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                                MEMOIRS

                                OF THE

                       Marchioness of Pompadour.

                          WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

                         Wherein are Displayed

     The Motives of the Wars, Treaties of Peace, Embassies, and
     Negotiations, in the several Courts of Europe:

     The Cabals and Intrigues of Courtiers; the Characters of Generals,
     and Ministers of State, with the Causes of their Rise and Fall;
     and, in general, the most remarkable Occurrences at the Court of
     France, during the last twenty Years of the Reign of Lewis XV.

                      Translated from the French.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:

              Printed for P. VAILLANT, in the Strand; and
                    W. JOHNSTON, in Ludgate-Street.

                               MDCCLXVI.




THE

EDITOR’S PREFACE.


The following work must be acknowledged highly interesting to these
times; and to posterity will be still more so. These are not the memoirs
of a mere woman of pleasure, who has spent her life in a voluptuous
court, but the history of a reign remarkable for revolutions, wars,
intrigues, alliances, negotiations; the very blunders of which are not
beneath the regard of politicians, as having greatly contributed to give
a new turn to the affairs of Europe.

The Lady who drew the picture was known to be an admirable colourist.

They who were personally acquainted with Mademoiselle Poisson, before
and since her marriage with M. le Normand, know her to have been
possessed of a great deal of that wit, which, with proper culture,
improves into genius.

The King called her to court at a tempestuous season of life, when the
passions reign uncontrouled, and by corrupting the heart, enlarge the
understanding.

They who are near the persons of Kings, for the most part, surpass the
common run of mankind, both in natural and acquired talents; for
ambition is ever attended with a sort of capacity to compass its ends;
and all courtiers are ambitious.

No sooner does the Sovereign take a mistress, than the courtiers flock
about her. Their first concern is to give her her cue; for as they
intend to avail themselves of her interest with the King, she must be
made acquainted with a multitude of things: she may be said to receive
her intelligence from the first hand, and to draw her knowledge at the
fountain head.

Lewis XV. intrusted the Marchioness de Pompadour with the greatest
concerns of the nation; so that if she had been without those abilities
which distinguished her at Paris, she must still have improved in the
school of Versailles.

Her talents did not clear her in the public eye; never was a favourite
more outrageously pelted with pamphlets, or exposed to more clamorous
invectives. Of this her Memoirs are a full demonstration; her enemies
charged her with many very odious vices, without so much as allowing her
one good quality. The grand subject of murmur was the bad state of the
finances, which they attributed to her amours with the King.

They who brand the Marchioness with having run Lewis XV. into vast
expences, seem to have forgot those which his predecessor’s mistresses
had brought on the state.

Madame de la Valiere, even before she was declared mistress to Lewis
XIV. induced him to give entertainments, which cost the nation more than
ever Madame de Pompadour’s fortune amounted to.

Madame de Montespan put the same Prince to very enormous expences; she
appeared always with the pomp and parade of a Queen, even to the having
guards to attend her.

Scarron’s widow carried her pride and ostentation still further: she
drew the King in to marry her, and this mistress came to be queen, an
elevation which will be an eternal blot on the Prince’s memory.

This clandestine commerce gave rise to an infamous practice at court,
with which Madame de Pompadour cannot be charged. All these concubines
having children, to gratify their vanity, they must be legitimated; and,
afterwards, they found means to marry these sons, or daughters, of
prostitution, to the branches of the royal blood; a flagrant debasement
of the house which were in kin to the crown: for though a Sovereign can
legitimate a bastard, to efface the stain of bastardy is beyond his
power. The consequence was, that the descendants of that clandestine
issue aspired to the throne; and, through the King’s scandalous amours,
that lustre which is due only to virtue, fell to the portion of vice.

It was given out in France, and over all Europe, that Madame de
Pompadour was immensely rich: but nothing of this appeared at her death,
except her magnificent moveables, and these were rather the
consequences of her rank at court, than the effects of her vanity. This
splendor his Majesty partook of, as visiting her every day.

The public is generally an unfair judge of those who hold a considerable
station at court, deciding from vague reports, which are often the
forgeries of ill-grounded prejudice. Madame de Pompadour has been
charged with insatiable avarice. Had this been the case, she might have
indulged herself at will: she was at the spring-head of opulence; the
King never refused her any thing; so that she might have amassed any
money; which she did not. There are now existing, in France, fifty
wretches of financiers, each of a fortune far exceeding her’s.

