Tea at Trianon: Madame Campan

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Madame Campan

I who for fifteen years saw [Queen Marie-Antoinette] attached to her august consort and her children, kind to her servitors, unfortunately too polite, too simple, too much on an equality with the people of the Court, I cannot bear to see her character reviled. I wish I had a hundred mouths, I wish I had wings and could inspire the same confidence in the truth which is so readily accorded to lies.
~Madame Campan, Memoirs of the Court of Marie-Antoinette

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan was the femme de chambre, the chamber maid, of Queen Marie-Antoinette. She was author of the famous memoirs, detailing life at Versailles. Madame Campan was a highly educated lady from a bourgeois family who began her career at Versailles as the Reader to the daughters of Louis XV, from whom she had an earful of gossip. As the Queen's maid, she attended to the details of the running of the queen's household. Madame Campan has often been accused of exaggerating her role, especially where the diamond necklace scandal is concerned. That may very well be; it is easy to picture Madame Campan as an old lady at the finishing school she ran for the daughters of revolutionaries, carried away by memories of a glittering past. I do not, however, think she deliberately softened her portrayal of Marie-Antoinette, in order to get back into the good graces of Madame Royale. In that case, she would not have been so critical of Louis XVI, since it was well-known that the princess idolized her dead father. As far as her politics go, Madame Campan was perhaps a bit liberal and so she interprets some events in that light. As far as her descriptions of the various personalities, her insights are balanced; her observations, shrewd and detailed.