Noble Blood - The Pretty Prime Minister (with Jennifer Wright)

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

TW: This episode contains discussions of violence towards children that might be disturbing for some listeners. For decades, one woman was the heart and soul of Versailles: Madame de Pompadour. Dana speaks with Jennifer Wright (author of Madame Restell) about the courtier's rise to the King's Mistress and her strengths as a diplomat and great party guest. Support Noble Blood:  — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hello, this is Dana Schwartz, and this is a very special episode of Noble Blood because I am joined by my very good friend, the incredibly talented, truly brilliant. brilliant writer, Jennifer Wright. Dana, I am so happy to be here.

Jennifer, you are just an incredible history writer. You've written a few of my favorite books. Get Well Soon, which is a book about... History's worst plagues and the heroes that fought them. Really? I was going to say a very topical pre-pandemic subject. Yeah, in retrospect, I should not have leaked the Wuhan virus. Yeah, it was too much viral marketing on my part. I was going to say, but it did probably boost books.

sales. Yeah. Also, just to be clear, that was a joke. That's not how anything naturally happened. Jennifer is a lovely human being who is not involved in anything COVID-related. You wrote the book, it ended badly, 13 of the worst historical break-ups. Yes. One of my favorite books, because it covers one of my favorite historical couples, Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron. I was going to say, I remember years ago talking about Carolyn Lamb chopping off her pubic hair and sending it to Lord Byron to try to win him back. It's that move. What I relate to so profoundly is what I relate to so profoundly is when you're so in love with someone who clearly is not interested, but you're like, you keep having to up the stakes to get their attention. You've got to go for broke. You've got to chop off all

your pubic hair and send it to them in the mail. It's the equivalent. If I could show you some of the emails I wrote to, like a boy, when I was like 22, stopped responding to my text. Yeah. Like some of the emails that I wrote are just like, I never want to see them again. I hope they're the equivalent of pubic hair. Oh, I wrote like multi-thousand-word emails to people I'd just broken up with. just trying to break down every part of our relationship, but also get back together? Why did I think that would work? Yeah, that's always the secret is they want a well-written email. Yes, they want a really long email.

That is the equivalent. But I'm so excited. Your most recent book is Madam Ristel. And it's a story that, to be totally honest, I had no idea what it was, who she was until I started talking to you. Well, that is because I think she has been. very deliberately written out of history. She was a very successful female abortionist operating in mid-19th century America. And when she started performing abortions in the 1830s, it was still classified as a misdemeanor if you perform the abortion before the fourth or fifth

month. And by the end of Madame Restell's life in the 1870s, the Comstock Act had passed, and the Comstock Act forbade sending anything obscene through the mail. which included, say, written descriptions of birth control or abortion, to say nothing of actually sending birth control medication through the mail. And sadly, that is something we are seeing revived now today. Another sadly topical book. You're like the history, Cassandra, at this point. Yeah, I swear the next one is just going to be about parties or something. Like, it's going to be about how everybody is nice and gets along with. It would be so nice. Can you, I know we're going to move on to the subject.

of the main subject of the podcast, which is a fascinating figure of the French-Versailles culture. But can you tell us a little bit about Madame Ristel, even though she's not a noble? I can tell everything about Madame Ristel. There is indeed a whole book about it. But, yeah, Madame Ristel began her life in Britain. She was born Anne Trow in 1812 in Painswick, England. And she came from a very large, very poor family. She was a maid of all work for a butcher, which meant that she would have been doing pretty backbreaking work, doing things like fetching any water from the well and dumping out the chamber pots and beating all the rugs to make sure they were clean and cleaning out the fireplaces.

And that was also a time where if you were a maid, you were open to a horrifying number of sexual advances from any man in the house. Jonathan Swift actually wrote advice to maids saying that you have to beware of the eldest son because you're going to get nothing from him but a big belly in the clap. At least you can get money from the master of the house. So I think that may have been one of the reasons that Madame Ristell always worked on a sliding scale when she charged people later

and why she tended to charge servants less. And when she was 16, She married a tailor. The tailor was unfortunately an alcoholic. Is this where she got the name, Ristel? Oh, no. The tailor was unfortunately an alcoholic. And she took over his work very quickly. And this is a running trend in Madame Ristel's life. She kind of meets a man, sees how he does his job, and then figures out how to do it better. Yeah.

