Tag: Louis XVI

On a Court Visitor

We forget that the concept of European royalty having almost absolute political and economic power over their subjects was a thing as recently as about 200 years ago. The revolutions of the 1840s put an end to most of the period of powerful reigns of the kings and queens in Europe. One of the most powerful courts was that of the Hapsburgs, and they last ruled in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You probably know more about them than you realize, including the fact that one of the most famous products of that powerful royal family was Marie Antionette, the Queen of France, who, along with her husband Louis, was beheaded on the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Marie grew up in Vienna, at the royal palaces including the large one at Schonbrunn and the palace at Hofburg. She was the 15th child of her parents, the Emperor Ferdinand and his wife, Maria Theresa. Marie, of course, would grow up to be the poster person for upper class snobbery and disaffectedness. The quote attributed to her, “let them eat cake,” supposedly said about starving French citizens who had no bread, was less about her lack of care and more about how she was raised. It never occurred to her that people would run out of bread, of course, and, if they did, well, surely they could then eat cake–because she had never done without. That gives you the idea of how isolated from how the average, common person lived that Marie’s upbringing was. And that’s why it’s surprising to find that the royal family entertained two commoners at the palace when Marie was a young girl.

This young boy was about Marie’s age, actually. He and his father had an audience at the palace at the order of Marie’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa. The man and the boy, only aged 7, came to entertain the Empress and some of her children. It was noticed immediately that the boy and Princess Marie were of similar age and size. The story goes that, during his time in the palace, the boy slipped and fell on the highly polished floor. Marie, being polite, bent down and helped the boy up. In his gratitude, the common boy is said to have said to the princess, “Will you marry me? Yes or no?” Marie was stunned and also amused. She asked him why he would ask her that. He replied, “Because you were so nice to me.” Marie is said to have giggled, and the adults thought that the scene between the two seven year olds was sweet.

While we don’t know if that event actually happened (it was told about Marie in later years), we do have written evidence that the young man did take some liberties to some degree, especially for someone who was not a member of the royal family. It seems that he climbed up into the lap of Empress Maria Theresa. His father was mortified. This was embarrassing and unseemly and an affront to the majesty of the wife of the emperor of that part of the world. But, the empress was kind and loving to the boy. She not only hugged the brash youngster, she allowed this common boy to give her a kiss on her cheek.

Later, after the father and son left the palace, Maria Theresa sent a gift to this 7 year old boy as a token of her kindness towards the family. She had some of the slightly used but incredibly expensive silk clothes of one of her sons sent to the boy. Also, the gift was in appreciation for the musical entertainment that the boy and his father provided for the court, Maria Theresa, and her young children. Of course, the real star of the recital was the 7 year old; the father, his teacher, was there to assist his musically gifted son.

And that’s how, possibly, that Marie Antoinette came to receive a proposal of marriage from a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

On a Model Maker

Marie Grosholtz. was born in Strasbourg France during the Seven Years War. Her father, Joseph, died in the war two months before Marie’s birth. She and her widowed mother, also named Marie, moved to Switzerland, to the city of Bern, where the mother found work as the housekeeper of a surgeon.

This surgeon became the most influential person in the young Marie’s life. His name was Dr. Curtius. Marie became like a surrogate niece to the doctor, and she returned his love. Curtius took the young girl into his surgery and taught her anatomy. Here, from the time she could clamber on to a stool to reach the counter, Marie learned the skills that would make her life’s work.

The doctor used models to teach anatomy to students, and he found that the young girl had a natural feel for the creation of those models. Using pliable materials, Maria sculpted body parts that Dr. Curtius would then teach from. She saw the models she did not as work but rather as play, as time she could spend learning more from her beloved and adopted uncle. The pair became inseparable, and, by the time she was in her teens, Marie’s models were far superior to those off the good doctor.

In between the years of the Seven Years War and the beginning of the French Revolution, Curtius and Marie and her mother moved moved to Paris. There, the doctor set up his practice, but he started a sideline business—he began exhibiting the models that Marie had so lovingly and skilfully crafted. People were fascinated by the fact that she was so young, yes, but also that she was so talented.

She began modelling the heads of the famous and the infamous in France at the time. She even spent time among the soon-to-be-doomed Royal Family of France, even receiving an invitation to go live at Versailles. Voltaire, Marie Antionette, Louis XVI, and Robespierre all received a sitting with the young woman.

Eventually, Marie’s connections to France’s aristocracy made her an enemy of the new French Revolution’s government, and, after a short imprisonment, she had to flee to Britain where she would spend the rest of her life. Before she left in exile, Marie had married a man named Francois and had two sons who lived to adulthood. But it was in Britain that she made the reputation that she continues to enjoy today.

You can see her models for yourselves at one of London’s most visited tourist attractions:

Madame Tussauds.