The Huffington Post: Survival in Pre-Civil War South: 12 Years a Slave Honored at the Lotos Club

By Regina Weinreich

The subject of race was addressed head on at a luncheon celebrating the film “12 Years a Slave,” easily the film of the year in an awards season gathering momentum. “I’m a black man, as if you didn’t notice, and part of the global identity of slavery” said director Steve McQueen on a panel led by Amanda Foreman at the Lotos Club on Tuesday. The director was seated between two of his stars Chitwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o and in front of guests who included the luncheon’s host George C. Wolfe, Geoffrey Fletcher, Spike Lee, Thulani Davis, Walter Mosley, and many more of the city’s cultural and industry elite, but the context of McQueen’s remark was an answer to a question about his being a British citizen making art of a particularly American experience, and embarrassment. With family from the West Indies, he pointed out, we are all part of a diaspora, and that understanding makes the horrors of plantation life witnessed in his powerful movie all the more dreadful, and close to home no matter what your color or ethnicity.

Others attending included the actors Tovah Feldshuh, now in “Pippin,” and Nikki James, Tony winner for her work in “Book of Mormon.” James, soon returning to “Mormon,” and slated to play Eponine in the coming revival of “Les Mis,” said she had read for the part of Patsy, the love object of the cruel, psychopath plantation owner played by Michael Fassbinder. While James acknowledged that it is always a disappointment when a part goes to someone else, she admired Lupita Nyong’o’s work as Patsy, especially as this is the young actress’ first film and she was chosen fresh out of Yale. Beaten and tortured, Patsy picks cotton by day and prays for death by night. One of the most heartbreaking scenes is when Solomon (Ejiofor) leaves the plantation, a free man at last, but he leaves her, a soul mate, behind.

In many ways, the story of Solomon Northrup, based on his memoir of the same title, who, as a free man was kidnapped and sold into slavery, has a happy ending. He does return to family and loved ones. But Patsy as a character is emblematic of the huge numbers that never lived free lives. Despite the relief of seeing Solomon with a grandson named for him, the searing images of where he has been are unforgettable.

One of the movie’s producers, Dede Gardner (she’s partners at Plan B with Brad Pitt who plays a heroic role both in the film as a Canadian abolitionist, and beyond, getting the film financed and green lit) noted that one of her jobs was protecting the film, fighting the fear that the subject is not commercial, is too difficult in its most extreme violent moments. Gardner is clearly building a career with fine films that have this edge. Her current project is a movie of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” starring Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts. As in matters of race, the politics of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980’s, pose questions of conscience and humanity that we are all only beginning to address.

WSJ Historically Speaking: The Bad Idea of Daylight-Saving Time

CHRIS SILAS NEAL

CHRIS SILAS NEAL

Every November, a great theft is perpetrated against hundreds of millions of innocent people. They are robbed of an hour of afternoon sunlight by the government decree that divides the year into standard and daylight-saving time. The switch to standard time occurs precisely at the wrong moment, when the days are already growing shorter.

The arguments used to justify the DST arrangement always employ the language of cost, savings and safety. But, as the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies once observed: “At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

It was in the 14th century that humanity was liberated from relying on the sun or water for telling the time. In place of sundials and water clocks came the wonder of mechanical devices that worked independently of cloudy days and freezing weather.
The oldest working clock in the world is said to be the hourly clock in Salisbury Cathedral in the west of England. Designed in 1386 to strike a single bell on the hour every hour, it was built with one purpose in mind: to bring people closer to God by reminding them of service times. For the medieval peasant and noble alike, time wasn’t the handmaiden of money but an expression of religious faith. Continue reading…

A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman

ABOUT THE BOOKBUY THE BOOKREVIEWSMULTIMEDIAPHOTOS

books0703gallagherWinner of the Fletcher Pratt Award for Civil War History

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

The New York Times Top Ten Books of 2011

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, The Economist, Nancy Pearl, NPR, Bloomberg.com, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly

 

Though with the North we sympathize
It must not be forgotten
That with the South we’ve stronger ties
Which are composed of cotton
Punch, 30 March, 1861

It is said that the closeness of siblings can be measured by the intensity of their fights. During the first one hundred years, Britain and the US were almost always arguing about something. Trade, maritime rights, and boundary disputes were the chief tinderlights; a spark from each had the capacity to send troops running to the barricades. Much good such martial spirits did for the belligerents. The war of 1812 ended ignominiously for both sides: the British Army suffered a stunning defeat at New Orleans, but not before it had seized Washington and set fire to the White House.

