Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2: Hello, this is Danish Schwartz and this is a very
Speaker 2: special episode of Noble Blood because I am joined by
Speaker 2: my very good friend, the incredibly talented, truly brilliant writer
Speaker 2: Jennifer Wright. Dana, I am so happy to be here. Jennifer,
Speaker 2: you are just an incredible history writer. You've written a
Speaker 2: few of my favorite books, get Well Soon, which is
Speaker 2: a book about.
Speaker 3: History's worst plagues and the heroes that fought.
Speaker 2: Really, I was going to say a very topical pre
Speaker 2: pandemic subject.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in retrospect, I should not have leaked the Wuhan virus. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was too much viral marketing. Yeah, in my part, I.
Speaker 2: Was going to say, but it did probably boost book sales.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, just to be clear that that was a joke.
Speaker 3: That's not how anyhing actually happened.
Speaker 2: Jennifer is a little human being who is not involved
Speaker 2: in anything COVID related. You wrote the book It ended Badly,
Speaker 2: thirteen of the worst historical breakups. Yes, one of my
Speaker 2: favorite books because it covers one of my favorite historical couples.
Speaker 2: Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, I remember years ago talking
Speaker 3: about Carolyn Lamb chopping off for pubic hair and sending
Speaker 3: it to Lord Byron to try to win him back.
Speaker 2: It's that move. What I relate to so profoundly is
Speaker 2: when you're so in love with someone who clearly is
Speaker 2: not interested, but you're like, you keep having to up
Speaker 2: the stakes to get their attention.
Speaker 3: You've got to go for broke. You've got to chop
Speaker 3: off all your pubic hair and send it to them
Speaker 3: in the mail.
Speaker 2: It's the equivalent. If I could show you some of
Speaker 2: the emails I wrote to like a boy when I
Speaker 2: was like twenty two, stopped responding to my text Like,
Speaker 2: some of the emails that I wrote are just like
Speaker 2: I never want to see them again. I hope that
Speaker 2: they are the equivalent of pubic hair. Oh.
Speaker 3: I wrote like multi thousand word emails to people i'd
Speaker 3: just broken up with, just trying to like break down
Speaker 3: every part of our relationship but also get back together.
Speaker 3: Why did I think that would work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's always the secret is they want a well
Speaker 2: written email.
Speaker 3: That's what they want, A really long email.
Speaker 2: That is the equivalent. But I'm so excited. Your most
Speaker 2: recent book is Madame Marstelle, and it's a story that,
Speaker 2: to be totally honest, I had no idea what it
Speaker 2: was who she was until I started talking.
Speaker 3: Well, that is because I think she has been very
Speaker 3: deliberately written out of history. She was a very successful
Speaker 3: female abortionist operating in mid nineteenth century America, and when
Speaker 3: she started performing abortions in the eighteen thirties, it was
Speaker 3: still classified as a misdemeanor if you performed the abortion
Speaker 3: before the fourth or fifth month, and by the end
Speaker 3: of Madame Marstelle's life in the eighteen seventies, the Comstock
Speaker 3: Acted passed and the Comstock Act forbade sending anything obscene
Speaker 3: through the mail, which included say, written descriptions of birth
Speaker 3: control abortion, to say nothing of actually sending birth control
Speaker 3: medication through the mail. And sadly, that is something we
Speaker 3: are seeing revive now today.
Speaker 2: Another sadly topical book. You're like the history, Cassandra at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I swear the next one is just going to
Speaker 3: be about parties or something like. It's gonna be about
Speaker 3: how everybody is nice and gets along.
Speaker 2: It would be so nice, can you I know, we're
Speaker 2: going to move on to the subject of the main
Speaker 2: subject of the podcast, which is a fascinating figure of
Speaker 2: the French Versailles culture. But can you tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about Madame Morstelle, even though she's not a noble.
Speaker 3: You can tell everything about Madam Moistelle. There is indeed
Speaker 3: a whole book about it. But you know, Madamistelle began
Speaker 3: her life in written She was born antrou in eighteen
Speaker 3: twelve in Painswick, England, and she came from a very large,
Speaker 3: very poor family. She was a mate of all work
Speaker 3: for a butcher, which meant that she would have been
Speaker 3: doing pretty back breaking work, doing things like fetching any
Speaker 3: water from the well and dumping out the chamber pots,
Speaker 3: and beating all the rugs to make sure they were clean,
Speaker 3: and cleaning out the fireplaces. And that was also a
Speaker 3: time where if you were a maid, you were open
Speaker 3: to a horrifying number of sexual advances from any man
Speaker 3: in the house. Jonathan Swift Actuley wrote advice to maids,
Speaker 3: saying that you have to beware of the eldest son,
Speaker 3: because you're going to get nothing from him but a
Speaker 3: big belly in the clap at least you can get
Speaker 3: money from the master.
Speaker 2: Of the house.
Speaker 3: So I think that may have been one of the
Speaker 3: reasons that Madame Ristelle always worked on a sliding scale
Speaker 3: when she charged people later, and why she tended to
Speaker 3: charge servants less. And in when she was sixteen, she
Speaker 3: married a taylor. The tailor was unfortunately an alcoholic.
Speaker 2: Is this where she got the name Restelle?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, the tailor was unfortunately an alcoholic, and she
Speaker 3: took over his work very quickly. And this is a
Speaker 3: running trend in made Moistelle's life. She kind of meets
Speaker 3: a man, sees how he does his job, and then
Speaker 3: figures out how to do it better. Ye, but she
Speaker 3: convinced him to move with their newborn daughter to America
Speaker 3: so they could become rich. Then she gets to the
Speaker 3: Lower East Side, her alcoholic husband dies almost immediately and
Speaker 3: she is now a single mother on the Lower East
Speaker 3: Side of New York. If you've seen Gangs of New York,
Speaker 3: that's not accurate, but keep that picture in your mind.
Speaker 3: That's where Madame Ristelle is.
