The Grimaldis of Monaco, page 8
To add to the gloom, his son the Dauphin died in October 1765 at the age of thirty-six. “Poor France!” Louis cried. “A King of fifty-five and a Dauphin of eleven!” This was the new heir, his grandson, the Duc de Berry—the future Louis XVI.
Honoré found himself in a Court divided between Pompadour’s supporters and the conservatives who opposed her. The intrigue was beyond Honoré’s grasp and he remained in Paris, which was cloaked in dismal vapors. Soon, loneliness set in and he wrote to Marie-Catherine admitting how greatly he missed her. “My dear love,” she replied, “I swear I feel as deeply as you how cruel it is to be separated from the one you love most in the world. My sorrow is ever with me. I’m only truly happy when dreaming, for then I’ve always the feeling of being with you . . . and I’m always happy to see you respond affectionately to the signs I give of my tenderness for you; but waking up is cruel for however much I look I don’t find you . . .”
She joined Honoré in Paris that December, having left her son in Monaco in the care of her parents. The reunion was marred when, on January 12, 1761, the Marquis Sauveur Gaspard, a son of the late Marquis de Cagnes (who had been the direct male heir to Monaco at the time of Antoine’s death) addressed to the Court of France a protest against what he called the usurpation by the family of the Comtes de Matignon of his father’s right to the succession of the Principality of Monaco. A petition was entered claiming the title of Prince de Monaco. It appears to have been tabled and ignored, but Honoré would never again be easy about the matter.1
Marie-Catherine remained in Paris with Honoré for two years, and then, finding herself pregnant, decided to return to Monaco and the son she had not seen since her departure. “Our son . . . did not know me,” she wrote in a letter to her husband. “He’s got amazing strength and vigour, he’s big and a lovely child, with the eyes, forehead and nose of his papa, and the mouth and chin of his mama. I found my mama has got fat and Papa is still as thin as ever. Goodbye dear love, with my fondest kisses . . .”
She suffered a miscarriage in her fifth month and Honoré returned to Monaco, remaining just long enough to collect her and bring her back to Paris with him. There he left her to recuperate in the care of his brother and sister-in-law while he went off to Fontainebleau. It was at this time that the first signs of disharmony in their marriage can be detected.
“You are forgetting about me, dear love,” she wrote in May 1763. “The pleasures of Fontainebleau take up all your time. This is the third letter I’ve written to you and I’ve only had one from you. That’s not very nice, make up for your mistake promptly by sending me your news . . .”
She was pregnant once again, but her request sent Honoré even farther away, to Normandy, where he spent his time exercising his yearlings on the grounds of his family’s estate. He ignored all her entreaties for him to return to Paris, and was still in Normandy on September 10, when she gave birth to another son, Joseph-Marie-Jérôme. This good news did not bring Honoré rushing back to her side. Over the next two years he was to visit her only three or four times in Paris, and his stays there were brief. Each time he left, his attitude toward her grew more distant.
Honoré’s younger brother, Charles-Maurice, the Comte de Valentinois, and his wife, Marie-Christine, Comtesse de Val-entinois, shared the Matignon Paris mansion with Marie-Catherine, and the sisters-in-law did not get on well. The Comtesse was a Saint-Simon, a descendant of the famous chronicler of Louis XIV’s reign and a member of a family long associated with the Kings of France. She was envious of her younger, richer sister-in-law, although she was contemptuous of her provincial manners and style.
Versailles remained the center of noble society. Pompadour had died in 1764, and the following year, the King took as his maîtresse en titre Madame Du Barry, a striking beauty, although a pale reflection of her predecessor. Born Jeanne Bécu to an impoverished mother and an unknown father, she had been a prostitute in Paris, eventually becoming the mistress of a dissolute nobleman, the Comte Du Barry, who was a well-known procurer in the Court. The office of maîtresse en titre could go only to a nobleman’s wife. Therefore, when Jeanne won the King’s favor, she was swiftly married to Du Barry’s obliging brother. She lacked Pompadour’s political power but was responsible for the dismissal and eclipse of most of the King’s former close advisers. His prestige was diminished and the royal treasury became more depleted.
