Tales from the Alcove

In the Loire Valley you are never far away from the French kings who built and occupied the chateaux we now visit as historic monuments.

Bare as they are after the excesses of the French Revolution and the sale of buildings and contents for paper money it can be hard to envisage the same  buildings in the days of their splendour, but the stories bring them to life.

What more evocative than the fates of the chateaux of Chaumont and Chenonceaux....the one given to a despised wife, Catherine de Medici, by Henri II, the other to his mistress Diane de Poitiers.
Once the king dead and the despised wife Regent of France she obliged the mistress to exchange the properties and made a jewel of the chateau on the banks of the Cher.

Here she introduced the festivities so common in the Italian scene...masques, plays and ballets, her version of the festivities otherwise offered by towns to their overlords...the 'Joyeuse Entree' where fountains ran with wine, learned professors gave speeches in Greek and Latin and pretty girls posed as nymphs while the essential ceremony...that in which the mayor and burgers offered cups of gold coins...clouded its mercenary nature in a veneer of culture.

My first acquaintance with the Renaissance courts of France was via Jean Plaidy.

Mother was fond of historical novels....Georgette Heyer in particular....so a friend suggested she try Jean Plaidy...remarking darkly that mother might find them a bit, well, 'you know'.
Try Jean Plaidy she did, and lighted on one of her books about Catherine de Medici. I don't know whether she found it a bit, well, 'you know', but it was certainly lurid even if written so clunkily that it was hard going.
Poison, astrology and intrigue have never sounded so dull.
Still, I remembered this vaguely when making a further acquaintance of the period....and recognised the reference to Catherine de Medici's flying squadron......l'escadron volant......
Her maids of honour, though never was a word so misused.

Nor does the translation do justice to the function of the ladies concerned.
Rather than being the predecessors of those magnificent men in their flying machines, as the image implies, 'volant', flying, is a euphemism for light...as in light of love...of somewhat free morals...having, in that unforgettable French phrase, 'la cuisse legere'.

The death of Henri II left Catherine de Medici Regent of France while her children were young....and her aim was to maintain power in her hands on their behalf, while the aim of the powerful nobles was to seize it for themselves.
After all, she was only a woman...and foreign at that.

So she used the rivalries of the various noble factions to keep them divided rather than united against herself and to this end her maids of honour played their part.
At her command they would make advances to, or accept advances from, the powerful men about the court....and report back to the Queen on the state of the power play.
While in everyday life their morals might be deplored - and were in particular by Protestant ministers (this is the age of John Knox) - she gave them her full support...unless they became pregnant...in which case they exchanged the court for the convent in very quick order.

And as it was easier to keep the nobles under supervision at court rather than at liberty on their own estates, it was necessary to offer entertainment of a more public kind....where, again, the maids of honour would feature in the danses and ballets which kept the mind of the courtiers fixed on learning their steps under the tuition of Italian dancing masters, distracting them from the steps to the overthrow of the royal power.

Was she successful? Given that this is the period of the St. Bartholomew massacre, the age of the Wars of Religion, you might say not.
But she did succeed in maintaining royal power though her eldest son Francois II, husband of the young Mary, Queen of Scots, died young, his younger brother Charles IX reigned only a few years and neither he nor his younger brother Henri III, produced heirs, the kingdom going to Henry of Navarre, that most pragmatic religionist.
Had her daughter in law used her example she might not have ended on the block at  Fotheringhay.

A woman who did follow her example was Francoise Giroud, editress of her lover's newspaper l'Express in the 1950s and 60s.
Despite her revulsion at the way in which she had been used by men when making her way in the film industry of the 1930s, she saw nothing wrong in developing her own escadron volant...women journalists whom she would form as to dress and manners to interview the powerful men of the day.
Just as Catherine de Medici needed to know who was plotting what to ensure her family's survival in power, Giroud needed to have scoops for her newspaper......and to have the drop on these powerful men by means of another French phrase...'les secrets d'alcove'....pillow talk.

None of which prevented her lover...who had refused to leave his wife for her....finally marrying her secretary when Giroud proved incapable of having children.
Clear case of the wrong alcove.

There are faint echoes of the escadron volant to this day....
Valerie  Trierweiler, companion of Francois (Moije) Hollande and political journalist, is taking legal action - again - after it was reported that she had had a relationship with a senior right wing married French politician at the same time as having a relationship with Hollande - who was at that time living with Segolene Royal - while she herself, Mme. Trierweiler was still living with M. Trierweiler.

Now, while this may be normal behaviour in the brothel atmosphere of Parisian society and thus counting as her private life, which should be left undisturbed by publicity, it might be thought...as the reporters concerned maintain....that the nexus of journalists and politicians should be exposed...in which case publication is justified.

I would just note that when she was employed at Paris Match her boss gave the  rules of the publishing house as follows..
Get me results...I don't care by what means, but get me results...'

Sounds like Catherine de Medici to me..