[VI]
THE POMPADOUR
A young bride had become the gossip of the rich merchant society of Paris—that class that was ousting the old noblesse from power. She was a beautiful, a remarkable woman; her wit was repeated in the drawing-rooms, she had all the accomplishments; her charming name—Madame Lenormant d’Etioles.
Draw aside the curtains of the past and we discover our little Jeanne Poisson—grown into this exquisite creature. It has come about in strange fashion enough. The father—a scandalous fellow—having fingered the commissariat moneys in ugly ways to his own use, had been banished for the ugly business. Nor is Jeanne’s mother any better than she should be; and the wags wink knowingly at the handsome and rich man of fashion, Monsieur Lenormant de Tournehem, who has been the favoured gallant during the absence of the light-fingered Poisson. And, of a truth, Lenormant de Tournehem takes astonishing interest in the little Jeanne—watching over her up-growing and giving her the best of education at the convent, where she wins all hearts, and is known as “the little queen.” The truth spoken with wondrous prophecy, if unthinkingly, as we shall see. Complacent Poisson came home, and took the rich and fashionable, bland and smiling Lenormant de Tournehem to his arms. Has he not wealth and estates? therefore as excellent a friend for Poisson as for Madame Poisson. The girl Jeanne leaves the convent to be taught the accomplishments by the supreme masters of France, the wits foregather at Madame Poisson’s, and the brilliant Jeanne is soon mistress of the arts—coquetry not least of all; has also the most exquisite taste in dress. Under all is a heart cold as steel; calculating as the higher mathematics. She has but one hindrance to ambition—her mean birth. Lenormant de Tournehem rids her even of this slur by making his nephew, Lenormant d’Etioles, marry her, giving the young couple half his fortune for dowry, and the promise of the rest when he dies—also he grants him a splendid town-house, as splendid a country seat. And consequential self-respecting little Lenormant d’Etioles is lord of Etioles, amongst other seignories. So Jane Fish appears as Madame Lenormant d’Etioles, seductive, beautiful, accomplished, to whose house repair the new philosophy, the wits, and artists. She has a certain sense of virtue; indeed openly vows that no one but the king shall ever come between her and her lord. But, deep in her heart, she has harboured a fierce ambition—that the king shall help her to keep her bond. She puts forth all her gifts, all her powers, to win to the strange goal; confides it to her worldly mother and “uncle,” Lenormant de Tournehem; finds keen allies therein to the reaching of that strange goal. The death of the Châteauroux clears the way. At a masked ball the king is intrigued as to the personality of a beautiful woman who plagues him with her art; he orders the unmasking. Madame Lenormant d’Etioles stands revealed, drops her handkerchief as by accident; the whisper runs through the Court that “the handkerchief has been thrown!” The king stoops and picks it up. A few evenings later she is smuggled into the “private apartments.” She goes again a month later; in the morning is seized with sudden terror—she daren’t go back to her angry lord lest he do her grievous harm; he will have missed her. The king is touched; allows her to hide from henceforth in the secret apartments; promises the beautiful creature a lodging, her husband’s banishment, and early acknowledgment as titular mistress—before the whole Court at Easter, says the pious Great One. But he has to join the army to play the Conqueror at Fontenoy; and it is later in the year (September) before Madame d’Etioles is presented to the Court in a vast company and proceeds to the queen’s apartments to kiss hands on appointment. Thus was Jeanne Poisson raised to the great aristocracy of France in her twenty-third year as Marquise de Pompadour.
Boucher had been one of the brilliant group of artists of the d’Etioles’ circle. That the Pompadour’s influence had much effect upon his position at Court for a year or two is unlikely; for she had to fight for possession of the king day and night, as the Châteauroux had done, against the queen’s party and the unscrupulous enmity of Maurepas. To set down Boucher’s favour at Court to her is ridiculous. He was painting for the queen’s apartments at thirty-one when the Pompadour was a school-girl of twelve. But in the year following her rise to power, Boucher painted four pictures for the large room of the Dauphin, which were “placed elsewhere”; and, the year after that, he was at work upon two pictures for the bedroom of the king at the castle of Marly. It is likely enough that the Pompadour directed this order. She had almost immediately secured the office of the Director-General of Buildings, which covered the direction of the royal art treasures, for “uncle” Lenormant de Tournehem, who was also a friend of the artist. And from this year it is significant that Boucher paints no more for the opposing camp of the Queen and Dauphin.
PLATE VII.—INTERIEUR DE FAMILLE
(In the Louvre)
Boucher had a quick ear for the vogue. Twice he found the Home to be in the artistic fashion; and each time he painted Home life in order to be in the mode. This interior, showing a well-to-do French family of the times at the midday meal, is not only rendered with glitter and atmosphere, but it is valuable as a rich record of the manners and furnishments of his day.
He was now giving all his strength to the “Rape of Europa” that he painted for the competition ordered by the Academy at the command of Lenormant de Tournehem in the king’s name, in which ten chosen Academicians were to paint subjects in their own style for six prizes and a gold medal, to be awarded in secret vote by the competing artists themselves. Boucher won, by his amiable nature, the good-will of them all by proposing that they should so arrange as to share the prizes equally, and thus prevent any sense of soreness inevitable in the losers.
But greatly as he won the good-fellowship of his fellow-artists by it, this picture caused a murmur to rise amongst the critics who, aforetime loud in his praise, now began to complain of his “abuse of rose tints” in the painting of the female nude. The fact was that Diderot and the men of the New Philosophy were turning their eyes to the whole foundations upon which France was built, art as well as society, and were beginning to demand of art “grandeur and morality in its subjects.” They were soon to be clamouring for “the statement of a great maxim, a lesson for the spectator.” Diderot, with bull-like courage, picked out the greatest, and turned upon Boucher, blaming him for triviality.
The nations, weary of war, concluded the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in the October of 1748. No sooner was peace concluded than Louis relapsed into his old habit of dandified indolence and profligate ease; and, putting from him his duties as the lord of a great people, he gave himself up to shameless intrigues. He allowed the Pompadour to usurp his magnificence and to rule over the land. He yielded himself utterly, if sometimes sulkily, to her domination; and for sixteen years she was the most powerful person at Court, the greatest force in the state—making and unmaking ministers, disposing of office, honours, titles, pensions. All political affairs were discussed and arranged under her guidance; ministers, ambassadors, generals transacted their business in her stately boudoirs; the whole patronage of the sovereign was dispensed by her pretty hands; the prizes of the Church, of the army, of the magistracy could be obtained solely through her favour and good-will. Her energy must have been prodigious. Possessed of extraordinary talents and exquisite tastes, she gave full rein to them, and it was in the indulgence of her better qualities that Destiny brought Boucher into the friendship of this wonderful woman. She became not only his patron but his pupil, engraving several of his designs.