But she convinced him to move with their newborn daughter to America so they could become rich. then she gets to the Lower East Side, her alcoholic husband dies almost immediately. And she is now a single mother on the Lower East Side of New York. If you've seen Gangs of New York, that's not accurate. But keep that picture in your mind. That's where Madame Restelle is. And I remember a detail in your book that seamstresses was like they were literally a dime a dozen. Yes, yes.

It made me understand. I've read so many novels from this period where the main character will be like, I have thousands of dollars of debts to my dressmaker. And I've always thought, then why is your dressmaker still making you dresses? She should have cut you off ages ago. It's because there are so many of them that you have to operate on even the hope of payment. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a bad time.

A prostitution is everywhere because working in a factory means working 16-hour days. And if you have a child, then you don't have enough money for child care. The factory doesn't pay enough. Women would drug their children with lot of them, so they would sleep. while they were at work. In one especially horrifying Dickensian note that I found, there was a woman who was a single mother, worked in a factory, had a four-year-old and a newborn,

and she told the four-year-old to take care of the newborn while she was at work. And when she came back, the four-year-old, and if you have a toddler, you can imagine how proudly the four-year-old would say this, said that the baby had been crying, but they had stopped him. And the mother praised him,

and then she went to see the baby. baby, and he had stopped him by beating him over the head with a hammer until he died. So, so this was a terrible time to be a single mother or have an unplanned pregnancy of any kind. And Madame Ristell really might have fallen into this situation very easily, but she lived down the street from a pill compounder named Dr. Evans. And Dr. Evans provided all manner of pills. There was no oversight. You could smash any herb. together and say, this will cure your headaches. Yeah. Or this will cure insomnia.

It might. It might. Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? Yeah. And he probably also provided birth control pills. But Madame Ristel started making what must have been incredibly effective birth control pills. She was using ingredients like tansy oil and turpentine and mixing them together.

And those are unbelievably dangerous ingredients. You should never, ever use some. Yeah, like paint thinner in your body. Like paint thinner, yes. Unfortunately, they still do get used in the 1970s. Dr. Sid turpentine is a harrowing motif in do-it-yourself abortions. Oh. So these are things that will work. They will just also kill their female patients. And Madame Roussel is pretty remarkable in that she mixed them together without killing people.

People in the neighborhood started saying that they had had five abortions this way and they were coming back for more. She could also perform surgical abortions with a sharpened piece of whalebone. Now, if her hand slipped, she could punch her a woman's bladder and kill her. Another amazing thing is that despite a lot of people trying very hard to prove that Madam Ristell was killing people, there are no records that indicate that she ever killed a patient. Oh, my God. So, Madame Restell must have had a very steady hand and a real genius for mixing ingredients. Yeah.

Around this time, she met her second husband, Charles Lohman. who was a printer, and he was really familiar with the bombastic personalities that advertised in newspapers. And together they came up with this persona of Madame Restelle. And they talked about how she was French and her grandmother was a famous midwife, and she had been training in Paris and bringing her skills to America. And this was a time when medical innovation was happening in Paris in a way it wasn't in America. So this was a great persona to craft. It's glamorous now.

It's glamorous. If anyone came and said her grandma was a famous Parisian, anything. It sounds sexy, too. People thought that French people were more sexually sophisticated in addition to having better medical skills. So that's how this persona of Madame Restel was born. And that's what brought in rich people. Dr. Muter, this is my anatomy research shelf down there, Dr. Muter, who has, if you've been to

Philadelphia. There's a muter museum. Oh, I'm dying to go. Me too. We should go together. We should go. Girl strip. He trained for in French surgeries. That's where all the surgery was taken out. Go to France. Learn things. One of the reasons that they drove female midwives out of business in America is because they started trying to open up schools for doctors in America. But they were terrible. You couldn't walk the hospitals the way you could in France. Yeah. So they would rent out a letter hall, charge.

young men like $50. And in six months, if you showed up to most of the classes where you would never see an actual patient, usually there was just like a skeleton or a box of bones, at the end you got your diploma. Sure. And as a result, it's estimated that in the mid-1800s, there were suddenly four times as many doctors as towns needed. And they had to find a new source of income.