Speaker 2: And I remember a detail in your book that seamstresses
Speaker 2: was like they were literally a down diamond.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it made me understand I've read so many
Speaker 3: novels from this period where the main character will be like,
Speaker 3: I have thousands of dollars of debts to my dressmaker,
Speaker 3: and I've always thought them, Why is your dressmaker still
Speaker 3: making you dresses? She should have cut you off ages ago.
Speaker 3: It's because there are so many of them that you
Speaker 3: have to operate on even the hope of payment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's a time.
Speaker 3: A prostitution is everywhere because working in a factory means
Speaker 3: working sixteen hour days, and if you have a child,
Speaker 3: then you don't have enough money for childcare. The factory
Speaker 3: doesn't pay enough. Women would drug their children with laud
Speaker 3: of them so they would sleep while they were at work.
Speaker 3: In one especially horrifying Dickensian note that I found, there
Speaker 3: was a woman who was a single mother worked in
Speaker 3: a factory, had a four year old and a newborn,
Speaker 3: and she told the four year old to take care
Speaker 3: of the newborn while she was at work. And when
Speaker 3: she came back, the four year old and if you
Speaker 3: have a toddler, you can imagine how proudly the four
Speaker 3: year old would say this, said that the baby had
Speaker 3: been crying but they had stopped him, and the mother
Speaker 3: praised him, and then she went to see the baby
Speaker 3: and he had stopped him by beating him over the
Speaker 3: head with a hammer until he died. Oh so, so
Speaker 3: this was a terrible dime to be a single mother
Speaker 3: or have an unplanned pregnancy of any kind. And Madame
Speaker 3: Restelle really might have fallen into this situation very easily.
Speaker 3: But she lived down the street from a pill compounder
Speaker 3: named doctor Evans, and doctor Evans provided all manner of pills.
Speaker 3: There was no oversight. You could smash any herbs together
Speaker 3: and say this will cure your headaches, or this it
Speaker 3: might give it a shop. What have you got to lose?
Speaker 3: And he probably also provided birth control pills. But Madame
Speaker 3: Rostelle started making what must have been incredibly effective birth
Speaker 3: control pills. She was using ingredients like tansy oil and
Speaker 3: turpentine and mixing them together. And those are unbelievably dangerous ingredients.
Speaker 3: You should never ever use. Some although paint center in
Speaker 3: your like paint centner. Yes, unfortunately, they still do get used.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies, doctor said turpentine is a harrowing
Speaker 3: motif into it yourself abortions.
Speaker 2: So these are things that will work.
Speaker 3: They will just also kill their female patient. And Madame
Speaker 3: Roselle is pretty remarkable in that she mixed them together
Speaker 3: without killing people's. People in the neighborhood started saying that
Speaker 3: they had had five abortions this way and they were
Speaker 3: coming back for more. She could also perform surgical abortions
Speaker 3: with a sharpened piece of whalebone. Now if her hand slipped,
Speaker 3: she could punch her a woman's bladder and kill her.
Speaker 3: Another amazing thing is that, despite a lot of people
Speaker 3: trying very hard to prove that Madame Ristelle was killing people,
Speaker 3: there are no records that indicate that she ever killed
Speaker 3: a patient. Oh, so Restelle must have had a very
Speaker 3: steady hand and a real genius for mixing ingredients. Around
Speaker 3: this time she met her second husband, Charles Lowman, who
Speaker 3: was a printer, and he was really familiar with the
Speaker 3: bombastic personalities that advertised in newspapers, and together they came
Speaker 3: up with this persona of Madame Rostelle, and they talked
Speaker 3: about how she was and her grandmother was a famous
Speaker 3: mid wife, and she had been training in Paris and
Speaker 3: bringing her skills to America. And this was a time
Speaker 3: when medical innovation was happening in Paris. In a way
Speaker 3: it wasn't in America. So this was a great persona
Speaker 3: to craft. It's glamorous, man, it's glamorous.
Speaker 2: If anyone came and said that her grandma was a
Speaker 2: famous parish and his.
Speaker 3: Wife, exactly, it sounds sexy too. People thought that French
Speaker 3: people were more sexually sophisticated in addition to having better
Speaker 3: medical skills. So that's how this persona of Madame Riistelle
Speaker 3: was born.
Speaker 2: And someone not rich people, doctor Muter. This is my
Speaker 2: my anatomy research shelf down there. Doctor Mutter, who was
Speaker 2: has If you've been to Philadelphia, there's a Muter music.
Speaker 2: I'm dying to go. I mean too, we should go
Speaker 2: together to go girls. He trained for in French surgeries.
Speaker 2: That's where all the surgery was was.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yes, go to France. One of the reasons that
Speaker 3: they drove female midwives out of business in America is
Speaker 3: because they started trying to open up schools for doctors
Speaker 3: in America. But they were terrible. You couldn't walk the
Speaker 3: hospitals the way you could in France. So they would
Speaker 3: rent out a lecture hall, charge young men like fifty
Speaker 3: dollars and in six months if you showed up to
Speaker 3: most of the classes where you would never see an
Speaker 3: actual patient. Usually there was just like a skeleton or
Speaker 3: a box of bones. At the end, you got your diploma.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: And as a result, it's estimated that in the mid
Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds there were suddenly four times as many doctors
Speaker 3: as pounds needed, and they had to find a new
Speaker 3: source of income, and that is one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that they started pushing in on midwives trade.
Speaker 2: Wow, And I do love I think like the interest
Speaker 2: of like when midwiffery became obcentrics and like more male
Speaker 2: dominated doctors is fascinating to me because I love the
Speaker 2: story of how Princess Charlotte of Wales in the early
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, who's a character in Immortality, but she in
Speaker 2: real life was pregnant and it was very fashionable to
Speaker 2: have a male doctor. At this time.
Speaker 3: They were worse, you know, they were there right there, died.
