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Princess Rosalie Lubomirska

25 Mar

Rosalie Chodkiewizc was a contemporary of the Princesse Joseph de Monaco and met the same grisly end on the scaffold during the Terror.

She was born in Chernobyl, Poland on the 16th December 1768 and was married at a young age to the Prince Alexander Lubomirski, whose father had been a candidate for the Polish throne.

According to Olivier Blanc: ‘A passionate lover of literature, music and travel, the princess wandered across Europe during the years prior to the Revolution. She was twenty years of age, ‘beautiful as a painting of Venus’, and she was to be seen at Vienna, London, Nice and Paris, where, like many young liberal aristocrats, she applauded the events of 1789.‘

Rosalie was therefore something akin to what we would call a jet setter, a demi-mondaine who travelled the continent, took countless lovers but was also, clearly, a denizan of the important political and artistic salons of the era as she maintained friendships with Marie Antoinette and other important personages in Versailles and Paris.

In 1791, Rosalie left France and returned to Warsaw where she supported the ‘Polish Patriots’ in their struggles to bring about a revolution. Frightened by the spectre of Jacobinism, the Russians and Prussians ruthlessly turfed the Polish revolutionaries from their home land, deporting many to Siberia and so they fled elsewhere in Europe. Rosalie Lubomirska escaped to Vienna then went on to Lausanne before returning to Paris in early 1793.

She stayed at the luxurious and beautiful Hôtel de Salm with her lover, the Prince of Salm-Kyrburg and his unmarried sister, Princess Amelia of Hohenzollern. After the execution of Louis XVI, Rosalie allied herself with the royalist cause and after a row with the Prince de Salm, she set up home with her daughter Alexandrine, in her own house in Chaillot where she played hostess to a stream of Polish and English guests, many of whom where known spies and agents of the English government.

Her guests also included the Prince de Talmont, one of the dashing leaders of the counter revolutionary Vendéan army and his younger brother, the Abbé de la Trémoille, who was to become her lover. It is unsurprising therefore that the beautiful Princesse Lubomirska came to the attention of the Commitee of Public Safety and on the 9th November 1793 she was duly arrested and taken to the Petit Force, one of the most dreary of the Parisian prisons.

In late January 1794, she managed to buy a transfer to the maison de santé La Chapelle, which was a big improvement as the maisons des santé were technically hospitals and much more comfortable than the prisons.

She failed to save her life, however and was condemned to death on 30 Germinal on the spurious charge of being an accomplice of Madame du Barry. Rosalie was terrified and immediately claimed to be pregnant, which would delay execution for a short period until she was transferred to the Maison de l’Évêché near Notre Dame where pregnant women were held until they had given birth.

The faithful Trémoille managed to get transferred there as well, determined to remain close to his beloved Rosalie and no doubt, fully aware that she was not really pregnant. According to a fellow prisoner, the two were caught together in the prison bathroom, after which Trémoille was sent to the Conciergerie and guillotined a few days later.

Time was running out for Rosalie. She was in a permanent state of dejection and terror and the news that one of her former lovers, Beaussancourt, had been executed on 1 Messidor while wearing a bracelet with her miniature and a lock of her hair only served to increase her fears. On the same day, another tactless prisoner, the General Carteaux wandered the prison singing a song about Trémoille and Rosalie, which had a bizarre effect on Rosalie and she fell into terrible convulsions, which spread through the other female prisoners.

She was taken away to the Conciergerie ten days later, on 12 Messidor when it was noted that she had still failed to show any signs of pregnancy. Her final letter was addressed to Princess Amalia of Hohenzollern:

‘Farewell, Amelia, soon I too shall cease to be alive. Remember your friend and love me in the person of my child. Rosalie.‘

After her death, her remains were cast into the common graves at Picpus and her daughter, Alexandrine was taken in by Princess Amelia. Alexandrine, who inherited her mother’s famous beauty would later become Princess Rzewuski and would be the terror of Honoré de Balzac, who married her beloved niece.

Further reading:

Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution 1793-1794

Marie Antoinette’s beauty secrets

24 Mar

At the end of her life, Marie Antoinette’s cosmetics were reduced to a tarnished mirror, a swansdown puff with some powder and a vial of scented water. As she patted the powder onto her already pallid cheeks, she must have reflected with some wonder and sadness about the fact that not too long ago, her toilette had been one of the high points of the court day, attended by dozens of courtiers, all vying for attention and dictated by an arcane and complex etiquette that had been handed down for generations.

Ironic then that Marie Antoinette’s own tastes inclined towards the discreet and modest. To the ordinary people, she was a haughty, spoiled, pampered creature who delighted in extravagance and ceremony whereas those who were closest to her, knew that on the contrary she preferred simplicity and a total lack of pomp and fuss.

She had an unerring and exquisite taste and the beautiful objects owned and worn by Marie Antoinette still exert a tremendous fascination today. Sadly the ravages of the Revolution resulted in the destruction of Marie Antoinette’s fabulous wardrobe and much of her belongings were either looted, sold abroad or lost forever but enough remains for us to have a very good idea of the luxury that she liked to surround herself with.


Marie Antoinette’s clothes collection was vast, with three whole rooms put aside at Versailles just to store it. The rooms were open to public so it was possible to visit the Queen’s clothes, just as you could go and watch her have dinner or walk past on her way to Mass in the morning. I suspect that to the fashion mad ladies of Versailles, a trip to the Queen’s wardrobe was viewed with as much reverence, if not more, than seeing her in person.


Marie Antoinette was given a fixed allowance of 120,000 Livres a year for clothes and accessories, a vast sum that was somehow never quite enough (she spent 258,000 Livres in one year), probably because at some point along the line, etiquette had decreed that eighteen pairs of pastel coloured gloves scented with violet, hyacinth or carnation and four new pairs of shoes had to be ordered for her on a weekly basis. Her weakness for the designs of Rose Bertin was also a problem here as each of her gorgeous dresses which had swooning, romantic names like ‘Indiscreet Pleasures’, ‘Heart’s Agitation’ and ‘Stifled Sighs’ cost around 1,000 Livres, sometimes even 6,000 Livres each, which quickly mounted up when you were ordering dozens at a time along with shoes, perfumed fans, feathers and extravagant hair decorations.


