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Introduction for Mme de Pompadour
by Amanda Foreman
 Born
in 1904, Nancy Mitford was a British aristocrat par excellence:
eccentric, proud, and clannish. Yet she relished in poking
fun at the upper classes. Her best-known novels, The Pursuit
of Love (1945), Love in a Cold Climate (1949),
and Don’t Tell Alfred (1960), are based on the
antics of her friends and family. The misanthropic character
'Uncle Matthew’, was none other than her father, Lord
Redesdale. In real life he was even more peculiar. He thought
that teaching girls was a waste of time (he had six), and
denied his daughters a formal education. Consequently, Nancy
and her sisters taught themselves out of what they found
in the old library at the family country seat, Swinbrook.
Nancy was only half-joking when she claimed that the one
novel she had read in her life was 'White Fang’.
The Mitford sisters’ individual forays into the world
of learning may explain the extraordinary wildly different
lives they were to lead. One became an ardent communist,
another fell in love with Hitler, one married the leader
of the British fascist party, another married a Duke. Nancy
broke ranks by becoming a journalist and novelist. She achieved
instant fame with her essay "The English Aristocracy",
a witty analysis of class-based habits of speech, in which
she coined the terms U and non-U, meaning upper-class and
the rest. Yet she always remained insecure about her lack
of education. The façade of wit and flippant prejudice
that she constructed over the years was as much a barrier
as it was a pose to get attention.
Few people recognised her vulnerable side, or her genuine
love of learning. Most were too busy dodging her cruel tongue.
She spared no one, not even her closest friends. All her
life, Nancy made up her own rules, not caring for their consequences.
Although a self-declared snob and racist, she mocked other
snobs and racists. She had an aristocrat’s horror of
manual labour, yet she toiled in a refugee camp for the Republican
side during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, Nancy
devoted herself to the cause of the defeated French, campaigning
on behalf of Charles de Gaulle. There was nothing predictable
about her, not even her contrariness.
After the war, Nancy moved to France and lived in a charming
house in Versailles. There she could be near the object of
her unrequited love, Colonel Gaston Palewski, a senior aide
to de Gaulle. But the tragedy of Nancy Mitford was that while
she could not bear to be alone, she shied away from intimacy.
'To fall in love,’ she once wrote, 'you have to be
in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.’ The
bourgeois, conjugal variety of love all but offended her
sensibilities. She felt more at ease writing about upper
class scandals and affairs. To her they were the delicious
fruits of high society, to be plucked, peeled, and relished.
Nancy decided to write a biography of Mme de Pompadour in
1952, at the suggestion of her friend, Lady Pamela Berry.
At first she was daunted by the amount of research involved.
'I do more or less grasp the functions of the parlements,’ she
told the novelist, Evelyn Waugh, 'but not how they are constituted.’ Nor
was she sure whether to aim the book at the general public
or the educated reader. But the idea appealed to her twin
loves of insider gossip and eighteenth-century French culture.
She also viewed the project as an opportunity for attacking
the feminist lobby. Nancy loathed the idea of female politicians
and originally regarded Mme de Pompadour as a good illustration
of why women are unsuited to the role.
However, during the course of writing the book she became
seduced by the charms of her subject. 'I have lost the poor
Marquise,’ she wrote at its finish. 'I miss her fearfully,
my constant companion for nearly year.’ Her view of
Mme de Pompadour had changed from that of affable condescension
to deep affection and respect. During the 1950s it was fashionable
for historians to argue that the Marquise never had any influence
on Louis XV’s opinions. Nancy came to realise that
her contribution to politics was far more substantial; and,
although not always successful or right, Mme de Pompadour
had been no worse than the men around her.
In Mme de Pompadour, she discovered a heroine who was everything
and nothing she admired. Although the leader of aristocratic
society, the Marquise always remained true to her bourgeois
origins. Unlike her aristocratic biographer, she despised
the petty feuds and malicious gossiping which dictated Court
life. She truly loved Louis XV, much to Nancy’s surprise,
and her sole ambition throughout their relationship was to
make the King happy.
Mme de Pompadour was born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson. Her
father had left the family in 1725, when she was four, to
escape his creditors. Even though Jeanne-Antoinette grew
up to be an accomplished beauty - well-read, musical, artistic,
intelligent, and exceptionally graceful - her moderate birth
and family history repelled suitors. Finally, her step-father
bribed one of his own nephews to propose, using a generous
marriage settlement as bait.
Undaunted, the twenty-year-old Jeanne-Antoinette set about
establishing herself in Parisian society. It was not always
a dignified struggle, but the young woman was single-minded
in her determination to gain admission to the Court. Obsessed
by a gypsy’s prophecy, she was already convinced of
her love for the King. Moreover, she was certain that the
reserved father of the ten would fall in love with her too.
In 1744, the happy coincidence of a royal ball in Paris,
and Louis XV finding himself in between mistresses, gave
Jeanne-Antoinette her long-awaited opportunity. Within hours,
the post of royal mistress had been filled.