And that is one of the reasons that they started pushing in. in on midwives trade. Wow. And I do love, I think, like, the interest of, like, when midwifery became obstinrics and, like, more male-dominated doctors is fascinating to me because I love the story of how Princess Charlotte of Wales in the early 1800s, who's a character in immortality, but she, in real life, was pregnant, and it was very fashionable to have a male doctor at this time. They were worse.

You know they were worse. Right. And she died. There was an average of one death in 200 was a female midwife in this period. And it was 10 to 20 times higher if you had a male doctor. They were so much worse. They were so much worse. And she died.

And it was just considered fashionable to have a male doctor because she was a princess. She had to do it. Yep. And she died. And it was bad. Yep. And the American Medical Society made such a big deal out of how midwives are barbaric relics. And of course, midwives hand.

were actually clean, whereas doctors were digging them into a corpse and then pulling them out and then sticking them into a woman's birth canal. Yeah, they would treat an infected abscess and then be like, perfect, put inside a woman. Oh my gosh, the one that killed me the most. I'm sorry, I know we have to talk about nobility because this is noble blood. But please. But after Igna Samalifies, so God bless him. God bless him. May he rest in peace. But after Ignazemelize suggested that maybe the reason so many women are dying are because doctors need to wash their hands. And by the way, he tested this. He found out that it worked.

He could bring the death rate for female patients down on par with midwives when they walk their hands. Jennifer, that's crazy talk. And Charles Miggs replied that this was absurd because, quote unquote, doctors are gentlemen and gentlemen have clean hands. It's the ego on them. I'm so furious about it. I'm furious. 200 years later.

About how many women had unnecessary deaths? Deaths, yeah. Well, speaking of women. Fun day for birth control in America, you guys. Luckily that it's not something we need to deal with anymore. Oof, yeah. But if we're talking about women in positions of power that I think sometimes people think are anachronistic.

Like, women didn't have any power influence in the 1700s. One of my favorite figures, and I think a figure that you love, is Madame de Pompadour. I am so happy. to talk about her, known as the pretty prime minister at the court of Versailles. So for someone who has no idea who she is, outside perhaps of a single Doctor Who episode. There is a Dr. Who episode. Oh, really good one.

It's the only one I've seen. It's a good one. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. It's sweet. I don't like the robots. I like the part where it's just about Madame Pompe d'Or. That is also kind of my...

I've watched a little bit more Doctor Who. I've fallen off a little bit. I like when it's like historical characters. I like when they meet Vincent Van Gogh. I like it if it was just some people meeting Vincent Van Gogh. I love the Vincent. I love when they just meet historical figures. Me too.

I don't need a distant planet. No, I don't. Sorry. I know people love it. It's a good show. I get it. I know it's very special to people. Yeah.

But there's a wonderful Madame de Pompadour episode. But for people who maybe have only seen that episode or nothing, who was the pretty friend minister? The pretty friend minister was Louis 15th mistress, and she was one of the most famous mistresses of this era because she was a mistress at Versailles for about 20 years. When you say mistress, you mean the official position. I mean the official mistress, yes. For context, in case you're less familiar, mistress in this case doesn't just mean, you know, was having a sexual relationship with a king. mistress was a court position.

Mistress was a court position and it was a very important court position. The queen was really just there to provide children. Louis XIV had a very lovely wife, Queen Marie Lysinka. She produced children, but she was also very religious. She was very retiring. She did gamble, but she played a game that nobody liked. So she had a hard time getting people to play her very old. fashion gambling game with it. It's like how Ian doesn't like to play Scrabble with me because I always

beat him. Oh, hurtful. I know. Daniel and I play Scrabble every night. That sounds so nice. We do. We watch a movie, we play Scrabble. It's a lovely... I would love that. It's a lovely way to end the deck. Ian has taken to refusing to play Scrabble with me because I'll be like a hundred points up and he'll be like, done with us. Well, I mean, you've got to know all the two-letter words. It's Zah, Ki-Chi. Like those are your winners guys. Well, that's it. I play for strategy. He plays for showmanship. Quot, Q-A-T. Yeah. Yeah, work that in. But anyhow, Queen Marie out there trying to get people to play slettlers of Caton with her every night.