Strictly speaking, Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe purchases were supposed to be restricted to orders of thirty six dresses for the summer and thirty six for the winter but the Queen adored fashion and so ordered far more. According to etiquette she was only supposed to wear dresses once and had to change three times a day so clearly seventy two dresses a year wasn’t going to cut much of a dash at Versailles. Once worn, favourite dresses were kept and carefully looked after so that they never looked anything less than brand new but others were given away to her ladies in waiting.

When the Queen’s gorgeous bedchamber was renovated in the last century, several pins were discovered wedged between the wooden floorboards, a remnant of the ceremony that surrounded the dressing of the Queen. Every morning before she got out of bed, Marie Antoinette would be presented with the gazette des atours, a huge book full of fabric swatches from each of her gowns and she would place a pin in the dresses that she wanted to wear that day, which would then be brought down from the wardrobe in vast green taffeta covered baskets.

Marie Antoinette would change three times in the course of the day: first of all there would be a formal silk or velvet gown to be worn to Mass, followed by a lighter, more informal muslin, lawn or cotton dress for the rest of the day and then finally a gorgeously elaborate evening dress to be worn to dinner, concerts or balls.

The Queen’s preference was for light fabrics and pale, pastel colours such as a soft lemon yellow, dove grey, pale green and lilac. Again, Madame Bertin was inventive, taking an almost poetic pleasure in thinking up names for different shades – ‘Incendie de l’Opera’ was a vivid orange red; ‘Cheveux de la Reine’ a soft gold inspired by her hair colour and, most poetically, ‘Caca Dauphin’ was a pale brown.

Marie Antoinette took as much care of her person as she did her clothes and her beauty regime was extensive. At night she would sleep wearing gloves lined with wax, rose water and sweet almond oil and she probably treated her hair with a wash of saffron, turmeric, sandalwood and rhubarb in order to accentuate its strawberry blondness.

Before she applied her make up, she would carefully cleanse her skin with Eau Cosmetique de Pigeon, followed by Eau des Charmes astringent and then Eau d’Ange, a gentle whitener. After this white paint was carefully applied to her face, followed by a dusting of scented powder then khol around her eyes and a touch of rouge to her cheeks. Sticks of pomade scented with rose, carnation or vanilla were used to gloss her lips, eyebrows and eyelashes.

Marie Antoinette had survived a childhood bout of small pox relatively unscathed bar a few scars but it is likely that she still enjoyed the fashion for black velvet beauty patches – perhaps applying one to the corner of her mouth, which signaled her wish to be kissed or one on the forehead, which suggested that the wearer was haughty.

There was a definite emphasis on the senses – Versailles at this time was absolutely foul smelling and the courtiers did everything they could to keep the smell at bay. Marie Antoinette’s rooms were scented with a profusion of fresh flowers, melted pastilles, pot pourri, oils and perfumed sachets. She particularly loved the fresh scents of orange blossom, lemon, rose, lavender and violet and her rooms would have smelled heady and sweet as you entered them.

The Queen loved to douse herself with eau de fleur d’oranger (orange blossom water); simple violet, rose and jonquil scents or more complex perfumes made with vanilla, musk, lavender, iris, jasmine and lily or lemon, cinnamon, angelica, cloves and coriander. It seems that everywhere she went, she wanted to be surrounded by gorgeous smells.

Unusually for the time, Marie Antoinette insisted on frequent baths and her bathroom at Versailles still exists with simple dove grey walls and a sloping tiled floor so that the water could drain away. Her perfumer Fargeon invented for her the bain de modestie, which involved donning a flannel chemise so that her body would not be exposed even to the gaze of her ladies in waiting. Once in the bath she would sit on a large pad filled with sweet almonds, pine nuts, linseed, marshmallow root and lily bulb while she washed herself with muslin pads filled with gentle and exfoliating bran and soaps scented with herbs, amber and bergamot.

It’s sad now to walk around Versailles and see these delicately hued rooms, now crowded with tourists, where once the air was filled with the scents of the most beautiful garden imaginable.

Recommended further reading:

A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer

Marie Antoinette

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

Rosalie Filleul, a victim of the Terror

23 Mar

The popular pastellist, Rosalie Filleul was born Anne-Rosalie Bouquet in Paris in 1753 and was the daughter of Blaise Bouquet, ornamental painter and dealer in fans. The young Rosalie showed a talent for art from a young age as recalled by her best friend, the portrait painter Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who wrote:

‘I also drew from nature and from casts, often working by lamplight with Mlle. Boquet, with whom I was closely acquainted. I went to her house in the evenings; she lived in the Rue Saint Denis, where her father had a bric-à-brac shop. It was a long way off, since we lodged in the Rue de Cléry, opposite the Lubert mansion. My mother, therefore, insisted on my being escorted whenever I went. We likewise frequently repaired, Mlle. Boquet and I, to Briard’s, a painter, who lent us his etchings and his classical busts.‘

Vigée-Lebrun, always given to hyperbole when describing the good looks of female acquaintances described the young Mademoiselle Boquet as a rival beauty with ‘considerable‘ artistic talents although where Vigée-Lebrun specialised in oil paintings, Rosalie prefered the more tactile, softer medium of pastels.

Rosalie’s work was very popular and she is known to have exhibited her work several times in the 1770s, when she was still only a teenager. She was attracting attention also for her beauty, with Vigée Lebrun writing later about their walks in the gardens of the Palais Royale that ‘we never entered this avenue, Mlle. Boquet and I, without attracting lively attention. We both were then between sixteen and seventeen years old, Mlle. Boquet being a great beauty. At nineteen she was taken with the smallpox, which called forth such general interest that numbers from all classes of society made anxious inquiries, and a string of carriages was constantly drawn up outside her door.’

