She held between her slim fingers the reins of government, and womanlike she twisted them this way and that, her foolish head slightly turned by adulation and flattery. Louis adored her: he gave her a cameo brooch, a beaded footstool (which his mother had used), and the loveliest cock linnet, which used to fly about all over the place, singing songs of its own composition.
All the world knows of her celebrated scene with Marie Antoinette, but Edgar Sheepmeadow recounts it so deliciously in Volume III of "Women Large and Women Small" that it would be a sin not to quote it. "They met," he says, "on the Grand Staircase. The Dauphine, with her usual hauteur, was mounting with her head held high. Julie, by some misfortune, happened to get in her way. The Dauphine, not seeing her, trod heavily on her foot, then jogged her in the ribs with her elbow. Though realising who it was, the great lady could not but apologise. Drawing herself up as high as possible, she said in icy tones, 'I beg your pardon!' Quick as thought Julie replied, 'Granted as soon as asked!' Then with a toss of her curls she ran down the stairs, leaving the haughty Princess's mind a vortex of tumultuous feelings."
A few words of description should undoubtedly be vouchsafed to the decoration of her apartments at Versailles. Artistic from birth, Julie de Poopinac inaugurated almost a revolution in colour schemes: her salle des populaces (room of the people), where she received supplicants for alms and various other favours, was upholstered in Godstone blue, with hangings of griffin pink; her salle à manger (dining-room) was a tasteful mélange of elephant green, cerise, and burnt umber. Her salle de bain (bathroom) deserves special mention, owing to its bizarre mixture of mustard colour and vetch purple—while her chambre à coucher (bedroom) was a truly fitting setting for so brilliant a gem. The walls were lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she wrote most of her poems.[3]
Her world-renowned "Idyl to Summer":—
"Dawn,
The poplars droop and sway and droop,
A lazy bee
With wings athread with gold and green
His merry way with esctasy
He takes, amid the garden blooms—
Ah me, ah God, ah God, ah me!
Dawn...."
And the perfectly delicious light poem dedicated to Louis—
"Beloved, it is morn—I rise
To smell the roses sweet;
Emphatic are my hips and thighs,
Phlegmatic are my feet.
Ten thousand roses have I got
Within a garden small,
Give me but strength to smell the lot,
Oh, let me sniff them all!"
Then her rather sordid realistic poem to Louis's death-bed commencing
"Oh, Bed
Wherein he frequently disposed
His weary limbs when day was done,
His last long sleep has murmured down—
Oh Bed—beneath your silken pall,
His eyes aglaze with death, and dim
With age—are closed.
Oh, Bed!"
It was of course after Louis's death that Julie was forced to seek retirement in her château in Old Brittany. There for many years she lived in almost complete seclusion, writing her books which were the inspired outpourings of a tortured soul: "Lilith: the Story of a Woman"; "The Hopeless Quest," an allegorical tale of the St. Malo sand-dunes, then unexplored; and "The Pig-Sty," a biting satire on life at Court.