Part 18 (1/2)
Mlle. Clairon did as much for the theatre as did Adrienne Le Couvreur, especially in discarding, in her _Phedre_, the plumes, spangles, the panier, the frippery, which had been the customary equipments of that role. She and Lecain, the prominent actor of the day, introduced the custom of wearing the proper costume of the characters represented.
The grace and dignity of her stage presence caused her to be sought by the great ladies, who took lessons in her famous courtesy _grande reverence_, which was later supplanted by the courtesy of Mme. de Pompadour.
Mlle. Clairon became the recipient of great favors and honors, her most prominent slave being Marmontel, to whom she had given a room in her hotel after Mme. Geoffrin had withdrawn from him the privilege of occupying an apartment in her s.p.a.cious establishment. She contributed largely to the success of his plays, as well as to those of Voltaire, whom she visited at Ferney, performing in his private theatre. Her success was uninterrupted until she declined to play, in the _Siege de Calais_, with an actor who had been guilty of dishonesty; she was then thrown into prison, and refused to reappear. When about fifty years of age she became the mistress of the Margrave of Ansbach, at whose court she resided for eighteen years. In 1791 she returned to Paris, where, poor and forgotten, she died in 1803.
An actress or a singer who left a greater reputation through her wit, the promptness and malignity of her repartee, and her extravagance, than through her voice was Sophie Arnould, the pupil of Mlle. Clairon.
She was the daughter of an innkeeper; her first success was won through her charming figure and her flexible voice. Some of the ladies attached to the court of Louis XV., having heard her sing at evening service during Pa.s.sion week, had induced the royal chapel master to employ her in the choir. There, and by the warm eulogies of Marmontel during one of his toilette visits to Mme. de Pompadour, the attention of the _maitresse-en-t.i.tre_ was called to her beauty and vocal charm.
Her debut was made with unusual success, but she afterward eloped with the Comte de Lauraguais, who had made a wager that he could win the beautiful artist. After her reappearance at Paris her career became a long series of dissipations and unprecedented extravagances. She was as witty as she was licentious, and many of her _bons mots_ have been collected. It was she who characterized the great Necker and Choiseul, on being shown a box containing their portraits: ”That is receipt and expenditure”--the credit and debit. She was one of the few prominent women who died in favor and in comfortable circ.u.mstances.
The lowest and most depraved of this licentious cla.s.s of women was Mlle. La Guimard, the legitimate daughter of a factory inspector of cloth. In 1758 she entered the opera as a ballet girl, but very little is known of her during the first years of her career except in connection with her numerous lovers. In about 1768 she was living in most sumptuous style, her extravagances being paid for by two lovers, the Prince de Soubise, her _amant utile_, and the farmer-general, M.
de La Borde, her _amant honoraire_.
At this period she gave three suppers weekly: one for all the great lords at court and of distinction; the second for authors, scholars, and artists; the third being a supper of _debauchees_, the most seductive and lascivious girls of the opera; at the last function, luxury and debauch were carried to unknown extremes. At her superb country home, ”Pantin,” she gave private performances, the magnificence of which was unprecedented and admission to which was an honor as eagerly sought as was that of attendance at Versailles.
There was another side to the nature of Mlle. La Guimard: during the terrible cold of the winter of 1768, she went about alone visiting the poor and needy, distributing food and clothing purchased with the six thousand livres given her by her lover, the Prince de Soubise, as a New Year's gift. Her charity became so general that people of all professions and cla.s.ses went to her for a.s.sistance--actors and artists to borrow the money with which to pay their debts, officers with the same object in view. To one of the latter to whom she had just lent a hundred louis and who was about to sign a note, she said: ”Sir, your word is sufficient. I imagine that an officer will have as much honor as _fille d'opera_.”
Her performances at ”Pantin” and her luxurious mode of life required more money than the two lovers were able to supply; therefore, another was accepted in the person of the Bishop of Orleans, Monseigneur de Jarente, who supplied her with money and other necessaries. In 1771 she decided to build a hotel with an elegant theatre which would comfortably seat five hundred people. The opening of this Temple de Terpsich.o.r.e was the great event of the year (1772). All the n.o.bility was there, even the princes of the blood, and the ”delicious licenses of the presentation were fully enjoyed by those who were fortunate enough to obtain admission.”
