I was intrigued by the strong-willed, highly intelligent Madame de Pompadour in the Doctor Who ep "Girl in the Fireplace." After reading this biography, I can see that the episode got two details right: she was nicknamed Reinette as a child, and upon her death (at age 42!) her lover King Louis XV watched the carriage bearing away her body in the rain from a balcony. Unfortunately, her character was a bit less impressive in reality than in fiction, at least according to Algrant. She was beautiful, poised, and magnificently self-possessed, with a gift for social manipulation. But her letters make it clear that she demanded adoration from all. As Algrant says, "...she measured everyone in relation to their devotion to her, their loyalty, their sense of obligation. Men and women had to profess their love for her, and only her, and then she would be generous and indulgent...She believed she acted for the good of the state. But in reality, she was unable to rise above games of intrigue and struggles for power." She promoted those who flattered her and destroyed those who did not--all regardless of merit. This tendency, which echoed that of France's other powerbrokers, was to the extreme detriment to France itself. The king was uninvolved in matters of state, the councils and parlements all busy fighting amongst themselves. The Seven Years War was incredibly mismanaged: generals were continually coming and going, according to the whims of Versailles with no accounting for actual martial ability or experience; meanwhile, the army had run out of money while the king persisted in sumptuous building projects. In the end, the war ended to the shame of France and Pompadour died of TB, her reputation slandered throughout Paris. ( )

I was interested to read more about Madame de Pompadour (Louis XV's mistress and an ambitious member of the mid-18th century Parisian bourgeoisie who eventually became the most politically influential woman in France) after I read Voltaire's Zadig, which is dedicated to the marquise and filled with allusions to the religious and political upheavals of the day. Luckily my interest was easily sated since I bought a copy of Christine Pevitt Algrant's Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France (2002) four or five years ago and it has been sitting patiently on my bookshelf ever since.

Algrant's book is a very readable and well-researched life of this interesting, ambitious and flawed woman who became a repository for the disgust and frustration of the French people for the royal family two generations before the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette (who was married to Louis XV's grandson). The last quarter of the book gets a little bogged down in battles and nobles and bureaucratic intrigue, but that is more history's fault than Algrant's. Definitely worth reading.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/08/madame-de-pompadour-mistress-of-france.htm... ] ( )