American anglophobia, already high, increased after 1812. It was positively unhealthy to be suspected of pro-British leanings. Every decade saw some fresh dispute. During the 1840s the quarrel centered on territory, in the 50s a friendly discussion over colonial ambitions in Central America turned into sour recriminations. Yet the two countries were each other’s best customers.

Southern cotton and Northern wheat fired up British factories and fed her workers. In return, manufactured goods and financial investment poured in to a hungry economy that was increasing faster than its population. (Between 1840 and 1860 America doubled from seventeen to thirty-two million.) The South grew richer and more genteel, while the North grew bigger and more powerful as artisans turned into workers, and entrepreneurs became bankers or industrialists. A vast network of railroads, partly financed by British capital, connected the North in a lattice of commerce. By 1860 an English oak dining table could be unloaded in New York on Monday and set for lunch in Chicago on Wednesday.

Read more here

The same ease of transport enabled British immigrants to avoid the fetid slums of New York and seek a new life in any of the thirty-four states and seven territories of America. There were Englishmen in the New England mills and on the Texas homesteads, Cornishmen in the Wisconsin lead minds, Welshmen in the Ohio collieries, and Scots in the Vermont Quarries and Carolina plantations. Unlike the Germans, Poles, Italians and Irish, who clustered in conspicuous communities in the North, the British tended to integrate very quickly. In the North their sentiments were largely pro-Union and vehemently anti-slavery, while below the Mason-Dixon line they sided with the majority in favour of secession. During his tour of the South, the Times correspondent, Sir William Russell, was surprised to see what a difference a few miles could make to the moral opinions of his compatriots. Among the most articulate defenders of slavery were some of the, ‘British residents, English, Irish and Scotch, who have settled here for trading purposes, and who are frequently slave-holders. These men have no state rights to uphold, but they are convinced of the excellence of things as they are…’

As the bickering between the North and South turned into bitterness, southerners took great satisfaction in pointing out that the world depended on its cotton. In 1858 the loud-voiced Senator from South Carolina, James H. Hammond, spelled it out to a silent Congress. No one dared say no to the South, he declared, not even mighty Britain. Deprived of cotton she, ‘would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is King.’

The war officially began on 12 April 1861, when the South Carolina artillery pounded the tiny Federal garrison out of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour. Understandably, news of the engagement roused secessionism to a fever pitch among southerners. They were absolutely convinced of two things: that the North did not have the stomach for a fight, and that Britain would recognize their independence. They were wrong on both counts.

London remained loudly silent. The government was inclined to recognise the South, but not at the cost of becoming involved in the war. It feared losing southern cotton, and yet did not wish to prop-up a slave economy. The British press, however, suffered no such doubts. Editorials applauded Lincoln and denounced the South as ‘bullies’. The rush of volunteers in the free states added excitement to the reports crossing the Atlantic. These were heady although precarious times. The Secretary of State, William H. Seward, bluntly told Russell, that the North would fight Britain too, if she attempted to interfere. ‘We shall not shrink from it,’ he warned. ‘A contest between the Great Britain and the United States would wrap the world in fire.’

When Britain revealed her hand in May 1861, North and South were equally enraged. Queen Victoria issued a Proclamation of Strict Neutrality. This was far less than what the South had expected, and far more than the North would tolerate. Strict Neutrality recognised the South as a legitimate fighting entity, but also the North’s right to blockade her ports. Britain considered this a fair compromise. But the North considered it tantamount to a recognition of Southern independence. A leading Northern Senator pronounced it ‘the most hateful act of English history since the time of Charles II’.

