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Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
...great merit of this biography by Novelist Nancy Mitford that it excels in depicting both these worlds-the brilliant, romantic showcase and the recessed secret world of power...
...made wholly of nymphish curves: her skin was "snow-white," her eyes "the brightest, wittiest and most sparkling." She could act dance and sing, play the clavichord "to perfection," paint, draw, engrave precious stones, and spout about gardening, botany and natural history-"a more accomplished woman," says Author Mitford, "has seldom lived." The only interesting thing about her childhood comes from an account book, where she records payment of 600 livres to a fortune teller "for having predicted, when I was nine, that I would be the King's mistress...
Unlike other historians, Author Mitford believes that "sincère et tendre Pompadour" (Voltaire's description) did all she did for love of the King, not because she was ambitious. Her weakness-a terrifying one for a royal mistress-was that she was "constitutionally incapable of passion." "She tried to work herself up to respond to the King's ardors by every means known to quackery"-diets of vanilla, truffles and celery, "elixirs" guaranteed to "heat the blood." Nobody knows how far she succeeded, but Louis adored her even when he had turned for his pleasure to what...