Bedchamber of History: Madame de Pompadour's bedchamber

I am quite sure that almost all of you have heard about Madame Pompadour. Perhaps you also knew that she was the mistress of the French King Louis XV. Good! I am here to tell you rest of her story which you might not know already.

She was born as Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson in 1721 (Yep another Antoinette and another Louis! ). She had no royal blood, she wasn't even an aristocrat. She was coming from a bourgeois family that had links with Paris financiers and military provisioners. Her mother Mme. Poisson was a remarkable character since she was a real beauty and had numerous lovers while she was married to M.Poisson. So, Jeanne-Antoinette's education was sponsored by one her mother's lovers (M. Tournehem, probably her paternal father). After one year at a convent she started to take lessons at home and I should tell you that she was educated very well indeed! She could act, dance, sing and recite whole plays by heart. She could paint and also play the harpsichord very well (which was considered as a remarkable gift those days). Plus, she was a gardener, a botanist and so on. ( I got tired of writing her accomplishments! :) ) Our Mlle. Poisson had a great knowledge of art and its forms and she was taught everything necessary(!) to a rich bourgeois of 18th century France and these accomplishments will bring her advantages later (when desires of the flesh decrease, you can only impress people with your knowledge and wit...)

When she was nine years old she went to a fortune teller who said to her that "she will one day reign over the heart of a king". ( if she were still alive I would like to go to that fortune-teller! ) After this event she was called as "Reinette" by her family especially by her mother. (It means 'little queen').

As for her appearance there are sources which give choppy information about her looks and if you look at her portraits they all differ so much that you may think they are portraits of several different people. Some say that she was white as snow, very tall, had light brown hair and eyes neither blue, nor grey or black (but eyes that changed color according to light). What was certain is that she was very charming and pretty. She was bewitching people with her good looks and her intelligence. At the age of 20 she was married to the nephew of M. Tournehem, the young M. D'Etoiles who at first did not like the idea of this arranged marriage but then fell in love with his wife, 'reinette' Mlle. Poisson. ( The fact that M.Tournehem offered him a huge dowry, a lifelong guarantee of their expenses and his inheritance must have played a role ;) ). No, no seriously he really was amazed by her wife (He would be devastated when he found out that she was 'seeing the king and practically almost living with him). Their first child, a little boy has died in infancy but they had a second child Alexandrine. (So, she was married and had a child when she became the King's mistress at the age of 24!)

As Madame D'Etoiles, she was arranging intellectual meetings in her Salon that has become quite the fashion of the time. She was inviting the philosophes, the intellectuals such as Voltaire, Vauvenargues, Montesquieu, Marivaux, Fontenelle and Helvétius. She has earned the respect and admiration of the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals. But inviting and receiving them in her home was not enough. She wanted to enter to a higher society and she wanted to be invited. But there was an obstacle to that: Her mother! Her reputation was not good and people did not want to invite her to their Salon. ( No! you haven't forgotten what I have wrote so far! She had affairs, lovers that sort of things, remember?) God has brought a solution to that. She was taken ill and was forced to give up society. Our 'reinette' was really lucky so far..But how could she meet the king? Louis was already informed of her name and even her looks because she was widely spoken of in Paris and in Versailles. In addition, she was smart enough to show herself a couple of times riding in her carriage looking very chic and beautiful as always when he was hunting in the woods. Luckily he has lost his last mistresses ( yes, she was neither the first nor the last mistress of Louis XV!) and his wife the Queen Marie Leczinska was leading the life of a nun. She was so boring that he could not keep himself from yawning in her presence. Everybody in Versailles (including himself) was curious about a single question: Who would be the next mistress?

Louis and Mme. D'Etoiles met in Hotel de Villes and after that they began to see each other so often that people began whispering. But it was unbecoming to take a mistress from bourgeois background. She was not from the court and she was not an aristocrat. But yet Louis realized that she would never bore him since she was amusing, smart and knowledgeable and as a bonus she was pretty. The king was also tall, handsome and had a charismatic voice which enchanted women and made them easily fall in love with Louis XV. Mme. D'Etoiles was no exception. She worshiped Louis. Can you imagine a greater aphrodisiac for a man than having a woman who worships the soil he steps on?

So, she remained at Versailles in a little flat that was once belonging to his former mistress and was connected to the King's room by a secret staircase. He was sending letters to his beloved mistress when he was away for a campaign. At first the letters were addressed to Mme. d'Etoiles, later one night it was addressed à Madame la Marquise de Pompadour! It enclosed title deeds to an estate of this name and an extinct Marquisate revived in favour of 'Reinette'.

I will write soon what has happened later in Madame de Pompadour Vol.2 :) stay tuned...