In theory the Proclamation prohibited British subjects from enlisting in either military service, from violating the Northern blockade, and from fitting out or equipping Union or Confederate vessels for warlike purposes. In practice, people did exactly as they pleased. In the first months of the war, officers, soldiers and ordinary civilians left in droves for America. They joined a mass exodus that included thousands of Germans, Irish and other Europeans. Later, as the Northern blockade increased, Britain also furnished an unofficial navy of blockade runners. ‘Firm after firm,’ recalled an English blockade runner, ‘with an entirely clear conscience, set about endeavouring to recoup itself for the loss of legitimate trade by the high profits to be made out of successful evasions of the Federal cruisers.’ At the height of the war, between 1862-4, Liverpool exhibited an energy and spirit not seen since the bustling days of the Slave Tra de. Seamen who supported the Confederacy scratched the figure of a turkey into the lintels of their houses, a few of which survive to this day.

Altogether, some 50,000 British men and women participated in the war. The South, already disappointed by Britain’s refusal to grant recognition, deeply resented the influx of foreigners who filled the ranks of the Union army. However, as we shall see, it too attracted a sizable number. Moreover, it was the grit and tenacity of the British blockade runners which enabled the Confederate army to enter the field with more than bowie knives. The problem for the South was not a lack of rifles but the dwindling supply of men.
The British involvement in the Civil War has always been a sensitive subject. At the time, Northerners accused Britain of complicity; Southerners, of betrayal. The bitterness engendered by the war no longer taints Anglo-American relations. However, grudging acceptance has come at the cost of historical amnesia. The British who fought alongside Union and Confederate soldiers have disappeared from the picture. With them, the world they inhabited, an Anglo-American world bound by shared ideals, shared dreams and shared kin, has disappeared too.
As cousins by culture and yet strangers by nature, these British adventurers are unrivaled historical witnesses. Moreover, their perspective as both the parent and rival of American civilisation, their experiences of immigration and integration, their understanding of the outsider’s struggle, makes them a talisman for the present. There has never been a book about the bloody pas-de-deux between these closest of strangers.

Historians have, of course, written diplomatic histories of the war; made studies of foreign volunteers; exposed the extent of Federal and Confederate espionage in Britain, described the Confederate naval operations in England, and examined the international reporting of the conflict. But no one – understandably, given the breadth and depth of the research required – has ever drawn all the facets together into a multi-stranded narrative of the Anglo-American world during the Civil War.

A World on Fire’ began as a study of the British volunteers. But eight years of research revealed a vast cyclorama, an immersion of humanity, that demanded its own epic telling. The British volunteers provided a wealth of unique histories. But it was only by placing each one within and alongside the biographies of their neighbour, their enemy, their army, their government, and ultimately the war itself, did the many and the one achieve a synthesis of meaning.

Read an excerpt from Chapter 22 of A World on Fire, ”Crossroads at Gettysburg,” pages 486-497

Dawson watched as 14,000 Confederate soldiers assembled in the woods. One division, led by the ringletted George Pickett, was almost exclusively Virginian. Prayers were read to the brigades, as though the men were receiving the last rites. ‘This is a desperate thing to attempt,’ Dawson heard one of the brigadier generals remark. ‘Just then,’ Dawson continued, ‘a hare which had been lying in the bushes, sprang up and leaped rapidly to the rear. A gaunt Virginian, with an earnestness that struck a sympathetic chord in many a breast, yelled out: “Run old heah; if I were an old heah I would run too.”’