On the 1st October 1777, at the age of twenty four, Rosalie was married to the much older Louis Besne Filleul, who held the office of Superintendant of the royal Chateau de Muette and the newly married couple made their home in the Hôtel de Travers, whose windows overlooked the chateau’s beautiful gardens. Muette was a great favourite with Marie Antoinette, who installed the Duchesse de Polignac there and so the young Madame Filleul came to the attention of the royal family, who gave her several commissions for portraits, most famously a charming one of the eldest children of the Comte d’Artois.

The charming Rosalie was rightly feted for her artistic talents and personal charm and was close friends with several notable figures of the day including Vigée-Lebrun, Madame de Bonneuil (reputedly the most beautiful woman in Paris, who would later become a spy during the Revolution) and Benjamin Franklin, who appears to have had something of a crush on her and would pose for her also.

Sadly, Monsieur Filleul died in 1788 but fortunately for Rosalie, Marie Antoinette decided to make her his successor as Superintendant of Muette and so she continued to live there with her young son, Louis-Auguste, who was born on the 14th of June 1780 and her close friend Marguerite-Émilie Chalgrin, daughter of the artist Vernet.

Like most liberal, artistic members of French society, lovely, flirtatious Madame Filleul welcomed the Revolution when the Bastille fell in 1789 but she soon became disillusioned after the suppression of Christianity and then imprisonment of the royal family. She drew attention to herself when she wore mourning for Louis XVI on the anniversary of his execution in January 1794 and then again when she unwisely auctioned some old pieces of furniture from La Muette, which bore the royal insignia.

Rosalie was duly denounced to the Committee of Public Safety and put under surveillance by a certain Citoyen Blache. Arrest was inevitable and eventually she and her friend, Madame Chalgrin were both arrested, with execution following swiftly on the 24th June 1794 on the Place du Trône-Renversé.

Madame Vigée-Lebrun would write in her memoirs:

‘She had a remarkable talent for painting, but she gave up the pursuit almost immediately after her marriage with M. Filleul, when the Queen made her Gatekeeper of the Castle of La Muette. Would that I could speak of the dear creature without calling her dreadful end to mind. Alas! how well I remember Mme. Filleul saying to me, on the eve of my departure from France, when I was to escape from the horrors I foresaw: “You are wrong to go. I intend to stay, because I believe in the happiness the Revolution is to bring us.” And that Revolution took her to the scaffold! Before she quitted La Muette the Terror had begun. Mme. Chalgrin, a daughter of Joseph Vernet, and Mme. Filleul’s bosom friend, came to the castle to celebrate her daughter’s wedding – quietly, as a matter of course. However, the next day the Jacobins none the less proceeded to arrest Mme. Filleul and Mme. Chalgrin, who, they said, had wasted the candles of the nation. A few days later they were both guillotined.‘

Madame Élisabeth, the martyred princess of France

20 Mar

I’ve put together all of the links from a series of articles I wrote about the life of Madame Élisabeth, the youngest sister of Louis XVI a couple of years ago.

‘Élisabeth Philippine Marie Hélène de France was born at 2am on Thursday, 3rd May 1764, the daughter of the unusually devoted royal couple, the Dauphin Louis of France and his second wife Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, who was affectionately known as ‘Pépa’.

The royal couple were unusual for their domestic harmony and frank and open adoration of each other in a court where it was considered bad form to be openly affectionate towards one’s spouse. The Dauphin was a complicated character: he wrote to a friend that his soul was ‘always gay’ and indeed there was a liveliness and cheerfulness about him that made his company much sought after. However, he had also inherited the morbid nature of his parents, Louis XV and his devout Polish wife, Marie Leczinska and was obsessed with death and dying. His mother kept the skull of the delightful courtesan Ninon de Lenclos on her desk, garlanded with flowers and grinning toothily upon a velvet cushion. She called it ‘Ma chère Mignonne’…’

The infancy of Madame Elisabeth.

‘It is recorded that in the early days of their marriage, the young Saxony princess Marie-Joséphe had been horrified to witness her new husband and his sisters spending evenings dressed in black and walking slowly around the dim candlelit room murmuring ‘I am dead, I am dead, I am dead’ in a continuation of a favourite game from childhood. It was unacceptably morbid to a healthy young princess who adored dancing, laughter, being outdoors, having fun and celebrating life…‘

A Versailles childhood.

‘The orphaned children of the Dauphin and Marie-Josèphe de Saxe were a diverse bunch. At the time of their mother’s death, the eldest was the twelve year old Dauphin Louis-Auguste, a serious, sombre boy with low self esteem and a diffident manner. Next was the eleven year old Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, Comte de Provence, already overweight with a cruel, sarcastic yet indolent nature. Next was the nine year old Charles-Philippe, Comte d’Artois, the only one of the trio of boys to have inherited his handsome grandfather, Louis XV’s good looks, in particular his sparkling dark eyes, inherited from his mother Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie.

The two girls followed: seven year old Marie-Adélaïde-Clotilde-Xaviere, who was known as Madame Clotilde, an overweight child with a sweet, endearing nature and a genuine love of music who was known at court as ‘Gros Madame’ (Madame Fatty) and then finally, the baby of the family, two year old Madame Élisabeth…’

The arrival of Marie Antoinette.

‘The betrothal of her eldest brother, the Dauphin Louis had been a source of intense interest at court for quite some time as preparations went on for what was to be one of the most magnificent wedding spectacles ever held at Versailles. Excitement had reached fever pitch by the time his bride, the fifteen year old Archduchess Marie Antoinette arrived at the palace at 10am on the 16th May 1770 and Madame Élisabeth, as the youngest member of the royal family must have been quite beside herself by the time the beautiful new princess, dressed in her splendid travelling costume of blue and white silk arrived in the royal apartments.

Madame de Marsan, who Marie Antoinette had been warned against and who she was to take one of her quick and unyielding dislikes to, was quick to push her favourite pupil, Madame Clotilde forward but the young Archduchess immediately knelt in front of the smallest princess, Élisabeth and gave her a quick hug…‘

An adolescent princess at Versailles.

‘On the 11th June 1775, Louis XVI was crowned in Rheims cathedral in the presence of most of the court as well as his family. His younger siblings were all present and his young sisters, Clotilde and Élisabeth were seated at the side of Marie Antoinette, who was so moved at one point that she had to leave her seat in order to hide her tears. ‘I could not resist it,’ she wrote to her mother. ‘My tears began to flow in spite of myself.’

