"A stitch in time": the chemise à la Reine

La Reine en Gaulle by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783.  Oil on canvas, 93.3 x 79.1 cm.
Private collection of Hessische Hausstiftung, Kronberg, Germany.

If you haven't seen it already,  be sure to catch on iplayer the final episode of BBC Four's A Stitch in Time, introduced by fashion historian Amber Butchart.  In each of this series Nottingham-based costumier Ninya Mikhaila and her team,  recreate a different  costume based on a historical portrait;  this week was the turn of Vigée Lebrun's Marie-Antoinette en Gaulle.  The reconstruction of the dress was gorgeous, the locations well thought out and Amber's commentary insightful.  Here are a few notes.

Not all frocks and cakes! Marie-Antoinette's library

LibraryThing, the social book cataloguing site, hosts a number of "legacy libraries" which recreate the book collections of historical figures. The initial project, launched in 2008, focused on Early American private libraries, but the scope has since been widened to include libraries from other countries.  Over 150 libraries have now been completed, with 50 in progress and many more proposed.  Among 18th-century libraries are those of Jefferson, John Adams, John Hancock, and of course Washington, as well as both Johnson and Boswell. There is also a partly completed Voltaire library which contains 3,746 books. Enthusiasm for  the Voltaire project seems to have fizzled in 2013 - understandably, given both the size of Voltaire's collection and the fact that a definitive print catalogue,  published in the Soviet Union in 1961, already exists.

The only 18th-century French library to be fully entered to date is a slightly unexpected choice.  It is Marie-Antoinette's  personal library from the Petit-Trianon, which was originally catalogued by Paul Lacroix in 1863. The collection contains 736 books, mostly novels and plays [tagged Belles-lettres (475), Romans (179), Théatre (177)].  Unfortunately there are no pretty cover pictures which is one of the best features of LibraryThing accounts.  I was also a bit disappointed to learn that I share no books with M.-A. and that we have no titles that can be recommended to one another....

References

LibraryThing "legacy libraries":
http://www.librarything.com/legacylibraries
Marie Antoinette's library:
http://www.librarything.fr/profile/MarieAntoinette
http://www.librarything.fr/wiki/index.php/User:MarieAntoinette#Background_information_on_Marie-Antoinette.27s_library

Let them eat cake! A marketer's dream

Let them eat cake!

 In fact that lethal phrase had been known for at least a century previously, when it was ascribed to the Spanish princess Marie-Thérèse, bride of Louis XIV, in a slightly different form: if there was no bread, let the people eat the crust (croûte) of the pâté.  It was known to Rousseau in 1737.  It was credited to one of the royal aunts, Madame Sophie, in 1751, when reacting to the news that her brother the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand had been pestered with cries of 'Bread, bread' on a visit to Paris. The Comtesse de Boigne, who as a child played at the Versailles of Marie Antoinette, attributed the saying to another aunt, Madame Victoire.  But the most convincing proof of Marie Antoinette's innocence came from the memoirs of the Comte de Provence, published in 1825. No gallant guardian of his sister-in-law's reputation, he remarked that eating pâté en croûte always reminded him of the saying of his own ancestress, Queen Marie-Thérèse.  It was, in short, a royal chestnut.
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: the journey (pbk, 2002), p.160-1.

Marie-Antoinette may never have uttered the notorious words, but oh what a delicious marketing concept!  

 In 2006 Ladurée, the French luxury pâtissier, scored a major coup by negotiated with Sofia Coppola to fill the visually sumptuous set of the film Marie-Antoinette with gloriously presented and suitably decadent gateaux and pastries.  Cakes became chic, youthful, bright and faintly irresponsible.  Marie-Antoinette, notes one marketing website, is "worth watching for the food styling alone".  Quite true - though the costumes are marvellous as well!

Musée du Barreau cont. - Documents from the trial of Marie-Antoinette

Pierre Bouillon, The trial of Marie-Antoinette, 1793, Musée Carnavalet
Chauveau-Lagarde can be recognised seated at the table behind the Queen
http://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/fr/collections/proces-de-marie-antoinette-le-15-octobre-1793

Among the most important documents on show in the Musée du Barreau are notes for the speech made by Claude-François Chauveau-Lagarde (1756-1841)  the counsel for Marie-Antoinette at her trial. The eight-page manuscript, acquired by the Order in 1989, is of particular interest since no transcript of Chauveau-Lagarde's oration was made at the time.  The archivist of the Order of Barristers Yves Ozanam has published brief details on the website  La Grande Bibliothèque du Droit (see references) 

Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: love decrypted

In recent years experts have been scrutinising the cipher used by Marie-Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen in their correspondence after the failure of the flight to Varennes (June 1791 to August 1792)  In this period Ferson, now exiled in Stockholm, acted as intermediary between the royal family and the King of Sweden; the cipher served to disguise diplomatically sensitive negotiations, and also perhaps to conceal the intimacy between the couple. Only the letters which were in Ferson's possession survive. In 1877 Fersen's grand-nephew, the Baron R. M. de Klinckowström published some sixty letters, together with Fersen's Journal intime, but censored them heavily.  It was long believed that Klinckowström had destroyed the originals  but  in 1982 the manuscripts were offered for sale by his descendants and purchased by the Archives Nationales: AN 440AP comprises 51 letters and a further 13 remain conserved in Stockholm. Many are written in cipher or have passages in invisible ink.  Some have heavy crossings out - though whether by Fersen himself, Klinckowström or some other hand is not known.  

Marie-Antoinette's Wardrobe Book

This book, recently the subject of a video in the Le Point "Incredible treasures of history" series,  is Marie-Antoinette's "Gazette des atours" or "Wardrobe Book"  for 1782.  It was a scrapbook in which Marie Antoinette's Mistress of the Robes and confidante Geneviève de Gramont, comtesse d'Ousun, pasted fabric samples of the Queen's outfits.  It used to be assumed that the book was used by Marie-Antoinette to help her decide what to wear. Thus Antonia Fraser: "the Wardrobe Book of the Queen was presented to her daily by her Mistress of the Robes together with a pincushion;  Marie Antoinette would prick the book with a pin to indicate her choices. The porters attached to the Queen's Wardrobe (this was three large rooms filled with closets, drawers and tables) then carried in the huge baskets covered in cloths of green taffeta."  According to Antonia Fraser, the actual pinpricks that the Queen made can still be seen in the book, and in recent years some of the long pins she used have been recovered from the floor of her room in Versailles. (Marie-Antoinette, p.207-8 in the pbk)