The Federals could not see the Confederates massing in the woods across from them. ‘From our position the eye ranged over a wide expanse of uneven country, fields broken by woods, showing nowhere any signs of an army movement, much less of conflict,’ Charles Francis Adams Jr. wrote in his memoirs. Even at the height of the battle, Gettysburg seemed pleasingly pastoral: ‘a quiet, midsummer, and champagne country. Nei- ther our lines nor those of the enemy were visible to us; and the sounds of battle were hushed.’ When the Confederate artillery fire began, Charles Francis Jr. and the survivors of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry had been lying on the grass, near their horses, while they waited for orders. The thick heat and soft buzzing of insects acted as a kind of sop- orific. ‘Lulled by the incessant roar of the cannon,’ he recorded, ‘while the fate of the army and the nation trembled in the balance, at the very crisis of the great conflict, I dropped quietly asleep. It was not heroic; but it was . . . war.’

Forty-seven Confederate regiments spaced a mile apart began advancing across the 1,400-yard field which lay in front of Cemetery Ridge. Francis Lawley – too ill to climb the tree himself – shouted up to Justus Scheibert to describe the charge to him. The Prussian started a running commentary, full of technical descriptions, prompting Lawley to bellow at him in frustration to use layman’s terms, but Scheibert was at a loss for further words, having never witnessed such butchery. The closer the Confederates stumbled towards the concave Federal line the easier tar- gets they presented. Fremantle entered the wood where Pickett’s division had gathered only a few minutes before. Federal shells were bringing down huge tree limbs, and yet the wood was full of grey-clad soldiers, ‘in numbers as great as the crowd in Oxford Street in the middle of the day’. Then he saw that every single one was wounded.

The woodland scene confused Fremantle. When he found Longstreet, who was sitting on a rail at the edge of the wood, he made an exception- ally thoughtless comment. ‘Thinking I was just in time to see the attack,’ he wrote contritely, ‘I remarked to the General that “I wouldn’t have missed this for any thing.”’ Longstreet gave a hollow laugh,‘“The Devil you wouldn’t! I would like to have missed it very much; we’ve attacked and been repulsed; look there!”’28 Longstreet asked wearily for a drink and Fremantle offered him a sip of rum from his flask. Scattered in heaps and fragments below were nearly 7,000 Confederate soldiers. George Pickett had lost two-thirds of his division, including all thirteen colonels. ‘I suppose that I was the first man to whom Pickett spoke when he reached the line,’ wrote Francis Dawson. ‘With tears in his eyes, he said to me: “Why did you not halt my men here? Great God, where, oh! where is my division?” I told him that he saw around him what there was left of it.’

Read the comprehensive bibliography for A World on Fire here.

Read the comprehensive bibliography for A World on Fire. To download the comprehensive bibliography for A World on Fire, please click the following links:

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“History as a Cecil B. DeMille epic…One puts down A World on Fire with a sense of awe.” —The Boston Globe

“Thrilling narrative on a grand scale.” —History Today

“[A] remarkable book…an extraordinary cast.” — The New York Times Book Review

“[A] magisterial history.” —Newsweek

The New Yorker – 1 August 2011
“Over There” by Hendrik Hertzberg
Amanda Foreman’s “A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War” (Random House; $35) broadens the scope. Her story is more than an eye-opening corrective to American insularity. It is an immensely ambitious and immensely accomplished—and just plain immense—work of narrative art. At a third of a million words sprawled over nearly a thousand pages, “A World on Fire” is not far south of “War and Peace.” Yet the pages fly like the wind—like “Gone with the Wind”—because there’s so much life, so much action, and so many vivid people in them.

The Wall Street Journal – 25 June 2011
“When Cotton Wasn’t King” by Michael Burlingame
Amanda Foreman’s well-researched and highly readable “A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War” examines why the British government never did recognize the Confederacy. Ms. Foreman, the author of the best-selling biography “Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire” (1999), is such an engaging writer that readers may find this 958-page volume too short. She supplements the traditional scholarly approach to British-American relations with an array of testimony from dozens of British witnesses to and participants in the Civil War. Their diaries, letters, reminiscences and newspaper reports provide insights into the war that differ from similar accounts by Americans, who perforce could not achieve the detached perspective of foreigners.

