I Love You Madly: Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Secret Letters
460
I Love You Madly: Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen: The Secret Letters
460eBook
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Overview
Delve deeper into the world of the BBC hit drama series Versailles, and discover the real Marie-Antoinette in this ground-breaking study of her secret love affair with the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen.
For the first time an historian has compiled all the known letters between Swedish count Axel von Fersen and Marie-Antoinette, including six letters never before published. With unprecedented access to French and Swedish archives, Evelyn Farr has proven beyond doubt one of history's greatest romances.
Axel von Fersen was Queen Marie-Antoinette's lover and loyal counsellor who gave her political advice from 1785 to the fall of the French monarchy at the time of the French Revolution. Evelyn Farr's revelatory work on the subject also goes some way to proving that Count Fersen was in fact the biological father of Marie Antoinette's two younger children. Farr reveals the lengths the couple went to conceal their affair; the use of code and invisible ink, the role of intermediaries, secret seals, double envelopes, codenames and the location of Fersen's clandestine lodgings at Versailles. I Love You Madly is a meticulously researched and enjoyable study of a forbidden love at a time of revolution. The letters portray a rebellious and independent queen who risked everything and broke all the rules to love the man who succeeded in conquering her heart.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780720618785 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Owen, Peter Limited |
| Publication date: | 01/10/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 460 |
| Sales rank: | 205,425 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
I Love You Madly
Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen â" The Secret Letters
By Evelyn Farr
Peter Owen Publishers
Copyright © 2016 Evelyn FarrAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7206-1878-5
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In preparing this new edition of Marie-Antoinette's correspondence with Axel von Fersen, I examined high-resolution digital images of all the letters to be found in French and Swedish archives. The blacked-out passages, completely indecipherable on microfilm or in print-outs, were much less obscure on a computer screen. This enabled me to read, in some cases for the first time in more than two hundred years, deleted words and passages in Fersen's letters to the Queen as well as a few words in her letters to him, changing the entire tenor of their correspondence.
The destruction and dispersal of Fersen's archives since the nineteenth century has made the task of transcribing the correspondence and comparing it with his letter register even more difficult, but it is the only way to understand its importance. What is absolutely beyond doubt is that today we possess only an infinitesimal amount of the total number of letters exchanged. It would appear that Fersen himself started the process of destruction – the deletion of entire paragraphs, the copies made of certain letters and his editorial marks on others suggest that he intended to follow the example of many of his contemporaries and write his memoirs on the French Revolution. He mentions the idea in a letter on 30 October 1791 to his friend Baron Taube, shortly after Marie-Antoinette's death.
This dreadful event has made me regret even more the loss of my memoirs since 1780. I used to write them every day. I left them in Paris in 1791; when I left I dared not take them with me, and the person with whom I deposited them burnt them, for fear they would be seized in his possession. They contained precious notes on the Revolution which would have served to write the history of this epoch and make the King and Queen better known. I regret them all the more because my memory is poor, and I no longer remember everything I have done myself. One would have been able to understand how unhappy this princess was, how justly she felt her misfortune, to what degree she was affected by it and how her great soul knew how to forgive and rise above injustice by a consciousness of the good she did and wished to be able to do.
His diary lost, Fersen appears to have gathered together his papers, including what remained of his correspondence with the Queen, with a view to publishing a work explaining his role in the flight to Varennes. It seems unlikely that he would have destroyed any original documents he still possessed, since after Marie-Antoinette's death he wrote to his sister: 'I've sent an order to Paris to buy everything of hers that can be found; everything I already have is sacred to me. They are relics which are and will always be the object of my constant adoration.' Doubtless he kept the original letters after having made copies with the passages containing intimate details omitted. Unfortunately he was assassinated in 1810 before he could complete his work, and the loss of so many of his papers is linked to the terrible circumstances of his death.
Fersen and his sister Countess Sophie Piper were accused quite wrongly of having poisoned the new Crown Prince from Denmark. He had been offered the Swedish crown after Gustav IV Adolf was forced to abdicate in a coup, but he died suddenly of a stroke. On the day of the Prince's funeral, 20 June 1810, Fersen was lynched and murdered by a mob in the heart of Stockholm, with the complicity of the Swedish government who saw him as an obstacle to their plan to replace the Crown Prince with a French republican general, Bernadotte. Sophie, equally implicated in this non-existent 'plot', was arrested after her brother's murder and detained in the island fortress of Vaxholm. Both were eventually cleared of all suspicion, but unfortunately it was too late for Fersen, who had fallen victim to the vengeance of Karl XIII, former Duke of Södermanland. Their relations had always been strained, not only because of their political differences but because of the marked preference of Karl's wife for Fersen.
Sophie could not even organize the funeral of her adored brother. It was their younger brother Fabian who took charge of everything, including Fersen's papers, although he did not receive them until they had been thoroughly examined as part of the investigation into the 'crime' supposedly committed by his siblings. Fabian's letters to Sophie at this dreadful time show that she had asked him for all the souvenirs of Marie-Antoinette that Axel owned, including his correspondence with the Queen. 'Nyblom is bringing you', Fabian wrote, 'a packet containing the late Axel's French correspondence. It's all of it that I could find. The other papers are all diplomatic and relate to the Congress of Rastatt and to his affairs as First Minister of the King's Household.'
