Right now I'm reading the novel Petticoat Government by Baroness Emma Orczy. It illustrates how the French aristocracy traded favors to wield important government positions. One theme of the novel suggests that Orczy wished her English readers to understand the level of government corruption that led to the French Revolution.
A chief figure in the novel is Madame de Pompadour. Although of humble origins, she rose to prominence as a favored mistress of King Louis XV. She used her influence to go on such an elaborate spending spree that the parliament instituted a Ministry of Finance. As the court traded on favors back then, the young husband of the Prime Minister's daughter was appointed the French Finance Minister.
While he initially viewed himself as unqualified for such an exalted position, the young husband finds that wielding the most powerful government position in France agrees with him. He welcomes groups of petitioners to his bedchamber in the Palace of Versailles, and entertains their ideas and suggestions from his throne-like bed. Orczy sees the women as largely wielding the real power in French society back then. So while the husband listens to their plans and pleas, it is his wife, the Prime Minister's daughter, who actually decides how to spend, or check, the government's income.
On one occasion, the secretary to the Finance Minister tells a supplicant that he holds no qualifications for entry. But when the young man tells the secretary that he's engaged to his daughter's friend, he is granted immediate access to the exalted chamber.
On this same August 13, 1746, he succeeded in being present at the petit lever of M. le Controleur-General des Finances. Once within the secret precincts of the bedchamber he, like so many other petitioners and courtiers, was duly confronted by the stony stare of M. Achielle, and found himself face to face with an enormous bedstead of delicately painted satinwood and ormolu mounts, draped with heavy azure silk curtains which hung down from a gilded baldachin, the whole a masterpiece of the furniture-maker's art.
Baroness Emma Orczy, Petticoat Government, 1910.
Another theme of the novel is the French aristocracy's love of chocolate. People in important government positions have access to chocolate, which is then not sold in bars, or an ingredient for desserts, but seen as the rich man's drink. Favors are traded, and access granted, because of people close to the servants who bring and mix the hot cocoa. Earlier in the novel, the Finance Minister's secretary wins his position because his daughter brings hot chocolate to a highly-placed official each morning. Of course, the young Finance Minister finds that his new schedule of drinking a cup of hot chocolate each morning agrees with him.
When the young supplicant, who is engaged to the friend of the secretary's daughter, enters the Finance Minister's bedchamber, these are his first impressions:
The scent of chocolate filled his nostrils, and he vaguely saw a good-looking man reclining under a coverlet of magnificent Venetian lace, and listening placidly to what was obviously a very amusing tale related to him from well-roughed lips. From the billowy satins and laces of the couch a delicate hand was waved toward him as he attempted to pay his respects to the most powerful man in France...
Earlier this month, I enjoyed discovering the rich history of chocolate in Britain, which was celebrated in Norwich Cathedral by converting a large brass mixing bowl from a chocolate factory into a baptismal font. Now, through British-Hungarian author Baroness Emma Orczy, I'm learning that chocolate played a role in bringing down the government of France in the 18th Century. Oh, for the love of chocolate!
Dragon Dave
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