And Louis XIV, had a bit of a more bon vivant personality. He was prone to boredom. But he was also somebody who really enjoyed consistency. I think something that you see with Louis the 15th is that Madame Pompadour essentially became his wife. I mean, mistress for 20 years, and then like, friend to the king for years after. That is fascinating to me. So can we begin with the beginning of her life? Yes, of course. Madame Pompadour, and it's something that differed her a lot from other royal mistresses, was born to the bourgeois class. So she was wealthy but not noble. She was wealthy but not

noble. Her father was a financier who had been exiled for fraud. Her mother had a sparkling personality, which reading between the lines on St. Nancy Mepford's biography of Madame Pompadour meant that her mother was sleeping around a lot. A lot of people felt that they could not receive Madame Pompadour's mother. But everybody loved Madame Pompadour pretty much from birth. Her mother's special friend helped finance her education. She spent two years with nuns who said that she charmed everyone at the Abbey. She was just such a delight. And then she returned home and she was educated in all the arts of the day, in art, in dancing, in playing music. She was a successful harpist. So she was this delightful

person and everybody was also really nice to her, which is one of the reasons that I really enjoy reading her story. Because usually you read stories about these people and it'll be a story about like she was first raped by her stepfather at the age of seven. After that, her mother died of smallpox. And Matt Pompadour is just hanging out with her, um, somewhat licentious, extended family. Playing harp. Plenty of money. Playing the harp. Everybody loves her. Everybody says she's great. Her mother's special friend, like, dotes on her and talks about how wonderful she is. And when she was about 10, her mother took her to visit a fortune teller. And the fortune teller told her that she was not going to be queen, but almost queen.

She, she fucking nailed it. She nailed it. Madame Pompadour sent her money much later in life for nailing it so well. And everyone in her family started calling her Raynette, which means little queen. And Madame Pompadour fully, fully believed this. Renet is a great name for a cat. It is, yeah. She fully believed that, all right, I am going to be the royal mistress. We are going to do it.

And her family was kind of on board with that. It kind of seemed like, yeah, sure, you're going to be an astronaut. Do it. Why not? Why not? Now, at the time, bourgeois women weren't royal mistresses. Sure. The king would select somebody from court.

And court had become unbelievably important under the reign of Louis XIV. Yeah. Louis the 14th. Because nobles had been feuding so much and for so long that Louis 14th, Louis the 14th really figured out, all right, you keep them all at court. You give them an endless round of pleasure and you gamify every aspect of their lives. There was a special bow at court for women who had a good cook. So I guarantee you if there were like that many little things I could win on,

as somebody who thinks of themselves is only mildly competitive, I would need to have the best cook. It would become like a dominating thought that I had. on a day-to-day basis. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.

It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through.

And I know it's a place they come look for up-and-coming talent. said if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam.

My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I was. And dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent.

He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So everybody was gathered at court. And it was an incredibly ritualized society. It was a society where, you know, every tiny move could be interpreted the wrong way.

And it was really thought that if you just grew up in wealthy Parisian society, you could never understand the rules of this world. But Madame Pompadour, you know, married a very nice, wealthy man. Her mother's, I don't want to say stepfather, I keep calling him a special friend. Special friend, okay, her mother's special friend helped arrange the marriage. Yeah. And it was a young man who had not wanted to marry. He definitely didn't like the idea of marrying this woman who had kind of a vaguely scandalous family.

Yeah. And supposedly the first day he met her, he fell completely in love with her. Oh. And this was actually really hard for Madame Pompadour because she made it clear to him that she was going to leave him when she got an opportunity to sleep with the king. Oh. And she wrote about how actually it's. very hard to be the beloved in a relationship with somebody that you are not in love with. And I think that's interesting.

We hear a lot about the pain of unrequited love, but we don't hear about the kind of day-to-day discomfort of being the object of unrequited love, especially when you are in a marriage with that person. It's very sweet that she let him know up front. I think he thought she was joking. I think you did not think that this was ever actually going to happen. Yeah, he's like, okay, sweetheart. Yeah, of course, yes.

When you meet an astronaut, yes. I am okay. You're going off with George Clooney. Yeah, she had a hall pass list. And it was like Brad Pitt, the king. Only that. Yeah, and then you're fine. Yeah, yeah.

So her poor husband, desperately in love with her, but providing a very nice life for her, at which point she gets to start a salon. She becomes friends with Voltaire and Dieterow and other thinkers of the day. And she is going to help them a lot once she's at court. And one of the big advantages of her marriage is her husband has a hunting lodge that is near where the king likes to hunt. So while the king is hunting, Madda and Pompadour does this cool thing, where she drives by in a beautiful pink dress in a blue carriage or a blue dress in a pink carriage.

