At last!  It’s taken decades, but my Mitford collection is now complete.  I’m referring to Nancy Mitford’s 4 historical biographies, rather than her novels.  In order of publication, the biographies are: Madame de Pompadour (1954), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and Frederick the Great (1970).

Attentive readers might remember this photo from an early post on this blog:

Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King, both by Nancy Mitford.  These are the lavish American editions published by Harper & Row.

At the time, these were the only items in my Mitford collection.  They’ve followed me from home to home through 4 countries over the last 30-odd years, which is why the dust jackets are slightly the worse for wear.  I had once owned a hard cover copy of Frederick the Great, but I donated it to a library that one of my former professors was setting up at Western University (my alma mater, formerly known as the University of Western Ontario).  It’s called the Pride Library.  You can visit its website here: http://www.uwo.ca/pridelib/.

A visit to my local secondhand bookshop today paid off handsomely.  I found 2 ‘new’ Nancy Mitford biographies for my collection.

Attentive readers might remember from an early post that Mitford’s biography of Frederick the Great was the first Versailles Century book that I read as a youngster.

Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford.

That book then led me to her Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King, which were my introduction to the world of Versailles.

Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King by Nancy Mitford.

The books in the photo above are my personal copies.  I’ve had them for decades.  I once had a copy of Frederick the Great, too, but some years ago I donated it to the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.  Actually, I’ve donated several hundred titles in various media to that fine institution.  You can read about my donations here: http://www.uwo.ca/pridelib/site/Collections/Donor%20Collections1/David%20Gemeinhardt%20Collection.html

Having grasped that Versailles, as the embodiment of elite French culture, was the key to understanding 18th century Europe, I soon realized that knowledge of the French language was indispensable.  Not only was it the tongue of the most admired court in Europe, it was the lingua franca of the entire European elite from London to St. Petersburg.

French dictionary

My new hero, Frederick the Great, for instance, spoke and wrote French in preference to German.  Even when he spoke German, he is said to have spoken a Frenchified version of it.  Legend has it that he once galloped up to a group of officers who were holding their troops back during battle and barked, “Messieurs!  Warum attaquieren Sie nicht?” (“Gentlemen!  Why are you not attacking?”).  The point is that attaquieren is not a German verb, but one invented for the occasion from the French attaquer.

Frederick in the field

Furthermore, French was the language of the ‘Republic of Letters’, that group of what we would now call public intellectuals who lead the Enlightenment.  Many of the most eminent of them were francophones, like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, of course.  However, even if the non-francophones published in their native languages, like, say, Hume in English, or Vico in Italian, they used French to correspond with their foreign peers.  They also used French when they met in person, which was not often in those days before planes and trains, as did Frederick and Voltaire when the latter took up the former’s invitation to live — temporarily, as it turned out — in Potsdam.  When Diderot went to St. Petersburg to meet his benefactress, Catherine the Great, they conversed in French.  The Empress, however, was disconcerted at their first interview by the fact Diderot would thump her on the knee whenever he agreed with what she said.  At their next meeting, he found that a table had been inserted between their chairs.

Catherine the Great

Having devoured Nancy Mitford’s Frederick the Great, which gave me a burning desire to visit Potsdam, the site of Frederick’s beloved palace of Sans Souci, I became curious about the  other people and places mentioned in the book.  For instance, this man Voltaire.  Who was he?  And Madame de Pompadour?  Cardinal de Fleury?  None of these people were showing up in our weekly viewings of The Remarkable Life of Friedrich von der Trenck.

Sans Souci

It occurred to me that Miss Mitford might have written other books.  Returning to the library, I looked up her other works in the card catalogue.  Sure enough, it listed Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King.

I loved the sparkle and wit of her prose, even as a 10-year-old.  Of course, a good deal of her wit went over my head.  I also loved her personal insights.  I noticed, for instance, that in The Sun King she was able to offer a first-hand comparison of the toilet facilities at Versailles and Buckingham Palace, which then, unlike now, was not open to the general public.

Since the great courtesan was Frederick’s contemporary, I decided to borrow Madame de Pompadour first.  Thus it was that I discovered the teeming, scheming labyrinth of Versailles in the mid-18th century.