Ah Maria, How to Educate a Heedless Lady

Mr. Al’s take on Marie Antoinette, as seen by her mother, continues.

I must beg forgiveness of all my readers for a mistake that I made last week. I said that Marie Antoinette was not born to be Queen of France. This was quite true. However, she had been pledged to to wed the Dauphin at age eleven. This should have given mom plenty of time to prepare her except for the fact that she actually got married when she was barely fifteen.

Those few years might have been enough for most girls to acquire at least enough knowledge to wing it until they got their “sea legs,” so to speak. But, alas, Marie Antoinette was a Hapsburg. And, as many historians have noted, Hapsburgs were not, as a group, the sharpest pins in the cushion. Marie Antoinette was not dumb, but she had much to learn, not much time to learn it, and a personality that disinclined her to learn anything.

Maria Theresa was an anomaly, although no one would have ever mistaken her for a genius in the conventional sense. It was probably one of Maria’s bigger mistakes to believe her children could rise to the occasion as the situation demanded because, well, that’s what she did. She should have known better.

Marie Antoinette was barely better educated than mom at the same age,and she was on her way to one of the most sophisticated, gossip-ridden courts in Europe. Her French was atrocious, she couldn’t dance, not in the complex French court style, and she knew next to nothing about the French at all.

Maria sought out tutors. Versailles provided a suitable instructor in All Things French in the form of the Archbishop of Toulouse, Abbe Vermond. This worthy gentleman quickly discovered what others had about Marie. She was not stupid, on the contrary, she was bright and very clever, but she absolutely would not, or could not, apply herself to anything.

They tried. Maria knew they tried their best, and as the appointed day approached, Maria had to accept that as sufficient. This is not to say that once Marie Antoinette went to France all efforts ceased. That was hardly the case. And in the weeks leading up to her departure, mom had Marie share her bedroom so she could keep the advice mill running until, I imagine, Marie covered her head with a pillow and pretended to be asleep.

She wrote out instructions. Long, long letters of instructions that she insisted her daughter read in their entirety once a month. By contrast, instructive letters to her son, Maximilian, were to be read once a year. She wasn’t leaving her daughter’s continued education to letters alone. She was also doing a thing She had always had a talent for. Picking the right guy for the job.

In this case it meant picking someone who not only could keep an eye on her daughter, but also positively interact with the French court, and be counted on to send back reports to Austria, often and in detail. And there he was. Count Mercy d’Argenteau, Imperial Ambassador to the Court of Versailles.

In her first letter to the Count she wrote; “I am apprehensive about my daughter’s youth, her susceptibility to flattery, her idleness, her disinclination for any serious activity.” As well she should have been. The Count was given the duty to keep her out of danger as best he could directly, or else to warn mom in good time so she could intervene on a level the Count had no power in.

Although he did not consider himself this, the Count was Maria’s spy in her daughter’s court. I don’t doubt for a moment that Marie Antoinette would have been horrified to learn of the great detail that went into these reports to mom. It would have upset her even more to learn that acquiring that detailed information was only possible because, like all good spies, the count had people very close to the target working for him.

“I have made sure of three persons in the service of the Archduchess, one of her women and two of her men-servants, who give me full reports of what goes on. Then, from day to day, I am told of conversations she has with Abbe Vermond, from whom she hides nothing. Besides this, the Marquise de Durfort passes on to me everything she says to her aunts. I have also sources of information as to what goes on whenever the Dauphine sees the King. Superadded are my personal observations, so that there is really not an hour of the day as to which I am not instructed concerning what the Archduchess may have said or done or heard.”

And while all had been done that could be done to educate Marie Antoinette before she left for France and after she arrived, there was nothing anyone could do to help in one rather important aspect of all this. She was marrying a boy she had never met.

— Mr. Al