Speaker 3: There was an average of one us in two hundred
Speaker 3: was a female midwife in this period, and it was
Speaker 3: ten to twenty times higher if you had a male doctor.
Speaker 3: They were so much worse.
Speaker 2: They were so much worse, and she died and it
Speaker 2: was just considered fashionable to have a male doctor because
Speaker 2: she was a princess. She had to do it. Yep.
Speaker 2: And she died and it was bad yep.
Speaker 3: And the American Medical Society made such a big deal
Speaker 3: out of how midwives are barbaric relics, and of course
Speaker 3: midwives hands were actually clean, whereas doctors were digging them
Speaker 3: into a corpse and then pulling them out and then
Speaker 3: sticking them into a woman's birth canal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would treat an infected abscess and then be
Speaker 2: like perfect, but inside of it, oh my gosh, the
Speaker 2: one that killed me the most. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I know we have to talk about nobility because this
Speaker 3: is noble blood.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 3: But after Ignat Similfies, oh God bless him, God may
Speaker 3: he rest in peace. But after Ignacemolies suggested that maybe
Speaker 3: the reason so many women are dying are because doctors
Speaker 3: need to wash their hands. And by the way he
Speaker 3: tested this, he found out that it worked. He could
Speaker 3: bring the death rate for female patients down on par
Speaker 3: with mid.
Speaker 2: Talk and Charles Miggs replied.
Speaker 3: That this was absurd because quote unquote, doctors are gentlemen,
Speaker 3: and gentlemen have clean hands.
Speaker 2: It's the ego on them. I'm so furious about it.
Speaker 3: I'm furious two hundred years later about.
Speaker 2: How many women had unnecessary death.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well, speaking of one day for bird control
Speaker 3: in America, you got.
Speaker 2: Luckily that it's not something we need to deal with anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But if we're talking about women in positions of power
Speaker 2: that I think sometimes people think are anachronistic, like women
Speaker 2: didn't have any power or influence in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite figures, and I think a figure
Speaker 2: that you love is Madame de Pompadour.
Speaker 3: I am so happy to talk about her. No one
Speaker 3: as the pretty prime Minister at the Court of Versailles.
Speaker 2: So for someone who has no idea who she is
Speaker 2: outside perhaps of a single Doctor Who episode, there.
Speaker 3: Is a Doctor Who episode, really good one. It's the
Speaker 3: only one I've seen.
Speaker 2: It's a good one. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah, it's sweet.
Speaker 3: I don't like the robots.
Speaker 2: I like where it's just about Madame Pompadour. That is
Speaker 2: also kind of my I I've watched a little bit
Speaker 2: more Doctor Who. I've fallen off a little bit. I
Speaker 2: like when it's like historical characters and fine, I like.
Speaker 3: When they meet Vincent Bengo. Yeah, I like it if
Speaker 3: it was just some people meeting Vincent, I love.
Speaker 2: I love when they just meet historical figures too. I
Speaker 2: don't need a distant planet. No, I don't.
Speaker 3: I sorry. I know people love it. It's a good show.
Speaker 3: I get it. I know it's very special to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a wonderful Madame de Pompadoor episode. But
Speaker 2: for people who maybe have only seen that episode or nothing,
Speaker 2: who was the pretty frid Minister?
Speaker 3: The pretty friend minister was Louis the fifteenth Mistress, and
Speaker 3: she was one of the most famous mistresses of this
Speaker 3: era because she was the mistress at Versailles for about
Speaker 3: twenty years.
Speaker 2: When you say mistress you mean the official position, I.
Speaker 3: Mean the official mistress.
Speaker 2: Yes, for context, in case you're less familiar. Mistress in
Speaker 2: this case doesn't just mean, you know, was having a
Speaker 2: sexual relationship with a king. Mistress was a court position.
Speaker 3: Mistress was a court position, and it was a very
Speaker 3: important court position. The queen was really just there to
Speaker 3: provide children. Louis the fifteenth had a very lovely wife,
Speaker 3: Queen Marie Lesinka. She produced children, but she was also
Speaker 3: very religious. She was very retiring. She did gamble, but
Speaker 3: she played a game but nobody liked so she had
Speaker 3: a hard time getting people to play her very old
Speaker 3: fashioned gambling game.
Speaker 2: Ian doesn't like to play scrabble with me because I
Speaker 2: always beat him.
Speaker 3: Oh hurtful. I know Daniel and I to play scrabble
Speaker 3: every night. That sounds so nice. Do we watch a movie,
Speaker 3: we play scrabble?
Speaker 2: I love I would love that.
Speaker 3: It's a lovely way to end the desk.
Speaker 2: Ian has taken to refusing to play scrabble with me
Speaker 2: because I'll be like a hundred points up and have
Speaker 2: done with this.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you've got to know all the two
Speaker 3: letters got in za key gi like those the winners.
Speaker 2: Guys, Well that's it. I play for strategy. He plays
Speaker 2: for showman QT. Yeah yeah, work that in.
Speaker 3: But anyhow, Queen Marie out there trying to get people
Speaker 3: to play Lettlers of Katan with her every night. And uh,
Speaker 3: Louis the fifteen that had a bit of a more
Speaker 3: bomb vivent personality. He was prone to boredom, but he
Speaker 3: was also somebody who really enjoyed consistency. I think something
Speaker 3: that you see with Louis the Fifteenth is that Madame
Speaker 3: Pompadour essentially became his wife.
Speaker 2: I mean, the mistress for twenty years and then like
Speaker 2: friend the king that years after.
Speaker 3: Fascinating to me, So can we begin with the beginning
Speaker 3: of her life? Of course, Madame Pompadour, and it's something
Speaker 3: that differed her a lot from other royal mistresses was
Speaker 3: born to the bourgeois.
Speaker 2: Class, so she was wealthy but not noble.
