Madame Guillotine

I swore that I’d NEVER write a sequel to my novel about the young Marie Antoinette but five thousand sold copies, many fab reviews and a LOT of nagging about ‘When’s the sequel coming out?’ has kind of changed my mind. What can I say? I like to listen to my readers and I also kind of need money for perfume, books and hot pink hair-dye.

I thought I’d be fed up returning to the world of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles for a fourth time, especially as I SWORE that the third time was the last but I’m actually having a LOT of fun. The sequel begins with Marie Antoinette’s wedding day and er ends at some unspecified point that I haven’t yet decided.

Best of all  - it means I’m off to Paris and Versailles yet again this May to do some ‘research’. Ah, it’s such a hard life being a historical fiction writer…

The Croix à la Victime, a red silk harness, which was worn like a thin shawl around the bodice, artfully forming a red cross on the wearer’s back.

A red scarf à la Némesis. This was first worn after the execution of the famous beauty, Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe, who was rumoured to have been arrested after she spurned the attentions of not just Saint-Just but also Robespierre. Her courage in the face of death and undeniable glamour made her something of a heroine to the fashionable ladies of Paris and they wore red scarves thrown loosely around their shoulders in her honour.

Nothing could be more French than to allow current affairs to influence fashion (just look at the hairstyles concocted by Rose Bertin for Marie Antoinette and her coterie – battleships, babies being born and balloons taking off are just a few examples) and the outrageously dressed Merveilleuses are the finest example of this.

Les Merveilleuses (‘The Marvellous Ones’) made their first appearance in 1794 and influenced by the victims of the guillotine, they cultivated a highly modish and edgily morbid style that bordered on the gothic. The leaders of the Merveilleuses were the extremely stylish Theresa Tallien and Rose de Beauharnais, both of whom had been imprisoned during the Terror and had barely escaped with their lives.

One of the favoured accessories of the fashionable Merveilleuse was a thin red ribbon or choker of rubies, designed to mimic droplets of blood around a severed neck.

Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon (known as Marie-Adélaïde)  was born on the 13th March 1753 at the Hôtel de Toulouse in Paris, the daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre (a grandson of Louis XIV and Athénaïs de Montespan) and Princess Maria Teresa Felicity of Modena. Her mother died in childbirth when she was just a year old, leaving behind just Marie-Adélaïde and her brother Louis-Alexandre, the Prince de Lamballe in the care of their doting, kind hearted father.

Maroon leather shoes, lined with pale blue silk and embroidered with silver thread, worn by Empress Joséphine.

Empress Joséphine’s sweet little fur lined boots that would have been worn on cold Parisian days. They remind me of Cinderella’s fur shoes in the original fairy tale.

A bill from Au Grand Turc, the most fashionable couture house in Joséphine’s Paris. Joséphine’s enormous debts were notorious as she spent vast amounts on clothes, shoes and accessories and never managed to stay within the confines of the already generous allowance bestowed upon her by Napoléon. This particular bill is for ‘un schal de cachemire vert pistache vendu à sa majesté impératrice et reine’ (a pistachio green Cashmere shawl) and was issued on the 6th April 1809.

Louis XII, from his tomb at St Denis.

Most of Madame de Sevigné’s  letters were written to her daughter, Françoise after her marriage on the 27th of January 1669 to the Comte de Grignan and then, a few years later, departure from Paris to Provence. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Sévigné was a big event – the bride was twenty two years old, rather older than most brides at this time and her mother had begun to despair of her ever marrying. She was one of the great beauties at Louis XIV’s court and one of his favourite dancing partners but it seems that thanks to Athénaïs de Montespan, she had narrowly missed out on being the object of his affections.

Spoiled, haughty, lovely Mademoiselle de Sévigné, who was hailed as ‘the prettiest girl in France’ had been flattered and flirted with all her life long but had rejected a long succession of suitors before finally falling in love with a twice widowed older man who was, furthermore, rather famous for his ugliness.

Madame de Sévigné was fortunate indeed to marry a glittering writing style with the enviable position of being on the spot in one of the most fascinating and dramatic periods in history. I can’t visit her former home, the Hôtel de Carnavalet in the Marais district without imagining her, blonde ringlets bouncing, laughing and pretty, wandering through its sun filled, beeswax scented rooms.

I remember buying my now extremely battered Penguin edition of Madame de Sévigné’s letters as a schoolgirl and then devouring it several times over in the following years. I totally fell in love with Madame, with her witty but warm writing style; her fresh, affectionate yet unflinching vision and, above all, her glamorous life as a Versailles insider who knew all of the major players – Louis XIV, Athénaïs de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon, Nicolas Foucquet, Ninon de Lenclos…