Her costumes were of such taste and became so renowned that Marie Antoinette consulted her in reference to her own wonderful inventions; the dresses became known as the _Robe a la La Guimard_. Inasmuch as the management of the Opera supplied all gowns, the expense for this one artist was enormous, in 1779 amounting to thirty thousand livres for dresses alone. In 1785, being in financial straits, she sold her hotel on the Rue Chaussee-d'Antin by lottery, two thousand five hundred tickets at one hundred and twenty livres each. None of the salons of Paris could compare with hers in the ”costliness of the crystal and the plate of her table service, in the taste and elegance of her floral decorations--choice exotics obtained from a distance, regardless of expense.”
After appearing at the Haymarket Opera House in London in 1789, Mlle. La Guimard decided to retire to private life, and married M.
Despreaux, the ballet master, fifteen years her junior. During the Revolution the government ceased to pay pensions, and as she had saved very little of her wealth the two lived in the most straitened circ.u.mstances. Her fate was similar to that of the average woman of pleasure--forgotten, half-witted, stooping to any act of indecency to gain a few sous.
Such were the princ.i.p.al heroines of the stage, opera, and ballet; they were in harmony with the general state of that depraved society of which they were natural products; transitory lights that shone for but a short s.p.a.ce of time, consumed by their own sensuous instinct, they were forgotten with death. The royal mistresses lived the same life and followed the same ideals, but exerted a greater and more lasting influence in the state.
CHAPTER XI
ROYAL MISTRESSES
In the study of the royal mistresses of the eighteenth century, we encounter two in particular,--Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry,--who, though totally different types of women, both reflect the gradual decline of ideals and morals in the first and last years of the reign of Louis XV. The former dominated the king by means of her intelligence, but the latter swayed the sovereign, already consumed by his sensual excesses, through her peculiarly seductive sensuality.
During the first years of the reign of Louis XV., one of the most influential women was Mme. de Prie, who brought about the marriage of the king to Marie Leczinska, the daughter of the King of Poland, by which manoeuvre she made herself _Dame de Palais de la Reine_. The queen naturally took her and her husband into favor, regarding them as her and her father's benefactors and as ent.i.tled to her warmest grat.i.tude. Mme. de Prie succeeded in winning the queen's affection and confidence; however, these were of little value, inasmuch as the queen's influence upon society and morals was not felt, for she led a life of seclusion, shut up in her oratory and constantly on her _prie-dieu_, and was an object of pity and ridicule.
Mme. de Prie and M. le Duc, having planned to deprive M. Fleury, the minister, of his power,--he had been the king's preceptor,--suddenly had the tables turned against them. Both were exiled, and a new coterie of ladies came into power; the d.u.c.h.esse d'Alincourt replaced Mme. de Prie, and the king and M. Fleury themselves took up the affairs of state.
M. Fleury, now cardinal, perceiving that a mistress was inevitable, consented to the choice by the dissolute men and women of court of Mme. de Mailly,--or Mlle. de Nesle,--who was supposed to be a disinterested person. The king, who had no love for her, accepted her as he would have accepted anything put before him by the court. The queen was incapable of exerting any beneficial influence upon him; in fact, the more he became alienated from her, the more humble and timid did she appear when in his presence. The reign of Mlle. de Nesle had lasted less than a year, when the beautiful Mme. de La Tournelle, created d.u.c.h.esse de Chateauroux, replaced her; the latter lived but a short time, being the second mistress of Louis XV. to die within a year. After her death the king raised the beautiful Mme. d'Etioles to the honor of _maitresse-en-t.i.tre_; she, as Mme. de Pompadour, was, without doubt, the most prominent, possibly the most intelligent and intellectual, certainly the most powerful, of all French mistresses.
It was the first time that a _bourgeoise_ of the financier cla.s.s had usurped the position of mistress--that honor having belonged exclusively to the n.o.bility.