Guardian – 27 November 2010
“A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman“” by Jay Parini
Amanda Foreman leapt into public view with her Whitbread-prizewinning portrait of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, in 1999, proving herself a storyteller of lavish gifts, a writer with an eye for the telling biographical detail who could also portray society at large – in that case the world of late-18th-century aristocrats in Britain and France. More than a decade later, she has delivered a massive work of considerable artistry, which tells the complex and riveting tale of British involvement in the American civil war.

More reviews here.

Virtual Book Signing – 2 November 2012
Abraham Lincoln Book Shop – Chicago, IL
Host Daniel Weinberg speaks to Amanda Foreman about her book A World on Fire.

The New York Historical Society – 8 November 2011
The Civil War: Great Britain’s Role

Ohio University – 31 January 2012
The George Washington Forum on American Ideas, Politics, and Institutions
Amanda Foreman speaks to an audience at Ohio University about her inspiration for writing A World on Fire.

C-Span – 15 July 2011
BookTV: After Words
Amanda Foreman discusses her book A World on Fire with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner.

CBS Boston – 8 July 2011
NightSide: Amanda Foreman, Author of “A World On Fire” Discusses The American Civil War

The Oldie – 7 June 2011
Oldie Literary Lunch
Amanda Foreman speaks to an audience of The Oldie magazine readers about A World on Fire and the discovery that led her to the subject while she was researching for Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

C-Span – 26 March 2011
The Lincoln Conference, Washington DC
Britain’s Response to the Emancipation Proclamation

Video: http://www.c-span.org/video/?298687-2/britains-response-emancipation-proclamation

5 x 15 – 18 April 2011
Amanda Foreman @ 5 x 15

George IV by Christopher Hibbert

9781403983794_p0_v1_s600Foreword

The prevailing view of George IV was entirely negative until Hibbert’s sympathetic biography revealed a gifted individual whose harsh upbringing and personal weaknesses conspired to ruin his potential. It was also the prince’s misfortune to fall into the hands of the brilliant but dissolute Whigs. The Duchess of Devonshire, Charles James Fox, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were indeed a “School for Scandal.” But while they eventually grew into sadder and wiser middle-age, the prince never matured past adolescence.

George IV’s pathological self-indulgence turned him into a buffoon, blinding critics then and now to his contribution towards Britain’s cultural heritage. Many of London’s most beautiful buildings owe their genesis to this much maligned king. As Hibbert argues, no other monarch cared so passionately about art and architecture.

Eschewing the obvious for the nuanced, Hibbert rescued George IV from the clowns’ corner to restore him to his true, tragic glory.

Amanda Foreman

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THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ENGLAND’S REBEL KING

“Christopher Hibber’s George IV is at once soundly based on research in the Royal Archives at Windsor and a rollicking good read. I found it invaluable when I was researching The Unruly Queen, my life of George IV’s wife Queen Caroline, and I recommend it to anyone interested in George IV’s flamboyant and outrageous personality.”
Flora Fraser, author of Princesses and The Unruly Queen

“This is one of the most satisfying biographies of an English king: it is ample, convincing and well written.”
Times Literary Supplement

In this definitive biography of George IV, Christopher Hibbert delivers a superbly detailed picture of the life and times of England’s rebel king. From his exorbitant spending on his homes, his clothes, his women; throughout his patronage of the arts; his “illegal” marriage to Catholic Mrs. Fitzherbert; and lesser known facts such as his generous charity donations, George IV led a rich and enchanting life. Hibbert also revives George IV’s many witty one-liners, including one he uttered when he met his bride-to-be (Caroline of Brunswick) for the first time: “Harris, I am not well, fetch me a brandy”.

Christopher Hibbert, “ a pearl of biographers” (New Statesman), was born in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oxford. He is the beloved author of many highly acclaimed books, including The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, The English: A Social History, and Cavaliers and Roundheads. He lives in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

Amanda Foreman is the author of The New York Times best-seller Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography, and is currently writing about the American Civil War. She lives in New York.