Beautiful Montreuil.

‘Élisabeth’s life at Montreuil was marked with its simplicity and goodness. She loved to spend time with her friends, either picnicking in the grounds, gardening, working her printing press, doing embroidery or doing good works in the neighbourhood, where she was hailed as a saint by the local people who all had reason to be grateful to her charitable ways and sweet natured friendliness. Élisabeth was naturally very thrifty and would often refuse to buy things because she reasoned that the money could be better spent on helping the poor…’

The early days of the Revolution.

‘Change was in the air but life at Versailles carried on much as it had always done with the inhabitants doing their best to ignore what was happening outside their privileged bubble. The wife of a labourer who had been assisted by Madame Élisabeth requested a private interview at the end of September 1789 and told her that the people of Paris suspected the King of plotting to escape with his family to Metz and were planning to prevent this. Alarmed, Élisabeth immediately went to tell Marie Antoinette, who refused to believe that it was anything more than rumour and exaggeration.

On the 5th October 1789, Élisabeth was at Montreuil when then news arrived that an immense crowd of women were marching on Versailles. She left her house immediately and returned to the palace to be at the side of her brother and sister in law. The royal family gathered together, unable to escape the shouts of the mob that had gathered in the courtyard below them but assured that it would be impossible for them to actually get inside…’

The Tuileries.

‘While Madame Élisabeth busied herself with her books, her painting and her daydreams of happier days spent hunting or riding her beloved horses (Élisabeth was an amazing horsewoman and like her brother, the King, she was said to look her best when mounted on a horse), her brother and sister in law, Marie Antoinette were scheming to get themselves and their family away from France. They were frustrated by their imprisonment at the Tuileries and increasingly disillusioned with the Revolution and the National Assembly, which was becoming increasingly distanced from the needs of ordinary people…’

The Temple.

‘The royal family were depressed, exhausted and thoroughly demoralised. They had spent three days at the Feuillants monastery, with nothing but the clothes that they were wearing until the Countess of Sutherland, wife of the English ambassador sent them fresh linen. All of their clothes and belongings had been looted by the mob – the Queen’s famous collection of clothes now dispersed throughout Paris, where it was worn by the women of the streets.

When they were told that they were to be taken to the Temple palace, Marie Antoinette whispered in dread to Madame de Tourzel: ‘You will see, they will put us in the tower, and they will make it a veritable prison. I have always had such a horror of that tower, that a thousand times I begged the Comte d’Artois to have it pulled down; it must surely have been a foreboding of all that we would suffer there… you will see if I am not mistaken.’

Execution, 10th May 1794.

‘As the guillotine did its work, Élisabeth kept her gaze resolutely forward, showing no sign of fear and reciting the De Profundis as she waited her turn. Finally, there was no one else left and the executioner came for her. She refused his hand and instead went by herself up the steps to the scaffold.

Just before they tied her to the grisly plank of wood that would tilt her beneath the guillotine’s blade, her fichu of fine Indian lawn slipped from her shoulders, revealing the silver medal of the Immaculate Conception and tiny pocket book, which she had tied around her neck with a silken cord.

We are told that one of the executioner’s assistants, Desmarest, tried to remove the fichu, probably to steal it for his own but that Élisabeth stopped him, crying: ‘In the name of your mother, Monsieur, cover me!’ These were to be her last words.

It is said that as the blade fell down, ending the life of Madame Élisabeth, the square was filled with the beautiful scent of roses…’


Recommended further reading:

Madame Elisabeth. Days at Versailles and in prison with Marie-Antoinette and her family

The wonderful Gunning sisters

18 Mar

‘‘To be sure we do not move in the very best circles,’ Mrs Garland admitted with some difficulty, ‘but it didn’t do the Gunning sisters any harm did it? I’ve seen a painting of the one that married two Dukes and I’m sure that my Anastasia is twice the beauty that she was. She will certainly be much richer!’

Sidonie smiled faintly but she inwardly cursed the existence of the celebrated Gunning sisters, a pair of impoverished but exquisitely beautiful Irish girls from a similar background, she imagined, to Mrs Garland, who had taken English society by storm a few decades earlier and married into the aristocracy. Ever since then the two Gunnings had been twin deities to ambitious mamas everywhere and a byword for serious social mobility.’


The legendary Gunning sisters were both born in around 1733 in Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire and were two of the five daughters of an Irish gentleman, John Gunning and his wife the Hon. Bridget Bourke, daughter of the 6th Viscount Bourke.

In 1740, when the girls were both still very small the family decamped back to their father’s native Ireland where they lived in a rented house in Dublin. Mrs Gunning appears to have been just the same sort of ambitious mama as those who would later be inspired by her and was determined that her girls, who were inordinately beautiful, should do well in life.

However, the relative poverty of the family was against them and it seems that abandoning the idea of their being able to make advantageous matches with rich men, she decided that they should both become actresses and seek their fortunes on the stage.

However, whatever the truth of this is, the two Gunning girls made their debut into high society in October 1748 when they attended Viscountess Petersham’s ball at Dublin Castle. Their parents were too poor to be able to afford proper ball gowns so Thomas Sheridan, manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin (and father of the famous playwright, Sheridan) took pity on them and loaned them dresses from the theatre wardrobe so that one of the girls went in the costume of Juliet and the other in that of Lady Macbeth.

This could have gone badly wrong but the girls were an instant and phenomenal success. During the course of the evening they were introduced to the Earl of Harrington, who would later bestow a sizeable pension on their mother, which proved to be enough to allow for the family to return to England, where they proceeded to bewitch the small society of their native Huntingdon.

Word of the gorgeous and charming Gunning sisters soon spread to London and their mother, keen to advance her daughters as much as possible, soon moved the family there to make the most of their new found celebrity and status as the eighteenth century equivalent of It Girls. It is said that they had to be closely guarded by a military escort whenever they went out anywhere as they were literally mobbed by dozens of people, all crowding close to stare at them. The fact that they were sisters, possibly twins, probably had much to do with their appeal.

