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by Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, marquise de
Language: en322 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Biographies·History - European·History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)
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The following work must be acknowledged highly interesting to these times; and to posterity will be still more so. These are not the memoirs of a mere woman of pleasure, who has spent her life in a voluptuous court, but the history of a reign remarkable for revolutions, wars, intrigues, alliances, negotiations; the very blunders of which are not beneath the regard of politicians, as having greatly contributed to give a new turn to the affairs of Europe.
The Lady who drew the picture was known to be an admirable colourist.
They who were personally acquainted with Mademoiselle Poisson, before and since her marriage with M. le Normand, know her to have been possessed of a great deal of that wit, which, with proper culture, improves into genius.
The King called her to court at a tempestuous season of life, when the passions reign uncontrouled, and by corrupting the heart, enlarge the understanding.
They who are near the persons of Kings, for the most part, surpass the common run of mankind, both in natural and acquired talents; for ambition is ever attended with a sort of capacity to compass its ends; and all courtiers are ambitious.
No sooner does the Sovereign take a mistress, than the courtiers flock about her. Their first concern is to give her her cue; for as they intend to avail themselves of her interest with the King, she must be made acquainted with a multitude of things: she may be said to receive her intelligence from the first hand, and to draw her knowledge at the fountain head.
Lewis XV. intrusted the Marchioness de Pompadour with the greatest concerns of the nation; so that if she had been without those abilities which distinguished her at Paris, she must still have improved in the school of Versailles.
Her talents did not clear her in the public eye; never was a favourite more outrageously pelted with pamphlets, or exposed to more clamorous invectives. Of this her Memoirs are a full demonstration; her enemies charged her with many very odious vices, without so much as allowing her one good quality. The grand subject of murmur was the bad state of the finances, which they attributed to her amours with the King.
They who brand the Marchioness with having run Lewis XV. into vast expences, seem to have forgot those which his predecessor’s mistresses had brought on the state.
Madame de la Valiere, even before she was declared mistress to Lewis XIV. induced him to give entertainments, which cost the nation more than ever Madame de Pompadour’s fortune amounted to.
Madame de Montespan put the same Prince to very enormous expences; she appeared always with the pomp and parade of a Queen, even to the having guards to attend her.
Scarron’s widow carried her pride and ostentation still further: she drew the King in to marry her, and this mistress came to be queen, an elevation which will be an eternal blot on the Prince’s memory.
This clandestine commerce gave rise to an infamous practice at court, with which Madame de Pompadour cannot be charged. All these concubines having children, to gratify their vanity, they must be legitimated; and, afterwards, they found means to marry these sons, or daughters, of prostitution, to the branches of the royal blood; a flagrant debasement of the house which were in kin to the crown: for though a Sovereign can legitimate a bastard, to efface the stain of bastardy is beyond his power. The consequence was, that the descendants of that clandestine issue aspired to the throne; and, through the King’s scandalous amours, that lustre which is due only to virtue, fell to the portion of vice.
It was given out in France, and over all Europe, that Madame de Pompadour was immensely rich: but nothing of this appeared at her death, except her magnificent moveables, and these were rather the consequences of her rank at court, than the effects of her vanity. This splendor his Majesty partook of, as visiting her every day.
The public is generally an unfair judge of those who hold a considerable station at court, deciding from vague reports, which are often the forgeries of ill-grounded prejudice. Madame de Pompadour has been charged with insatiable avarice. Had this been the case, she might have indulged herself at will: she was at the spring-head of opulence; the King never refused her any thing; so that she might have amassed any money; which she did not. There are now existing, in France, fifty wretches of financiers, each of a fortune far exceeding her’s.
It was also said, that the best thing which could happen to France, was to be rid of this rapacious favourite. Well; she is no more; and what is France the better for it? Has her death been followed by one of those sudden revolutions in the government, which usher in a better form of administration? Have they who looked on this Lady as an unsurmountable obstacle to France’s greatness, proposed any better means for raising it from its present low state? Is there more order in the government? are the finances improved? is there more method and oeconomy? No, affairs are still in the same bad ways the lethargy continues as profound as ever. The ministry, which before Madame de Pompadour’s death was fast asleep, is not yet awake. Every thing remains in statu quo. Some European governments have no regular motion; they advance either too fast, or too slow; their steps are either precipitate, or sluggish.
