Queen of Fashion by Caroline Weber

Author:Caroline Weber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2009-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

TRUE COLORS

If the people were momentarily swayed by the sight of their Queen’s tricolor garb at the Fête de la Fédération, the fact remained that her acceptance of the Revolution’s sartorial codes in no way corresponded to an underlying conversion to its politics.1 In January 1790, she explained in a secret letter to Mercy that although as a rule she considered herself too well-born to stoop to deception, “my current position is so unique that for everyone’s sake, I have to change my frank and independent character and . . . [learn] how to dissimulate.”2 Her successful performance at the Fête de la Fédération was therefore just that, a performance: “One has to participate,” she confessed to Mercy in advance of the festival, “but oh, how I dread it.”3

Indeed, even as she sought to appease her subjects’ wrath and diminish their hatred, she never warmed to the notion that they ought to have a hand in governing her husband’s kingdom. Over the course of the Revolution’s second year, she watched in horror as it took ever bolder swipes against the ancient pillars of the absolutist régime: in June 1790, the deputies of the Assemblée abolished all hereditary aristocratic titles and chivalric orders; in July, they drafted a “Civil Constitution of the Clergy,” which, in an unprecedented repositioning of the Church’s hierarchy, deemed all clergymen servants of the state; and in December, they pushed the King to accept this Civil Constitution, very much against his will. In the face of these radical changes, Marie Antoinette came to despise the Revolution more than ever.4

Louis XVI deplored the Assemblée’s actions as well, and like his wife true colors he dreaded the moment when the deputies would finish work on France’s new constitution, which was bound to decree marked diminutions of his power.5 However, in his perennial indecisiveness, he seemed unable or unwilling to consider taking any forceful steps to counteract the revolutionaries’ maneuvers. Marie Antoinette, by contrast, drew daily more convinced that she and the King could not remain passive if they hoped to save their family, their position, and their kingdom from ruin.6 Her behind-the-scenes preparedness to act with courage made a strong impression on the liberal aristocrat Mirabeau, who said of her on June 20, 1790: “There is only one man siding with the King now—his wife.” Then, perhaps referring to her past as an intrepid, cross-dressed equestrienne, he added: “Soon the time will come when we will have to see what a woman can do in the saddle.”7

In a satirical ditty published in a royalist newspaper at around the same time, Marie Antoinette was similarly praised for her “masculine” force of character, as contrasted with the sneaky feminine costume that the Duc d’Aiguillon had been said to adopt when provoking the October 1789 march on Versailles:

We have been transported to a miraculous time:

While d’Aiguil-- dresses up as a woman,

Antoinette becomes a courageous man.8

As Mirabeau’s quip may have done, this observation cast the Queen precisely as she had once attempted to

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