Many a plain woman, on the other hand, captivated her king, but not with a grand entrance at a ball. She would require frequent contact with the monarch to reveal her inner beauty, her good nature, keen intellect, and clever wit. He would begin to look forward to their conversations, the comfort he felt in her presence, the laughter she provoked in him. And soon the court would snicker that the king had taken an ugly mistress.
With or without beauty, with or without sexual talents, the successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable, catering to each of the king’s five senses. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, cater to his every whim, serve his favorite foods, sympathize when he was cranky, massage his feet, decorate his homes, and raise his illegitimate children—sometimes sired with women other than herself. And all of this must be done cheerfully.
Only a few monarchs enjoyed passionate foot-stomping battles with their mistresses. Typically, the royal mistress did not scold, browbeat, or throw jealous tantrums. Sitting on her perch of dignified serenity, she selected her battles carefully, only rarely flapping down with talons bared.
In the king’s presence his mistress was never to be tired, ill, complaining, or grief-stricken. She wore a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts. When Louis XIV bestowed upon his mistresses and their friends the honor of traveling in his carriage from one palace to the other, it was in actuality a great torment. The duc de Saint-Simon reported, “The expedition would not have covered a quarter of a league before the King would be asking the ladies in his carriage whether they did not care to eat something…. Then they were all obliged to say how hungry they were, put on an air of jollity, and set to with good appetite and willingness, otherwise the King became displeased and would show his resentment openly…. The King liked fresh air and insisted on having all the windows lowered; he would have been extremely displeased had any lady had the temerity to draw one of the curtains to keep out the sun, the wind or the cold. There was no alternative but to pretend not to notice that, nor any other kind of discomfort…. To feel sick was an unforgivable crime.”1
Perhaps worst of all, the ladies were not permitted to mention the needs of nature. During one six-hour ride from Versailles to Fontainebleau, the duchesse de Chevreuse was in such dire need of a chamber pot that she almost collapsed. Fixing a smile upon her face, she never mentioned her agony to the king. Upon reaching Fontainebleau, she raced into the nearest room—which happened to be the chapel—and relieved herself there in the first vessel she found—which happened to be a holy chalice.
But the royal mistress’s discomforts did not end there. She was forced to participate in the king’s hobbies whether she liked them or not. Smiling broadly, she rode with him through the cold woods on the hunt and nodded her approval as he cornered and killed screaming animals, then dismembered their bloody carcasses. Laughing gaily, she spent hours in wet fields watching the royal hawks devour little birds. Chuckling merrily, she pretended to relish boring card games until the wee hours of the morning. And then, moaning in feigned ecstasy, she endured unwelcome sex.
We rarely hear of a queen exerting herself to exhaustion to please the king. While the mistress sang, and hunted, and recited poetry, and brought in jugglers, and made love all night, and ate when not hungry, and denied the needs of her bladder and bowels, the queen glided through her marriage with solemn lethargy. Why did the mistress have to work so hard, while the queen did not? Quite simply, because the mistress could be dismissed at any moment, while the queen was a permanent fixture in the palace—like the marble floors or stone columns—until her death. No matter what a queen’s behavior—short of blatant adultery—she would retain her marriage and her position. The mistress, on the other hand, could lose all she possessed with a snap of the royal fingers.
The Art of Pleasing
The quintessential royal mistress was Jeanne-Antoinette d’Etioles, marquise de Pompadour, who reigned for nineteen years over Louis XV and France. This twenty-four-year-old from the middle class crashed the forbidding gates of Versailles in 1745, survived countless plots and counterplots by jealous nobles to unseat her, and left court only as a corpse on a stretcher. What silken cords bound the king to her?
Initially she entranced handsome Louis with her beauty and charm. Comte Dufort de Cheverny wrote, “Not a man alive but would have had her for his mistress if he could. Tall, though not too tall; beautiful figure; round face with regular features; wonderful complexion, hands and arms; eyes not so big, but the brightest, wittiest, and most sparkling I ever saw. Everything about her was rounded, including all her gestures. She absolutely extinguished all the other women at Court, although some were very beautiful.”2
But Madame de Pompadour’s beauty was like that of a hothouse flower that soon began to wither in the poisonous atmosphere of Versailles. In her twenties she boasted a fresh, ethereal beauty, with perfect skin, silken chestnut hair, and dark hazel eyes. She set off the purity of her look by simple costumes of rose, pink, or blue silk and satin, trimmed with the requisite lace. But as the rigors of court life sapped her natural beauty, she increased the magnificence of her gowns and jewels to distract the observer from her face—richer lace, larger gems, heavy brocades and velvets embroidered with gold and silver and pearls. One evening she appeared in a dress trimmed with lace worth 22,500 livres, the cost of an estate.
Frigidity is, of course, a great disadvantage to a mistress. To compensate for her poor performance at night, during the day Madame de Pompadour devoted every moment to amusing a monarch who quickly grew bored. Louis escaped the stiff etiquette of Versailles by fleeing to her apartments and barring the door. There he found an entire world created for his personal comfort. His mistress decorated her rooms in colors and fabrics that he found relaxing. She filled them with sweetly scented flowers from the palace greenhouses, even in winter. She ordered dishes and wines that pleased the royal palate.
Madame de Pompadour became an avid student of the king’s moods, his every facial expression, the cadence of his words. She knew when he was hiding boredom, anger, or frustration behind his mask of royal calmness. The twitch of an eyelid, the lilt of a syllable, would tell her the behavior necessary to please him. Did he want a comfortable silence? Should she recount an amusing story, play a somber tune on the harpsichord, stand up and perform a monologue?
Louis must have climbed the secret spiral staircase leading from his apartments to hers with great anticipation. What would she discuss with him that evening? Building, perhaps. Madame de Pompadour had a mania for building palaces and asked the king’s advice on architecture, improvements, and decorations. Perhaps she would have architectural plans laid out for his approval. Or maybe the subject would be botany. His mistress created a botanical garden at the Trianon Palace on the grounds of Versailles where she conducted experiments and grew the first strawberries in France especially for her royal lover. She also had a greenhouse built so that Louis could have fresh oranges and lemons at any time of year.
Perhaps she would report on the progress of the farmyard she had created for him on the palace grounds, complete with a dairy and milk cows. Or maybe she would discuss the art of gem cutting she had taken up, or her plans for a porcelain factory.
One of Louis’s favorite diversions was to listen to Madame de Pompadour read from the private letters of his courtiers. All letters both into and out of court were opened, read for treacherous intent, and carefully resealed. Madame de Pompadour obtained from the palace police copies of the most amusing missives—which contained the most intimate details—to read to the king. After a hard day’s work Louis roared with laughter as she read him these excerpts in a lively and entertaining manner.