Marie Antoinette: An Intimate History by Clegg Melanie

Author:Clegg, Melanie [Clegg, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Madame Guillotine
Published: 2015-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

‘Madame,

We are filled with happiness and venture to think that the last arrangements proposed to us, which we have performed with zeal and respect, are a further proof of our submission and devotion to Your Majesty’s order, and we have genuine satisfaction in thinking that the most beautiful set of diamonds now existing will belong to the greatest and best of Queens.’

Amused by what she believed must be an unfortunate misunderstanding, Marie Antoinette read the note out to her First Lady of the Bedchamber Madame Campan then, remarking that the letter wasn’t worth keeping, set fire to it with a candle. Boehmer and Bassange had visited her a few times in the past to beg her to buy a most extravagant and extremely outmoded looped necklace which had actually been made for Madame du Barry when she was at the height of her relationship with Louis XV and had her royal lover so completely wrapped around her little finger that he would have bought it for her without a single qualm. Marie Antoinette had never got over her adolescent loathing of Madame du Barry, who was still banned from ever returning to Versailles and this association with the hated former royal mistress would have been more than enough to put her off buying the necklace if it hadn’t also been utterly hideous and ruinously expensive at an eye watering 1.8 million livres. Always eager to please his wife, Louis at one point offered to buy the piece for her but Marie Antoinette, who thought it a most outmoded and crude piece of work and had, besides, begun to economise where diamonds were concerned, turned him down, saying that the country had more need of war ships than diamonds and besides she had enough of the latter anyway.

However, the cryptic note brought none of this to mind and instead Marie Antoinette thought that it must simply be a rather stupid ploy to persuade her into buying some other extravagant piece of jewellery. She instructed Madame Campan to let Boehmer know that she would no longer be patronising him and then would almost certainly have thought no more of the matter if it hadn’t been forced upon her attention once again and in rather more alarming terms after Boehmer visited Madame Campan later that same day and poured his tale of woe into her increasingly horrified and shocked ears. It seemed that having given up all hope of the Queen relenting and taking the now infamous necklace off his hands, Boehmer had been delighted to be contacted by the Cardinal de Rohan who informed him that he had been instructed to buy the necklace on behalf of Marie Antoinette, who wished the transaction to be kept secret. Convinced by notes that had allegedly been signed by the Queen herself, the jeweller had delivered the necklace to the Cardinal, who in return informed him that the Queen would make the first payment of 400,000 livres on 1 August and would make her glittering début in her purchase in the next few weeks.

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