And the king sends her some venison. Of course. And also an invitation to a masked ball at the court of Versailles. So you know your dress and carriage made an impression when you get venison and a party invite. You do, yeah. So Madame Pompadour goes to this ball, and it's a ball where Louis XVI's has dressed up as a U-Tree along with eight of his male friends because he doesn't want people to immediately know who he is. and everybody is very invested in figuring out who the king is at a mass ball. That is part of the fun. Yeah.

But he's one of eight U-tree. Meanwhile, Madame Pompadour dressed as Diana the Huntress. Oh. Yeah, as a little reminder of her hunting excursions. And they sleep together for the first time on that night. And Madame Pompadour essentially never leaves. She figured out which U-Tree he was. Oh, he revealed it to her.

Yeah. Yeah, he was in. One of the things that I do think is sad is her husband, uncharacteristically, wrote her, just begging her to come back, saying that all was forgiven, like he didn't even care if she was sleeping with other people, just come back. And she showed it to Louis the 15th, like, ha, isn't this funny? And Louis the 15th got really serious and said, your husband seems like he's a very decent man. Yeah. Yeah, he was a very decent man. man. Now, Louis the 15th is also, I'm sure you've talked about him on Noble Blood,

but he ends up being a king that I have a lot of tenderness for. He is in case, I mean, we haven't covered him specifically on Noble Blood. We've covered tangents, but he is Louis the 16th, aka Marie Antoinette's husband's grandfather. And he was the great-grandson of Louis the 14th. So he was never expected to be king, except when he was five. his entire family died of measles. And he was saved by his governess who sequestered him away.

And one of the reasons that was important was not just because measles can kill you, thank God for vaccines, but because the doctors were letting blood out of all his brothers and they let out so much blood that it worsened their health and killed them. So his governess probably saved his life

by hiding him away. but when he emerged his entire family was dead and he was going to be the new king of France. And one of the things I like about Louis 15th is that it's so clear that he worked so hard. Louis the 14th, I think it's hard to argue that Louis the 14th was at least a short-term genius. Yeah, strategy genius. I think ultimately the notion of keeping every single noble act, court destroyed the French countryside. And I think that was already happening by Louis the 15th reign. People thought that being exiled from Versailles was a fate as bad as death.

It's getting kicked off Twitter. Yeah, there was one noble woman whose husband came to her to reveal that they were being exiled back to their massive beautiful estate in the country. And she started crying as soon as she saw him. And she explained that that was because from the look on his face, she assumed that their son had died. So, So it was very, very bad to have to leave Versailles. But that did mean that the farmlands were not being taken care of in France. People were starting to starve to death because nothing was being farmed. You need a leader there.

You need somebody there just kind of reminding people that they do have to farm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you don't actually need that in modern society. Democracy is a way to go. Please don't let's return to any of this. but at the time it did not make for a functional countryside.

So, Louis the 15th did not really have any of his grandfather's short-term genius, though. But he started sitting in meetings from the time he was five. He would take his pet cat along with him and he explained to everybody that his pet cat was his special advisor and he would like whisper little notes to his cat

while he was listening and just tried really hard to keep up with it. They talk about how one of the times he started crying in one of the meetings was when they revealed to him who he was going to be married to and he realized that he was never going to get to marry for love. And overall, just like a guy who was trying pretty hard. A guy trying his best. A guy trying his best. One of the other facts that I've always liked about him is that there was an appointed time when the king would rise at Versailles and other

nobles would have the privilege of helping the king wake up. In order of rank, right? In order of rank. Yes. Yes. So it would be a very special thing to get to hand and the king like a towel upon his face in the morning. And what Louis 15th would do was he would wake up two hours before that, light his own fire, get his own room ready, try to take care of paperwork so he could get a jump on the day, then extinguish everything and pretend to go back to bed. And he would do the third. And he would do the same thing late at night, where Nobles would put him to bed, and then he would have to get up again. He's like, oh, I'm so sleepy.

This was so great, everybody, night, night. So I've always found that a very, I guess I find hard work kind of likable. Yeah. The other thing he was doing at night was slipping off to see his mistress. But for the first seven, at least seven years of his marriage, I think it was longer than seven years. I think you might have... Yeah, you would have...