Du Barry was, to say the least, unpopular. “What do you see in her?” the Duc de Richelieu asked the King. “Only this,” Louis replied. “She makes me forget I will soon be sixty.” (Richelieu had been one of Pompadour’s favored courtiers. A procurer for the Court himself, he was much given to the grand luxuries of milk baths and wearing silver heels on his shoes.)
Du Barry was even more excessively extravagant than Pompadour. She redesigned fifty rooms at Versailles for the King’s private apartments and filled her own with the finest porcelain, ebony-encrusted furniture, costly ivory and leather-bound volumes of erotica. She rode in the most sumptuous carriage yet seen by the Court; painted by Vallée with cupids, hearts and beds of roses, it was decorated with the arms and motto of the Barrymores of Ireland, to whom she claimed the Du Barrys of Gascony were related. To pique the King’s jaded appetite she dressed as a curly-haired boy and played the guitar.
While taxes for the people skyrocketed ever higher, the Court at Versailles continued its grand balls, operas, hunts and receptions. On ball nights the great château blazed with light, the hundreds of flaming candles in the massive crystal chandeliers reflecting in the towering mirrors that lined the walls. Men wore powdered wigs, heavily embroidered satin and brocade suits, silk stockings and shoes with jeweled buckles that sparkled as they moved to the music, their jeweled swords lashed at the hip. Diamonds blazed as the ladies, their décolleté silk or brocade ball gowns stretched wide over panniers, tried to gracefully navigate the dance floor with their trains, the lengths varying according to their rank. Also required was a perfectly round patch of bright rouge, worn on each cheek, precisely three inches in diameter.
Marie-Catherine would have none of this. She used no color on her face and refused to wear a train. She sat out most dances with the older women. Her sister-in-law, a robust woman who had to be laced tightly into her clothes, was constantly critical of her. In contrast, according to the highly romantic Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of England’s Duke of Richmond, who visited Paris in June 1765, the Princesse de Monaco had “a round face with a sweet and charming expression. Her complexion is lovely and she’s got the best figure of any woman I know. She is the only one here not to paint her face, all the others dab rouge on in a horrible manner.”
Lady Sarah was not the only one that summer to take particular notice of Marie-Catherine. The youthful, extremely attractive widowed Prince de Condé (descendant of Athénaïs Montespan and Louis XIV and owner of the magnificent Château de Chantilly) began to pay her considerable attention. She appears to have regarded him as a kind friend; being something of a recluse, she had few others. He often stopped by in the afternoon to see her and frequently sat with her at a ball. The Comtesse de Valentinois wrote to Honoré of the Prince de Condé’s attentions to his wife, commenting in a spiteful tone that Marie-Catherine “enjoys these ‘overtures’ and does nothing to discourage the Prince’s admiration.”
Honoré left his mistress in Normandy and descended on his wife in Paris in a jealous rage; after shocking her with his accusations, he departed in a fury. Two months later, her letters reveal the coolness that now existed between them. “As you say nothing about your return,” she wrote, “I don’t know when you will be back here . . . [but] I am most grateful for the kindness you showed in enquiring about my health.”
A year passed without his return to Paris. The Prince de Condé continued his attentions and Marie-Catherine did not turn him away.
The twenty-eight-year-old Duke of York, brother of George III of England, was traveling through France in August 1767. He was on his way from Paris to Genoa to see a young woman with whom he was passionately in love. When the Duke and his entourage reached Toulon, the governor of Provence, the Due de Villars, gave a ball in his honor. “H.R.H. had danced rather too much,” the London Gazette later recorded, “and this not only fatigued him but occasioned a very strong perspiration; as soon as the ball was finished the Duke of York gave orders for his carriages to be got ready. . . . The gentleman of the train, Colonel de Morison, represented to H.R.H. the necessity of remaining where he was [and confining himself to bed]. . . .
“The Duke of York declared there was no actual occasion for such caution, that he would wrap himself up in his cloak, and that would be sufficient. He did so and stepped into his carriage. This was on the 29th of August.