In this favourite’s time, there was too much shifting and changing in the ministry; now she is gone, there is none at all, &c. &c.
I am very far from intending a panegyric on Madame de Pompadour. Faults she had, which posterity will never forgive. All the calamities of France were imputed to her, and she should have resigned in compliance to the public: a nation is to be respected even in its prejudices. With any tolerable share of patriotism, Madame de Pompadour would have quitted the court, and thus approved herself deserving of the favour for which she was execrated; but her soul was not capable of such an act of magnanimity: she knew nothing of that philosophy which, inspiring a contempt of external grandeur, endears the subject to the Prince, and exalts him above the throne.
There is great appearance that this Lady intended to revise both her Memoirs and her will, and that death prevented her: she used to write, by starts, detached essays, without any coherence; and these on separate bits of paper. These were very numerous and diffuse, as generally are the materials intended to form a book, if she really had any such design.
We were obliged to throw by on all sides, and clear our way through an ocean of writings, a long and tiresome business.
It is far from being improbable, that Madame de Pompadour got some statesman, well versed in such matters, to assist her in compiling this book: however that be, we give it as it stands in her original manuscript.
The following narrative is not confined to the particular history of my life. My design is more extensive: I shall endeavour to give a true representation of the court of France under the reign of Lewis XV. The private memoirs of a King’s mistress are in themselves of small import; but to know the character of the Prince who raises her to favour; to be let into the intrigues of his reign, the genius of the courtiers, the practices of the ministers, the views of the great, the projects of the ambitious; in a word, into the secret springs of politics, is not a matter of indifference.
It is very seldom that the public judges rightly of what passes in the cabinet: they hear that the King orders armies to take the field; that he wins or loses battles; and on these occurrences they argue according to their particular prejudices.
History does not come nearer the mark; the generality of annalists being only the echoes of the public mistakes.
These papers I do not intend to publish in my life-time; but should they appear after my death, posterity will see in them a faithful draught of the several parts of the administration, which were acted, in some measure, under my eye. Had I never lived at Versailles, the events of our times might have been an inexplicable riddle to posterity; so complicated are the incidents, and in many particulars so contradictory, that, without a key, there is no decyphering them.
Ministers and other place-men are not always acquainted with the means, which they themselves make use of for attaining certain ends. A plenipotentiary very well knows that he signs a treaty of peace, but he is ignorant of the King’s motives for putting an end to the war.
Every politician strikes out a system in his own sagacious brain; the speculatists have often fathered on France what she never dreamed of; and many refined schemes have been attributed to her ministers, which never made part of their plan.
It is not long since a minister of a certain court said to me at Versailles, That the two last German wars, which cost France so much blood, and three hundred millions of livres, was the greatest stroke of policy which the age afforded; as this court had thereby insensibly, and unknown to the rest of Europe, reduced the power of the Queen of Hungary: for, added he, if, on the demise of Charles VI. this crown had openly bent all its forces against the house of Austria, a general alliance would have opposed it; whereas it has weakened that house by a series of little battles and repeated losses, &c. &c.
The inserting such an anecdote in the annals of our age would be sufficient to disfigure the whole history. The truth is, that they who were at the head of the French affairs, during these two wars, had no manner of genius.
All details not relative to the state I shall carefully omit, as rather writing the age of Lewis XV. than the history of my private life. The transactions of a King’s favourite concern only the reign of that Prince; but truth is of perpetual concern.
I hope the public does not expect from me a circumstantial journal of Lewis XV’s gallantries: the King had many transitory amours during my residence at Versailles; but none of his mistresses were admitted into the public affairs. The reign of the far greater part began and ended in the Prince’s bed. These foibles, so closely connected with human nature, belong rather to a King’s private life, than to the public history of a Monarch: I may sometimes mention them, but it will only be by the way. I shall likewise be silent in regard to my family. The particular favour with which I have been honoured by Lewis XV. has placed my origin in broad day-light. A Monarch in raising a woman to the summit of grandeur, of course lays open the blemishes of her birth. The annals of the universe have been overlooked, to make a singular case of what has been almost a general practice in the world.
The Roman Emperors often raised so favour and eminence women of more obscure birth than mine: but, without going so far backward, the history of our own Kings abounds with such instances. Though the widow of Scarron the poet rose a step higher than I, she was not born to such exaltation. It is true her father was a gentleman; but all women, not born Princesses, are at a like distance from the throne.
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