Madame de Montespan: her haughty side

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Jordan, a reader of this blog, noted about the portraits of Madame de Montespan (see my blog below):

"The only three Montespan portraits, in my own opinion, that do justice to her famously "haughty" appearance can be seen by following links. As Sandra mentioned in her original post, it's interesting to note how well-fed Athenais seems in some of them."

Here are the images:

This first one is by an unknown artist. Her eyes, as mentioned before, are unusual, slightly protruding—and yes, as Jordan points out, there is something haughty about her.

The second one, a miniature by Jean Petitot, is clearly the image of a "robust" voluptuous woman with a slightly aloof expression. (The site suggests that it might also be the image of Queen Marie-Thérèse, but that I seriously doubt.)

The third one, also a Petitot image, is especially interesting to me:

(Note: this is an iStock photo which I paid for the right to use.)

Given Montespan's slightly protruding eyes (a symptom of Grave's disease), her emotional unsteadiness as well as her weight problem later in life, I can't help but wonder if she had a thyroid problem. Are there any doctors among us?

Thank you, Jordan, for bringing these images to our attention.


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Images of Madame de Montespan, a seductive angel/devil

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I've recently discovered Europeana, a great site for text, videos, and images. It's especially great for portraits. Here, for example, are some portraits of Athénaïs de Montespan, some of which I've never seen before:

This one above is credited to Ernest and Mignard. One can see how plump she has become. Here is another by Mignard with a similar theme: 

Athénaïs is often portrayed with her children, no doubt to secure her link to the King. This is another portrait by Mignard: 

And another:

And this one by Charles de La Fosse:

This image by Pierre Gobert is presumed to be of her, and I suspect it likely so:

Her lounging pose was unusual for the time; comfort was a new concept. Here again is a striking study by Nicolas Mignard:

This image of Athénaïs at her chateau at Clagny (Versailles now) is curious: bare legs!

This image, artist unknown (and previously thought to portray Louise de la Vallière) shows a younger Athénaïs with droopy eyes. Might this have been considered the come-hither look?

Here is another, likely even younger portrait, showing her unusual and slightly protruding eyes. 

Here is a fashon plate, dated 1694. I doubt very much that Athénaïs would have been so slender at that time. 

I could easily be on this site all day. 



Sandra Gulland


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How trying to stay young can kill you

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This isn't a 17th century discovery, but "Dying to look good" is an interesting article on the recent discovery of gold in the bones of Henry II's mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Liquid gold was believed to preserve youth, but it likely killed her.

It makes me wonder what Louis XIV's mistresses resorted to. Certainly Athénaïs, the Marquise de Montespan, took witchy remedies of various kinds. 

It also makes me wonder what effect they might have had on her many children by the King.

New thoughts on the Queen's Black baby

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I've fallen into the rabbit hole of research today. I began this research thinking that it wasn't possible for the Queen to have had a child by a beloved African dwarf — but now I'm not so sure. I've put together the evidence (such as it is) ... and my own conclusions (for now): here.

What's interesting about the Madame de Montespan chapters (I'll take up the question of their authenticity later) is the repeated statement that looking at someone while pregnant could affect the looks of the child. For example, in speaking of a young man who looks very much like the King:

The resemblance, I must confess, is the most striking that I have yet
seen; for it is complete, even to the tone of the voice. But a look
might have operated this miracle. Instance the little negress, the
daughter of the poor Queen, that Queen so timid and entirely natural, who, to her happiness, as much as to her glory, has never looked at, approached, or distinguished any one except the King. (Chapter XXXIII, page 474)

Plot and research concerns from a reader

I answered emails from readers on the week-end. One I got was a first for me: a serious response to my struggles with research (as posted on this blog) and what that means with respect to my plot. He (or she: I don't know) expressed concern that I was headed in the wrong direction for The Next Novel. With permission, I'm quoting the letter in full:

As a fan of your writing, I should probably have some faith that the Next Novel is going to be great, regardless of how you decide to organize the plot. Here are some of my thoughts on this, given in a constructive, rather than critical, tone, all in the hope of allowing you to consider a fan's perspective as you start making important decisions about the plot.

