cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

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January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

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From:

luzula

I don't for sure, but from what I've read (having never been there!), Versailles was built on a hill (which limited the ability to expand--Colbert is supposed to have protested), and rooms with a view over the garden were at a premium, so it might have been designed to look good from the palace.
Ah, that's a good theory. Re: assignations among the hedges at Versailles, I was actually keeping a lookout for such opportunities since there's a Flight of the Heron fic where that happens. *g* They are mostly long and straight, without handy little nooks, so it didn't look ideal. But what you could do is venture inside the hedges. A fair number of them are broad, and while there are fences now to keep you from going inside, there might not have been earlier. I bet you could spread your cloak on the ground and have an exciting assignation there. The vegetation on the ground didn't seem very thick.

The book had a footnote to explain the 'grey gate' thing, and provided another example: It's a sair pity to behold youthfu' blood gaun a gate sae gray.' 'Gate' does (or did) mean road/way in northern England as well, as you can see in street names, which must come from Scandinavian languages, since 'gata' means street in Swedish. I hadn't connected it with 'gait' though!

Fritz's execution was better than his intentions
Ha, I love that phrasing.

Edited Date: 2022-07-19 08:39 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

*g* They are mostly long and straight, without handy little nooks, so it didn't look ideal. But what you could do is venture inside the hedges.

Hee! But I would like to add that I'm not talking about private sex, I'm talking about private conversations. The way Versailles culture was set up, if you could get someone alone for a few minutes, you could ask them to do you a favor without anyone else knowing, and that was absolutely at a premium. The stakes were high, privacy was rare, and intrigues were the air the court breathed.

And as for Louis, I seem to have some memory of him (although it could have been someone else) taking advantage of the privacy when turning a corner to arrange future sex with a woman he wanted to sleep with. It only takes a minute or two to say, "Meet me at place X at Y o'clock." Louis' life was public enough, and women chaperoned enough, that that minute or two, which we take for granted, would have been really hard to come by. (There is a whole chapter in Horowski about how difficult it was for Louis XIV to get privacy for sex with a mistress; amd Horowski also talks for great length about the importance of privacy for favor-soliciting conversations (and how even then, someone might be hiding under the bed eavesdropping!)) I mean, there was the whole time Louis XV dressed up as a tree in order to be able to talk to Madame de Pompadour (not yet so-called) privately at a ball!

But whether that was the intent or just a side-effect, I don't know. Even a book I have on the history of Versailles doesn't seem to mention the hedges! Maybe the view just looked really good this way from Louis' suite. ;)

Ooh, I wonder if Uwe Schultz's book on Versailles would mention it. He's usually pretty detailed. Meh, I can't get it as an e-book. Alas!

From:

luzula

Hee, okay! Well, if you only need a minute or less to talk, rather than the longer time it takes to make out or have sex, then I can see how the hedges would help, even with the lack of nooks. : )

The stakes were high, privacy was rare, and intrigues were the air the court breathed.
I would have made such a bad French courtier...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I think I would have checked into a monastery. :P I'm not religious, but I am an introvert, and I wouldn't have lasted long at Versailles.

From:

selenak

But Mildred, why choose a monastery if you could find earthly paradise with lots of books, only guests if you wanted them, and France’s wittiest writer in an old country house?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I mean, if we're talking custom designing a lifestyle for me, then that, yes! (Minus the witty writer, though, tbh.) The monastery was a rhetorical device to convey just HOW repelled I am by the idea of living at Versailles, omg. D: