flemmings | (no subject)

It snowflurried through most of the day which didn't stick but did leave the sidewalks a damp leafy mess. Thus I stayed indoors and did very little. A wash of underwear and tops, black and colours mixed which you can do when you wash in cold. Read on in Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour, which I inherited from the parents' library. Am finding it not as enthralling as her one about Louis XIV, mostly because Mitford thinks Pompadour was a nice woman and Louis XV a devoted lover and neither had the nasty fascination of the Sun King and his various mistresses and offspring.

The details of the life and mores at Versailles are interesting enough when talking about things like never addressing anyone as tu when the king was present even if you were talking to a close relative. Very Byzantine. But mostly it's the frivolous amusements of frivolous people who were also jockeying for marks of distinction from the king, like being admitted to dinners in his inner chambers, and heartburning when they weren't forthcoming. The courtiers thought they were living at the centre of civilization, but it sounds insupportably boring to me. Mitford assures us that the conversation was scintillating, but conversation is a transient thing that doesn't get passed down to later generations unless you have a Boswell handy.