Versailles: A Biography of a Palace

by Tony Spawforth

Overview

Called “fast-paced” (Kirkus Reviews) and “highly engrossing” (Publishers Weekly), this is the behind-the-scenes story of the world’s most famous palace.

The story of Versailles is one of high historical drama mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid.

Using the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. He probes the conventional picture of this “perpetual house party” and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging palace but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats, as well as the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789.

Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself—from architecture to politics to scandal to restoration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312603465
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	03/16/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	213,534
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

As well as having a rich broadcast history, TONY SPAWFORTH is the author and editor of numerous books on the ancient world. He is currently professor of ancient history at Newcastle University in England.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 Builders of the Labyrinth 1

2 "Rome in one palace" 25

3 A Gilded Cage? 44

4 "How right to insist on ceremony..." 69

5 Follow the King! 98

6 "All the pleasures" 122

7 Comforts, or Lack of Them 145

8 Behind Closed Doors 168

9 A Garden with Flowers 195

10 "The royal zoo" 218

11 After the Deluge 242

Notes 255

Sources 279

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

An illuminating portrait.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Sparkling, elegant prose…. Spawforth brings the palace to glorious life.” —Caroline Weber, author of Queen of Fashion

“Irresistible to anyone interested in the interactions of power, sexuality, and topography.” —Philip Mansel, author of Paris Between Empires

From the Publisher

For any tourist who has visited the Palace of Versailles and wondered about the generations of royals who lived there, Spawforth's well-researched book offers an illuminating portrait…If the details that Spawforth, a British historian, provides in Versailles sometimes border on too much information, he makes up for it with vivid stories about the royals' personal choices and the ensuing architectural changes.
—The New York Times

J. Courtney Sullivan

British historian Spawforth animates the palace that was home to "the most charismatic monarchy in Europe" for a century, until the French Revolution. The glamour and pageantry of the palace hid a multitude of sins. The clothes-conscious Louis XIV, for instance, created a new office, grand master of the wardrobe, and appointed a duke whom the memoirist Saint-Simon likened to a slave. A handsome aristocratic page to Marie-Antoinette, Alexandre de Tilly, recounted his sexual intrigues at age 16 with a 36-year-old widowed countess, conducted in various palace locations. At Versailles the royals ate publicly, a display that was supposed to humanize them as spectators raced around to watch each member of the royal family dine; the crowd horrified a Russian princess in 1768. Chamber pots on the palace's the upper stories were frequently emptied into the interior courts below; Marie-Antoinette was hit-intentionally, she believed-as she passed under the windows of Madame du Barry, her father-in-law the king's mistress. This well-researched and highly engrossing account conjures a bygone era with all its opulence, deference and perilous insularity. 8 pages of color photos. (Oct.)

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Publishers Weekly

This fascinating, immensely readable book will be welcomed by both general readers and those interested in French culture. Using an impressive array of sources, Spawforth (ancient history, Newcastle Univ.; The Complete Greek Temples ) re-creates the history of Versailles and its inhabitants, focusing not merely on architectural details but on the many human stories hidden within its lengthy past. Meticulously tracing the growth and changing usages of the palace from the days of Louis XIII to the ill-fated departure of Louis XVI in the upheaval of the Revolution, he offers vivid insights into a vanished world of royal and aristocratic splendor as he describes the clothing, rituals, habits, ceremonies, and entertainments of a social set obsessed with the "fetishes of rank." No detail appears to have escaped his purview as he looks at the court's dress codes, standards of service, etiquette rituals, and sanitary facilities. Even more important are the glimpses he provides into the lives of those servants and townspeople who made life at Versailles possible, individuals such as the "water waiter" who oversaw a kind of underground economy by redistributing leftovers from royal tables. This book thoughtfully analyzes how Versailles has been both a living community and a symbol of many things-royal magnificence, despotism, extravagance, isolation, and, finally, national pride. Most intriguing is the little-known story of what became of Versailles after the Revolution and the key role played by conservators like Pierre de Nolhac in preserving and reconstructing its history. Highly recommended for large public libraries.-Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.

Library Journal

Portrait of the evolution of French court life and politics at Versailles.

British scholar Spawforth (Ancient History/Newcastle Univ.; The Complete Greek Temples, 2006, etc.) details the construction, restoration and daily intrigues at the royal palace—the opulent official residence and center of government—from the reign of Louis XIV to Louis XVI, the last kings of France. From 1682, when Louis XIV moved his then Paris-based court 12 miles west to the sleepy village of Versailles, until 1789, when thousands rose in protest against the flagrant excesses of the monarchy, the royal palace stood as a symbol of the grandeur and disgrace of France. About the public disaffection with aristocrats in advance of the French Revolution, the author writes, "Did Louis XVI need two thousand horses when Louis XIV had managed with seven hundred?" Drawing on memoirs, diaries, invoices, architectural plans and holdings from the palace archives, Spawforth elevates Versailles from an upscale tourist attraction to a breathing monument with a spellbinding flesh-and-blood history. Among other fascinating tidbits, readers learn that the monarchy routinely sold menial household jobs to poor families who coveted the social cachet of the palace. Positions such as royal chimney sweep, table clearer, clock winder and bearer of the king's chamber pot were purchased by status-conscious commoners as investments and passed from father to son for generations. In a fast-paced narrative, the author discusses the importance of dance, haute cuisine, costume balls and couture at Versailles, noting that clothes were a major expense of court life. In addition to dozens of wardrobe valets and 13 dressers whose sole dutywas to pass Louis XIV his cane, cloak and gloves, the king kept a lacemaker at the ready for mending. The gross disparities between the nobles at Versailles and the suffering masses in France in the 1780s made inevitable, Spawforth asserts, the gruesome end for Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI.

Arch, authoritative and richly descriptive.

Kirkus Reviews