Madame Du Barry
For my summer job I am heping an author edit his book. I have researched some topics and written short pieces on them. They are heavy in facts, yet (I hope) easy to read and assimilate. Here is an example, it was intended to provide the basis for a paragraph or two as the intro to a chapter.
Louis XV’s mistress, Madame Du Barry, sat at his right at the kings every public meal. It was no secret what she was, and in fact she was very proud of her position. Having started life as the illegitimate daughter of a Friar and a seamstress, she had reason to be proud of her ascension into the midst of French royalty. From the writings of almost any man in the court the source of her meteoric rise was obvious. As one courtesan wrote,
She is tall, well-made, ravishingly fair, with an open forehead, fine eyes, pretty lashes, an oval face with little moles upon her cheeks, which only serve to enhance her beauty, an aquiline nose, a laughing mouth, a clear skin, and a bosom with which most would be wise to shun comparison.
Madame Du Barry had the King around her finger, though he doubtless didn’t mind. Although her monthly stipend of 30,000 Livres was more than generous, it paled in comparison to her real source of funds. The bank of the court was ordered to consider any draft by her a draft by Louis XV himself. In the four years she enjoyed this privilege, Du Barry emptied just thousands short of 6.5 million Livres from the French Treasury- that is, the French people’s treasury.
Madame Du Barry’s wardrobe was the envy of every woman in Versailles. Whether she felt that she had to compensate for her less-than-royal heritage, or simply reveled in unbridled extravagance Du Barry spent vast sums to be the best-dressed of Versailles. One dress, which she wore for a single day at court, was ordered from Mademoiselle Pagelle. Pagelle, a revered Modiste, under whom the later famous “Minister of Fashion”, Rose Bertin, would briefly apprentice, was considered one of the best. The dress was described as, “A white satin dress china silver, embroidered with green and pink straw,” It cost a staggering 10,500 Livres in comparison the average courtesan’s dress which cost between two and four thousand Livres.
The cost of the dress however paled in comparison to some of her parure, a collection of matching jewelry pieces, one of which costs 450,000 Livres. Du Berry was also known to frequent the French watchmaker Pierre-Basile Lepaute’s sale ledgers.
The starving peasants on the street lived in a different world, their building anger and resentment, though justified, would all too soon come to a horrifying head. Yet, It was into this frenzy of spending that Tattet sent his adopted son.
