LOVE, LOUIS XIV AND ME

You too can feel like the Sun King - that is, if you are conveyed round the magnificent gardens of Versailles in a mobile chariot, cheered by Japanese tourists. Or so I found in October 2005 when I was finishing my researches into LOVE AND LOUIS XIV following a knee operation. (Of course I waved back à la Queen Mother.) It is true that my chariot used electricity unlike the pony carriage in which the ageing King was conveyed round his beloved domain: but the courteous Japanese stood in splendidly for his courtiers.

Besides, the King himself would have been delighted by my tour, since he himself in his methodical way wrote a book THE WAY TO PRESENT THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES, first printed in 1689; it specified the exact route to be followed to get the best views and I was careful to follow it so far as modern conditions permitted. It’s a very sympathetic book. Instructions like ‘Go to the Triumphal arch and note the diversity of the fountains, jets, pools with statues and different water effects’ are followed by ‘Go along the top end of the Latona, pause, there, go to the Marais where there will be fruit and ices... Go to the Trois-Fontaines along the top and be sure there are ices there.’

I had always wanted to write about Louis XIV, or at any rate some aspect of his long, dramatic reign, ever since I was an early devotee of Alexandre Dumas. The adventures of the Three Musketeers, the wicked Milady (with that fatal brand on her shoulder which revealed her as a convicted thief), poor Louise de La Vallière, romantic Queen Anne of Austria, malevolent and machiavellian Cardinal Richelieu... all these characters were a great deal more colourful to contemplate than the decent, earnest dons of wartime North Oxford where I was brought up. But since I always wanted to write history not historical novels (who could do it better than the great Dumas?) it took me many years to find my own voice in which to summon up the Sun King and bring him back to life once more.

Various elements were involved. Working on the six wives of Henry VIII filled me with interest in a project in which a variety of women danced round the central maypole (a very big maypole in this case) of a great man. Charles II, first cousin and secret ally of Louis XIV, was one of my favourite biographical subjects and I made a mental note that the two men made an interesting contrast - one lazy, cynical, charming, the other a fanatical worker, highly religious - what they had in common was in fact the love of women. And women’s history is a subject which has obsessed me ever since I studied the women of seventeenth century England thirty years ago and found not one social history, let alone biography with the word ‘Women’ in the index. I remember encountering Michael Gilbert, a distinguished crime-writer and lawyer, on the steps of the Athenaeum on my way to the London Library, and telling him my new subject. ‘WERE there any women in the seventeenth century?’ he enquired rhetorically before vanishing up the steps of his (all male) club.

Versailles, and my many visits there (on foot in those days and badly needing the royal ices) when I was working on Marie Antoinette was the last element which had to fall into place. What was he like, the man who created all this ‘magnificence and the gallantry’ in the words of a contemporary, a hundred years before the French Revolution? The question was always at the back of my mind, even as I recorded the devastating fall of the ancien regime he had personified.

After that, there was a false start, something which as a writer had never happened to me before. It may have had its roots in the fact that it was a time of great personal stress involving the deaths of both my parents and the illness of my husband, so that my judgement was awry. I thought I could write a book centering on the Battle of the Boyne 1690, featuring of course the chief opponents, the Catholic James II who lost and the Protestant William III who won. But after a year of toil (including learning Irish from language tapes!) I suddenly realised that my imagination only came to life when I was considering the third king involved: the Boyne was sometimes known as the Battle of the Three Kings since Louis XIV was James’ heavy backer with French forces. For that matter I felt dislike mixed with admiration for William and dislike not mixed with anything for James. The fatal click, as I always call it, by which I know that a subject is MINE, had simply not occurred. ‘I’m going to Bin the Boyne,’ I told Harold firmly and did so. There were many consoling friends to tell me irritating things like ‘Nothing is ever wasted’. But of course they were right. Out of my Boyne-life came an abiding interest in the character of pious Mary Beatrice of Modena, James’ Catholic second wife: the mother of the son whose birth provoked the Revolution of 1688. A mere fourteen at the time of her marriage to the ageing royal roué twenty five years older, Mary Beatrice’s strength combined with virtue while in exile at the French court gained the admiration of Louis XIV and thus profoundly affected French attitudes to the Jacobites. That lay ahead. In the meantime I plunged happily into studying Versailles and fountains, building works, orangery, marble baths, menagerie, Hall of Mirrors and all, together with the private life of the Sun King. At this moment my intention was to study Louis’ mistresses and that was certainly a rich topic since their remarkably varied personalities presented a heavenly prospect for a would-be biographer. The first woman to capture the heart of the teenage Louis was dark-eyed Marie Mancini, lively, intelligent, and remarkably well educated for her time, with an interest in chivalric literature which she passed on to the King. Unfortunately Marie’s uncle Cardinal Mazarin, ruling France in the name of Louis’ mother Anne of Austria, was appalled at the idea of such a demeaning match for a great King and Marie was despatched in favour of marriage to a grand Spanish Infanta.

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