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A Childhood at Versailles, Part 5.4

Part 5.4 is the final part of Chapter 5.

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 5.4, the author relates her family’s crossing of the Alps in mid-winter on their way to England, where they would remain for many years.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 5, Part 4 (Part 5.4)

I have already spoken several times of my father’s valet, Bermont. When our departure for England was decided, my father wanted to find a place for him in Naples with General Acton. It would have suited him marvellously, but he absolutely refused to hear of it. Several years earlier he had married a woman who had been successively my nursemaid and then my brother’s when I was handed over to an Englishwoman. He had had children with her who were still in France. He told my father that he did not want to be separated from us.

“But, my poor Bermont, I cannot keep a valet.”

“That is true, Monsieur le marquis, but you need a muleteer. You are going to buy some mules for the journey, and someone will be needed to look after them and drive them. Well, that someone will be me.”

August 24, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 4.4

Part 4.4 is the fourth part of Chapter 4, and the first of two parts about the royal family’s disastrous, failed flight to Varennes in the summer of 1791.

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 4.4, the author records her father’s projected part in the royal family’s attempted flight from Paris and its aftermath.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 4, Part 4 (4.4)

Once established in Rome, my mother spent several months there in a state of keen anxiety over the dangers to which my father was exposed. He came to join us in the spring of the year 1792,* a few months after the flight to Varennes. Here is what I have heard him tell about it since.

June 5, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 4.3

Part 4.3 is the third part of Chapter 4.

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 4.3, the author recounts her father’s role in the narrow escape of Mesdames, Louis XV’s aunts, from the mob.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 4, Part 3 (4.3)

Far from calming down, the Revolution became ever more menacing. The King, who had formed the project of leaving Paris, wished to get his aunts away from it. They asked for and obtained the National Assembly’s permission to go to Rome. Before leaving, they went to stay at Bellevue.

My father had been named minister to St. Petersburg to replace M de Ségur (1790). The Minister’s public report had it that this choice had been made because the Empress Catherine would not consent to receive an envoy who was a patriot. This circumstance could not but render my father’s position very dangerous. Nevertheless, he did not think of leaving France, but he wanted his wife and daughter to leave. As soon as Mesdames had crossed the frontier, my mother was to follow them.

On the eve of the day fixed for Mesdames’ departure, my father, who spent his days among different groups, caught wind that many no longer wanted to let them leave. Demagogic orators preached a crusade against Bellevue, with a view to fetching the old ladies and bringing them back to Paris; one could never have too many hostages, etc. The obedient mob was already on the road to Bellevue.

May 31, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Uncategorised

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 2.8

Part 2.8 is the conclusion of Chapter 2.

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.

March 27, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 2.5

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 2.5, the author tells how the royal family spent their evenings at Versailles, describing the ceremony of the coucher, or the royal going-to-bed, as practised under Louis XVI.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter Two, Part 5 (2.5)

At nine o’clock the whole royal family gathered for supper in the apartments of Madame, the wife of Monsieur. They were exclusively amongst themselves there, and were only very rarely absent. There were positive reasons apart from displeasing the King. Even the Comte d’Artois, who was very bored by these occasions, was hardly ever absent from them. Court gossip was recounted and family matters were discussed. They were very much at ease and often very merry, for it must be said that once they were separated from the entourages that importuned them, these princes were the best people in the world. After supper, they all went their own ways.

The King went to his coucher.

February 28, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 2.2

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 2.2, the author describes the urbane manners and mores of summer life in 3 great country houses: Hautefontaine, Frascati, and Esclimont. As far as I can tell, all 3 chateaux were casualties of the Revolution.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 2 (Part 2.2)

During the first years of my parents’ residence at Versailles, they divided their summer between the homes of the Duc d’Orléans, Saint-Assise and Raincy, Hautefontaine, which belonged to the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Bishop of Metz’s Frascati, and the Maréchal de Laval’s Esclimont.

I am wrong to say that Hautefontaine belonged to the Archbishop of Narbonne; it belonged his niece, Mme de Rothe, daughter of his sister, Lady Forester. She was the widow of a General de Rothe. She had been pretty enough and despotic with it, and did the honours of the house for her uncle, with whom she lived for many years in a highly complete intimacy that they hardly bothered to dissimulate.

The Archbishop had eight hundred thousand in revenue from his clerical benefices. Every two years he went down to Narbonne for a fortnight, and then presided over the Estates at Montpellier for six weeks. Throughout these times, he led a grand and very episcopal life, and deployed a fair amount of administrative capacity in presiding over the Estates. However, the day that the sessions ended, he packed up his papers and never gave them another thought until the next sessions opened, nor did he give any further thought to the needs of his diocese.

Hautefontaine was his customary residence. Mme de Rothe was its proprietor, but the Archbishop was the master. He had married his nephew, Arthur Dillon, son of Lord Dillon, to Mlle de Rothe, an only daughter and his grand-niece. She was a very pretty woman, very fashionable, one of the Queen’s ladies, and openly had a liaison with the Prince de Guéméné, who spent his whole life at Hautefontaine. In a nearby village, he had installed a hunting establishment, which he possessed in common with the Duc de Lauzon and the Archbishop, for whom his nephew, Arthur, served as the front.