In an almost dizzying rise in fortunes, the two sisters were presented to George II at St James’ palace on the 2nd December 1750 while the courtiers stood on chairs in order to gawp at them both and their social success seemed assured. All that was needed now was for them both to make amazing matches.

In the new year of 1752, Elizabeth Gunning was presented at a masquerade to the 6th Duke of Hamilton, who was described by Walpole as ‘hot, debauched, extravagant, and equally damaged in his fortune and person.’ He was instantly smitten with her blonde loveliness. It is said that the couple were both present at a ball at Bedford House just a month later on Valentine’s Day and the young Duke, who was probably intoxicated in more ways than one, loudly and publicly declared his intention of making the blushing Elizabeth his bride and demanded that a parson be called for. He was only dissuaded from this romantic object when it was pointed out that he required a license to proceed.

Undaunted, the besotted couple jumped into a carriage and went off to Mayfair Chapel, for which a license was not required, and were married in secret. It probably wasn’t the grand wedding that Mrs Gunning had envisioned for her daughter, but nonetheless she was a Duchess now and that was all that mattered.

Maria’s wedding followed a month later, when she was married to the 6th Earl of Coventry. She and her husband went off to Paris for their honeymoon, where her beauty was to cause a sensation. However, the new Countess was rather less than fond of the French capital and pined for England, her unhappiness exacerbated by the increasingly controlling behaviour of her husband who would not allow her to wear rouge and didn’t think twice about publicly wiping it off her cheeks if she should appear with it on.

When they finally returned to London, she was dismayed to find that her husband had taken as his mistress the decidedly beauteous Kitty Fisher, which led to this unfortunate exchange in Hyde Park, which was recorded by an eyewitness, Guistiniana Wynne:

‘The other day they ran into each other in the park and Lady Coventry asked Kitty the name of the dressmaker who had made her dress. Kitty Fisher answered she had better ask Lord Coventry as he had given her the dress as a gift.” The altercation continued with Lady Coventry calling her an impertinent woman, and Kitty replying that she would have to accept this insult because Maria became her ‘social superior’ on marrying Lord Coventry, but she was going to marry a Lord herself just to be able to answer back.’

Maria was very upset by her husband’s unfaithfulness and began to take her own lovers in part out of loneliness but also, one feels, to ‘get back’ at him. It must have been very horrible for someone who was so used to wholehearted admiration and who was used to being adulated for her beauty to be married to someone who could not stay true to her.

In contrast, her sister Elizabeth’s marriage seems to have been a very happy one despite its ramshackle beginnings. Sadly though her Duke was to die on the 17th January 1758 after less than six years of marriage, after catching a cold while hunting. He was just thirty three. His widow, Elizabeth was left with three young children, one of whom, not quite three year old James, was now Duke of Hamilton.

It didn’t take her long to get engaged again, which is fair enough as the position of a lovely young widow in charge of small children was a vulnerable one. Her suitor was another duke, that of Bridgwater but the match was to fall apart and the engagement broken. Elizabeth then swiftly moved on and a year later she was married again, this time to the Marquess of Lorne.


Maria however was to tragically die at the age of twenty seven on the 30th of September 1760, probably as a result of lead and arsenic poisoning from the heavy cosmetics that she liked to use, in defiance of her husband. It was a tragic end to a really quite amazing life and probably terrified a lot of society ladies as well as they were all rather fond of their rouge and face paints. The news of her death was greeted by widespread mourning and it’s said that over ten thousand people turned up to see her coffin.

In contrast, Elizabeth was to be appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte in 1761, a post that she would hold until 1784. Her husband would become Duke of Argyll in 1770 after the death of his father, which meant that the beautiful Elizabeth became a Duchess for the second time.

She would eventually die at the age of fifty seven on the 20th of December 1790 at Argyll House in London.

Quote at the start taken from my very own book Before the Storm about Georgian social climbing and shenanigans in an age of Revolution, nice hats and plentitudes of cake.

Charlotte Corday and the murder of Marat

17 Mar

At 7am on the morning of Sunday, the 13th July 1793, a young woman, just twenty five years of age, with neatly arranged curling chestnut hair and clear blue eyes walked with a firm and steady tread through the already busy sunwarmed streets of Paris from her lodging, room 7 in the Hôtel de la Providence, 19 Rue Hérold, to the arcades of the Palais Royal. We don’t know what thoughts ran through her head as she strolled purposely along, perhaps stirring lines written by her great great great grandfather, the celebrated playwright Pierre Corneille, or perhaps she stopped every now and again to enjoy the bustle and excitement that attended the preparations for the next day’s celebration of the fourth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.

The elegant arcades of the former Royal palace were decorated for the occasion with tricolor banners, while the trees planted in the famous gardens were bedecked with tricolor ribbons that floated slightly in the morning breeze, while everywhere the woman looked she saw young people like herself laughing and smiling as they sang patriotic songs and looked forward to the festivities.

Marie-Anne-Charlotte de Corday d’Armont was not a Parisienne, despite the undoubted elegance of her brown striped silk dress, but was one of the last scions of a somewhat diminished aristocratic family from Caen in Normandy. The street vendor who sold her a newspaper before she entered into the cooling shelter provided by the colonnades, which were frequented at night by whores, gamblers, thieves and revelers drawn from all classes, would have noted that her accent was not that of a native Parisian but there was nothing unusual about that – since the outbreak of Revolution in 1789, the city had become a magnet for ambitious young women who crowded around the deputies of the National Assembly like wasps around honey.

Clutching her newspaper tightly, she wandered from shop to shop, admiring a pair of lilac scented gloves here, an elegant pink shoe, the shade of sugared almonds there and a rose and feather festooned bonnet there. She had come to the arcade to buy a particular item, but showed no haste in seeking it out, preferring instead to loiter in a leisurely manner just like any other fashionable young lady. One particular hat, tall, black and trimmed with green silk ribbons caught her eye and she bought it, immediately swapping her more modest white linen bonnet for it in the street.

