A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Pompadour, (Madame la Marquise de)
POMPADOUR (MADAME LA MARQUISE DE).
This lady's nominal father was one Poisson, house steward of the Invalids, at Paris. Some time after his marriage with her mother, one of the most beautiful women in France, falling under the lash of the law, he narrowly escaped execution by flight; he afterwards obtained a pardon, through his daughter's interest. During his absence, her mother, who lived a very dissolute life, was brought to bed of a daughter, which she declared to be the child of M. le Normant de Tourneau, one of her gallants.
This gentleman spared no pains nor expence to procure her those superficial endowments which are often considered as a good education, as dancing, music, and declamation;—accomplishments which were afterwards of great service to her. His fondness for her grew to such a height, that he began to think of marrying her in a manner that shewed he considered her no less than a legitimate daughter. Amongst a number of conquests her growing beauty had made, was that of M. d'Estiolles, nephew to her protector. The point was, to bring over the young gentleman's father, in which Le Normant prevailed, by offering to lay down half his fortune, and to settle the rest upon her at his death; in consequence of which, the young pair were at last united.
It does not appear that her heart had been consulted in this match. D'Estoilles had not the most engaging person; yet, if it had been susceptible of tenderness, he must have gained it. He spared no expences of dress or diversions that could prove his love; and it is generally believed, that, until her affair with the king, she had gone no farther than coquetry. She acknowleges, however, in her Memoirs, that she often tried to attract his notice. The libertine character of Lewis XV. made many handsome women, who preferred pomp and power to virtue and honour, aim at attaching him. She threw herself in his way, as often as she could, but without success, till she effected her purpose by the means of a relation in office.
They met: the king, who was affable, and, as she calls it, an hundred leagues from the throne, was pleased with her wit, and she soon captivated him to such a degree, that he was uneasy out of her sight.
In the mean time her husband began to be alarmed, and was soon apprized of his misfortune. Resolved, however, not to acquiesce, he began to speak in the tone of a person that was deeply wronged; when he received a lettre-de-cachet, banishing him to Avignon; though afterwards he made interest to be recalled to Paris, on promise of a passive acquiescence in the loss of his wife, now firmly fixed in the king's affections; and though he and his wife never saw each other, they were permitted to keep up a correspondence by letters.
The following anecdote, in her Memoirs, shews that this had like to have been attended with fatal consequences to the unfortunate D'Estiolles. "My husband loudly complained of my living at Versailles, and wrote me a very passionate letter, full of reproaches against me, and still more against the king; amongst other indiscreet terms, calling him tyrant. As I was reading it, the king came into my apartment; I immediately thrust it into my pocket. I was for concealing the cause of the emotion I shewed; but, on his repeated instances, put my husband's letter into his hand, assuring him that I had no share in his temerity, and desired that he would punish the writer severely.—"No, madam," said he to me, "your husband is unhappy, and should rather be pitied!" D'Estiolles being informed of it left the kingdom."
In the mean time, no pleasures were thought such, that had not the stamp of the new favourite's contrivance, or the sanction of her approbation. The king found her necessary to the pleasure of his life, and thought no mark of his favour too great; accordingly, he soon gave her a marquisate, with the title of La Pompadour; and created Poisson, who was her brother by the mother's side, marquis of Vandiere. She now purchased a palace at Paris, called the Hôtel d'Evreux, near the Thuilleries, which she pulled down, and rebuilt almost from the ground. This caused great heart-burning among the Parisians; and their rage was not a little exasperated by the circumstance of a large parcel of ground being, on this occasion, taken in, towards enlarging her gardens, out of the Course; a place so called from its serving for the nobility and gentry to take the air in coaches. She also procured a superb hotel at Versailles, not for herself, for she had apartments in the palace, but for her numerous retinue. The king, besides, gave her the royal palace of Cressy for life; but the people were justly incensed at such a misapplication of a part of the royal domain. He also built her a magnificent pleasure-house, called Belle Vue, from the spot on which it is built, just between Paris and Versailles: here too, in order to form the gardens, several proprietors of lands were despotically compelled to part with them, much against their will, and at a fixed price.
Such high marks of distinction, bestowed with such unbounded profusion, could not but create to the person on whom they were conferred a number of enemies. The dissatisfaction was general; but it soon became evident, that the way to ruin, let the rank and services of the offenders be ever so great, was an attempt to injure, or even to jest upon La Pompadour.
To convince the world of the high idea she had of her own power, she suffered no stool or chair besides her own in her dressing room, where she received company; and her arrogance increasing with her favour, nothing would serve her but having the honours of the Louvre, which principally consists in the privilege of the tabouret, or stool, to sit on in the presence of the queen, and in being presented to her to be embraced, which is the ceremony of investiture. The triumph however did not come pure and unmixed: for she was treated contemptuously by the dauphin; but on complaining to the king, he adopted her resentment; and the next day, as the dauphin was going to pay him a morning visit, he received orders to retire to his palace at Meudon. The queen, the ministers and members at court, interposed: the king, however, would not hearken to any proposals for a reconciliation, but on condition that he should personally go to La Pompadour, and in full circle disown his behaviour; which he submitted to. Not long after she wished to be lady of the palace to the queen; a place never given but to ladies of the highest rank and character. The queen however, only mildly represented, that it would be too crying an indecency to admit into that station a person, who could not even approach the altar to take the sacrament, as living in a state of separation from her husband. La Pompadour found means to vanquish this difficulty. She wrote a letter to her husband, intreating him to receive her again, and promising, 'that she would henceforward take care to edify the world by their union;' but by her manœuvres, he was induced positively to refuse her request. The copy of these letters were shewn to every body, and by this farce she became reconciled to the church. The capital objection to her admission was removed, and the queen desisted from any farther opposition.
