It’s well known that Louis XIV was an avid and accomplished dancer in his youth.  In 2000, the Belgian filmmaker the Gérard Corbieu memorably depicted the young king’s dance spectacles in the movie Le Roi Danse (The King is Dancing).

It’s also quite well known that the Sun King was surrounded by music from morning till evening.  Indeed, he was rarely out of earshot of one group of musicians or another.  Even while he was hunting there would have been horns, after all.

At HMV Canada’s going-out-of-business sale at its flagship store in Toronto, I purchased this boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

Les Menus Plaisirs de Louis XIV de Paris à Versailles (Harmonia Mundi), a 10-CD boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

The Chapel was the last major component of the Château to be completed.

Louis XIV had been planning a grand new chapel in the late 1680s when the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697), also known as the Nine Years’ War, broke out.  The plans for the Chapel were then shelved.

The Chapel of the Château de Versailles as seen from a street in the town.

When the planning resumed after the end of the war, the King had changed his mind about a crucial point of the design: instead of marble, the white stone known as banc royal would be used for the interior.

Madame Adélaïde (1732-1800) was one of Louis XV’s children.  As such, she was a “Daughter of France,” and was accorded a truly royal apartment in the main block of the Château.

Portrait of Mme Adélaïde in 1787 by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. It hangs in her sister’s apartment at Versailles.

Her apartment adjoins that of her younger sister, Mme Victoire (1733-1799).  I previously described Mme Victoire’s apartment in an early post on this blog: http://versaillescentury.com/2016/09/22/versailles-mme-victoires-apartment/#more-304

The 2 sisters were the last of Louis XV’s offspring still alive and living in the Château towards the end of the reign of their nephew, Louis XVI. The latter also gave them the Château de Bellevue, and, unprecedentedly, the joint dukedom of Lauzun.  The layout of the rooms today is as it was arranged for the sisters in the 1780s.

For several years I’ve been looking for a French work from or about the Versailles Century (1682-1789) to translate, preferably one that has never been translated into English before.  It also needs to be in the public domain.  It’s been a slow search because every time I found an interesting property it turned out to have been done already or under copyright.  I’m pleased to say that the search is now over.

Beginning this week, I will be serializing for you, dear readers, a French novel about the 18th century that has never before been published in English: Madame de Boigne’s La Maréchale d’Aubemer (The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer).  It’s original subtitle is right up our alley, so to speak: Nouvelle du XVIIIème (A Novella of the 18th Century).

Now, who is this Mme de Boigne, you may wonder?  Though she lived most of her life in the 19th century, Éléonore-Adèle d’Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne, has unassailable Versailles Century credentials: she was born at the Château de Versailles in 1781.  Her parents, the Marquis and Marquise d’Osmond, were courtiers.  Her half-Irish mother had the more prestigious position: she was a lady-in-waiting to Mme Adélaïde, one of Louis XVI’s aunts.  Little Éléonore-Adèle was chosen to be one of the playmates of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette’s eldest son, Louis-Joseph, the first dauphin, who died a month before the fall of the Bastille.  After the Revolution broke out, the Osmond family fled to England.

Mme de Boigne in her youth. Credit: Wikipedia.

The Cour de Marbre is part of the footprint of Louis XIII’s original chateau, which was intended to be nothing more than a hunting lodge and a place of quiet refuge from court life.

The Cour de Marbre facade of the Chateau de Versailles.

Louis XIV, of course, had very different ideas for his father’s hunting lodge.  Still, he respected his father’s memory to such an extent that he planned his expansion of the Chateau around the original building instead of knocking it down and starting fresh.   Thus was born the Enveloppe, literally the “envelope” of new construction that enclosed Louis XIII’s hunting lodge.

The King’s State Bedroom was the ceremonial heart of the Château, but the Cabinet du conseil (Council Chamber) next door was its political heart.

The King’s Council Chamber at Versailles.

All three kings who lived at Versailles spent many hours in this room.  It was the venue for meetings of the Conseil d’Etat, the Council of State, which was effectively the cabinet.   The King also chaired the meetings of the Conseil des Dépêches (Foreign Affairs) and the Conseil des Finances (Finance) here.  Furthermore, foreign ambassadors presented their credentials in this room.  Last but not least, all those who wished to join the court had to be presented to the King here by a sponsor.  In 1745, Madame de Pompadour was presented, for instance.