It was also said, that the best thing which could happen to France, was
to be rid of this rapacious favourite. Well; she is no more; and what is
France the better for it? Has her death been followed by one of those
sudden revolutions in the government, which usher in a better form of
administration? Have they who looked on this Lady as an unsurmountable
obstacle to France’s greatness, proposed any better means for raising it
from its present low state? Is there more order in the government? are
the finances improved? is there more method and oeconomy? No, affairs
are still in the same bad ways the lethargy continues as profound as
ever. The ministry, which before Madame de Pompadour’s death was fast
asleep, is not yet awake. Every thing remains in _statu quo_. Some
European governments have no regular motion; they advance either too
fast, or too slow; their steps are either precipitate, or sluggish.

In this favourite’s time, there was too much shifting and changing in
the ministry; now she is gone, there is none at all, &c. &c.

I am very far from intending a panegyric on Madame de Pompadour. Faults
she had, which posterity will never forgive. All the calamities of
France were imputed to her, and she should have resigned in compliance
to the public: a nation is to be respected even in its prejudices. With
any tolerable share of patriotism, Madame de Pompadour would have
quitted the court, and thus approved herself deserving of the favour for
which she was execrated; but her soul was not capable of such an act of
magnanimity: she knew nothing of that philosophy which, inspiring a
contempt of external grandeur, endears the subject to the Prince, and
exalts him above the throne.

There is great appearance that this Lady intended to revise both her
Memoirs and her will, and that death prevented her: she used to write,
by starts, detached essays, without any coherence; and these on separate
bits of paper. These were very numerous and diffuse, as generally are
the materials intended to form a book, if she really had any such
design.

We were obliged to throw by on all sides, and clear our way through an
ocean of writings, a long and tiresome business.

It is far from being improbable, that Madame de Pompadour got some
statesman, well versed in such matters, to assist her in compiling this
book: however that be, we give it as it stands in her original
manuscript.

[Illustration: text decoration]




MEMOIRS

OF THE

Marchioness of Pompadour.


The following narrative is not confined to the particular history of my
life. My design is more extensive: I shall endeavour to give a true
representation of the court of France under the reign of Lewis XV. The
private memoirs of a King’s mistress are in themselves of small import;
but to know the character of the Prince who raises her to favour; to be
let into the intrigues of his reign, the genius of the courtiers, the
practices of the ministers, the views of the great, the projects of the
ambitious; in a word, into the secret springs of politics, is not a
matter of indifference.

It is very seldom that the public judges rightly of what passes in the
cabinet: they hear that the King orders armies to take the field; that
he wins or loses battles; and on these occurrences they argue according
to their particular prejudices.

History does not come nearer the mark; the generality of annalists being
only the echoes of the public mistakes.

These papers I do not intend to publish in my life-time; but should they
appear after my death, posterity will see in them a faithful draught of
the several parts of the administration, which were acted, in some
measure, under my eye. Had I never lived at Versailles, the events of
our times might have been an inexplicable riddle to posterity; so
complicated are the incidents, and in many particulars so
contradictory, that, without a key, there is no decyphering them.

Ministers and other place-men are not always acquainted with the means,
which they themselves make use of for attaining certain ends. A
plenipotentiary very well knows that he signs a treaty of peace, but he
is ignorant of the King’s motives for putting an end to the war.

Every politician strikes out a system in his own sagacious brain; the
speculatists have often fathered on France what she never dreamed of;
and many refined schemes have been attributed to her ministers, which
never made part of their plan.

It is not long since a minister of a certain court said to me at
Versailles, That the two last German wars, which cost France so much
blood, and three hundred millions of livres, was the greatest stroke of
policy which the age afforded; as this court had thereby insensibly, and
unknown to the rest of Europe, reduced the power of the Queen of
Hungary: for, added he, if, on the demise of Charles VI. this crown had
openly bent all its forces against the house of Austria, a general
alliance would have opposed it; whereas it has weakened that house by a
series of little battles and repeated losses, &c. &c.

The inserting such an anecdote in the annals of our age would be
sufficient to disfigure the whole history. The truth is, that they who
were at the head of the French affairs, during these two wars, had no
manner of genius.

All details not relative to the state I shall carefully omit, as rather
writing the age of Lewis XV. than the history of my private life. The
transactions of a King’s favourite concern only the reign of that
Prince; but truth is of perpetual concern.