Finally, she turned towards the Café Février and stopped at Badin’s cutler’s shop nearby at 177 Rue de Valois, where she bought a kitchen knife with a six inch blade for two livres. After this she walked for a while around the Palais Royal gardens and sat on a bench to read her newspaper, enjoying the rich scent of the blooming roses that lined the gravel paths. Perhaps she then strolled down to the nearby Tuileries gardens, which lay in front of the old palace. The Royal family had not been in residence since August the previous year and in January, the king, Louis had met his end just a few yards away on the Place de la Révolution.

After this, there was nothing more to be done and she walked to the Place des Victoires, where she hailed a carriage and instructed the driver to take her south of the Seine to the home of Citizen Marat at 30 Rue des Cordeliers. While travelling down to Paris, Charlotte had planned to murder Marat in the Convention in full view of all the deputies  and as a public retribution for what she saw as his crimes against France. However, Marat was stricken with illness and had lately rarely left his home, preferring instead to soothe the hideous skin infection with which he was inflicted with cooling baths, scattered with healing herbs and powders procured for him by his devoted nurse and life partner, Simone.

Charlotte was disappointed that her grand plan had gone awry already but remained resolute and undaunted: Marat was going to die.

She arrived outside his building at half past eleven, climbed out of the carriage and went across a cobbled courtyard into the house. However, before she could ascend the shabby wooden staircase that led up to Marat’s apartment on the first floor, Simone’s sister, Catherine came down and informed her that Marat was far too ill to receive visitors and she could not be admitted for at least four or five days.

Charlotte hesitated then returned to her lodgings, where she sat at her small desk and wrote Marat a brief note: ‘Je viens de Caen, votre amour pour le patrie doit vous faire désirer connaître les complots qu’on y médite. J’attends votre réponse.’ (I have come from Caen, your love for the country must make you curious about the plots that are hatching there. I will wait for your reply.) She entrusted her note to a clerk and then requested that Citizeness Grollier, the owner of the hotel arrange for a hairdresser to come to her.

She spent the rest of the day at her lodgings, awaiting a reply from Marat which did not come. The hairdresser procured by Citizeness Grollier arrived and arranged her hair in a fashionable style with long ringlets that hung down to her slender waist before freshly powdering it. Charlotte then changed from her brown silk dress of earlier into a gown of fine spotted Indian muslin teamed with a clean fichu of pretty rose pink cotton. She tucked her birth certificate and a letter addressed to the French people into her chemise, where they would be discovered after her arrest.

After this, she sat again at her desk to write another, longer letter: ‘Je vous ai écrit ce matin, Marat, avez vous reçu ma lettre, puis-je espérer un moment d’audience ; si vous l’avez reçue j’espère que vous ne me refuserez pas, voyant combien la chose est intéressante. Suffit que je sois bien malheureuse pour avoir droit à votre protection.’ (I wrote to you this morning, Marat.  Have you received my letter? I am hoping for a short audience. If you have received it, I hope that you will not refuse me for I have many interesting things to tell you. Let it be known that I am so unhappy as to have the right to your protection.)

Satisfied that her new letter was enough to pique Marat’s interest, she tucked her knife down the front of her dress, pulling her fine linen fichu closer to conceal it, picked up a green silk fan and once again ventured out into the sweltering Parisian streets, hailed another carriage and went back to the Rue des Cordeliers, arriving there at around seven in the evening. This time it was Simone who came down from the first floor apartment to apprehend the pretty visitor and demand to know why she was so keen to see Marat.

The two women had a bit of a row on the stairs, which would have ended in the formidable Simone ejecting Charlotte, until the latter decided to raise her voice and loudly protest that she only wanted to tell Marat about the plots and schemes being hatched by his Girondin enemies who had escaped Paris and taken refuge in Caen. As she had hoped, his interest was immediately stirred by what appeared to be a heaven sent opportunity to finally score some points against his enemies, the noted Girondins  Madame Roland, Barbaroux, Brissot and Vergniaud and he called weakly from his bath that she should be allowed to come up to his room.

Marat greeted the very pretty Charlotte in the most friendly way, saying that he had read her notes and was keen to learn more before invited her to take a seat beside his bath to tell him more about the parlous situation in Normandy. Simone, still suspicious of the other young woman’s motives, also entered the room and sat with them as they talked about the Girondins, with Charlotte boldly providing a list of names of Girondins currently at large in Normandy, all of which Marat gleefully wrote down on the desk which went across his bath, chuckling all the time.

At this point, Simone, with a backward look of annoyance at Charlotte, left the room to fetch some more kaolin solution for the bathtub. Marat grinned at his guest and gestured to the list of names with his pen, saying: ‘Their heads will roll within a fortnight.’

Charlotte did not return his grin, instead she rose to her feet, knocking her stool backwards as she stood up, pulled the knife out from the bosom of her dress and plunged it desperately into Marat’s exposed chest before pulling it out and dropping it on to the floor. She then took the list of names and hurled it into the water of his bath, hoping that this would be enough to destroy it and protect the identity of the people she had incriminated.

‘A moi, ma chère amie!’ the dying man howled, bringing Simone rushing back into the room, but it was too late as Marat died within seconds of being struck. She took one look at the wound which was pumping blood into the water and all over the makeshift desk and the papers on it and screeched: ‘My God, he has been murdered.’ Meanwhile, Charlotte made no real attempt to escape but instead backed away from the commotion that her actions had caused then walked calmly from the room. ‘Malheureuse, what have you done?’ Simone screamed at her as she went.

Alerted by Simone’s screams, Laurent Bas, one of Marat’s employees ran after Charlotte and immediately attempted to fell her by picking up a chair and hitting her with it. He then ignored her clear lack of resistance and insisted upon knocking her down then pinning her forcibly to the ground until the Commissaire de Police, Citizen Guellard arrived to arrest her.

During the interrogation that followed, Charlotte made no attempt to deny that she had murdered Marat with her own hand and also insisted that she had acted alone.Throughout the course of her imprisonment and trial, the prosecutors sought in vain to insist that such a well bred young woman must surely have been acting on the behalf of a group of hardened plotters but she was to confound them all with her clear eyed insistence that there was no plot, no cell of malcontents and that the idea of murdering Marat had been her’s alone.