“Imprudently H.R.H. attended theatre the next evening in Toulon and had to return to his apartments with a terrible chill. The members of his suite tried to convince him that he should remain in Toulon until he was fully recovered. But he would not be delayed.” His original plan to continue by sea to Genoa seemed unwise in view of his ill-health. Thus it was decided that he should continue the rest of the way by land and that he would stop in Monaco en route. Such high-ranking guests were infrequent on the Rock and so, although Honoré was in Normandy when he received word of the royal visit, he hurried back to Monaco to prepare a proper welcome.
“He arrived at Monaco in good spirits,” the London Gazette continues, “a handsome figure in his rear admiral’s uniform. The weather was uncommonly hot and as he stood in the sun taking the salute from Monaco’s small, gleaming honor guard, he grew quite feverish.”
Honoré had been placed in a difficult situation. His royal guest “took to his bed entirely.” Great diplomacy was now required. Monaco did not have the medical resources of London or Paris, and the Duke of York’s condition worsened rapidly. The local physicians and those brought from Nice were unable to reverse the downward slide. Honoré wanted to notify King George, but the Duke of York refused to allow him to send the message.
After taking affectionate leave of all those who had traveled with him and thanking Honoré for his kindness, the Duke died on September 17, a fortnight after his arrival in Monaco. Honoré ordered a cannon to be fired every half hour and had the Duke of York placed upon his own bed for the lying in state. In accordance with the custom of England for royal deaths, the walls of the room were hung with black, and a huge canopy of black and silver with a representation of a coffin upon its dome was placed in the middle of the room. The bed had been raised onto a platform reached by six steps covered in black and rimmed with lighted tapers in large gold and silver candlesticks.
A gun salute sounded as the procession made its way to the frigate which was to carry the Duke of York’s body back to England. Honoré waited by the landing until the coffin and all the royal suite were aboard the Montreal and the royal standard was lowered to half-mast. He then gave the command for two rounds of cannon to be fired, to be followed by his regiment shooting two additional rounds.
It was, perhaps, Honoré’s greatest moment. He made sure that every rule of protocol that covered the death of a King of England’s brother was followed to the letter. For his efforts, George III sent Honoré two of the Duke of York’s finest race horses and invited him to London as his guest, an invitation that was too prestigious for Honoré to refuse.
He returned to Paris and outfitted himself grandly. Although Marie-Catherine begged to join him, he left for London without her on March 26, 1768. The King received him with suitable ceremony, and he was entertained by many members of the royal family. He went on a tour of Cambridge, visited the races at Newmarket (“accompanied by a gentleman and two servants”) and was the guest of honor at a ball attended by the Dukes of Northumberland, Grafton, Gloucester and Cumberland but—to his tremendous disappointment—not the King.
If Honoré thought that his visit would create stronger ties with England, or that the accident of the Duke of York’s having died in his Principality would bring him special recognition from George III, he had misjudged. The royal brothers, who were only one year apart, had been exceedingly close as children. But by the time they were young men, the Duke of York’s foppish ways, his love of dancing and his extravagant tastes had alienated his more sober, domesticated brother. At York’s death, Horace Walpole was moved to write, “Thus ended his silly, good-humoured, troublesome career in a pitious manner.” The King made no public comment on his feelings, but to Honoré, in whose care his brother had died, he was politely appreciative and little more.
On the bright morning of June 4, eight weeks after his arrival in England, Honoré embarked at Dover for Calais, his royal journey having amounted to rather less than he had hoped for. Back in Paris, he was confronted by his sister-in-law with malicious gossip about Marie-Catherine and the Prince de Condé. Husband and wife became quickly estranged. In behavior that contrasted sharply with his usual reserve, Honoré flaunted his various mistresses, and in July 1769 Marie-Catherine left their Paris home for a retreat in a nearby convent before going on to the Convent of the Visitation at Le Mans, where the Bishop was a Grimaldi relative. The Marquise de Brignole-Sale now intervened, hoping to arrange a reconciliation.
“My daughter is by no means fickle, and she loves you steadfastly,” she wrote to her son-in-law. “Open your heart to me; if you think there is something about her conduct that can be improved, let me know. But have you nothing to reproach yourself for? What you write to tell me pierces me to the heart . . . Don’t embitter the little time I still have to live!”