Speaker 3: She was wealthy but not noble. Her father was a
Speaker 3: financier who had been exiled for fraud. Her mother had
Speaker 3: a sparkling personality, which, reading between the lines on Saint
Speaker 3: Nancy Medford's biography of Madame Pompadour, meant that her mother
Speaker 3: was sleeping around a lot. A lot of people felt
Speaker 3: that they could not receive Madame Pompadour's mother, but everybody
Speaker 3: loved Madame Pompadour pretty much from birth. Her mother's special
Speaker 3: friend helped finance her education. She spent two years with nuns,
Speaker 3: who said that she charmed everyone at the abbey. She
Speaker 3: was just such a delight. And then she returned home
Speaker 3: and she was educated in all the arts of the day,
Speaker 3: in art, in dancing, in playing music. She was a
Speaker 3: successful harpist, so she was this delightful person and everybody
Speaker 3: was also really nice to her, which is one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that I really enjoyed reading her story, because
Speaker 3: usually you read stories about these people and it will
Speaker 3: be a story about like she was first raped by
Speaker 3: her stepfather at the age of seven. After that, her
Speaker 3: mother died of smallpox, and Mina Popadour is just hanging
Speaker 3: out with her somewhat licentious, extended family, plenty of money,
Speaker 3: playing the harp. Everybody loves her, Everybody says she's great.
Speaker 3: Her mother's special friend like doats on her and talks
Speaker 3: about how wonderful she is. And when she was about ten,
Speaker 3: her mother took her to visit a fortune teller and
Speaker 3: the fortune teller told her that she was not going
Speaker 3: to be queen, but almost queen.
Speaker 2: She freaking nailed it. She nailed it.
Speaker 3: Medame Pompadour sent her money much later life for nailing
Speaker 3: it so well, and everyone in her family started calling
Speaker 3: her Raynette, which means little Queen, and Madame Pompadour fully
Speaker 3: fully believed this.
Speaker 2: Reynette is a great name for a cat.
Speaker 3: It is, yeah, she fully believed that, all right, I
Speaker 3: am going to be the royal mistress, we are going
Speaker 3: to do it, and her family was kind of on
Speaker 3: board with that. It kind of seemed like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: you're going to be an astronaut, do it. Why not
Speaker 3: do it now. At the time, bourgeois women weren't royal mistresses.
Speaker 3: The king would select somebody from court, and court had
Speaker 3: become unbelievably important under the reign of Louis fourteen Louis
Speaker 3: the fourteenth, because nobles had been feuding so much and
Speaker 3: for so long that Louis fourteenth Louis the fourteenth really
Speaker 3: figured out, all right, you keep them all at court,
Speaker 3: you give them an less round of plays, sure, and
Speaker 3: you gamify every aspect of their lives. There was a
Speaker 3: special ballot court for women who had a good cook.
Speaker 3: So I guarantee you if there were like that many
Speaker 3: little things I could win on as somebody who thinks
Speaker 3: of themselves as only mildly competitive, I would need to
Speaker 3: have the best cook. It would become like a dominating
Speaker 3: thought that I had on a day to day basis.
Speaker 3: So everybody was gathered at court and it was an
Speaker 3: incredibly ritualized society. It was a society where you know,
Speaker 3: every tiny move could be interpreted the wrong way. And
Speaker 3: it was really thought that if you just grew up
Speaker 3: in wealthy Parussian society, you could never understand the rules
Speaker 3: of this world.
Speaker 2: But of Madame.
Speaker 3: Pompadour, you know, married a very nice, wealthy man, her
Speaker 3: mother's I don't want to say stepfather, I keep calling
Speaker 3: him a special friend.
Speaker 2: Friend.
Speaker 3: Her mother's special friend helped arrange the marriage, and it
Speaker 3: was a young man who had not wanted to marry.
Speaker 3: He definitely didn't like the idea of marrying this woman
Speaker 3: who had kind of a vaguely scandalous family, and supposedly
Speaker 3: the first day he met her, he fell completely in
Speaker 3: love with her. And this was actually really hard for
Speaker 3: Madame Pompadour, because she made it clear to him that
Speaker 3: she was going to leave him when she got an
Speaker 3: opportunity to sleep with the king. And she wrote about
Speaker 3: how actually it's very hard to be the beloved in
Speaker 3: a relationship with somebody that you are not in love with.
Speaker 3: Because and I think that's interesting. We don't we hear
Speaker 3: a lot about the pain of unrequited love, but we
Speaker 3: don't hear about the kind of day to day discomfort
Speaker 3: of being the object of unrequited love, especially when you
Speaker 3: are in a marriage with that person.
Speaker 2: Very sweet that she let him know up friends.
Speaker 3: I think he thought she was joking. I think he
Speaker 3: did not think that this was ever actually.
Speaker 2: Going to happen. He's like, okay, sweetheart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, yes, when you meet an astronaut. Yes,
Speaker 3: it was like I am okay house with George Clooney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had a hall pass liston.
Speaker 3: It was like Brad Pitt the King King, Yah perfectly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So her poor husband desperately in love with her but
Speaker 3: providing a very nice life for her, at which point
Speaker 3: she gets to start a salon. She becomes friends with
Speaker 3: Voltaire and Diderot and other thinkers of the day, and
Speaker 3: she is going to help them a lot once she's
Speaker 3: at court. And one of the big advantages of her
Speaker 3: marriage is her husband has a hunting lunch that is
Speaker 3: near where the king likes to hunt. So while the
Speaker 3: King is hunting, Meda and Pompadour does this cool thing
Speaker 3: where she drives by in a beautiful pink dress in
Speaker 3: a blue carriage or a blue dress in a pink carriage,
Speaker 3: and the king to send her some venison, of course,
Speaker 3: and also an invitation to a masked ball at the
Speaker 3: court of their side.
Speaker 2: So you know your dress and carriage made an impression.