This packet clearly failed to meet Sophie's expectations – it contained Marie-Antoinette's correspondence with Barnave as well as other political documents she entrusted to Fersen, since these are all now to be found in the Piper family archives, but not the letters he exchanged with the Queen. Sophie knew everything about their affair and must have hoped for something more personal. Fabian answered her request with further information on the fate of Axel's papers.
Regarding the history of the portfolios ... all the portfolios are the same; there are none with hidden locks. They all have normal locks, and I know Nyblom said you wanted to have the secret portfolios. That's why I didn't mind keeping the portfolios from you. I'm keeping them to lock away all my brother's papers which, as I told you last summer, were given to me in a box by the men who had read through them. They had removed all the papers from the drawers and other places where they were secured. Since then no one else has seen these papers, which could be of no interest to anyone. I looked through most of them and took out all those relating to financial affairs ... For the rest, in the evenings after our small society had retired, Louise and I occupied ourselves in taking extracts from my late brother's letters, which have been printed. These letters were not such as to be left in the hands of editors – they contain expressions that were appropriate at the time they were written but are not so today, and so we had to modify and suppress some sentences.
Is he referring to the Marie-Antoinette correspondence here or to Swedish matters, since the only papers printed at this time were published to clear Fersen of the death of the Crown Prince? Fabian assured Sophie that:
My brother's manuscripts are already secured, for I sent them to the library at Steninge ... There was no list made of Axel's papers, and the examination will be made in two or three days ... besides, I know positively, because he told me so himself, that after 13 March 1809 he burned a number of papers.
It is clear that he was equivocating in order not to give Fersen's correspondence with Marie-Antoinette to Sophie. He definitely kept those letters that survived, since they passed eventually to his daughter, Louise Gyldenstolpe, who sold the entire Fersen family archive to her cousin Baron Rudolf Klinckowström in order to settle her gambling debts. The baron, like his great-uncle a soldier and diplomat, wasted no time in publishing an edition of Fersen's correspondence with Marie-Antoinette and others, revealing his role during the Revolution but suppressing many details of his career in France prior to 1789. It is from his book Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France (1877–8) that we derive the image of Axel von Fersen as the devoted, respectful and, above all, purely platonic friend of the Queen of France.
In 1930 the Swedish historian Alma Söderhjelm edited unpublished passages from Fersen's diary as well as letters to his sister Sophie that reveal his true feelings for Marie-Antoinette. She postulated correctly that Marie-Antoinette was the mystery correspondent 'Josephine' in Fersen's letter register. She also published a note suppressed by Klinckowström, in which the Queen addressed Fersen as 'the most loved and most loving of men'; but of the rest of the correspondence she found no trace. Klinckowström's son Axel told her that his father had burnt all the letters for fear that someone would try to read beneath the many redacted passages. The Fersen archive was subsequently deposited in the Swedish national archives by Baron Axel's daughter. It includes only eight letters from Marie-Antoinette to Fersen; all date from 1792 and give news of the Queen but are written by her secretary François Goguelat.
In 1982 the French Archives Nationales nevertheless bought from the Klinckowström family a quantity of letters from the Fersen/Marie-Antoinette correspondence that had supposedly been destroyed. All bar six of these letters date from 1791 and 1792. Letters from the period 1780–8 have never been found, and my recent research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that they may well have been destroyed by Fersen himself in 1792 (see Part IV). It is doubtful that the archive purchased by Baron Rudolf Klinckowström in the nineteenth century contained these letters; if it had, he would have published them after expunging them of any 'delicate' passages, just as he did for the letters from the revolutionary period.
This collection contains all the letters exchanged by Marie-Antoinette and Fersen that it has been possible to trace – including six previously unpublished letters and more than twenty passages discovered by the author under blacked-out lines in the text. Explored in detail and set in context by cross-references to Fersen's letter register, diary and other unpublished documents, they portray one of history's most extraordinary and powerful love stories.
CHAPTER 2ANALYSIS OF THE CORRESPONDENCE
In order to understand the full import of Marie-Antoinette's correspondence with Axel von Fersen, it is essential to place it in its historical context; it then becomes clear that what survives today is but a tiny fraction of a frequent correspondence that continued – with breaks when they were together – for at least twelve years.
The First Meeting
Count Axel von Fersen met Marie-Antoinette for the first time in November 1773. Both had just turned eighteen. She was the Dauphine of France – lively, frivolous, flirtatious and full of mischief. He was the eldest son of the Grand Marshal of Sweden, rounding off his Grand Tour with six months in Paris. The attraction between them was immediate. At a masked opera ball, profiting from her disguise she spoke to him at length without revealing her identity. He became a regular attender at her Court balls at Versailles, and he mentioned her frequently in his diary. But Fersen left France in May 1774 two days after she became queen and did not reappear in her life until August 1778. He then became a member of Marie-Antoinette's inner circle, describing her as 'a charming princess'. In 1779, gossip began to spread about the Queen's liking for the handsome Swedish count; she always danced with him at the opera balls, he used to dine in the private apartments, and young French courtiers were very jealous of him.