Louis XVI’s library at Versailles is the only room in the Private Apartments (Petits appartements) that the unfortunate monarch substantially altered after he came to the throne.  Otherwise, he left his grandfather Louis XV’s rooms more or less as he found them.

Consequently, this library is also the only room in the Private Apartments that is decorated in the neo-classical style to which Louis XVI has given his name.  Note the rectilinear paneling in the picture below.

Looking into Louis XVI’s library from the west door.

Louis XV had of course also had a library.  In fact, he had several.  A series of small libraries in the attic-level Petits cabinets was constructed for him in the 1730s, including a map room.  He lost interest in the Petits cabinets after the creation of the Private Apartments and eventually made them over to his daughter-in-law, the Dauphine, in 1766.  After her death, they passed to Mme du Barry, for whom an exquisite little library was arranged.  It can be visited today.

Happy New Year!

The turn of the year was a big deal at Versailles during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.  Both kings liked to gather their families around the the stupendous astronomical clock in the eponymously named Cabinet de la pendule on New Year’s Eve to watch the year tick over on the clock face.

Louis XV’s astronomical clock in the Cabinet de la pendule in the Petits Appartements at Versailles.  The royal family would gather in front of the clock to celebrate the turn of the new year.  

In those days, gifts were given on New Year’s Day, rather than on Christmas Day.  Louis XVI’s private accounts still exist, and they show that he spent the most on gifts for his wife and his sister, Mme Elisabeth.

The great golden gate of Versailles: On this fateful day 227 years ago, Louis XVI and his family were escorted through it by the mob on their way to Paris, never to return.  Thus ended what I call THE VERSAILLES CENTURY (1682-1789).

The golden gate seen from inside the Cour d’honneur, which is how the King and his family would have seen it on 6 October, 1789, except that it had been broken off its hinges shortly before.  You can just make out the great stables through the grille.

The mob had burst through the gate shortly before midnight on 5 October, howling for the Queen’s blood.  Marie-Antoinette barely managed to escape from her bedroom through a secret passage to the King’s room. The advance of the mob had been delayed just long enough while they massacred the Swiss guards on duty outside the Queen’s room.

Today we visit Madame Victoire’s apartment at Versailles.

Louis XV had 8 daughters, of whom 7 survived to adulthood, and of whom 2 lived long enough to see the Revolution.  Mme Victoire, born in 1733, was the younger of those two.  Like all but one of her sisters, she was sent away from Versailles to the abbey of Fontevrault for her education.  As a Daughter of France, i.e. the daughter of a reigning king, she was called Madame rather than Mademoiselle even though she never married.  This portrait of her was painted when she returned to live at Versailles at the end of her schooling in 1748.

Mme Victoire by Nattier.  Credit: Wikipedia

Curiously, only one of the sisters married.  This was the eldest, Mme Louise Elisabeth, known simply as Madame, later as Madame Infante when she was married at 13 to the Infante Philip of Spain, a younger son of Philip V.  He later inherited his mother’s sovereign duchy of Parma,* thus making him and Mme Louise Elisabeth the founders of the house of Bourbon-Parma,** whose descendants now include all the Catholic royalties of Europe.

By the time their nephew Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, only 3 of the sisters were left at Versailles: Mme Adelaide, Mme Victoire, and Mme Sophie, who died in 1782.  Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire remained in the apartments that we see today until the royal family were forced to leave the Chateau in October of 1789.  The sisters withdrew to their estate at Bellevue, from which they fled in 1791 to seek refuge in Italy.  Mme Victoire died of breast cancer in Trieste in 1799, leaving Mme Adelaide the sole survivor of the sisterhood until her own death the following year.

In her final years at Versailles, Mme Victoire luxuriated in a suite of 6 principal rooms: an antechamber, a salon, a large drawing room, a bedchamber, a small drawing room, and a library.  Few people at Versailles had such spacious lodgings.  Even duchesses had to make do with a garret if they were not in favour, and anyone who could afford it kept a house in the town of Versailles as an escape from their cramped quarters in the Chateau.