Okay, hold on. I'm going to check when Louis XIV. Louis XVI married. Yeah, because Louis the 15th. It's so interesting the way that ritualized court structure forces, even the people it benefits the most, which is the Kings, into the most restrictive rules. It's like, you have all the power,

but you're still on a very limited track for what your daily existence is. you are. So there are some debates on the number, but people estimate that for around 10 years at least, he was totally loyal to his wife. He married Queen Marie with a last name. Len Sisa. I'm so sorry. I should know.

It's Polish. But he married Queen Marie, tried very hard to be loyal to her. She was very religious and always trying to get people to play the 18th century equivalent of Settlers of Catan. It sounds like fun. I would do, Marie. No, for sure. Yeah, how bad could it be? But eventually, Louis XIV did want somebody with a more dynamic personality.

And he had a few mistresses before Madame Pompadour. But Madame Pompadour really starts bringing things to court life that nobody was bringing. She started a theater. She is friends with Voltaire and Dieterot and other great writers of the time. She started having spats. dinners for Louis the 15th and all of her artist friends. And it's interesting to me that Louis the 15th loved being seated by artists at dinner and talking to them about art. But he did not love being seated by writers because he knew they might write about him. And he did not want to drink

with these people and say something that they were immediately going to write in public. That is so funny. It's also how rich people love surrounding themselves with creatives. Yes. His traditionally and historically? Yes, absolutely. Because it's the one thing money can't buy. It is. And Madame Pompadour opened up a theater at Versailles.

I think it was Le Teatro de Petit Cabinette. And she performed all of the main female roles. Of course. But it was incredibly coveted to get to act in the theater because they would have professional actors come and help the nobles. It would be like being in your high school. play. But nobles would bend over backwards to get like a tiny, tiny speaking role. I mean, it sounds really fun. It does sound really fun. Or they would bribe Madame Pompadour's

maid to get them an invitation so they could go and see one of these performances. Truly, if we were all like living at Versailles Summer Camp and there was like a play going on and like professional actors were coming in to like help you and do it, like that sounds so fun. Yes. Madame Madame Pompadour also had this huge list of rules for rules for being in the play. And there are things like you have to make every single rehearsal. Like you cannot turn down any role, even if you think that role is unflattering. And they're taking it really seriously.

Yeah. Now, this was one of the things that started enraging the commoners. Of why are we paying for them to do theater summer camp at Versailles? That seems unnecessary to everyone who is increasingly facing food shortages. Yes. So that was one of the things that people immediately started getting angry about the idea of this royal mistress is bankrupting us. Yeah. But at the same time, Medaat Pompadur was a huge patron of the arts.

So she was patronizing the idea of China being made at Severus instead of getting your China from places like Germany at the time. She was also commissioning every famous artist from this period. She's really responsible for the movement from the Baroque to the Rococo period. And so you're going from kind of, if you sort of know the difference between those periods, I'm going to oversimplify it, but this sort of dark, heavy biblical. Biblical imagery to... Girl on a swing. A girl on a swing.

A girl on a swing. Oh, and it's also a little sexual. It's sexy. It's fun. It contains elements of frivolity. It's more feminine. And she also made pink a popular feminine color that people wanted to wear. And I'm going to embarrass myself in case this is a one of those historical misconceptions.

Did the pompadour come from her hairstyle? It did indeed. Yes. Yes. So there are so many things that she was doing. She learned how to cut gemstones when she was at Versailles. I would love to be a rich person with just infinite time for hobbies. She started engraving.

Now, the only problem here is that Madame Pompadour was also in fairly fragile health. She had pretty much chronic bronchitis. And Louis X was coming to her for sex up to nine times a day. Can we also say, just to point out, that this like girl with a million cool hobbies, who's an artistic bohemian in ill health, is really manic pixie dream girl. Oh, she's very manic pixie girl. She might have originated it.

She has bronchitis. She's coughing out blood. She's coughing all the time. She's so glamorous. She is not in great health. And Louis XIV has a massive sexual appetite. Nine times a day. Yeah.

