by Veronika | Filed Under Articles, Muse History
Chapter 1: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
La Pompadour’s Opposite: The Ostentations of Madame du Barry and Her final Penance
After La Pompadour’s untimely death, Louis XV, who was desperately lonely, met the far less self-effacing, but nevertheless bewitching nymphet Jeanne du Barry. With her golden curls, of which she was extremely proud, dancing blue – some say violet — eyes, a highly agreeable smile (even her enemies accorded her that), and endless ambition, she stole the king’s heart, and some would say his senses, and remained his primary mistress until his death, even though she was, in the view of many, just a cheap whore.
Before she met Louis XV, she lived with and masqueraded as the wife of Jean du Barry, a high-class procurer of sweet young things and casino-owner. With the exposure he gave her beauty, she became one of the top courtesans in Paris by the age of twenty, with patrons such as Louis François Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu. Her husband/pimp, however, had grander ambitions for her, and indeed, the first time Louis xv laid eyes on her, those ambitions were, for all intents and purposes, achieved. Scandalized, the rest of his court didn’t understand why he just couldn’t keep her out of sight, such as in the Parc des Cerfs. However, the King was head over heels in love, and to secure her right to be with him at all times at Versailles, with its draconian hierarchy and rules, and to be allowed to be his maitresse declaree, he bestowed upon her the title of countess.
Still, title or not, everyone knew her gutter background – leaving home at fifteen, becoming first a lowly prostitute, and now, it could be argued, the grandest strumpet in the land, if the courtiers were disposed to look at it that way. The countess du barry had little but her beauty and her Anna Pavlova-graceful curtsies to recommend her to the highly critical Versailles court, but apparently these were enough to fool Marie Antoinette, the young dauphine, when she saw her for the first time. A naïve fourteen-year-old girl, Marie asked who that beautiful lady sitting next to the King was. A courtier replied euphemistically, “It is her job to make the King happy.” To which a touchingly ignorant dauphine, eager to please her grandfather-in-law, replied, “Then that’s my job too!”
Although Madame du Barry was dealing with a less sexually rapacious King than La Pompadour had in his younger days, she still sought, and apparently succeeded, in keeping him occupied in the bedroom. More controlling and jealous of her position than La Pompadour, Madame du Barry didn’t like it when the King took other lovers unless she had a hand in organizing whatever extracurricular debauchery he was to enjoy, selecting girls to put in his bed. Because of her flagrantly shameful past and her sorceress-like grip on the King, it was speculated that she arranged wild orgies of the most venal kind for the King, over which proceedings she reigned. Perhaps out of jealousy but also out of memories of her extremely humble beginnings, the royal mistress made Louis shut down the Parc des Cerfs’ brothels.
Perhaps that was her secret: du Barry knew just how far she could go in dominating a King to whom everyone else kowtowed. Indeed, he reportedly found her most fetching when throwing a tantrum. At the other end of the spectrum, Louis’ love affected a strong lisp and would engage in childlike behavior, like sitting on the King’s lap at meal times. In this way, she presented an irresistible blend of a delightful child and a sexually knowing woman in one person. In return for this, the King showered her with presents, specifically jewels. If houses were La Pompadour’s soft spot, Madame du Barry, having grown up in poverty, longed for all that glittered. In the end this would contribute to her sentence to the guillotine, but at the time all she knew was that she could finally dress as lavishly and modishly as one could wish, and decorate her person with diamonds and other precious gems. Indeed, so much scandal was aroused by the “affair of the necklace” that one might neglect to actually look at the necklace that was originally intended to make Madame du Barry’s heart beat faster (traditionally, over-the-top gifts like the monstrosity of a diamond necklace were reserved for royal favorites, not wives, although the reason Marie Antoinette – who had been quick to accept gifts of palaces and fine jewels from her husband in the past — was utterly uninterested in purchasing it was because she found it gaudy and distasteful.)
Gradually the countess drew many supporters into her circle, despite her meretricious history, as is proven by the warring factions that came to her aid when Marie Antoinette found out what du Barry really did for her grandfather-in-law the King. Early in her time at Versailles, in fact, she seemed not to shy from referencing, even obliquely, her past as a whore, for she was fond of dressing up as the goddess Flora – who, before she rose to the gods’ empyrean heights, had been a courtesan in ancient Rome. It behooved too many courtiers to court favor with her, once it was clear that the well-established favorite was at Versailles to stay. For Louis XV remained madly in love with her until the end, even fearing on his deathbed that if he sent her away, as kings were expected to do with their mistresses before the could be given the final sacrament of extreme unction, that he might recover and have to live without her, having already asked God, obviously half-heartedly, for forgiveness regarding his mistresses.
Once she was accepted by the court, the stylish poets of the day wrote verses for her and artists painted her. But apart from being a muse, du Barry was also a patron of the arts, as La Pompadour had been. However, she also served as “muse” for a form of literature totally unwelcome to her; to wit, the slanderous and often pornographic pamphlets against members of the royal court that were technically banned in France but, once printed in England, seemed to effortlessly circulate through Versailles, with two-faced “friends” taking secret glee in the obscene limericks, accusations, and drawings. The countess du Barry would be the main target of these verboten scandal sheets until she left court upon the king’s death and the public found a new and more powerful enemy to replace her: Queen Marie Antoinette.
Although Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry were enemies – despite the fact that the consort was finally persuaded to address one bland sentence to a woman she considered too debased to speak to, which was, “It is very crowded at Versailles today” – ironically, they both suffered the same fate. At first it seemed her retirement would be enjoyed in at least some of the splendor she had grown accustomed to as the maitresse en titre. At the king’s request before his death in May 1774, she was banished from the court to the convent of Pont-au-Dames, only because Louis XV knew that this was what he had, as a dying sovereign, to do. However, two years later Madame du Barry moved to her famous Château de Louveciennes, which had been a gift from the king, where she continued her career as a courtesan, having relationships with both Henry Seymour and the Louis Hercule Timolon de Cossé, Duke of Brissac. Then she, like Marie Antoinette, was completely surprised by the French revolution. Only one difference divided them in their death sentence and its execution: the queen went to her death with dignity, while Madame du Barry, once the toast of Versailles and the beloved of King Louis XV, cried and screamed all the way to the chopping block.
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The Pavillon de Madame du Barry, or Château de Louveciennes, was the home of the American School of Paris between 1959 and 1967.