Jeanne Antoinette Poisson’s life started out was destined to be the mistress to the king. Born on December 29m 1721 in Paris, her father Francois Poisson was the food commissioner during the Famine of 1725 and was charged with fraud forcing him to leave France. Jeanne and her mother were left behind and without a home as everything was seized. Jeanne was sent to the Ursuline Convent in Poissy in 1727.
Quickly two men came into their life, with her mother Madame de la Motte. Jean Puvis de Monmartel and Charles François Paul Le Normant de Tournehem. Tournehem became her legal guardian and thought to be her actual father. Back at the convent she may have been educated with the elite of Paris but she was bored and constantly ill so she returned home at just nine years old.
Shortly after her mother took her to a fortune teller who told the young girl that she would one day hold the heart of the king. From then on she was called Reinette, little queen. Her mother set out from that moment to raise her to be a mistress and hired the best teachers to educate her in art, dancing and the theater.
In 1740 at the age of 19 she was married to Charles Guillaume, nephew of her guardian Tournehem with one clause. They would be happily married and she would never leave him unless the king came calling. Tournehem showered the couple with gifts and the Chateau des Etoiles and also made him his only heir, cutting out his own children.
The marriage was a happy one and resulted in two children. In 1744, a son that would die just months later and a daughter Alexandrine that wouldn’t live past her 9th birthday. Poisson and her husband held lavish Salons with Voltaire, Fontenelle and Montesquieu in attendance at the Chateau des Etoiles. Her name began spreading all the way to court. Poisson heard that Louis XV hunted in the woods near their home and one day she dressed in a blue dress and took off in her pink carriage cutting right into his path. She did it again days later, this time in a pink dress and a blue carriage.
She got the king's attention and in turn he sent her a whole venison as a gift, what a way to woo a girl. On February 24, 1745 she was invited to court to attend a masked ball. Dressed as Diane the huntress she floated through the ball and right into his arms. Three days later at the Hotel de Ville he publicly declared his love for her.
By May 7, her separation with her husband was official, it worked quickly when the kind wanted it. However, as a commoner it was frowned upon for her to be at court much less a relationship with the king, but easily fixed when Louis XV bought her the title, chateau and the crest of the Marquise de Pompadour. On September 14, 1745 she was officially introduced at court and on the arm of the king.
Their intimate relationship lasted from 1745 to 1751 but the two still remained close and his trusted adviser. Pompadour became pregnant three times with the king, all ending in miscarriages and taking a toll on her health and thought to be why their physical relationship ended,
Louis XV always kept her close, naming her a duchess on October 12, 1752 and Lady in Waiting to the Queen in 1756, the highest position a woman could hold at court. Louis gave her property and chateaux including having the Petit Trianon built for her but she would never see it finished.
While the mistresses of the kings were many, Pompadour should be remembered for her contribution to the arts through supporting artists and her own skills. From gemstone engraving to create books with her own printing press and the first royal porcelain factory in France. She contributed to the building of the Ecole Militaire and the Place Louis XV, today's Place de la Concorde and what is today's Elysees palace, home to the president of France.
On April 15, 1764 at 42 years old she died of Pulmonary Congestion at Versaille with the king by her side. Three days later a lavish funeral, fit for a queen, was held at the Eglise Notre Dame de Versailles where the king was inconsolable. After she was taken to Paris to be buried alongside her mother at the Capucines Convent. Today the convent is gone and it’s believed that she and her mother are still there buried under the sidewalk at 3 rue de la Paix.
She is remembered in statues and art that can be found in the Musée du Louvre including the pastel by Maurice Quentin de la Tour surrounded by her books and engravings, many of which she did herself.
Listen to the newest episode of La Vie Creative - Paris History Avec A Hemingway today and learn all about the mistress to the king that cultivated and created French culture.
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