I hope the public does not expect from me a circumstantial journal of
Lewis XV’s gallantries: the King had many transitory amours during my
residence at Versailles; but none of his mistresses were admitted into
the public affairs. The reign of the far greater part began and ended in
the Prince’s bed. These foibles, so closely connected with human nature,
belong rather to a King’s private life, than to the public history of a
Monarch: I may sometimes mention them, but it will only be by the way. I
shall likewise be silent in regard to my family. The particular favour
with which I have been honoured by Lewis XV. has placed my origin in
broad day-light. A Monarch in raising a woman to the summit of grandeur,
of course lays open the blemishes of her birth. The annals of the
universe have been overlooked, to make a singular case of what has been
almost a general practice in the world.

The Roman Emperors often raised so favour and eminence women of more
obscure birth than mine: but, without going so far backward, the history
of our own Kings abounds with such instances. Though the widow of
Scarron the poet rose a step higher than I, she was not born to such
exaltation. It is true her father was a gentleman; but all women, not
born Princesses, are at a like distance from the throne.

A multitude of injurious reports have been propagated concerning my
parents. A wretched anonymous writer has gone even farther, by
publishing a scandalous book with the title of the history of my life.
The Count D’Affry wrote to me from Holland, that this production was of
the growth of Great-Britain. The English seem to make it their
particular business to throw dirt at persons of distinguished rank at
the court of France: that government is said to claim such a privilege,
in order to keep up the hatred between the two nations.

Though my birth had nothing great in it, my education was not neglected.
I was taught dancing, music, and the rules of elocution, by excellent
masters; and those little talents have proved of the highest use to me.
I also read a great deal, and a favourite writer of mine was one Madame
de Villedieu. Her picture of the Roman empire entertained me
exceedingly. I even felt a very lively joy in observing that the
greatest revolutions in the world have been owing to love.

After bestowing on me all the accomplishments which advantageously
distinguish a young person of my sex, I was married to one whom I did
not love; and a misfortune still greater was, that he loved me. This I
call a misfortune, and indeed I know not a greater on earth; for a woman
not beloved by a man, whom she likewise has married without any
affection, at least comforts herself in his indifference.

During the first years of my marriage, the King’s gallantries were much
talked of at Paris: his fleeting amours opened a field for all women,
who had beauty enough to put in for his heart.

The post of mistress to Lewis XV. was often vacant. At Versailles all
the passions had an appearance of debauchery. In that airy region love
was soon exhausted, as consisting wholly in fruition. Nothing of
delicacy was to be seen at court; the whole scene of sensibility was in
the Prince’s bed. This Monarch often laid down with a heart full of
love, and the next morning rose with as much indifference.

This account made me shudder; for I own I had then formed a design of
winning the heart of that Prince. I was afraid that he was so used to
change, as to be past all constancy.

I even, then, blushed at the thought of giving myself up to an
inclination of no farther consequence than a momentary gratification of
the senses; but was fixed on my design.

I had often seen the King at Versailles, without being perceived by him;
our looks had never met; my eyes had a great deal to say, but had no
opportunity of explaining my desires. At length I had an interview with
the Monarch, and, for the first time, talked with him in private. There
is no expressing what passed in me at this first conversation; fear,
hope, and admiration, successively agitated my soul. The King soon
dispelled my confusion; for Lewis XV. is certainly the most affable
Prince in his court, if not in the whole world. In private discourse his
rank lays no restraint, and all ideas of the throne are suspended; an
air of candour and goodness diffuses itself through every part of his
behaviour; in short, he can forget that he is a King, to be the more a
gentleman.

Our conversation was to me all charming: I pleased and was pleased. The
King has since owned to me, that he loved me from that first interview.
It was there agreed that we should see one another privately at
Versailles: he was very much for my immediately coming to an apartment
in the palace: he even insisted on it; but I begged he would give me
leave to remain still incognito for some time; and the King, being the
most polite man in France, yielded to my request. On my return to Paris,
a thousand fresh emotions rose in my breast. A strange thing is the
human heart! we feel the effects of those passions of which we know not
the cause. I am still at a loss whether I loved the King from this first
meeting: that it gave me infinite pleasure, I know; but pleasure is not
always a consequence of love. We are susceptible of a multitude of
other passions, which may produce the like effect.

I experienced a thousand delights in our secret intercourse: little do I
wonder that Madame de la Valiere, in the infancy of her amours with
Lewis XIV. was so transported with the sole enjoyment of that Monarch’s
affection: but at length, the King requiring that I should live at
Versailles, I complied with his desire.

Now was my first appearance at court. Very faint and imperfect are the
descriptions which books give of this grand theatre. I thought myself
amidst another species of mortals: I observed that their manners and
usages are not the same; and that in regard to dress, deportment, and
language