After the first infidelities of the king, Marie Leczinska's life became more and more austere and secluded; she remained indoors, far from the noise and activity of Versailles, leaving only for charitable purposes or for the theatre. Her mornings were entirely occupied in prayers and moral readings, after which followed a visit to the king, a little painting, the toilette, ma.s.s, and dinner. After dinner, she retired to her apartments and pa.s.sed the time making tapestry, embroidering, and in charity work--no longer the recreation of leisure, but the duty of charity which the poor expected. Her taste for music, the guitar, the clavecin, all amus.e.m.e.nts in which she delighted before her marriage, were abandoned. Under such circ.u.mstances the mistress had full control of everything.
It was prophesied of Mlle. Jeanne Poisson, at the age of nine, that she would become the mistress of Louis XV. (Mme. Lebon, who made this pleasing prediction, was later rewarded with a pension of six hundred livres.) Mlle. Jeanne was the natural daughter of a butcher, but received a good education and, at the age of twenty, was married to Le Normand d'Etioles, farmer of taxes. It was shortly after this that she managed to attract the king's attention, at a hunting party in the forest of Senart. With the a.s.sistance of her friends, she was successful in winning the king, and, in April, 1754, at a supper which lasted far into the early morning, reposing in his arms, she virtually became the mistress of Louis XV. The actual accomplishment of this, however, depended upon the disposal of her husband, which was easily arranged by Louis, who ordered Le Normand d'Etioles from Paris, thus securing her from any harm from him. The brothers De Goncourt write thus of her talents:
”Marvellous apt.i.tudes, a scholarly and rare education, had given to this young woman all the gifts and virtues that made of a woman what the eighteenth century called a virtuoso, an accomplished model of the seductions of her time. Jeliotte had taught her singing and the clavecin; Guibaudet, dancing; Crebillon had taught her declamation and the art of diction; the friends of Crebillon had formed her young mind to _finesse_, to delicacies, to lightness of sentiment, and to irony of the _esprit_ of the time. All the talents of grace seemed to be united in her. No woman mounted a horse better; none captured applause more quickly than did she with her voice and instrument; none recalled in a better way the tone of Gaussin or the accent of Clairon; none could tell a story better. And there where others could vie with her in coquetry, she carried off the honors by her genius of toilette, by the graceful turn she gave to a mere rag, by the air she imparted to a mere nothing which ornamented her, by the characteristic signature which her taste gave to everything she wore.”
To please and charm, Mme. d'Etioles had a complexion of the most striking whiteness, lips somewhat pale, and eyes of an indescribable color in which were blended and compounded the seduction of black eyes, the seduction of blue eyes. She had magnificent chestnut hair, ravis.h.i.+ng teeth, and the most delicious smile which ”hollowed her cheeks into two dimples which the engraving of _La Jardiniere_ shows; she had a medium-sized and round waist, perfect hands, a play of gestures lively and pa.s.sionate throughout, and, above all, a physiognomy of a mobility, of a changeableness, of a marvellous animation, wherein the soul of the woman pa.s.sed ceaselessly, and which, constantly in process of change, showed in turn an impa.s.sioned and imperious tenderness, a n.o.ble seriousness, or roguish graces.”
In September, 1745, she was formally presented to the queen and court as the Marquise de Pompadour, and, in October, was installed at Fontainebleau in the apartments formerly occupied by Mme. de Chateauroux, who had just died. Her position was not an easy one, for all the superb jealousy and hateful scorn which the aristocracy cherished against the power and wealth of the _bourgeoisie_ were turned against her; but the court scandal-mongers and intriguers found their match in Mme. de Pompadour, who showed herself so superior in every respect to the court ladies that the hostilities gradually ceased, but not until the public itself had expended all its efforts against this upstart.
Her first move was to surround herself with friends, the first of whom she wisely sought in the queen. Paying her every possible attention, she persuaded the king to show her more consideration. The Prince de Conti, the Paris brothers, and others of the great financiers of France were added to her circle. After this she began her rule as first minister, in place of the dead Fleury, by giving places and pensions to her favorites. The reign of economy and domestic morality came to an end with the accession of Mme. de Pompadour; in fact, it was soon generally considered that those upon whom she did not shower favors were her enemies. At this time the n.o.bility of France was too corrupt to raise any serious objections to the dispensing of favors by the _maitresse-en-t.i.tre_, whether she were of n.o.ble birth or not.