Real power, meaning access to the King, lay not with the
Queen but with the mistress du jour. 'Royal Mistress’ was
less a term than a job description. The position entailed
a code of behaviour as well as a set of clearly defined duties.
Every waking hour had a purpose.
When not amusing the King, there were requests to fill,
plans to execute, and scores to be settled The whole of Versailles
and its one thousand inhabitants buzzed around the Royal
Mistress like bees in a hive. During her tenure she was the
focus of attention, constantly flattered, constantly importuned,
and constantly in danger.
Versailles had remained unchanged since Louis XV’s
great-grandfather, the Sun King, had reduced the French aristocracy
to the level of serfs in silk. Every noble family in France,
unless in exile or desperately poor, lived there under the
King’s watchful eye. All paths of ambition led to him.
Although it seemed to the outsider that life at Court was
lived solely for pleasure, the inhabitants knew better. They
were prisoners as much as they were participants. Behind
the mask of enjoyment was a desperate competition for financial
spoils, political influence and social power. The aristocracy
had to stay and play the game if they did not want their
families to be outcasts.
The rules governing Versailles were too arcane for Jeanne-Antoinette
to master over night. Like all closed societies, it thrived
on nuances which are second nature to the initiated and hidden
traps for the unwary. It was not only important for the Marquise
to know how to behave in general, but also how to treat each
inhabitant appropriately. Although she had conducted herself
with aplomb the first time the King showed her off to the
Court, the risk of ridicule was great. Every member of the
Court was ready to pounce on some unintentional solecism.
To remove the stain of her parentage, Louis XV created Jeanne-Antoinette
the Marquise de Pompadour. To eradicate her bourgeois manners
required more comprehensive measures. The King sent her to
the country for several months to be trained by two of his
closest friends. The Marquise was an enthusiastic pupil,
and very quickly learned the complex customs and language
of Versailles.
Once assigned her own apartments, with a secret staircase
that led to those of the King, the Marquise never ceased
to be vigilant against potential rivals. A physically cold
woman, she had to find other ways of maintaining the King’s
interest. During her twenty-year tenure she transformed Versailles
into a cultural paradise, a veritable showcase of France’s
greatest dramatists, composers, architects, craftsmen and
artists. Louis XV shared her passion for art and architecture.
Together they supervised the building of some of France’s
finest palaces, including the Petit Trianon at Versailles,
and the Chateau de Bellevue.
The only area where the Marquise and the King differed was
in their intellectual tastes. She had always admired the
French Philosophes. Long before she had met the King,
her friendships had extended to Voltaire as well the authors
of the great Encyclopédie. When Louis XV banned
its publication she persuaded him to allow private subscribers
to receive t heir copies. However, he refused to read it.
The Marquise had to be content with furthering the interests
of the Philosophes on her own. Even Voltaire, who did nothing
but complain, recognised her pure intentions. 'She had righteousness
in her soul,’ he wrote, 'and justice in her heart;
all this is not to be met with every day.’
Unfortunately, a good heart did not make the Marquise successful
in foreign affairs. Historians still debate the extent of
her influence on the King during the disastrous Seven Years’ War
(1756-63). Nancy Mitford argues that it was considerable.
This costly war resulted in the loss of most of France’s
overseas territories, including Canada. At the very least,
she was a powerful voice among those who convinced the King
to shift France’s alliance from Prussia to Austria,
which precipitated the conflict.
The Marquise felt each defeat very keenly, and the War no
doubt hastened her death in 1764. 'Aprés nous le
déluge’, (after us the deluge), she is alleged
to have remarked sadly to the King. She was unpopular with
the people and her death went largely unlamented. However,
compared to her successor, Mme du Barry, who died under the
guillotine, the Marquise enjoyed a quiet and dignified end,
supported by the King and surrounded by her friends. Childless
after the early death of her daughter, Mme de Pompadour’s
legacy to France was the great flowering of art during her
time.
The critical reaction to Nancy’s biography was mixed.
She had initially dreaded its publication. 'For one thing
I now believe it (the book) to be very bad and badly written’,
she wrote during one of her bouts of insecurity. Her novelistic
style certainly outraged more orthodox historians. AJP Taylor,
in the Manchester Guardian, was vitriolic: "All
those who admired 'The Pursuit of Love’ will be delighted
to hear that its characters have appeared again, this time
in fancy dress. They now claim to be leading figures in French
history.’ The Observer declared it delightful,
but not history. Yet the great French historian, Alfred Cobban,
congratulated her on writing such an enjoyable book. The
public agreed with Cobban, and, encouraged by her success,
Nancy wrote two more books about the Court of Versailles
in a similar mode.
Mme de Pompadour has endured as a classic precisely
because of its witty and anecdotal style. It captures the
essence of eighteenth-century Court life far more expertly
than any monograph on the period. Nancy Mitford rescued a
genre of history writing, first made popular by the 17th
century historian John Aubrey, that had all but disappeared
under a pile of academic minutiae, ideology and statistics.
Almost in spite of herself, she championed the humanity of
the past against the forces of vanity and cynicism.
Forward to The lost art of Letter Writing
The Times Article 25th October 2003
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