Speaker 2: When you get venison and a party invite, you do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Madame Pompadour goes to this ball and it's a
Speaker 3: ball where Louis the fifteenth has dressed up as a
Speaker 3: U Tree along with eight of his male friends because
Speaker 3: he doesn't want people to immediately know who he is,
Speaker 3: and everybody is very invested in figuring out who the
Speaker 3: king is at a mass ball that is part of
Speaker 3: the fund. But he's one of eight U Trees. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Madame Pompadour dressed as Diana the Huntress, yeah, as a
Speaker 3: little reminder of her hunting excursions. And they sleep together
Speaker 3: for the first time on that night, and Madame Pompadour
Speaker 3: essentially never leaves.
Speaker 2: She figured out which U Tree he was, Oh, he revealed.
Speaker 3: It to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3: He was in.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I do think.
Speaker 3: Is sad is her husband uncharacteristically wrote her this letter
Speaker 3: just begging her to come back, saying that all was forgiven,
Speaker 3: like he didn't even care if she was sleeping with
Speaker 3: other people.
Speaker 2: Just come back.
Speaker 3: And she showed up to Louis the fifteenth like ha, ha,
Speaker 3: isn't this funny? And Louis the fifteenths got really serious
Speaker 3: and said, your husband seems like he's a very decent man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he was a very decent man.
Speaker 3: Now, Louis the fifteenth says, also, I'm sure you've talked
Speaker 3: about him on Noble Blood, but he ends up being
Speaker 3: a king that I have a lot of tenderness for.
Speaker 2: He is in case. I mean, we haven't covered him
Speaker 2: specifically on Noah Bleass. We've covered tangents, but he is
Speaker 2: Louis the sixteenth aka Marie Antoinette's husband's grandfather.
Speaker 3: And he was the great grandson of Louis the fourteenth,
Speaker 3: so he was never expected to be king except when
Speaker 3: he was five, he's entire family died of measles, and
Speaker 3: he was saved by his governess, who sequestered him away.
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons that was important was not
Speaker 3: just because measles can kill you, thank God for vaccines,
Speaker 3: but because the doctors were letting blood out of all
Speaker 3: his brothers, and they let out so much blood that
Speaker 3: it worn't their health and killed them. So his governess
Speaker 3: probably saved his life by hiding him away. But when
Speaker 3: he emerged, his entire family was dead and he was
Speaker 3: going to be the new king of France. And one
Speaker 3: of the things I like about Louis fifteenth is that
Speaker 3: it's so clear that he worked so hard Louis the fourteenth.
Speaker 3: I think it's hard to argue that Louis the fourteenth
Speaker 3: was at least a short term genius.
Speaker 2: Yes, strategy, strategy genius.
Speaker 3: I think ultimately the notion of keeping every single noble
Speaker 3: at court destroyed the French countryside, and I think that
Speaker 3: was already happening by Louis the fifteenth reign. People thought
Speaker 3: that being exiled from Versailles was a fate as bad
Speaker 3: as death. Yeah, there was one noble woman whose husband
Speaker 3: came to her to reveal that they were being exiled
Speaker 3: back to their massive, beautiful estate in the country, and
Speaker 3: she started crying as soon as she saw him, and
Speaker 3: she explained that that was because from the look on
Speaker 3: his face, she assumed that their son had died. So
Speaker 3: it was very, very bad to have to leave Versailles.
Speaker 3: But that did mean that the farmlands were not being
Speaker 3: taken care of in France. People were starting to starve
Speaker 3: to death because nothing was being farmed.
Speaker 2: You need a leader there, You need.
Speaker 3: Somebody there just kind of reminding people that they do
Speaker 3: have to farm. Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously you don't
Speaker 3: actually need that. In modern society, democracy is the way
Speaker 3: to go. Please don't let's return.
Speaker 2: Any of this.
Speaker 3: But at the time it did not make for a
Speaker 3: fundational country side. So Louis the fifteenth did not really
Speaker 3: have any of his grandfather's short term genius. So but
Speaker 3: he started sitting in meetings from the time he was five.
Speaker 3: He would take his pet cat along with him, and
Speaker 3: he explained to everybody that his pet cat was his
Speaker 3: special advisor, and he would like whisper little notes to
Speaker 3: his cat while she was listening, and just tried really
Speaker 3: hard to keep up with it. They talk about how
Speaker 3: one of the times he started crying in one of
Speaker 3: the meetings was when they revealed to him who he
Speaker 3: was going to be married to, and he realized that
Speaker 3: he was never going to get to marry for love,
Speaker 3: and overall just like a guy who was trying pretty hard,
Speaker 3: guy trying his best, guy trying his best. One of
Speaker 3: the other facts that I've always liked about him is
Speaker 3: that there was an appointed time when the king would
Speaker 3: rise at their sih and other nobles would have the
Speaker 3: privilege of helping the king wake up in order of rain,
Speaker 3: in order of rank. Yes, yes, so it would be
Speaker 3: a very special thing to get to and the king
Speaker 3: like a towel on his face in the morning. And
Speaker 3: what Louis the fifteenth would do was he would wake
Speaker 3: up two hours before that, light his own fire, get
Speaker 3: his own room ready, try to take care of paperwork
Speaker 3: so he could get a jump on the day, then
Speaker 3: extinguish everything and pretend to go.
Speaker 2: Back to bed.
Speaker 3: And he would do the same thing late at night,
Speaker 3: where nobles would put him to bed, and then he
Speaker 3: would have to get up again. It's like, I'm so sleepy,
Speaker 3: was so great everybody night night. So I've always found
Speaker 3: that a very I guess I find hard work kind
Speaker 3: of likable pace.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing he was doing at night was slipping
Speaker 3: off to see his mistress the bud for the first
Speaker 3: seven at least seven years of his marriage. I think
Speaker 3: it was longer than seven years.
Speaker 2: I think you might have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would have.
Speaker 2: Okay, hold on, I'm going to check on Louis.
