Writing of the final years of the monarchy when she was a small child at Versailles, Madame de Boigne, attributes almost exactly the same remark to Madame Victoire (1733-1799), the third daughter of Louis XV, with sufficient circumstantial detail to suggest that she all but witnessed it. Madame Victoire, she says, was a Lady of very little intelligence but great generosity. At a time of shortages, when people were discussing the misery of the poor, it was she who said, with tears in her eyes, 'Mais mon Dieu, s'ils pouvaient se resigner a manger de la croute de pate.' (Memoires de la Comtesse de Boigne du Regne de Louis XVI a 1820), ed. Jean-Claude Berchet, Mercure de France, 1999. p.65).
'True wit,' says the poet, 'is nature to advantage dress'd/What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd,' but it is equally the case, that the better the story, the less likely it is to be true.
Marie Antoinette probably never said 'Let them eat cake', but in the poisonous atmosphere of the time, there were many who might have wished that she had, and even more who were prepared to believe it.
As a child, Madame de Boigne had amazed the Court at Versailles with her precocity. She tells us that at the age of three she was sufficiently in command of her letters to be able to recite passages from Jean Racine 'pour mon plaisir et meme, dit-on, pour celui des autres.' Well, we must take her word for it, but I can't help being reminded of little William Byng in Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses about Bill's sister, Sarah. Sarah, of course, was the lazy girl who could not read and was tossed by a very furious bull. Bill was better read, but even he was comparatively ancient when, at an age of between 9 and 12, he is said to have become 'unnaturally keen On 'Athalie', by Jean Racine'.
Madame de Boigne tells a good story, and has an even better turn of phrase. Compelled to leave France in 1791, she subsequently found herself at the court of Naples, and describes how, on occasion, she was permitted to assist in Lady Hamilton's celebrated Attitudes.
' On one occasion' says Madame de Boigne, Lady Hamilton made her, 'pose, kneeling, before an urn with my hands joined in an attitude of prayer and leant against me, as if overwhelmed with grief. All of a sudden she stood up, stepped away, and pulled me so sharply by the hair as to make me turn towards with her in shocked surprise. This, it turned out, was just the thing that my role required, for there she was, flourishing a dagger. The enthusiastic spectators burst out with cries of 'Bravo, Medea!' but a moment later, and she drew me towards her, clutching me to her bosom as if in despite of heaven, and wresting cries of 'Well done, Niobe!' from the same spectators'. It was, said Madame de Boigne, a unique achievement, often imitated but never equalled, one of those things in which the sublime was only one step away from the ridiculous. Apart from her artistic talent, nobody could have been more common and vulgar then Lady Hamilton. Her conversation was devoid of interest, and even intellect. 'C'etait a tout prendre, une mauvaise femme et une ame basse dans une enveloppe superbe' (p.124)).
One tale Madame tells concerns her father, the Marquis d'Osmond, who, she says, was in Toulon, waiting for a favourable wind, when he was approached by Corsican gentleman who requested passage to Ajaccio for himself, his son, and their cook. The Marquis agreed, and during the passage, invited the officers of his own regiment to dine with him. The Corsican's son, who was dressed in the uniform of the Military Academy, was sitting at the back of the boat, reading, so the Marquis sent an adjutant called Belloc to invite him to table. A few moments later, Belloc returned scowling, and said that the invitation had been rejected. 'Shifty individual with the face of a crook,' said Belloc, 'I've a good mind to go and shove him overboard! How about it, Colonel?' 'No, no' said the Marquis, 'and anyway, your quite wrong, the lad's face has character, and he will make his mark!'
Well, reader, you will probably have guessed that that shifty looking individual was Napoleon. Madame de Boigne says that Belloc used to heave a deep a very deep sigh when he told this story: 'If only the Colonel had let me have my way, the world wouldn't be in quite the mess it is today!' But as it it turns out, the details of this story aren't quite accurate. The Officer in question was not called Belloc, but Belly, and the man that he subsequenttly took for Napoleon was in fact the latter's elder brother, Joseph on his way back to Corsica with his father in the summer 1794, having just completed his military training at Autun.
No comments:
Post a Comment