Wednesday 13 January 2016

Marie Antoinette to Count Fersen : "I love you madly"



Marie-Antoinette's torrid affair with Swedish count revealed in decoded letters

French experts unravel mystery content of Marie-Antoinette’s secret love letters to a Swedish count thanks to cutting-edge imagery technology

By Henry Samuel7:20PM GMT 12 Jan 2016


Newly decoded letters penned by Marie-Antoinette suggest France’s last queen had a torrid affair with a Swedish count, amid claims that two of the children she had with Louis XVI were illegitimate.
Two centuries after the notoriously decadent royal was guillotined during the Revolution, researchers in France have finally unlocked the secrets of blacked-out secret passages from Marie Antoinette’s letters to Axel de Fersen, a friend of France’s royal family.
The first of 13 passages to be revealed in the coming months reads: “I will end [this letter] but not without telling you, my dear and gentle friend, that I love you madly and that there is never a moment in which I do not adore you.”
Dated January 4, 1792, the declaration of love was penned in black ink six months after the count unsuccessfully tried to spirit her and her captive husband out of Paris. A year later, Louis XVI would be executed.
Historians have long debated the nature of Marie Antoinette and Fersen’s relationship – whether it was romantic, sexual or merely platonic. The question was a crucial at the time as revolutionaries depicted the queen as a frivolous thief and a traitor to husband and country while royalists insisted she was loyal to Louis XVI.
Until now, her letters to Fersen were almost exclusively limited to matters of state. The more personal sections of the letters were carefully redacted by a mystery hand – thought to be the Swedish count himself or his descendants in a bid to preserve her honour.
All previous attempts at deciphering the censored messages, meticulously obscured by circular scribbles to mask Marie Antoinette’s original handwriting, proved fruitless.
Now, however, a team working at France’s Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections, CRCC, has managed to extract the original text handwritten by Marie Antoinette.
Using cutting-edge x-ray and different infrared scanners, researchers said they were able to “discriminate between the two levels of writing” thanks to slight variations in copper content.
New of the revelations follow the publication of a new book by a British historian, out in the spring, which suggests her daughter, Sophie, who died as an infant, was fathered by her Swedish lover.
In I Love You Madly – Marie-Antoinette: The Secret Letters, cites, Eveyln Farr reveals secrets that she believes will send shock waves through France.
“From what the Duke of Dorchester insinuated to the Duchess of Devonshire, it was fairly obvious [Princess] Sophie was Fersen’s child,” Ms Farr reveals.
Ms Farr also reportedly calls into question the paternity of Antoinette's son Louis Charles.
The main piece of evidence is a 1791 note from a friend of the couple, Quintin Craufurd, to then-British Prime Minister William Pitt and his Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville.
Mr Craufurd is cited as affirming that the count, who he knew "intimately", was "generally supposed to be the father of the present Dauphin [eldest son of the King of France]."
The book cites the amorous count as telling the queen in one letter: “I love you and will love you madly all my life.” She in turn called him “the most loved and loving of men” and informed him “my heart is all yours”.
“‘I love you madly’ is a very strong phrase – you don’t say that to a good friend. It’s really telling; it implies a physical relationship. They were lovers,” Ms Farr is cited as saying.
According to the book, the couple – which it says had a 10-year physical relationship – hid the content of their passionate correspondence using invisible ink and code names. "I live and exist only to love you – adoring you is my only consolation," Fersen wrote in one. "My God, how cruel it is to be so near and not be able to see each other!," she responded.


Communiqué de presse
Paris novembre 2015

Les passages cachés des lettres de Marie-Antoinette au comte de Fersen livrent leurs
premiers secrets.
De la fin juin 1791 à la fin juin 1792, alors que la famille royale est en résidence surveillée aux Tuileries, la reine MarieAntoinette
et le comte de Fersen ont échangé une correspondance secrète conservée depuis 1982 aux Archives
nationales. Si une partie de ces lettres qui étaient codées ont pu être déchiffrées, sur d’autres le texte en est
cependant incomplet car il a été en partie masqué par un caviardage soigneux. Ceci a longtemps conduit à alimenter
diverses hypothèses sur la nature des informations livrées par la Reine.
Après plusieurs tentatives restées sans succès, aujourd’hui, les lettres caviardées commencent à livrer leurs
secrets !
Dans le cadre des actions de soutien à la recherche de la Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine (FSP), en 2014 un
projet déposé par les Archives Nationales a permis au Centre de recherche sur la conservation des collections (CRCC)
d’analyser ces lettres à l’aide de techniques récentes d’imagerie dans trois domaines distincts du spectre
électromagnétique : celui des rayons X, du visible et du proche-moyen infrarouge ainsi que celui de l'infrarouge
lointain afin de discriminer les deux niveaux d’écriture.
Les encres de l’époque, dites métallogalliques, étaient préparées à partir d’un mélange aqueux de sulfate de fer ou
de sulfate de cuivre, de tannins végétaux (acide gallique extrait de la noix de galle) et d’une gomme végétale (gomme
arabique) jouant le rôle de liant pour les pigments formés par ce mélange.
Des cartographies chimiques ont été réalisées sur la lettre « 4401_1-43 » datée du 4 janvier 1792, une des rares
lettres autographes de Marie-Antoinette. Grâce à de légères variations dans les concentrations de cuivre entre les
deux encres, la fluorescence de rayons X sous micro-faisceau (μXRF) a permis de distinguer les deux niveaux d’écriture
et d’extraire le texte original (les mots en italique-souligné sont interpolés) :
« je vais finire, non pas sans vous dire mon bien cher et tendre ami que je vous aime a la folie et que
jamais jamais je ne peu être un moment sans vous adorer ».
Au-delà de l’information obtenue sur le contenu de cette correspondance, l’étude a permis d’asseoir diverses
méthodologies d’imagerie utiles pour analyser plus finement des manuscrits et en extraire des informations invisibles
à l’œil nu.
C’est l’un des objectifs de l’Equipement d’excellence PATRIMEX que gère la FSP et qui vise à mettre en synergie de
nouvelles techniques pour mieux connaître, comprendre et préserver les biens culturels.
Fort de ce premier succès et avec l’idée de déchiffrer la totalité de la correspondance entre Marie-Antoinette et Axel
de Fersen, la FSP souhaite pouvoir assurer la poursuite du projet.
2
Contact : crcc@mnhn.fr
Partenaires
1) Les Archives Nationales
2) Le Centre de recherche sur la conservation,
USR CNRS 3224, Sorbonne Universités, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle,
Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
3) Le laboratoire ETIS, UMR CNRS 8051, ENSEA, Université de Cergy-Pontoise
4) La Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine
(LabEx Patrima / EquipEx Patrimex : programme Investissements d’avenir)
Avec le concours du Musée de la Musique et de l’Institut National du Patrimoine (INP)
également partenaires de la FSP.
Equipe :
Florian Kergourlay2
, Christine Andraud2
, Anne Michelin2
, Aymeric Histace3
, Bertrand Lavédrine2
, Isabelle AristideHastir1
, Rosine Lheureux1