Now, at one point, she started trying to subsist on a diary of vanilla, truffles, and celery because she had heard that those were all things that would increase her libido. But a friend of hers, fortunately, told her that this is going to kill you and it will not make you more able to have sex. Eating only those things, I don't think would make me feel sexy. I mean, I like truffles. I don't know. That would be cool.

I'd eat truffles. But she started exercising, which seemed to help a little bit. But I think somewhat fortunately for Pompadour, who could not keep up with this, after five years, the sexual relationship ended. But she was kept on at Versailles as a full. friend to the king. And I think it's very funny that when they made her this sort of new official title, she changed all of the imagery in her room from being like cupids and depictions of love to depictions of beautiful friendship. And she gave a statue to the king. But if it is a statue I'm thinking of, it's a statue that represents the spirit of friendship, but the spirit of

friendship has both of its breasts exposed if she's cupping them for him. Yeah, as friends. As friends. like you do with your buddies. Yeah, sometimes you show your friends pictures of your boobs to be like, how do my boobs look now? They look great, right? See how I'm copying them for you? Yeah. Around this time, Louis XIV didn't ever really take on another full-time mistress.

He had a hunting lodge where he would keep young women who he was having sex with and I think it was called the Park Gosef. So it's like he's not going to fall in love with these girls. And that was Madame Pompadour's comment at the time. that she wasn't afraid that some young girl with no education was going to take him away, but she was afraid that he would follow up with another noble lady at the court. So better he be getting his physical needs met just by pretty young things? Yes.

One of the things that's so interesting is that this is also very similar to what happened to the queen. And the queen said was Madame Pompadour, if there has to be a raw mistress, better her than any other. And I think I remember even reading that Madame de Pompadour was, was, very nice and kind to the queen. Oh, Madame Pompter was thirsty for the queen's approval. She was desperate for the queen to like her. It's so interesting

because you see her handle Louis XIV with this kind of a plumb. Like, it's going well. She, you know, she wants him to love her very, very much. Some of her detractors said that her sickness was because

keeping up an attitude of being madly in love every single day is exhausting on the human body. But she did love the king. But when it comes to the queen, you see her just bending over backwards to like invite the queen to every single performance that she's having at the theater. And the queen like kind of shows up sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

She's like, look, I know what's going on here. I'll be a good sport. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. She was always like picking out special gifts for the queen. And the reason that she was so nice to her was. because the queen was supposed to acknowledge the royal mistress at some point. And usually queens were incredibly bitchy about this.

Understandably. When Marie Antoinette met Madame Duberi, she had to say something to her. And she just kind of snidly said, well, there are a lot of people at court today. Yeah, and at this time, just for context, Louis the 16th, Marie Antoinette's husband never actually took a mistress, which is why it's... Sometimes I had one professor in college actually... He couldn't get it up, Dana. Well, yeah. It took for years to get it up.

Yeah. But I had a professor in college point out that arguably it damaged Marie Antoinette because there was no other woman to serve as a lightning rod for gossip and attention. And Madame Pompadour was that lightning rod for this is the woman who was bankrupting France. Yes, absolutely. And Madame DeBrie was Louis Xenth's next mistress. Yes.

But Marie Antoinette was just the princess. But since she outranked her, Madame de Berry couldn't even say hi unless Marie-Internet says something first. Exactly. Yeah. So when it was Madame Pompadour's time to meet Queen Marie, there was very little for them to talk about because Madame Pompadour, as everybody kept pointing out, was bourgeois. She didn't know anybody at court. What were they possibly going to say to each other?

And the queen really nicely had one friend in common with Madame Pompadour and asked if Madame Pompadour had seen that friend lately because she'd seen her at court. and she was wondering how she was doing. And Madame Pompadour, I imagine, responded about how her friend was doing, but immediately afterwards fell to her knees and said that she was so grateful that she had such a kind and gracious queen, that she was going to do anything she could in this life to make the queen happy. And she never went back on this promise. And I honestly think it got to be a little bit much for the queen. She was the object of the unrequited affection.

She was the object of the unrequited affection, and it was a little uncomfortable for her. But that's very sweet. I respect that Madame de Pompadour is like, look, I get that this is the awkward situation. I am your... But just so you know, I love you. Yeah, just so you know, we're good, right? Besties, best. Besties?