When that attempt was made by Damien on the king's life, in consequence of which his death was expected, a powerful party was formed, to forbid her the presence. The bishop, who attended the king, urged it as a matter of conscience. Accordingly, on presenting herself at the chamber door, she had the mortification to have it shut upon her. The king being in five or six days perfectly recovered, paid her the first visit, and she received him all in tears. This determined him to banish from court the scrupulous bishop, and three or four more of the courtiers, who had distinguished themselves in opposing her entrance.
By this time all ranks and classes of the people concurred in hatred towards her. The Parisians, especially, could not forbear giving her the most public marks of it. Whenever she went to Paris, crowds followed her coach, hooting and showering upon her invectives and curses. It could not be pleasing to the nation, to see their greatest and ablest ministers and generals, either degraded into a servile, precarious dependence on a low obscure woman, who was constantly giving marks that she miserably mistook the artifices, by which she governed the king, for a capacity of ruling the kingdom; who had introduced a prodigious venality of offices, wholly to her own profit, and to the ruin of the nation. It was even said, that she had been in treaty with the king of Prussia, for the purchase of the sovereignty of Neufchatel, a province of Switzerland; but this report was apparently without foundation.
It has been observed, that she had all imaginable accomplishments and talents for pleasing. Happy enough to be born with a great share of wit, she not only cultivated it in herself, but, what is more, she loved, or affected to love it, in others. The king himself never passed for having much relish for men of letters; and, indeed, their general silence forms a kind of tacit condemnation. La Pompadour, however, not always to make a blameable use of her interest over him, procured a pension of six thousand livres, (about three hundred pounds) a year, for Crebillon the elder; she obtained another for Madame de Lussan; countenanced and promoted the interest of Marmontel; and kept on fair terms with Voltaire. She was the original Collette, in Rousseau's Devin de Village, acted at court, and sent him one hundred pounds on the occasion; of which, however, he would take but forty shillings, saying, it cost him but so long writing, as that sum would subsist him. Nor did she neglect the patronage of the liberal arts. All applications were made through her, in their several branches; and there was not any man eminent in his profession, but what she distinguished and encouraged. She not only visited herself the work-places of those employed in the mechanics arts, but took with her the king, to whom she pointed out and recommended their respective merits. For some she obtained pensions, lodgings in the Louvre, and other advantages and distinctions. The tapestries of the Gobelins, the porcelain manufactory, and the carpet works of the Savonniere, felt her beneficial influence. But she did not fail making a due parade of all those laudable attentions, serving, as they must, to place her in a respectable light with the king, who could not but see the fitness of them, and their tendency to do him honour.
When Le Normant de Tourneau, who, in the chatacter of her presumptive father, had taken so much care of her education, was struck with the apoplexy, of which he died, long after she was in favour with the king; on the first news of his danger, she flew to D'Estiolles's, where he was, but insensible and past recovery. The violent signs she gave of affliction on this occasion were, most probably, at least for the greatest part, real and unaffected. She staid fifteen days at this place, having had the precaution to acquaint her husband with her journey, that she might not meet him there. For some years before her death she lost her charms; and the chagrin, which incessantly preyed upon her at the prospect of her blasted ambition, joined to the artifices she used to improve her beauty, increased her indisposition. Her figure was reduced almost to a skeleton; and her constitution had received a shock in the very early part of her advancement. Towards the end of March 1764, she was so thoroughly convinced of her approaching end, that she made her will; after which she wrote to her husband a very affectionate letter, acknowledging all her faults, and begging to see him, in order to be reconciled. But, whether through a just indignation, or a want of the softer feelings of humanity, he sternly declared, that, though he forgave her, he would not be prevailed upon to pay her a visit. Her royal lover shewed no such unkindness: he continued his visits constantly till two days before her death; when, having received the extreme unction, she herself declined seeing him any more. Her death happened in 1764, in the forty-third year of her age; after having reigned two-and-twenty years, without any visible abatement of her influence, sole arbitress of the counsels of one of the greatest monarchs in Europe. Her whole fortune, to the reserve of her jewels and a few legacies, she disposed of in favour of her brother.
Her Memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death, draw in a very lively and entertaining manner, the picture of the court of Lewis XV: They attribute to her the encouragement given to the porcelain manufactory. If Madame de Pompadour would have made her influence felt this way alone, it would have been well; but she would govern, and she had not the sensibility and love of real glory of Agnes Sorel. Her choice of ministers was directed by such motives as could not render them happy ones, and France might well ask of her, her Well-Beloved before she knew him, for they were not the same. Some people believe that she rendered France a great benefit by the expulsion of the Jesuits; which was her work, and that of M. de Choiseul. Some lament it; and think the revolution would never have happened, had it not taken place.