February 8, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 2.1

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 2.1, the author highlights the lack of interest that the courtiers at Versailles took in the outside world, which is revealed in an amusing exchange between her father and Mme Adéläide, the most senior princess at Court after the King’s wife and sisters-in-law.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter 2 (Part 2.1)

From Sunday to Saturday one lived quietly at Versailles in a way that was horribly dull for people who tore themselves away from their usual society to come and serve there without being well established. However, it was a life not without interest for people who were definitively established; it was, in a way, a country house life of which the gossip revolved around important affairs. Most had no notion of the national interest while following the intrigues that exiled M de Malesherbes from the centre of power or brought M de Calonne to it. However, enlightened minds, such as my father’s, were interested in things other than a dispute over music or a rupture between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Princesse de Luxembourg, which were the great events in society at the time.

No one thought of public policy in general. If anyone did, it was done unreflectingly and motivated by a private interest of fortune or faction. Foreign governments were as unknown to us then as that of China is to us today. My father was considered a bit of a pedant for taking an interest in European affairs, and he read the only journal that took some notice of them.

January 31, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books

A Childhood at Versailles, Part 1.7

The chapters are quite lengthy, so I’ve broken each one into several parts. In Part 1.7, the final part of Chapter One, Mme de Boigne relates the strange tale of a pair of imposters posing as Greek refugee princes who hoodwinked Louis XVI, his ministers, the court, and high society.

A Childhood at Versailles, Chapter One, Part 7 (1.7)

The Court of France’s predilection for foreigners was exploited in a rather singular way by two illustrious Greeks, hounded from their homeland by Muslim provocations. The Prince of Chios and Prince Justinian, his son, direct descendants of the Byzantine emperors, came to request the hospitality of Louis XVI at the beginning of his reign. He accorded it to them nobly and grandly, as befitted a king of France. While waiting for the claims he was making to the Sublime Porte for the restitution of his property to be resolved, the Prince of Chios was begged to accept a hefty pension, and Prince Justinian entered French service by taking command of a fine regiment.

These Greek princes lived off the royal munificence for some years, and were well received in the best society in Paris and at Versailles. Their accent, and a bit of oddness in their manners, assured their success. One day, when, for the hundredth time, they were dining at the table of the Comte de Maurepas, the latter saw the Prince of Chios, who was seated next to him, turn pale and look troubled.

January 24, 2018 by David Gemeinhardt

Books, Events, On This Day, People, Rulers

On This Day: The Death of Catherine the Great

On this day in 1796, Catherine the Great, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, died in St. Petersburg at the age of 67.

Catherine the Great a few years before her death.

She had been found sprawled on the floor of her bathroom on the morning of 16 November. She was moved to her bedroom, where her doctor examined her and determined that she’d had a stroke. Having slipped into a coma, she never recovered consciousness and died on the evening of the 17th.

Known to history as Catherine the Great, she’d been born in 1729 as Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, one of the most insignificant of the numerous insignificant German statelets at that time. The Empress Elizabeth (r. 1741-1761) summoned her to Russia in 1744 to marry her nephew and heir, the future Peter III. The marriage was unhappy and remained unconsummated for years. Both parties were unfaithful and the paternity of their son, the future Emperor Paul, has always been in doubt. On Elizabeth’s death at the end of 1761, Peter became emperor, but made himself unpopular in short order. Within months of the late Empress’s funeral, Catherine organized a coup d’état, assumed the throne — to which she had no actual claim, of course — as empress regnant, not merely regent for her young son, and eliminated all her rivals, including Peter. She ruled with great energy, enlarging Russia’s territory by a third, building enthusiastically, collecting art on a grand scale, corresponding with the great thinkers of the day, writing voluminously, and taking numerous lovers. Her last lover, Platon Zubov, later helped to assassinate the Emperor Paul, who had done all he could to undo his mother’s work, even going so far as to decree that no woman should ever again sit on the Russian throne.

I first read Catherine’s memoirs when I was a teenager. She had written them in French, but my local library had a copy of the English translation edited by Dominique Maroger and translated by Moura Budberg. I later found and purchased a copy at a local secondhand bookstore (see below). I believe it’s the original Canadian edition. It has followed me through 4 countries and sits on a shelf in my bedroom to this day. It’s a very lively book and Catherine’s voice comes through very clearly. Unfortunately, she stopped writing, literally in mid-sentence, just as she was beginning to describe a conversation with the Empress Elizabeth shortly before her death which started with that monarch saying, “I insist that you tell me the truth about everything I am going to ask you.”

Cover of Catherine the Great’s memoirs, published in Canada by Hamish Hamilton, Ltd, in 1955.

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think? Please comment below, on the Versailles Century Facebook page, or in the Versailles Century gallery on Instagram.

November 17, 2016 by David Gemeinhardt

Ideas, Reflections

Versailles Century, the Beginning — Part 3: Learning French

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.