Copyright© 2008 Christopher Hibbert

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What Might Have Been by Andrew Roberts

Throughout history, great and terrible events have often hinged upon sheer luck. Tiny changes to great enterprises can produce profoundly different results. We all ask ‘what might have been?’ about our own lives, now Andrew Roberts has assembled a team of twelve leading historians and biographers and asked them what might have happened if major world events had gone differently?

Each concentrating in the area in which they are a leading authority, historians as distinguished as Antonia Fraser, Norman Stone and Anne Somerset look at vital moments of history and consider: ‘What Might Have Been?’

In her first publication since her acclaimed Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman looks at what might have happened if Lincoln’s Northern States of America and Lord Palmerston’s Great Britain had gone to war, as they so nearly did in 1861. Whether it’s Stalin fleeing Moscow in 1941, as imagined by Simon Sebag Montefiore, or Napoleon not being forced to retreat from it in 1812, as recorded by Adam Zamoyski, the events covered here are important, world-changing ones.

George W. Bush’s former White House advisor David Frum considers a President Al Gore’s response to 9/11, while Simon Heffer posits a Heseltine premiership had Margaret Thatcher been assassinated by the I.R.A. in Brighton. Conrad Black wonders how the United States might have entered the Second World War if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor.

All twelve essays are thought-provoking and scholarly, some of them posit a fascinating and often horrifying parallel universe – a universe that so easily just might have been.

Reviews

‘This is counter-factual history at its best – drawing fresh but informed conclusions from perfectly credible errors. Stimulating, provocative and playful, What Might Have Been is everything one looks for in a collection of essays.’
Graham Stewart, Literary Review

‘The main object of these essays is to entertain, and they do so handsomely. This book is a hymn to the accidental and the erratic. Look on these works, ye Determinists and Dialectical Materialists, and at least consider the possibility that you might not be entirely right.’
Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph

Moments when the fates of nations seem to turn on the roll of a die, haunt the minds of the twelve writers assembled for this intriguing and entertaining anthology.’
Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

What Might Have Been is the latest of a series of volumes in which a gifted team of authors envisages alternative historical scenarios. As has become the custom of the genre,20some of the contributors submit sober and measured assessments, while others spot a chance for playfulness.’
Blair Worden, Sunday Telegraph

‘All twelve essays are good fun, and the will make the reader think – and that is, after all, what all good history, ‘factual’ or ‘counterfactual’, should be about.’
T.G. Otte, Times Literary Supplement

Copyright© 2008 Andrew Roberts

Georgiana’s World by Amanda Foreman

6As one of the most flamboyant and influential women of the late 18th century, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was an icon of her time. Born Lady Georgiana Spencer, she married the fifth Duke of Devonshire in 1774; within a short space of time she had become the undisputed queen of fashionable society, adored by the Prince Regent, an intimate of Marie-Antoinette, an influential Whig hostess and a darling of the common people. Yet for all her aura of public glamour, Georgiana’s personal life was fraught with suffering brought on by her compulsive gambling, which led to insurmountable debts and ignominy, and her search for love, which caused misery and exile.

“Georgiana’s World” is the illustrated version of Amanda Foreman’s bestselling biography, “Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire”, and brings a fresh perspective to her life and times. Filled with images of the people and places she actually knew, a series of special features explore such aspects of 18th-century life as aristocracy.

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The Sylph by Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, Foreword by Amanda Foreman

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Georgiana’s extraordinary influence on fashion first became noticeable during the ‘feather headdress affair’. These were three-foot ostrich feather headdress which she imported from Paris. They were so scarce in England that fashionable women resorted to bribing undertakers for their horses’ plumage. The following year, in 1775, Georgiana initiated the craze for extravagant hair towers of preposterous designs. One day she would appear sporting a pastoral tableau, complete with miniature wooden sheep; the next she might wear a nautical theme with storm-tossed ships and sailors artfully placed among the curls. Later on, she introduced the ‘picture hat’ and, in 1783, again transformed women’s fashion with the free-flowing muslin dress that was simply tied by a ribbon around the waist. There was the ‘Devonshire brown,’ a ‘Devonshire hair powder’, even a ‘Devonshire minuet’ which Georgiana created with Vestris, the leading dancer of the day.