The news of Marat’s murder swept through the streets of the Cordeliers district, where he was a much loved figure and it didn’t take long for a large mob to assemble outside number 30 both to loudly mourn his premature passing and scream threats of retribution towards his assassin which floated up to the windows of the first floor flat as Charlotte, her face bruised and bloodied was interrogated and had her possessions confiscated.

Thanks to Laurent’s rough treatment, the birth certificate and letter that she had hidden beneath her chemise were revealed and one of her interrogators pulled them forcibly from her dress, tearing it in the process and almost revealing her breasts. Ashamed and horrified, Charlotte shook her hair forward to conceal them as best she could.

Finally, in the middle of the night an armed guard bundled Charlotte past a screaming, furious mob down the stairs and into a carriage. She was lucky to escape with her life as many of the crowd were determined to render their own retribution for her terrible act – however, it was pointed out to them that she was clearly part of some terrible terrorist cell based in the provinces and so must be kept alive long enough to name her co-conspirators.

Charlotte, bruised, exhausted but triumphant was taken through the dark streets to the prison of Abbaye, where she was led past staring, whispered gaolers and their fearsome dogs to a small, mean cell that had only recently been vacated by Madame Roland. Meanwhile, the city was in uproar as news of Marat’s assassination spread and it became known that a beautiful young woman from the provinces had been the one to deliver the fatal blow…

Further reading:

Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France

Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution

Thérésia Cabarrus

10 Mar

‘This woman would be able to close the gates of hell‘ – William Pitt on Thérésia Cabarrus Tallien.

The ultimate society girl of the late eighteenth century and leader of the dashing and morbidly attired Merveilleuses with their thin muslin gowns, red ribbon chokers and tousled clipped short hair, Juana María Ignazia Teresa de Cabarrús y Galabert (known as Thérésia) was born in a palace in Madrid on the 31st July 1773. She was one of those huge flamboyant, scandalous, intellectual yet tender hearted women that the eighteenth century excelled at producing – a true product of her time in every way.

Heiress to the enormous fortune of her father, a Spanish finance minister, aristocrat and friend of Goya, Thérésia, had no difficulty in attracting suitors and was to marry the Marquis de Fontenay on the 21st of February 1788. Fontenay was an unattractive little man and probably couldn’t believe his luck as he took the enchantingly lovely fourteen year old Thérésia, who had a dowry of over half a million Livres, as his wife. Rich, popular and pretty, the new Marquise de Fontenay was presented to Marie Antoinette at Versailles and placed herself at the heart of fashionable Parisian life on the eve of the Revolution.

Her marriage was a miserable affair though and Thérésia rid herself of her husband, who had dissipated her fortune and then emigrated in order to escape both the fury of the mob, his totally fed up wife and also his creditors. They were divorced in 1791 and Thérésia threw herself with gusto into the liberal political scene of the early 1790s, hosting a salon and having affairs with several prominent men. When the Terror reached its height and even liberal aristocrats who had supported the Revolution found themselves in danger, she escaped to Bordeaux, only to be promptly imprisoned despite her reputation there as a much loved benefactress to the poor of the area. She would have very likely have been guillotined, had she not caught the eye of handsome young Jacobin Tallien who had travelled there as a representative of the Convention and negotiated her release at some risk to himself as he was immediately recalled to Paris to explain himself to the Committee of Public Safety.

The couple returned together to Paris, where Thérésia’s aristocratic pedigree and attempts, via her lover, to secure the release of several state prisoners drew the attention of the Committee of Public Safety who had her re-arrested. Thérésia was firstly imprisoned in the vile La Force and then in the far more salubrious Carmes, where she was to meet Rose de Beauharnais and form a friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. Both women lived in daily fear of execution, especially when Rose’s husband, Alexandre was guillotined.

It is not known for certain how involved Thérésia was in the events of Thermidor. She herself was to tell people that she had had a letter smuggled out to Tallien, telling him that she was due to be brought before the Tribunal the following day and calling him a coward for doing so little to save her life. And lo, she would say, the very next day, he brought about the fall of Robespierre and saved not just her but everyone else then awaiting trial. Their correspondance no longer exists so it is impossible to say if this is the truth, but it makes a good story and Thérésia herself certainly seems to have believed that the Terror was ended for her sake as she gratefully married Tallien on Boxing Day 1794, shortly before giving birth to a daughter who was fancifully christened Thermidor Tallien.

Once the Terror was over, the city of Paris gave itself over to an orgy of fashion, fun and decadence, reminiscent of the lavish joy evidenced by the City of London during the Restoration of Charles II, a century earlier. Beautiful Thérésia, rich, hailed by a grateful populace as Notre Dame des Thermidor who had saved them all from Robespierre was naturally to become the leader of fashionable society and was to be seen out and about every night, dressed in her skimpy muslin gowns, covered in diamonds and, scandalously without any underwear. After watching her arrive at the Opera in a thin white muslin gown with sapphires and rubies flashing on every gold painted finger and toe, Talleyrand is said to have dryly observed: ‘It is not possible to exhibit oneself more sumptuously!’

There was more to Thérésia than these lavish displays though – now that Robespierre had been overthrown and the Terror was at an end, Tallien placed her in charge of the urgent operation to empty the full to bursting Parisian prisons and so she secured the release of countless prisoners as well as securing the penalty free return of many emigrés.

Her marriage to Tallien was to be short lived and finally came to an end in 1795 (although they didn’t formally divorce until the 8th of April 1802) when his callous and underhand treatment of the Royalist Chouan prisoners at Quiberon (he released the women and children as promised but had around 950 soldiers, including the Marquis de Sombreuil shot) turned her against him forever. ‘He has too much blood on his hands,’ Thérésia commented with revulsion.

One of Thérésia’s most ardent admirers at this time was the awkward young Corsican General Bonaparte, but it is said that after gently rebuffing his advances, she introduced him to her best friend Rose de Beauharnais, who was to become his beloved Joséphine. Sadly, Napoleon did not remain grateful for the good turn that she had done him and would later ban Joséphine from seeing her, forbid her to come to his court and rudely pass comment on her morals: ‘She has had two or three husbands and children with all the world’.

