Christine Pevitt Algrant (–2013)

I was intrigued by the strong-willed, highly intelligent Madame de Pompadour in the Doctor Who ep "Girl in the Fireplace." After reading this biography, I can see that the episode got two details right: she was nicknamed Reinette as a child, and upon her death (at age 42!) her lover King Louis XV watched the carriage bearing away her body in the rain from a balcony. Unfortunately, her character was a bit less impressive in reality than in fiction, at least according to Algrant. She was beautiful, poised, and magnificently self-possessed, with a gift for social manipulation. But her letters make it clear that she demanded adoration from all. As Algrant says, "...she measured everyone in relation to their devotion to her, their loyalty, their sense of obligation. Men and women had to profess their love for her, and only her, and then she would be generous and indulgent...She believed she acted for the good of the state. But in reality, she was unable to rise above games of intrigue and struggles for power." She promoted those who flattered her and destroyed those who did not--all regardless of merit. This tendency, which echoed that of France's other powerbrokers, was to the extreme detriment to France itself. The king was uninvolved in matters of state, the councils and parlements all busy fighting amongst themselves. The Seven Years War was incredibly mismanaged: generals were continually coming and going, according to the whims of Versailles with no accounting for actual martial ability or experience; meanwhile, the army had run out of money while the king persisted in sumptuous building projects. In the end, the war ended to the shame of France and Pompadour died of TB, her reputation slandered throughout Paris.… (más)

Philippe was the grandson of Louis XIII and nephew to Louis XIV. Although one of the royal family, there were so many other royals, and the king and his mistress (Mme de Maintenon) had taken such a dislike to him, that it seemed that Philippe would never be given any power or responsibility. Eventually he was given a military command and proved himself quite able, but alas, he intrigued to take the Spanish throne (which had been given to his cousin, Philip V of Spain) and was called back to France. There he lived as a useless courtier, plagued by rumors of intrigues, murders by poison (probably false), and incest with his daughters (also probably false). In rapid succession, Louis XIV's direct family members died, leaving behind just his great grandgrandson to inherit the throne.

Upon Louis XIV's death, Philippe took control of the Regency council and became the main power throughout Louis XV's youth. He attempted to reform the banking and tax system of France, but relied upon speculation on the success of the Louisiana colonies to do so, and this led to a terrible market crash. Philippe was more successful in the arena of diplomacy--he managed to avoid war and better diplomatic relations with England and Russia--and created a free library in the hotel de Nevers (a predecessor of the Bibliotheque Nationale?). At no point did he try to seize the throne from his little third cousin, and in fact trained him to handle diplomacy and administration like a king. Shortly after Louis XV took the throne at age thirteen, Philippe abruptly died in his chair. He was little mourned, and mostly remembered through scurrilous ditties and legends of his debauched lifestyle.

The author liked Philippe far better than I did: she saw virtues where I saw none, called him attractive when any portrait proves that a lie, and mourns that he never got a chance to rule (even though he actually had a huge amount of power during his eight year period as Regent). Worse than her partisanship, however, is how poorly she explains his life and milieu. She introduces people, doesn't mention them for a hundred pages, and when they pop again, she uses a completely different title or nickname for them. I read these biographies carefully and I've read other books set in this period, yet I still had to refer to the family tree as a cheatsheet, even as I finished the book. Philippe's mistresses appear only briefly, given barely a sentence each, even if they were by his side for years. I was never clear on why the court and Parisians singled out Philippe as so very morally corrupt when, from Pevitt's summary, it seems that the worst he did was have mistresses and late night dinner parties, which every other courtier was doing. Surely there was some reason Philippe was noted so often as a libertine, why it was so easy for everyone to believe that he seduced his daughters and killed his relatives?

Too, Pevitt spends an oddly large amount of time talking about Watteau. Five of the twenty-three illustrations are by or of Watteau, and there are numerous detailed descriptions of each of his paintings scattered in the text itself, to boot. WHY? Pevitt gives no indication that Philippe even particularly noticed or cared about Watteau, so I've no idea why she expended so much time on him. And it's not that she talks about all Rococo artists--Boucher isn't even mentioned, and Voltaire gets a quarter of the space she lavishes upon some painter whose colors are muddy and whose anatomy is laughable.… (más)

I was interested to read more about Madame de Pompadour (Louis XV's mistress and an ambitious member of the mid-18th century Parisian bourgeoisie who eventually became the most politically influential woman in France) after I read Voltaire's Zadig, which is dedicated to the marquise and filled with allusions to the religious and political upheavals of the day. Luckily my interest was easily sated since I bought a copy of Christine Pevitt Algrant's Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France (2002) four or five years ago and it has been sitting patiently on my bookshelf ever since.

Algrant's book is a very readable and well-researched life of this interesting, ambitious and flawed woman who became a repository for the disgust and frustration of the French people for the royal family two generations before the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette (who was married to Louis XV's grandson). The last quarter of the book gets a little bogged down in battles and nobles and bureaucratic intrigue, but that is more history's fault than Algrant's. Definitely worth reading.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/08/madame-de-pompadour-mistress-of-france.htm... ]… (más)