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Madame de Pompadou by Nancy Mitford, Foreword by Amanda Foreman

Madame de PompadorAt eight o’clock one morning, the Comte de Maurepas, Louis XVth’s Minister of the Navy, was called from his bed to receive a Royal messenger. Maurepas did not even bother to read the letter handed to him. Its timing, and the Royal seal on the back, could mean only one thing. His long-running battle with the Marquise de Pompadour, the King’s official mistress, was over. Maurepas dressed, gave directions to his servants, and then set off to begin his rustic exile far, far away from Versailles. Such was the definite and unyielding power of the Marquise.

It says something about the two countries, that in Britain we admire our ruling Queens while in France they celebrate their royal mistresses. It was the French, after all, who invented the word chauvinism. Indeed, the idea of legitimate female power never crossed the Channel. There was no legal provision for a daughter to inherit the throne. And, as for royal consorts, they were foreigners and therefore deeply under suspicion. Nevertheless, what was officially denied to the Kings’ wives was unofficially granted in abundance to the women who held the post of ‘maitresse en titre’. Of this select group, the most dazzling was Madame de Pompadour. It is no wonder that she is the inspiration behind two museum exhibitions, at the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery. During her twenty year tenure, the very best of French culture either flowed out of her largesse or came to her door.

The Marquise was not unique in her encouragement for the arts. Of the seven great mistresses of Versailles, only one was profoundly if not stubbornly middlebrow. This was Madame du Barry, the last maitresse en titre of France, who escaped to England before the Revolution only to return at its height and, not surprisingly, end up on the guillotine. The others all took great pride in their role as benefactors of the arts. Racine and Moliere, the finest playwrights of the seventeenth century, were just two of the many who owed their success not to Louis XIV but to his mistresses. And, while it is true that a number of second-rate artists also received encouragement it must be remembered that the mistresses belonged to a class which considered itself above such bourgeois things as expertise.

Mme de Pompadour, however, was an unusual woman in this respect. Although she had conquered the aristocracy, she did not belong to it. There was no disguising the fact, and nor did she try, that her family was middle class. Her upbringing, therefore, was different from her peers. She knew many writers and intellectuals before her elevation to maitresse, and among her best friends was the philosopher Voltaire. She supported and promoted him, even though he infuriated the King by doing things that no Courtier would dare, such as grabbing his arm or interrupting his conversation.

But it was de Pompadour’s mastery of her position rather than her salon which impressed Versailles. The maitresse en titre was expected fulfill a set of clearly defined duties. Every waking hour had a purpose. When she was not amusing the King, there were hundreds of requests to answer, plans to execute, and scores to be settled. Although most tourists came away thinking that life at Court was simply about pleasure, its one thousand occupants knew better. The palace had not changed since the Sun King, Louis XVth’s great-grandfather had made it the primary residence of the Court. Under his baleful eye, Versailles evolved into a terrifying, competitive place where honesty and kindness were rare and exotic qualities. The aristocracy only put up with Versailles’s miserable accommodation because the alternative meant being an outcast. They were little better than serfs in silk and, behind the bows and curtsies, was a deadly struggle for the King’s favour.

Since real power, meaning access to the King, lay not with the Queen but with the maitresse en titre, the whole of Versailles buzzed around the Royal Mistress like bees in a hive. During her tenure she was the focus of attention, constantly flattered, constantly importuned, and constantly in danger from her enemies. The rules governing Versailles were solipsistic and arcane. Like all closed societies, it thrived on nuances which are second nature to the initiated and hidden traps for the unwary. It was the height of bad manners, for example, to use the familiar ‘tu’ instead of the formal ‘vous’ in front of the King. Husbands and wives, siblings, old friends all had to address each other as if for the first time. Royal etiquette was so complicated that Mme de Pompadour’s presentation at Court required several months of preparation. The dress, the walk, the curtsey, even her choice of words: on every minute action teetered a lifetime of ridicule. Knowing this, she went to the country and practiced until she was ready.

