• The Pompadour
• Avec la Pompadour, • Faut toujours porter d'amour.
• Avec la Dubarry Faut toujours parler du prlx. . . .
• and all the ladies had two lines each. It is a pity that royal mistresm? • have gone out of fashion because, quite apart from giving the Publics ist so much to talk about, they were a challenge to women when onlY • few professions were open to them. Like all the best jobs, this was • ▪ the hardest to get and the hardest to keep. • All Louis XV's mistresses had the Goncourt brothers as t-tipir- • chroniclers. Madame de Pompadour is fortunate in having tila: a witty choreographer Miss Mitford to devise her a splendid se' of variations. This is Les Fetes Galantes de Versailles, with a few scenes at Trianon and the other little places. There is a corps de ballet of courtiers with the horrid Duc de Richelieu, Choiseul, etc., Making a sinister appearance from time to time accompanied by a • Peen flash and a bang off stage. As a prelude there is that little Pattie of Fontenoy where all those poor officers were killed without yen Fanfan La Tulipe to cheer them up. Miss Mitford has done lot of work. She has read everything from contemporary journals 0 the Dictionary of Cat Lovers. All these documents have been 111, riled into first-class Knightsbridge conversation and Madame de ofriPadour is so nice—the author uses the word in its Knightsbridge rise—that one could certainly ask her to tea. The chat would be rosy, as the blurb says, "lull of jokes and parties, fashion and fun." It is nice too to think that a little hygiene has been injected into tfhteenth-century history. Perhaps the most satisfying news of Lit is that the notorious Parc aux Cerfs was "a modest little private erothel run on humane and practical lines." This institution must ve been a great relief to Madame de Pompadour, who made some all herself about being as cold as a fish, and was forced to live on aphrodisiac diet of trullbs, vanilla and celery in order to satisfy Cr lover and save him from the arch-enemy, ennui. He was, of course, a thoroughly nice man, too, and almost worth ailing in love with. After Madame de Pompadour's death he ig Ported to have said that he never loved her at all and only kept because he thought it would be rather unkind to throw her out. Piss Mitford's Louis would never have done anything so caddish, Or these lovers would have won the prize for the Happiest Couple srl) Versailles any day. However could Macaulay talk about "the rwIlward progress of the monarchy," and all that nonsense about ' Profligacy in the court, extravagance in the finances, schism in the .ntirCh, faction in the parlements, unjust war terminated by ignornin- '1"s Peace," etc.? What a bore he was! Don't ever ask him to tea again.
Miss Mitford is most anxious that we should not consider Pompa- %lour frivolous. "If it be true that she marked the maps of Germany
Previous page