, Emmanuel Poirault4


Count Axel de Fersen

Marie-Antoinette’s 30-year romance with a Swedish count revealed in new book

Letters show the queen’s love was far from platonic, the author of new book tells Katie Grant

Katie Grant / Wednesday 30 December 2015


Marie-Antoinette has endured centuries of negative press – and now, more than 200 years after being guillotined, things are about to get worse as far as the late monarch’s reputation is concerned.

A historian and biographer of the queen is set to publish a tranche of correspondence which she claims proves that not only was the notorious queen of France unfaithful to her husband, Louis XVI, but that one of her children was illegitimate.

Born in Austria in 1755, Marie-Antoinette married Louis in 1770. Her indulgent lifestyle and frivolous spending came to symbolise the excesses of the reviled French monarchy. Her decadence was a factor in the unrest that led to the French Revolution and the monarchy’s demise.

In her book, I Love You Madly – Marie-Antoinette: The Secret Letters, the British historian Evelyn Farr lays bare the queen’s alleged infidelity with the powerful Swedish statesman Axel von Fersen and calls into question the parentage of her daughter, Sophie, who died as an infant, proposing the princess was fathered by the devoted lover.

The title of the book, due out next spring, was inspired by a quote from the adoring count, who told the royal in one letter: “I love you and will love you madly all my life.” She in turn called him “the most loved and loving of men” and informed him “my heart is all yours”.

Until now the only correspondence published between Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen concerns affairs of state. The complete and unexpurgated collection of their letters “confirms unequivocally their passionate and enduring love affair,” according to the book’s publisher Peter Owen.

“This is the first time the full extent of their relationship has been exposed,” according to Ms Farr.

Months spent trawling through archives in the UK, France and Sweden revealed a wealth of information, leaving the author in no doubt that the pair were lovers.

The author says she needed “detective-like skills” to decode many of the couple’s letters. They used a series of techniques to ensure their romance remained top secret, from writing in invisible ink and using code to creating secret stamps and enlisting trusted friends as go-betweens. “Because it was such a compromising correspondence it had to be kept secret,” Ms Farr says.

Some of their acquaintances were rather less discreet than the pair might have hoped, though. Previously unpublished correspondence between their “very gossipy” friends sheds a whole new light on their relationship, says Ms Farr, who believes one particular revelation will send shockwaves across France.

“From what the Duke of Dorchester insinuated to the Duchess of Devonshire, it was fairly obvious [Princess] Sophie was Fersen’s child,” Ms Farr reveals.

Many French scholars are “reluctant” to acknowledge the pair were more than just good friends, according to the author, but the historian believes her research settles the matter once and for all.

“‘I love you madly’ is a very strong phrase – you don’t say that to a good friend. It’s really telling; it implies a physical relationship. They were lovers,” she insists.

“It was a pretty instantaneous crush they had on each other,” Ms Farr says of the pair’s first meeting, which occurred when they were in their late teens in about 1774.

“They were extremely smitten,” she adds, claiming that the relationship lasted until Marie-Antoinette’s untimely death at the hands of the revolutionaries in 1793.

“Most French historians sit on the fence. Some insist it was a platonic love, others say we can never be sure,” Ms Farr says.

“I found quite a few declarations of love. Once you’ve started discovering passages like those you can’t sit on the fence any more.”

Royal letters: Intimate exchanges

Count Fersen to Marie Antoinette

25 October 1791

“My dear and very tender friend – my God, how cruel it is to be so close and not be able to see each other! … I live and exist only to love you; adoring you is my only consolation”

29 October 1794

“Adieu, my tender friend, I love you and will love you madly all my life”

Marie Antoinette to Count Fersen

4 January 1792

“I am going to close, but not without telling you, my dear and very tender friend, that I love you madly and never, ever could I exist a moment without adoring you”

19 March 1795

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