Novelists, even ones who are rigorous about the facts, have an obligation, first and foremost, to telling a good story. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that re-imagining the Affair of the Poisons as a petty frame-job executed by Louvois -- rather than a dastardly plot against the throne itself, carried out by a royal mistress KNOWN to have been a villain in many regards -- kind of lets the air out of a potentially epic story of love and betrayal. After all, what's more scintillating: Satanism within the gilded halls of Versailles or the 17th Century equivalent of watercooler politics?

Now, maybe you're resistant to someone urging you to downplay the facts for the sake of telling a good story. But that's not really what I'm doing. In fact, I question whether the facts are really pointing you in the direction you think.

Lemoine's argument about Louvois being the driving force behind the Poisons scandal seems to be contradicted by the pleas of many other historians who've concluded that Montespan really was guilty of some vile deeds. Sure, few modern scholars believe that she tried to murder the king, as that was against her interests. But why is it so difficult to believe that Montespan was psychologically incapable of poisoning Fontanges, a rival for the king's affection? Montespan's contemporaries describe her behavior as increasingly erratic -- violence, mood swings, temper tantrums, eating binges, gambling binges -- with each passing year in which she was the king's mistress. The marquise certainly acted like a guilty person after retiring from Versailles, exhibiting a terrible fear of the afterlife.

In an earlier post, you mentioned that you were having trouble with the Next Novel because it was difficult to write from Claude's point of view if one assumes she was a knowing accomplice to murder. I hope your attraction to the Louvois angle isn't rooted in the fact that it effectively absolves Claude to some degree and therefore makes her more sympathetic as a lead character. The fact is, you CAN write sympathetically from Claude's perspective, even if she was an accomplice to murder!

Here's how I see what happened in Claude's life: She was a fundamentally good, if slightly too impressionable, girl who got mixed up in something that was wrong. Many books have characters that resist the temptation to do wrong. But many great novels also feature characters who succumb to what is wrong, and live to be haunted by their deeds. I think we can all identify with that, right? It also happens to be more of a morally strong, perhaps even literary approach, than conceiving yet another female character who finds herself entirely the victim of other people's machinations.

When you think about it, there's even reason to sympathize, slightly, with La Montespan. Pampered, exalted, steeped in luxury and yet -- in a deep, subconscious place the haughty marquise wouldn't admit to anyone -- afraid of losing her treasured lifestyle to a rival, it's easy to see why she might have gone a little bonkers.

Anyway, as you find your way through the conceptual terrain of this novel, please keep these things in mind! Characters that make terrible decisions aren't necessarily unsympathetic! It just depends on how you tell their stories! Good luck, Sandra!

I love getting such a well-written letter from a knowledgeable reader, and I very much agree with this reader that story is the most important thing. As a writer, I do "massage" the historical record for the sake of story, but it's hard to write passionately about something for years and years if I don't think it's true ... or, at the least, that I think it likely true, at least from my understanding of the research.

Part of my personal motivation for writing about history is to explore that reality. But what is the reality? According to many historians, both Claude and Athénaïs are guilty. According to one significant historian (Petitfils) Athénaïs is innocent, but Claude is guilty. According to Lemoine, both Athénaïs and Claude are likely innocent. As I said on my writing blog, I may not really know what I think about all this until I'm into the bowels of the very last draft, years from now.

I do want the reader not to worry, however: the twists and turns of this story will make for extremely dramatic reading, no mater what kaleidoscope one is looking through!

Athénaïs: innocent or guilty?