Speaker 4: The fourteenth married. Yeah, because Louis the fifteenth, Louis the fifteenth. Sorry,
Speaker 4: it's so interesting the way that that ritualized court structure
Speaker 4: forces even the people that benefits the most, which is
Speaker 4: the kings, into the most restrictive roles. It's like you
Speaker 4: have all the power, but you're still on a very
Speaker 4: limited track for what your daily existence is.
Speaker 3: So there's some debates on the number, but people estimate
Speaker 3: that for around ten years at least he was totally
Speaker 3: loyal to his wife. He married Queen.
Speaker 2: Marie, Marie with her last name and.
Speaker 3: Sisa, I'm so sorry, I said, no, it's Polish. But
Speaker 3: he married Queen Marie, tried very hard to be loyal
Speaker 3: to her.
Speaker 2: She was again.
Speaker 3: She was very religious and always trying to get people
Speaker 3: to play the eighteenth century equivalent of settlers of Katan.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like fun Marie.
Speaker 3: No, for sure, Yeah, how bad could it be? But
Speaker 3: eventually Louis the fifteenth did want somebody with a more
Speaker 3: dynamic personality, and he had a few mistresses before Madame Pompadour.
Speaker 3: But Madame Pompadour really starts bringing things to court life
Speaker 3: that nobody was bringing. She started a theater. She's friends
Speaker 3: with Voltaire and Didero and other great writers of the time.
Speaker 3: She started having special dinners for Louis the fifteenth and
Speaker 3: all of her artist friends. And it's interesting to me
Speaker 3: that Louis the fifteenth loved being seated by artists at
Speaker 3: dinner and talking to them about art, but he did
Speaker 3: not love being seated by writers. She knew they might
Speaker 3: write about him, and he did not want to drink
Speaker 3: with these people and say something that they were immediately
Speaker 3: going to write in published.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. It's also how rich people love surrounding
Speaker 2: themselves with creatives his traditionally and historically, yes, absolutely, because
Speaker 2: it's the one thing money can't buy.
Speaker 3: It is and Madame Pompadour opened up a theater at Versailles.
Speaker 3: I think it was Le Teatra dept Cabinet, and she
Speaker 3: preferred formed all of the main female roles, of course,
Speaker 3: and she but it was incredibly competent to get to
Speaker 3: act in the theater because they would have professional actors
Speaker 3: come and help the nobles. It would be like being
Speaker 3: in your high school play. But nobles would bend over
Speaker 3: backwards to get like a tiny, tiny speaking role.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds really fun.
Speaker 3: It does sound really fun. Or they would ribe Madame
Speaker 3: Pompadour's maid to get them an invitation so they could
Speaker 3: go and see one of these performances.
Speaker 2: Truly, if we were all like living at versa summer
Speaker 2: camp and there was like a play going on and
Speaker 2: like professional actors were coming in to help you and
Speaker 2: do it, like that sounds so fun. Yes.
Speaker 3: Madame Pompadoor also had this huge list of rules for
Speaker 3: rules for being in the play, and there are things
Speaker 3: like you have to make every single rehearsal, like you
Speaker 3: cannot turn down any role even if you think that
Speaker 3: role is I'm flattering, and they're taking it really seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, this.
Speaker 3: Was one of the things that started in raging the
Speaker 3: commoners of why are we paying for them to do
Speaker 3: theater summer camp at Versailles. That seems unnecessary to everyone
Speaker 3: who is increasingly facing food shortage. Yes, so that was
Speaker 3: one of the things that people immediately started getting angry
Speaker 3: about the idea of this royal mysteries is bankrupting us.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, Madame Pompadour was a huge
Speaker 3: patron of the arts, so she was patronizing the idea
Speaker 3: of china being made at Sevre's instead of getting your
Speaker 3: china from places like Germany. At the time, she was
Speaker 3: also commissioning every famous artist from this period. She's really
Speaker 3: responsible for the movement from the Baroque to the rope
Speaker 3: Coco period, And so you're going from kind of if
Speaker 3: you sort of know the difference between those periods. I'm
Speaker 3: going to oversimplify it, but this sort of dark, heavy, heavy,
Speaker 3: biblical biblical imagery to girl girl, It's it's sexy, it's fun,
Speaker 3: it contains elements of frivolity, it's more feminine. And she
Speaker 3: also made pink popular feminine color that people wanted to wear.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to embarrass myself in case this is
Speaker 2: a one of those historical misconceptions. Did the Pompadour come
Speaker 2: from her? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, So there are so many things that she was doing.
Speaker 3: She learned how to cut gemstones when she was at Versa.
Speaker 2: I I would love to be a rich person with
Speaker 2: just infinite time.
Speaker 3: She started engraving. Now, the only problem here is that
Speaker 3: Madame Pompadour was also in fairly frag file health. She
Speaker 3: had pretty much chronic bronchitis, and Louis the fifteenth was
Speaker 3: coming to her for sex up to nine times a day.
Speaker 2: Can we also say, just to point out that this
Speaker 2: like girl with a million cool hobbies. He's an artistic
Speaker 2: bohemian in ill health. Is really manic pixie drinks. Oh,
Speaker 2: she's very manic pixie gers. She might have originated it.
Speaker 2: She has bronchitis, she's coughing. She's coughing all the top.
Speaker 2: She is not in great health.
Speaker 3: And Louis the fifteenth has a massive sexual appet.
Speaker 2: Nine times a day. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, at one point she started trying to subsist on
Speaker 3: a diary of vanilla truffles and celery because she had
Speaker 3: heard that those were all things that would increase her libido.
Speaker 3: But a friend of hers fortunately told her that this
Speaker 3: is going to kill you, and it will not make
Speaker 3: you more able to have sex.
Speaker 2: Eating only those things I don't think would make me
Speaker 2: feel sexy.
Speaker 3: I mean, I like truffles, Yeah, I don't know that
Speaker 3: would be cool, eddie truffles. But she started exercising, which
Speaker 3: seemed to help a little bit. But I think somewhat
Speaker 3: fortunately for Pompadour, who could not keep.