After a series of spectacular and high profile affairs with such men as Talleyrand, Paul Barras and Gabriel Ouvrad, she finally married again to the Comte de Caraman, who was later to become Prince de Chimay. It was almost as though Thérésia had gone full circle as she went from aristocratic beauty, who had been presented to Marie Antoinette at Versailles in early 1789 to heroine of the Terror, to leader of one of the most scandalous and louche societies in history to Princesse de Chimay and chatelaine of a château in the country.

Many, many years ago I was taken to the seat of the Chimay family in Belgium, and I remember standing for a long time before the portraits of the Princesse de Chimay who had been a lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette and then of Thérésia. Such a contrast between the two women and yet, they shared the same glamour and spirit that carried so many women of that time through the dark days.

I love this painting by Marguerite Gérard, that is said to depict Madame Tallien and another one of her best friends, Madame Récamier sitting together. I love to imagine Thérésia, Joséphine, Juliette Récamier and Madame de Staël, all great friends despite the tumult of the times and the vagaries of their menfolk, sitting together in their autumn years and reminiscing about the lost days of Marie Antoinette’s court, the excitement of the Revolution and the wild lives that they had all lived.

Further recommended reading:

Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France

Madame la Comtesse du Barry

8 Mar

Jeanne Bécu was born in Vaucouleurs on the 19th August 1743, the illegitimate daughter of a gorgeous seamstress and a friar. It was a shocking beginning to what was to be a scandalous life.

Jeanne, dragged up by her mother then fortuitiously sent to a convent school by a wealthy benefactor, was to grow up to be exceedingly beautious with a lovely face, tumbling blonde hair and meltingly seductive violet eyes. Sadly, her fiscal prospects were non existant and the presence of protective adults was minimal so the young Jeanne after an initial attempt to train as a milliner soon found herself working in a casino come brothel.

She was ‘rescued’ from this life by a noted roué, the spurious comte du Barry who installed her as his mistress then launched her career as a high class courtesan to men of the court. Jeanne does not appear to have been adverse to this life, being untroubled by too much in the way of morals and blessed with a budding taste for expensive luxuries.

She did very well for herself until 1768 when on a visit to Versailles, she came to the attention of another aged roué, Louis XV who, always prone to depression, had been in a protracted state of bored gloom ever since the death of his exquisite mistress, Madame de Pompadour. He’d ignored all of his courtiers attempts to divert his attention with various beautiful and well born ladies of the court and had instead consoled himself with the less demanding charms of servant girls and young women who were housed in his private brothel in Versailles.

He was instantly smitten by the young Jeanne and it wasn’t long before her lover du Barry’s brother was forced to marry her in order to make her position more respectable and enable her to have the title that was so necessary for an entrée to Versailles life. After this there was no stopping her and to the horror of all, the King even installed her in apartments in the palace. No one in Versailles had any illusions about the origins of the latest favourite, lovely thought she was. They’d all sneered at the middle class origins of Madame de Pompadour, so you can imagine how they felt about having Madame du Barry prancing around in their midst, dressed up in pink silk and exquisite lace and covered in the diamonds that she adored so much.

The good times didn’t last for long however as in May 1774, Louis XV died of small pox in his room at Versailles and Madame du Barry, who was loathed by his young and rather prudish grandson and heir Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette was promptly sent away from court and at first compelled to enter a convent, although she did not remain there for long.

Madame du Barry was never again received at court but does not seem to have regretted this exile too much as she had her own beautiful chateau at Louveciennes and seems to have lived there very happily throughout the rest of the 1780s, taking one lover after another, patronising artists and being a lady bountiful to the local people.

She did her best to live out the revolution in relative obscurity but her fame as one of Louis XV’s most extravagant mistresses and also, as usual, her total lack of proper advice and support were to be her downfall.

On the night of the 10th January 1791, a significant amount of the Comtesse’s jewelery collection had been stolen from her bedroom and she had moved heaven and earth in an attempt to retrieve it, which necessitated offering a reward and several trips to England. If she had only remained in London, where she had friends, then she would have been safe and would have come to no harm. However, not being too bright, she always returned to France and eventually these trips brought her to the attention of the hostile authorities, who were hardly likely to be sympathetic about her tale of stolen diamonds.

It was not long before she was arrested, in March 1793 and then imprisoned in Paris.  The unfortunate woman seems to have spent her days between hysterical fear and a belief that she would be able to buy or charm her way out of her predicament. When she was sentenced to death in December 1793, she wrote a lengthy list detailing the hiding places of all her remaining money and jewels at her estate in Louveciennes, hopeful that this would lead to her life being spared.

It availed her nothing and on a frosty day, the 8th December 1793, the still lovely fifty year old former courtesan was loaded on to a tumbrel and driven, crying and screaming through the streets of Paris to the guillotine. The aristocratic victims of the Terror prided themselves on their poise and haughty silence in the face of the baying mob – not so Madame du Barry who broke down completely and appealed ceaselessly to the crowds to rescue her from her fate.

It must have been a relief to everyone when they finally reached the square and their unwilling victim was pulled down from the cart then led up to the scaffold but her screams for mercy did not cease until the very end and even as they forced her onto the plank, she was begging the executioner for ‘one moment more, please monsieur, do not hurt me.’

Madame Vigée-Lebrun, who knew Madame du Barry very well and painted her more than once was to write: ‘Madame Du Barry … is the only woman, among all the women who perished in the dreadful days, who could not stand the sight of the scaffold. She screamed, she begged mercy of the horrible crowd that stood around the scaffold, she aroused them to such a point that the executioner grew anxious and hastened to complete his task. This convinced me that if the victims of these terrible times had not been so proud, had not met death with such courage, the Terror would have ended much earlier. Men of limited intelligence lack the imagination to be touched by inner suffering, and the populace is more easily stirred by pity than by admiration.’

Further recommended reading:

Madame Du Barry: The Wages of Beauty

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