sylvestre. It’s in the Meissen room of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, where I photographed it in December, 2017.

This wraps up our Versailles Century events for this week.  To get daily updates as they occur, please follow the Versailles Century page on Facebook.  They appear there first, and then get compiled here at the end of the week.

It’s true, dear readers: VC is off to Mexico for the next week. Consequently, there will be no new blog posts until at least Monday, 22 May, 2017.

However, on my return, I plan to bring you words and images related to Mexico as it was during the Versailles Century (1682-1789), when it was still the Kingdom of New Spain.

For instance, late in the period, Carlos III of Spain (r. 1759-1788) initiated a number of reforms in colonial government and sent out energetic viceroys to enforce them.  One of them, Bernardo de Galvez, the 49th viceroy of New Spain who ruled from 1785 to 1788, initiated the construction of the hill-top palace of Chapultepec in Mexico City.  I will definitely visit it and report back to you.

The Place des Vosges does not strictly speaking fall within the Versailles Century time period (1682-1789), as it was built between 1605 and 1612.  In other words, construction started in the reign of Henri IV and finished early in the reign of Louis XIII.  The connection to the latter king, however, is enough of a justification to write about it here, I feel, since Louis XIII actually built the original chateau at Versailles.

In fact, according to French Wikipedia (from which I get most of my information for posts of this type), the square was inaugurated with a carrousel (ie. a large-scale equestrian performance) in honour of Louis XIII’s wedding to Anne of Austria, who, despite her name, was a Spanish princess.  In 1639, a statue of Louis XIII was put up in the centre of the square.  It was pulled down during the Revolution, but a new one by the sculptors Dupaty and Cortot was erected in 1825.  It’s still there.

Monument to Louis XIII in the Place des Vosges.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 4, the Maréchale d’Aubemer’s niece attends her first ball in Paris. 

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER FOUR

A Ball

The end of Carnival brought the day destined for the English ambassadress’s ball.  It was to be the last as well as the most splendid one of the season, and the ladies set to work so as to be able to shine at it.

First thing in the morning, a young woman from Mademoiselle Augustine, the renowned couturiere, had brought an exquisite ball gown to Mme de Saveuse’s, wishing to be informed at what hour she should come back to dress her.  Mademoiselle herself would personally put the finishing touches on Madame la Comtesse’s ensemble.  The latter would gladly have declined these services had she not recognized in them her aunt’s solicitude.  She thus accepted, indicating an hour that very much surprised Mlle Augustine’s young woman, who was accustomed to seeing ladies wearing such elegant gowns not arrive at a ball until such time as their entrance would create the greatest sensation.  Mme de Saveuse, however, intended to go and wait at the Hôtel d’Aubemer until Mme de Montford came to take her to the English ambassador’s residence, not thinking of the danger of mussing her dress.  The Duchesse had fixed a time that was rather earlier than the Maréchale would have liked, for despite having a great store of good sense, she was too much a woman of the world not to wish for what she called “a brilliant debut” for her niece.  She knew that to obtain one it was necessary to display some slight nuance of originality, and, to this end, she desired that with Mlle Augustine’s dress, executed in the purest taste of the fashion of the day and adjusted by that inimitable person herself so as to defy any feminine criticism, the Comtesse Lionel should keep her customary hair style in order to be more beautiful and also to attract attention.   This hair style, consisting of loose plaits and large ringlets, which could not be imitated without such magnificent hair as her niece’s, would have to be nearly unique to Mme de Saveuse and would assure a lasting impact.  The difficulty, which the Maréchale felt keenly, was in getting her niece to enlist in the plan, and she manoeuvred with requisite skill.  She had managed to recount in front of her niece several instances of the tardiness of the hairdressers of Paris, and when the latter came in the morning to thank her for her charming gown, Mme d’Aubemer said to her with an air of indifference, “I thought, my child, that since she’s having the goodness to escort you, it wouldn’t be polite to keep Mme de Montford waiting because of some hairdresser’s lateness of the kind we’ve been talking about recently, and in the event that yours doesn’t turn up, there would be no inconvenience in putting up your hair the way you do it every day, only, in order to look sufficiently dressed up, you would replace your tortoise-shell comb with this one; that way, you would look very presentable.”  She handed Mme de Saveuse a superb diamond hair-comb and said no more about her hair-do.

Antonio Vivaldi was born on 4 March, 1678, precisely 339 years ago today.  He has always been one of my favourite composers.  Like just about any Baroque music fancier alive, I never tire of The Four Seasons.

The great man was born in Venice, the day after an earthquake.  He was sickly as a child.  It’s possible that he was asthmatic.  Given both a musical and a religious education, he became a violin virtuoso and an ordained priest.  By age 24, he was engaged to teach and compose for the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, an institution for foundlings and other impoverished children.  The orchestra there was made up entirely of girls.  It was for them that he wrote most of his early compositions, including the The Four Seasons (1725).

Vivaldi. Credit: Wikipedia.