In July 1779 Fersen left the amusement of Versailles to join the French army being mustered in Normandy in preparation of an invasion of England; but after months of inaction the idea was abandoned. He returned to Court on 23 December, and on Christmas Eve was invited to a celebration hosted for the Queen by Mme de Lamballe, her friend and superintendent of her household. At the beginning of 1780, as France became more deeply involved in the American War of Independence, Marie-Antoinette helped Fersen obtain a colonel's commission and a post as aide-de-camp to General Rochambeau. He spent his final days before leaving for America with her at Versailles. A letter sent to Gustav III of Sweden on 10 April 1780 by his Ambassador to France, Count Creutz, describes a sad farewell.
Young Count Fersen has been so well treated by the Queen that several people have taken umbrage at it. I confess that I cannot help believing she has a strong inclination for him; I've seen too many positive indications to doubt it. Young Count Fersen conducted himself admirably in these circumstances by his modesty and reserve, and above all by the decision he took to go to America. In going away he avoided all the dangers, but it evidently required a strength of will above his age to overcome this seduction. The Queen couldn't take her eyes off him during the final days; when she looked at him they were filled with tears.
Baron Evert Taube, who became Fersen's best friend and the lover of his sister Sophie, sent a letter to Gustave III by the same courier, describing in detail just how Marie-Antoinette had succeeded in fixing Fersen in her inner circle of friends.
The Queen has always distinguished Swedes who have appeared at Court ... She has particularly noticed young Count Axel. Every time she came to the opera ball this winter, she would walk with him. She even retired to a box with him, where she remained a long time talking to him. Envious people found it astonishing that the Queen should always promenade with young Count Axel, a foreigner, and they were all asking: 'But my God, who is this young Swede then, that the Queen always walks with him?' It was even said: 'But the Queen has never stayed so long at the opera balls as she has done this year!'
I believe that all these jealous remarks finally came to the Queen's ears. It only increased her fancy to see the young count; but in order not to make it too obvious she decided to admit more Swedes to her society. She therefore arranged for M. de Steding, to whom the King has spoken a few times since his return from America, to be ordered to sup in the private apartments. Steding was taken in by it and believed that he owed this distinction to his fine eyes. There was a great outcry that M. de Steding was shown such favour; one wanted to know if he was a gentleman of sufficiently ancient standing to be allowed to take supper in the private apartments with the King. All this was less than agreeable for our Steding. But in the end the Queen gained by it, because all the clamour fell on him; a week later, and while everyone was still protesting strongly against the favour shown to M. de Steding, young Count Axel was ordered to join the King's suppers. But as these suppers only take place once or twice a week, the Queen's ladies, Mme de Lamballe, the Comtesse de Polignac and the Comtesse d'Ossun hosted little parties and games in their apartments, to which the Queen always came and often the King, too. Count Axel was always present at those suppers as well as all the suppers in the private apartments. He also used to be present at all the Queen's games. These games are blind man's buff and what we call at home: 'war tar sinn, sa tar jag minn, sa far de andra inte'. Young Count Axel greatly distinguished himself at these games, which greatly pleased the King and the Queen. These games even continued after his departure for Brest. I humbly beg Your Majesty to say nothing of this to his father or mother, nor to anybody, because if word were to get back here it could perhaps do him harm.
The game of blind man's buff in which Fersen so distinguished himself offered the 'blind man', whose eyes were covered, the opportunity to touch the other players. Fragonard, favoured artist of eighteenth-century libertines, depicted a version of this popular game where the potential for caresses is implicit. Naturally, everyone was watching Fersen and Marie-Antoinette. Given the way gossip from Versailles inevitably always found its way back to Stockholm, Fersen talks of walking with the Queen at the opera balls and dining in the private apartments in his letters to his father, but risqué games are certainly never mentioned. She remained 'the most amiable princess I know'. It is clear that he was far from insensible to her charms; had he not been interested, he would have avoided her, just as he always eluded women who did not please him. But Marie-Antoinette was the Queen of France and Fersen a foreign interloper; it was out of the question for him to declare his feelings first. He left France with Rochambeau's army in May 1780. It was to be three years before he returned.
The First Letter
The first known letter in the correspondence between Marie-Antoinette and Axel von Fersen dates from October 1780. Writing to his father from Newport, Rhode Island, Fersen says he is sending a letter to the Queen to ask for her help in obtaining a post in a line regiment. His position as an aide-de-camp bored him extremely and he wanted to become commandant of the Duc de Lauzun's Legion.
The Duc de Lauzun is writing about it to the Queen, who has a great deal of kindness for him. She has a little for me, too, and I am also writing to her about it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from I Love You Madly by Evelyn Farr. Copyright © 2016 Evelyn Farr. Excerpted by permission of Peter Owen Publishers.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,A Note on Language,
Illustrations,
Marie-Antoinette and Axel von Fersen – Chronology,
I Introduction,
II Analysis of the Correspondence,
III The Lost Correspondence,
IV The Letters,
V The Discoveries – Method and Example,
Notes,
References,
Bibliography,
Index,