Yesterday I received a book ordered from France: Madame de Montespan et la Légende des Poisons by Jean Lemoine, a French historian I admire greatly. I inhaled this book, eager to know his thesis — his verdict regarding the guilt or innocence of Athénaïs with respect to dealings in Black Magic, Spanish Fly, infanticide. The plot of The Next Novel hinges on this crucial question: was she guilty?

Lemoine's thesis, at quick glance, seems to be that Athénaïs and a number of others accused by the prisoners of heinous crimes, were personally "encouraged" to embellish their testimonies by the Minister of War, Louvois, who was, in effect, carrying out a private vendetta against his arch-rival, Colbert.

Louvois shows up as a demon with respect to the horrific punishment inflicted on Lauzun. The earliest known record regarding the Man in the Iron Mask is a letter written by Louvois (July 1, 1669). He is also blamed, by some, for the dragonnades, the atrocities suffered by the Huguenots.

Lemoine indicates that part of what fueled Louvois's vendettas was rejection by the aristocracy. Here's a quote from the Net:

For all his ability and power, Louvois was never accepted as the social equal of the commanders who carried out his orders. The great Turenne dismissed Louvois as little better than a valet or clerk. But Louvois was by nature thick-skinned and bull-headed, characteristics he needed to make himself obeyed, although they hardly endeared him to the court.

According to Somerset's book on the Affair of the Poisons, Primi Visconti believed that Louvois's efforts to compile evidence against Olympe was fueled by her mocking him when he fell off his horse out hunting, and her contempt at the suggestion that his daughter marry one of her sons.

According to Hilaire Belloc in her book Louis XIV, Louvois was almost insanely violent, a relentless persecutor who was indifferent to people's suffering. (He was, on the balance, passionate in his devotion to the King. They were close in age, and had known each other since childhood.)

I'm a writer of historical fiction, and I smell a rat, here — a true villian.

Claude des Oeillets: guilty or not?

I have been doing so much research, of late, that I don't post here, because there is too much to say. And so I will start, slowly.

With my last post, on reading Strange Revelations, I was convinced that the heroine of the novel I am working on now, Claude des Oeillets, was guilty of dealing with the witch Madame Voisin (on behalf of her employer, Athénaïs, Madame de Montespan). The testimonies against Claude, recorded in the Bastille Archives, are overwhelming in number and detail. How could so many people be wrong?

Now, having read and reread Jean Lemoine's Les Des Oeillets; une grande comédienne, une maitresse de Louis XIV, I'm not so sure.

Jean Lemoine is one of those wonderfully careful historians that documents every claim. The book is, in fact, made up of documents: leases on houses, money loaned, money paid, last wills and testaments. The stuff of history.

What's telling, to me, is that Madame Voisin insisted, under terrible torture, right up to the day of her execution, that she'd not had any dealings with Athénaïs or Claude, Athénaïs's maid. She had squealed on many, many others at court, most of them high-and-mighty (Athénaïs's sister-in-law was one). There was nothing to be gained in not mentioning Athénaïs or Claude. What would be her motivation? Possibly: to tell the truth?

The accusations poured in from other prisoners after Voisin's execution. What I've learned from Lemoine's work is that Claude was called in by Louvois, the Minister of War, and, horrified by what was being said, insisted on being shown to her accusers. She swore on her life that they would not know her. The "test" was unfortunately mishandled (as noted later by minister Colbert): Claude wasn't shown to the prisoners with other people. The prisoners had been grilled shortly before about Claude. It was easy enough for them to guess who she was.

She insisted on another meeting with Louvois, pleading her case. This was followed up with a letter, in which she offered possible explanations. Louvois, who would have been happy to find any evidence compromising Athénaïs, was ultimately convinced of her innocence ... as was the King and Colbert.

And so: the jury is out. I'm not yet sure. The reason why Claude's guilt or innocence is critical is because it directly implicates Athénaïs — the Shadow Queen of France at that time. I've ordered Jean Lemoine's book on Athénaïs and the Affair of the Poisons. Until then, I remain puzzled, unconvinced either way.