I would, if I had to be a French mistress, I would rather be friends with the queen. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Makes your life so much easier. Well, the queen was treated very badly by Louis X's prior mistresses. And it was probably stupid on their part. Because, you know, you would think that because you're sleeping with the king and he loves you, you have some advantage over this, like, quiet religious woman who's just having children. But you don't.

She's seen them come and go. She's seen them come and go. So what happened toward the end of Madame de Pompadour's life? Oh, unfortunately, Madame Pompadour was probably very responsible for the seven years' war, which was a disastrous war on the part of France. And it may be apocryphal, but Madame Pompadour became very good friends with Austrian diplomats and sort of forged an alliance between France and Austria.

Where's the Prime Minister things? Yeah, which led to them engaging against Britain and Prussia in the Seven Years' War and just getting smashed. But they say that one of the one. of the reasons that she personally hated Prussians was because Frederick the Great referred to his dog as his Pompadour. That's mean. It is mean.

It is mean. So, yeah, that's not a good enough reason to fortunate alliance with another country and then go to war. No, it doesn't end well for France. And it does not end well for France. And then at 42, Madame Pompadour passed away of pneumonia. and Louis the 15th in that episode of Doctor Who sees her carriage going away in the rain, but he cannot attend his funeral. And one of the things that they do not incorporate into that Doctor Who is him turning

around and showing his courtier's tears streaming down his face and saying this is the only respect I am allowed to pay her. Wait, he wasn't allowed to go to her funeral? No. Why? Rules of Versailles. But he's the king. Yeah, but she... It would have been an embarrassment.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but she, you know, she lived out her life at Versailles. I think one of the lovely things is that she and Louis the 15th, even if, you know, he's also sleeping with younger girls towards the end of their relationship, really did have this meeting of minds. They were ethically non-monogamous. They were... I mean, like many... Ethically Non-mononymous relationships, it seems like the man got to be a lot more ethically non-monogamous than the woman who was just kind of going along with this. But at least she was aware of it.

She was definitely aware of it. There were very cruel rumors at the time that she was orchestrating all of this for him. Oh, yeah, that she was sort of being a madame. Yeah, exactly, that she was procuring these young girls. I don't think it was that difficult to procure young women. Who wanted to sleep with the king for advantage and power. Exactly, yeah. But they got to have these nice little dinner parties at their home.

Louis XVIth would bake the coffee himself. They got to talk to interesting people. And she got to have this very creative life where she brought a lot of art and spirit to Versailles that is what we associate with it now. And I also, I think I remember reading that she was very interested in gardening. She was, yeah. She's such a Nancy Myers hobby.

Madame Pompadour was interested in everything. I think it's also one of the things that I like about her where I think now we live in this era of kind of cool girls. Yeah. They were just like to be a sexy girl is like to never smile. Yeah. And I love the Madame Pompadour thing was like, today I'm going to learn to be a gem cutter. Honestly, if there was some girl on Instagram with a cool haircut who was like carving. Carving gems.

Carving gems, I'd be like, oh my God, that's amazing. Yeah. If you are a gem carver listening to this podcast, please let me know. We love that. If you're a gem carver who's also started like a very highly ranked theater that you're forcing people to perform in, and the queen will show up for sometimes if she's not busy playing her sad card game. Yeah. Yeah, I love that the thing that was so appealing about Madame Pompadour was that she did seem to have a passion and an interest in everything.

She seems like exactly the type of person. person you would want to invite to your parties. She seems really fun. Really good at parties. She seems really good at parties. She seems like somebody who also, maybe this is unfair, but like she's really smart. Yeah. And Louis XIV, nice guy, but nobody thinks that Louis XIV is a genius, right?

No, I've never heard that characterization. No, okay. And I love that the longest relationship of his life was with this woman who was really smart, except for the seven years worse. She should not have gotten them into that one. Terrible idea. Yeah, she tried her best. So Jennifer, where can the good people find you?

If they want to hear more about you or anything you're writing? Well, I used to be on Twitter at Jen Ashley Wright, but not really anymore. It doesn't seem like a fun place to be. But you can find me on my website at jennashleywright.com, or you can buy Madame Ristell in your local bookshop or on Amazon. You should absolutely buy Madam Restell and Jennifer. Jennifer's other books. This is a personal recommendation from me. Jennifer, thank you so much. Oh, this was such a pleasure. What a pleasure. Will you come back soon? Anytime.

Absolutely. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and Rima Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best. advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written

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