Honoré and Marie-Catherine publicly reconciled but the animosity between them remained. Her father, the Marquis, had recently died and left her a sizable inheritance with the stipulation that Honoré have no rights in it and no power of attorney. Furious over this slight, Honoré petitioned the Genoese Senate to give him control of his wife’s assets. He was outraged when this claim was rejected, and he threatened to send her back to Monaco alone while he stayed in Paris. She had by this time returned to the Matignon town house, but Honoré’s action compelled her to once again take refuge in the convent.
The Prince de Condé, still very much in love with Marie-Catherine, exerted his influence and on January 9, 1771, she was granted a legal separation and total control of her inheritance. A few days later she moved into the Prince’s magnificent Château de Chantilly. Honoré, much disconcerted by this, wrote to the Marquise de Brignole-Sale: “My legal advisors wanted me to pass an act at Monaco recalling her to her duties. I do not flatter myself that would turn her from the bad path she has taken.”
To his beleaguered wife’s relief he did not do this and she bought the elegant Château de Betz, close to Chantilly, where Honoré, relenting, allowed her sons to visit. Her love for the Prince de Condé deepened and in time Honoré came to accept it.2
Honoré’s life in Paris had become difficult. Everywhere there were signs of discord. On April 27, 1774, the King took mortally ill. Asked to pray for their monarch, Parisians quipped: “Our father who art in Versailles, hallowed be thy name; thy will is done neither on earth nor in heaven . . .” On May 9, “. . . motionless, his mouth open, his face neither deformed nor showing any sign of agitation, but towards the end swollen and copper-coloured,” he received extreme unction.
It had been arranged that a candle would be extinguished in the window of the sick room when the elderly King drew his last breath. His grandson and heir, the twenty-year-old Duc de Berry, and his nineteen-year-old wife, Marie Antoinette of Austria, sat vigil watching the flickering flame, which was blown out at 3:15 in the morning of May 10. The Duc de Berry was now Louis XVI, King of France.
The last years of Louis XV’s reign had left Honoré with great bitterness, disgust and a certain amount of fear. Monaco was dependent for its protection upon France, which was still the biggest state in Europe, with a population of twenty-five million people, but it was now a divided land. Honoré’s behavior shows that he was concerned about what this meant to his little Principality. He decided that Monaco must prosper if it was to prevail. His course of action was to set about to marry his elder son, who would succeed him, to a wife with a vast fortune and a marriage contract that would guarantee her husband, and ultimately himself, control over it.
6
IN THE SUMMER of 1785, Louis XVI was returning to Versailles after a visit to the port of Cherbourg, when a peasant approached his carriage and sang a song in his praise.
“I like your song,” said Louis. “Who wrote it?”
“I did, my lord.”
“You did! Bis, bis!”
“Bis?”
“That means sing it again.”
The man complied and when he had finished was rewarded with some gold coins.
“Bis, Sire, bis,” he said and thrust his other hand forward.
The King laughed and ordered more louis d’ors be given the man.
Such personal generosity might appease a single peasant, but France’s basic problems—the slow growth of national wealth and the misery of the poor—would not be solved so easily.
The French Revolution was moving into its first phase. The storming of the Bastille was still four years away, but already Monaco was feeling the effects of the brewing revolution, the growing unrest in Nice spilling over the border. The Chevalier de Grimaldi who had maintained peace and a sense of continuity for the Monégasques throughout his long control of the government, had died the previous year. Honoré returned from France, but he brought with him his French aristocratic attitudes and was concerned more with the safety of his properties in France than with the signs of discontent in his Principality. A group had organized in Menton and were demanding lower taxation and the right to elect representatives to the government.
With Marie-Catherine’s fortune no longer in his command and his French revenues threatened, Honoré ill-advisedly raised taxes, promising only future roadworks to enable farmers to market their produce and export them abroad. Clearly, he underestimated the great dissatisfaction that pervaded the Principality. Of its three towns—Monaco, Menton and Roquebrune—only Monaco felt a strong allegiance to the Grimaldis.