Speaker 2: Up with this.
Speaker 3: After five years, the sexual relationship ended, but she was
Speaker 3: kept on at Versailles as a friend to the king.
Speaker 3: And I think it's very funny that when they made
Speaker 3: her this sort of new official title. She changed all
Speaker 3: of the imagery in her room from being like cupids
Speaker 3: and depictions of love to depictions of beautiful friendship. And
Speaker 3: she gave a statue to the king. But if it
Speaker 3: is a statue I'm thinking of it's a statue that
Speaker 3: represents the spirit of friendship. But the spirit of friendship
Speaker 3: has both of its breasts exposed, and she's coppying them
Speaker 3: as friends, as friends like you do with your buddies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes you show your friends pictures of your boobs
Speaker 2: to be like, how do my boobs like that?
Speaker 3: They look great? Right, See how I'm copying them for you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Around this time, Louis the fifteenth didn't ever really take
Speaker 3: on on the full time mistress. He had a hunting
Speaker 3: lodge where he would keep young women who he was
Speaker 3: having sex with, and I think it was called the
Speaker 3: Parko Serf.
Speaker 2: So it's like, he's not going to fall in love
Speaker 2: with these girls.
Speaker 3: And that was Madame Pompadour's comment at the time that
Speaker 3: she wasn't afraid that some young girl with no education
Speaker 3: was going to take him away, but she was afraid
Speaker 3: that he would fall in love with another noble lady.
Speaker 2: At the court, so better he'd be getting his physical
Speaker 2: needs met just by exact Yes.
Speaker 3: One of the things that's so interesting is that this
Speaker 3: is also very similar to what happened to the Queen.
Speaker 3: And the Queen said was Madame Pompadour, if there has
Speaker 3: to be a raw mistress, better her than any other.
Speaker 2: And I think I remember even reading that Madame de
Speaker 2: Pompadour was very nice and kind to the Queen.
Speaker 3: Oh, Madame Pompadour was thirsty for Queen's approval. She was
Speaker 3: desperate for the Queen to like her. It's so interesting
Speaker 3: because you see her handle Louis the fifteenth with the
Speaker 3: just kind of a plum like it's going well. She
Speaker 3: you know, she wants him to love her very very much.
Speaker 3: Some of her detractors said that her sickness was because
Speaker 3: keeping up an attitude of being madly in love every
Speaker 3: single day is exhausting on the human body. But she
Speaker 3: did love the king. But when it comes to the Queen,
Speaker 3: you see her just bending over her backwards to like
Speaker 3: invite the Queen to every single performance that she's having
Speaker 3: at the theater, and the Queen like kind of shows up. Sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, look, I know what's going on here.
Speaker 2: I'll be a good spool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: She was always like picking out special gifts for the queen,
Speaker 5: And the reason that she was so nice to her
Speaker 5: was because the queen was supposed.
Speaker 3: To acknowledge the royal mistress at some point, and usually
Speaker 3: queens were incredibly bitchy about this.
Speaker 2: I understand them.
Speaker 3: With when Marie Antoinette met Madame du Berry, uh, she
Speaker 3: had to say something to her and she just kind
Speaker 3: of snidely said, well, there are a lot of people
Speaker 3: at court today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at this time, Just for context, Louis the sixteenth,
Speaker 2: Marie Antoinett's husband never actually took a mistress, which is
Speaker 2: why it's sometimes. I had one professor in college actually.
Speaker 3: Couldn't get it up.
Speaker 2: Dan Well, it took it for his real sexual job.
Speaker 2: But I had a professor in college point out that
Speaker 2: arguably it damaged Marie Antoinette because there was no other
Speaker 2: woman to serve as a lightning rod for gossip and attention.
Speaker 3: And Madame Pompadour was that lightning rod for this is
Speaker 3: the woman who was bankrupting friends.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Madame de Berry was Louis the Fifteenth's next mistresses,
Speaker 2: but Marie Antoinette was just the princess. But since she
Speaker 2: outranked her, Madame de Berry couldn't even say hi unless
Speaker 2: Marienoinnette said something first. Exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when it was Madame Pompadour's time to meet
Speaker 3: Queen Marie, there was very little for them to talk
Speaker 3: about because Madame Pompadour, as everybody kept pointing out, was
Speaker 3: she didn't know anybody at court. What were they possibly
Speaker 3: going to say to each other?
Speaker 2: And the Queen really nicely.
Speaker 3: Had one friend in common with Madame Pompadour and asked
Speaker 3: if Madame Pompadour had seen that friend lately, because she'd
Speaker 3: seen her at court and she was wondering how she
Speaker 3: was doing. And Madame Pompadour, I imagine, responded about how
Speaker 3: a friend was doing, but immediately afterwards fell to her
Speaker 3: knees and said that she was so grateful that she
Speaker 3: had such a kind and gracious queen, that she was
Speaker 3: going to do anything she could in this life to
Speaker 3: make the Queen happy. And she never went back on
Speaker 3: this promise, and I honestly think it got to be
Speaker 3: a little bit much for the queen.
Speaker 2: She was the object of the unrequitted was the object
Speaker 2: of the unrequited affection.
Speaker 3: And it was a little uncomfortable for But that's very sweet.
Speaker 2: I respect that. Madame de Pompadour is like, look, I
Speaker 2: get that, this is the awkward situation. I am your
Speaker 2: just so you know I loved you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just so you know you're all my performances forever, right, bestie.
Speaker 2: I would write, if I had to be a French mistress,
Speaker 2: I would rather be friends with the queen absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 2: makes your life so much Well, the Queen was treated.
Speaker 3: Very badly by Louis the fifteenths prior mistresses, and it
Speaker 3: was probably stupid on their part because you know, you
Speaker 3: would think that because you're sleeping with the king and
Speaker 3: he loves you, you have some advantage over this like
Speaker 3: quiet religious woman who's just having children, But you don't.
