Evelyne Lever's Marie Antoinette

I just recently purchased this biography on impulse as it was pretty cheap. Any pitfalls I should be aware of before I devour it?

Yes. Madame Lever is a very romantic lady especially where Count Fersen is concerned.

Dang.

I'm sorry, but this is starting to become comical. Every time I buy an MA biography without researching it, 100% guarantee it testifies as to the totally-indisputable Fantoinette romance, buffering the point with everything short of photoshopped love scenes.

Antoinette bought a Swedish stove for Trianon? Obviously to match her Swedish lover! Don't you see? What other explanation could there be?

Ah well....aside from that?

Madame Lever tends to play down the nature of the abuse endured by Louis-Charles in the Temple. She writes from a socialist point of view and at times seems to have contempt for Marie-Antoinette. I don't always trust the interpretation she gives to her sources. I personally do not like the book.

Are you sure she's Socialist? Her treatment of Robespierre and peculiar omission of Billaud (I flipped through the index, sue me) contradict my experience with the Socialist historiography. In my experience, they tend to exalt one or the other, not deride one and erase the other - and ignoring Billaud in a biography of Marie Antoinette is, ah, rather puzzling to me considering his devoted role in securing her execution, so it's not as though he was ignored for concision's sake.

Edit: No, Billaud makes a guest appearance. I just blinked and missed him.

I have the feeling that Lever hates Antoinette's children. Really. I have another book written by her, about the affair of the necklace (it was also published in Hungarian), and Lever simply keeps avoiding to mention the baby Sophie, or with such commentaires that Antoinette disliked her daughter, didn't care of her... what the hell???? OK, Sophie was "only" a girl with a poor health, but that's no reason to say she was "disliked". And, in the same book, Antoinette thinks abour Fersen, dreams about Fersen, everytime only Fersen, Fersen, Fersen... of course, a mother who has two ill children (Louis-Joseph and Sophie) only thinks about a man who's away this time and has nothing to do with her inner circle and family. Argh.

I've read this years ago, so it's maybe not so bad narrated as I here stated, but these are my memories about it. It's a pity.

Ew. That does not make sense to me. I can almost understand how "protagonist" (for lack of a better term) historical figures may have a polarizing effect, why one person may honestly hate Danton or Collot, but the royal children tended to be acted upon rather than acting. How you one hate them?

Then again, it might not be that Lever hates Antoinette's children but rather hates Antoinette. And what better way to elicit agreement from her readers than to make Antoinette a derelict mother?

Great. I thought this book was just going to be another Harlequin romance garbed in a historical cover. Now it's starting to seem like the book is dishonestly concocted in order to drive home some political thesis.

I guess I have to read it for myself to find out, but this doesn't bode well...

Lever also seems to support the various statements made by contemporaries and the gossip going around at Versailles as fact. It is not conclusive evidence. There were many rumors going about. And people probably came to their own conclusions because they already suspected a love between the two.

The nature of the relationship between the Queen and Fersen was a hot topic then, as it is now, but I would not cite it as evidence. I wonder why those rumors persisted so...

The nature of the relationship between the Queen and Fersen was a hot topic then, as it is now, but I would not cite it as evidence. I wonder why those rumors persisted so...

Whoa, whoa, whoa wait hold up whoa. Whoa. Levers reports contemporary rumors of a romance between Fersen and Antoinette? I had always thought that one of the primary flaws of the "Fersen/Antoinette" romance was that there was no contemporary speculation. What does Lever pull? [Yeah, it's been over a year and I still haven't read her. Sue me again.]

Haha! I won't sue you

She references comments made by some ambassadors and people like Saint Priest. She doesn't say specifics but I have heard other scholars point to comments by contemporaries.

I've read some of these supposed quotes as well. Still not convincing. Yes that is one of the flaws with the Fersen myth. It's only based off of speculation and off-hand remarks.

I know Georgiana of Devonshire and her friends (Elizabeth Foster and the Duke of Dorset) spread rumors of the Queen and Fersen (and they were also acquainted with Fersen) but most of what they say isn't reliable anyway and they liked to gossip.

The only thing I think we can be certain of is that Fersen was in love with the Queen and they were close. I cannot imagine there was any sexual relationship between the two for reasons I have stated elsewhere. What's interesting to me however is that while proponents say Fersen was discreet, he also helped spread some of the rumors himself by exaggerating his relationship with the Queen and in some cases altering the correspondence between them to make it more personal.

Kaitlyn Lauren wrote:She references comments made by some ambassadors and people like Saint Priest. She doesn't say specifics but I have heard other scholars point to comments by contemporaries.

I've read some of these supposed quotes as well. Still not convincing. Yes that is one of the flaws with the Fersen myth. It's only based off of speculation and off-hand remarks.

I know Georgiana of Devonshire and her friends (Elizabeth Foster and the Duke of Dorset) spread rumors of the Queen and Fersen (and they were also acquainted with Fersen) but most of what they say isn't reliable anyway and they liked to gossip.

Then Lever is totally wrong. There were no ambassadors, only the Swedish ambassador who reported about Fersen, because it was his job. He also didn't write about a love affair, only about the fact that the Queen likes Fersen, and her eyes were full of tears when she heard that he goes to America to fight. If people interpret it as a sign of The One And Only Love, they can do it. For me, it means that the Queen liked Fersen and she didn't want her new friend to die at the battlefield, which is a totally understandable reaction.

And who knows if Georgiana and Bess spread rumors about the Queen and Fersen? The cited source for it is Georgiana's daughter who said that Fersen (Bess' acquintance) is possibly the Queen's lover. But talking about such things in a family circle doesn't mean that Bess, Georgiana or her daughter were gossiped that as a rumor. Those who REALLY, documentedly spread rumors about the Queen, like Orléans, Provence or La Motte, never said she was in love with Fersen. They shipped her with Artois or female courtiers. Then, the Revolution propaganda (Hébert, most of all) treated Antoinette as a monster who is not only lesbian and nymphomaniac, but pedophile. But no Fersen at all, again.

So if Lever says that there was a love affair because some of Fersen's acquintances believed in it, then I can say that Antoinette was a real pedophile because Hébert believed in it. Her admirers (not Lever personally, but those who read her works) don't want to see her as a pedophile, that's why they are sure that Hébert was a liar, but they do want to see her as a woman in love with some handsome soldier, so Saint-Priest and co. are reliable sources for them. Isn't it problematic?

Absolutely agreed!

Yes, to my knowledge, most people at Versailles imagined she was sleeping with Artois or Polignac. Fersen is not mentioned very often and doesn't appear in the pornagraphic pamphlets that were circulated.

I believe Lever is wrong. She, like Fraser, is a romantic and likes to imagine Antoinette had this passionate love affair with a dashing Swede because she was saddled with an "unattractive" husband. Yes, poor Marie Antoinette. It must have been horrible to have a man who loved you and was faithful to you for a husband. Wouldn't we all have preferred Fersen and slept with him.

These contemporaries that do mention it are only speculating as I said earlier. And I still think the people in Fersen's circle and around Europe (as has been claimed) only liked to believe it and gossip about it. There's still no compelling evidence despite what Lever wants to believe.

The greatest piece of "evidence" is apparently word of mouth, censored documents, Fersen's own actions and writing (mainly to his sister Sophie but that only speaks of his attraction to the Queen, not her own to him), and a Swedish stove that was supposedly installed at Versailles. As if MA would have been so bold as to host a lover so near to her apartments. If he was there it had to have been an innocent gesture. And I'm convinced that Fersen wasn't the "sole of discretion" and liked to brag a little about the "relationship" himself.