Free True Pleasures by Lucinda Holdforth Page A

the newly discovered Australian continent. Black swans from Western Australia swam in her lake and emus ran through her forest. Her rose garden was recorded by Redouté in works of art as well as natural history. Napoleon is well known for his scientific and cultural interests, but his wife made her own major contribution to knowledge. Not bad for the daughter of a poor French settler in the West Indies, an indolent, dreamy girl, swinging on a hammock and rotting her teeth on sugar cane.
    The rain recedes as we exit rue de la Victoire, street of the victory. Josephine’s textbook femininity is outmoded these days: the modern woman is a substantive and explainable being, not an airy and elusive creature. In her day, however, though Napoleon was the warrior, Josephine’s arsenal of emotional weaponry was equally powerful. Napoleon used to say, proudly, wonderingly,
I win battles … Josephine wins hearts
.
    Napoleon divorced Josephine in 1809 in a formal, public ceremony. Josephine retained her famous, gentle dignity to the last. But her soon-to-be ex-husband wept openly. He sobbed,
God alone knows what this resolve has cost my heart
…

6
Courtesans
    It should be remembered, too, that in the eighteenth century pleasure was not regarded with the cold disapproval of our dismal age.
    Nancy Mitford
    M ANY COUNTRIES have a great house, a place that symbolizes the nation state in all its authority and power. There’s the White House in Washington. There’s Number 10 Downing Street in London. In Australia, far less grandly, there’s the Lodge in Canberra. In Paris, of course, there’s the Palais de l’Élysée, 55–57 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, at the corner of Avenue de Marigny. This is the home of the French President.
    But as I stand across the road, gazing at the immaculate guards and the high gates of the Élysée, I am not thinking about the grandeur of this place. I am thinking how delightful it is – how quintessentially French it is – that the French President should live in a home owned anddecorated by a courtesan, the famous Madame de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV and the most gifted woman of her age.
    This house was designed purely for love and pleasure. I’m sure France is the only nation in the world to permit such a feminine, romantic – and let’s face it, decadent – association to contaminate a position of national authority. Well, it could never happen in America. Or Australia. Which is not to say that, even in France, everyone was comfortable with the idea. When General de Gaulle became President for the second time in 1959, he resisted moving into the Élysée. Apparently he thought the romantic frescoes on the ceilings were decidedly un-statesmanlike. Not to mention the cherubs in the Presidential office.
    I would give anything to tour the Élysée, but of course it is closed to the public and heavily protected. Sometimes I see President Chirac and world leaders on television, important men posing for the camera with their heavy frames perched awkwardly on dainty Pompadour couches.
    Nancy Mitford introduced me to La Marquise de Pompadour through her biography, published in 1953. She wrote about Madame de Pompadour with such intimacy and affection, I felt as though I knew her myself. Critics said that Nancy Mitford had created Madame de Pompadour in her own image, which may explain my intense affection for both author and subject. When she finished writing her biography, Nancy wrote to Evelyn Waugh:
I have lost the poor Marquise … & I miss her fearfully, my constant companion for nearly a year
.
    The ‘poor Marquise’ hosted her very last party in this house before she died of tuberculosis at Versailles in 1764,aged forty-five. But the ghost of Madame de Pompadour hovers gracefully not only over this wonderful house; she is the presiding genius of this whole area. With a mental nod to the Marquise, I am about to