Speaker 2: She's seen them come and go. She's seen them come
Speaker 2: and go. So what happened towards the end of Madame
Speaker 2: de Pompador's.
Speaker 3: Life, Oh, unfortunately, Madame Pompadour was probably very responsible for
Speaker 3: the Seven Years War, which was a disastrous war.
Speaker 2: Oh no, France.
Speaker 3: And it may be apocryphal, but Madame Pompadour became very
Speaker 3: good friends with Austrian diplomats and sort of forged an
Speaker 3: alliance between France and Austria.
Speaker 2: Where's the Prime Minister things?
Speaker 3: Yeah, which led to them engaging against Britain and Prussia
Speaker 3: in the Seven Years War and just getting smashed. But
Speaker 3: they say that one of the reasons that she personally
Speaker 3: hated Prussians was because Frederick the Great referred to his
Speaker 3: dog as his Pompadour. That's mean, it is mean, it
Speaker 3: is mean. So so yeah, that's not a good enough
Speaker 3: reason to fortunate alize with another country and then go
Speaker 3: to war. No, it doesn't end well for and it
Speaker 3: does not end well for France. And then at forty two,
Speaker 3: Madame Pompadour passed away of pneumonia and Louis the fifteenth
Speaker 3: in that episode of Doctor who sees her carriage going
Speaker 3: away in the rain, but he cannot attend his funeral.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that they do not incorporate
Speaker 3: into that Doctor who is him turning around and showing
Speaker 3: his courtiers tears streaming down his face and saying, this
Speaker 3: is the only respect I am allowed to pay her.
Speaker 2: Wait, he wasn't allowed to go to her funeral?
Speaker 3: Why rules of hers I.
Speaker 2: But he's the king, you know, but she it would
Speaker 2: have been an embarrassed real yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, but she you know, she lived out her
Speaker 3: life at Versailles. I think one of the lovely things
Speaker 3: is that she and Louis the fifteenth, even if you
Speaker 3: know he's also sleeping with younger girls, towards the end
Speaker 3: of their relationship, really did have this meeting of minds.
Speaker 2: They were ethically non monogamous.
Speaker 3: They were, I mean, like many ethically non anonymous relationships,
Speaker 3: it seems like the man got to be a lot
Speaker 3: more ethically non monogamous than the woman, who was just
Speaker 3: kind of going along with this.
Speaker 2: But at least she was aware of it. She was,
Speaker 2: she was definitely aware of it.
Speaker 3: There were very cruel rumors at the time that she
Speaker 3: was orchestrating all of this.
Speaker 2: For oh yeah, that she was sort of being at
Speaker 2: madam yeah exactly, that she was procuring these young girls.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was that difficult to procure.
Speaker 2: Young women who wanted to sleep with the king your
Speaker 2: advantage and yes, power exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But they got to have like these nice little
Speaker 3: dinner parties at their home. Louis the fifteenth would make
Speaker 3: the coffee himself, they got to talk to interesting people
Speaker 3: and she got to have this very creative life where
Speaker 3: she brought a lot of art and spirit to Versailles.
Speaker 3: That is what we associate with it now.
Speaker 2: And I also I think I remember reading that she
Speaker 2: was very interested in gardening. She was, which is such
Speaker 2: a Nancy Meyer's hobby.
Speaker 3: Madame Pumpter was interested in everything. I think it's also
Speaker 3: one of the things that I'd like about her where
Speaker 3: I think now we live in this era of kind
Speaker 3: of cool girls who were just like, like, to be
Speaker 3: a sexy girl is like to never smile, and I
Speaker 3: love that Madame Pumpter thing was like today, I'm going
Speaker 3: to learn to be a gem cutter.
Speaker 2: Honestly, if there was some girl on Instagram with a
Speaker 2: cool haircut who was like carving, carving gems, carving joms,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh my god, that's so cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you are a gem carver listening to this podcast,
Speaker 2: please do you mean?
Speaker 3: I love that if you're a gem carver who's also
Speaker 3: started like a very highly ranked theater that you're forcing
Speaker 3: people to perform in, and the queen will show up
Speaker 3: for sometimes if she's not busy playing her sad card game. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I love. The thing that was about feeling about Madame
Speaker 3: Pompadour was that she did seem to have a passion
Speaker 3: and an interest in everything.
Speaker 2: She seems like exactly the type of person you would
Speaker 2: want to invite to your parties. She seems really fun,
Speaker 2: really good at parties. She seems really good at parties.
Speaker 3: She seems like somebody who also, maybe this is unfair,
Speaker 3: but like she's really smart. Yeah, and Louis the fifteenth
Speaker 3: the nice guy. But nobody thinks that Louis the fifteenth
Speaker 3: is a genius.
Speaker 2: No, I've never heard that characterization.
Speaker 3: No, okay, And I love the longest relationship of his
Speaker 3: life was with this woman who was really smart, except
Speaker 3: for the seven years worse. She should not have gotten
Speaker 3: them into that one terrible idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she tried her best. So, Jennifer, where can the
Speaker 2: good people find you if they want to hear more
Speaker 2: about you or anything you're writing?
Speaker 3: Well? I used to be on Twitter at jen ashley Wright,
Speaker 3: but not really anymore.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like a fun place to be.
Speaker 3: But you can find me on my website at Jenshleywright
Speaker 3: dot com. Or you can buy Madame Miristelle in your
Speaker 3: local bookshop or on Amazon.
Speaker 2: You should absolutely buy Madame Miristelle and Jennifer's other books.
Speaker 2: This is a personal recommendation from me, Jennifer, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 3: Oh, this was such a pleasure that will you come
Speaker 3: back soon anytime?
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Dana Shwarts, with additional writing and researching by
Speaker 1: Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zuick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
Speaker 1: The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
Speaker 1: rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more
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