However, it was not enough that the Maitresse know how to behave herself, it was vital that she understood Versailles’s pecking order and act accordingly. One of de Pompadour’s predecessors, Madame de Montespan, the most flamboyant of Louis XIVth’s mistresses, side stepped the problem entirely by treating all of Versailles as beneath her. While successful in its way, it had the affect of uniting all her enemies. They waited for her to become vulnerable and were rewarded by a sordid scandal involving witchcraft and rumours of poison. De Montespan was implicated – apparently she had tried to buy a potion which would make the Queen infertile – and the King was forced to dismiss her from Court.

Mme de Pompadour was not afraid to imitate de Montespan, although she exhibited a little more tact than her fiery predecessor. Instead of insisting that guests stand in her presence, for example, which was a custom reserved only for the King and Queen, she simply removed all the chairs. Just once did someone call her bluff. The Marquis de Souvré perched himself on the arm of her chair, remarking, ‘all the chairs appear to be missing.’ However, people forgave her these little displays of pomposity because she was the most good-natured and generous hearted mistresses Versailles had ever known. Even the Queen was fond of her. It took a great deal to make the Marquise show her claws. The banished Maurepas had tortured her for years before she finally executed swift revenge.

Where historians fault Mme de Pompadour is over her meddling in political affairs. It is said that she convinced Louis XVth to shift France’s alliance from Prussia to Austria, which precipitated the Seven Years’ war. While the shift was her idea, none will ever know quite where her persuasion ended and the King’s own sentiments began. The royal mistresses have always been credited with either too much influence or none at all. For a long time Madame de Maintenon, the only maitresse en titre who switched roles and became Louis XIVth’s wife, was accused of encouraging him to revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685. This ending of official toleration of Protestantism led to a mass exodus of Huguenots to Britain. However, the truth is that de Maintenon, who was herself born a Protestant, was guilty of quiescence rather than instigation. But what is not in dispute is that she had a system whereby the Ministers always visited her before they saw the King. Thus she could let them know her wishes so that the names or choices presented to Louis were already predetermined. The King had no idea and simply thought how fortunate he was to have a companion who agreed with him on every issue.

This sort of political interference was simply unknown in Britain. Two events, the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, had radically curtailed the power of the monarchy. Therefore there was little opportunity for a royal mistress to shine like her French counterparts. During the roughly one hundred and thirty years when Versailles was in its splendour and its maitresses at their peak, there is only one British royal mistress who is remembered today – Nell Gwynne.

The rest have left behind their portraits and some dukedoms, but little else. In general, they were either beautiful and greedy, like Charles II’s Louise de Keroualle and Barbara Villiers, or devoted and somewhat downtrodden like George II’s Countess of Suffolk. Some, either through circumstance or character were incapable of making their mark on British cultural life. George I’s mistresses, for example, known as the Elephant and Maypole because one was fat and the other was skinny, never learned to speak English properly. While dear Nell Gwynne, who did succeed in establishing the Chelsea Pensioners, was far too removed from the King’s world to have any influence on his ministers. The only woman who consciously tried to imitate the miatresse system was Louise de Keroualle, who engineered the downfall of the King’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. She also attempted to persuade Charles II to become a Catholic. However, once she realised that her influence went only so far, Louise concentrated on amassing a huge fortune instead. By the time Charles II had grown tired of her, Louise had accumulated a nest-egg of over £9 million in today’s money.

Although Napoleon restored the monarchy after the Revolution, the glorious era of the maitresse en titre never returned. While Britain’s royal mistresses arguably became more interesting in the 19th and 20th centuries, France’s declined into obscurity. Madame de Pompadour and her colleagues achieved extraordinary power at time when a single individual controlled the destiny of millions. They are proof of the old adage, that behind every great man, there is indeed a great woman.

Copyright© Amanda Foreman

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