Between the Public and Private in Visions of the Court of Versailles: Reports of Travellers from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Abstract

Many noblemen from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth travelled across Europe in the eighteenth century. One of the obligatory places in their itinerary was Paris, especially Versailles — a symbol of court created by Louis XIV. During any stay in Versailles, the most important point on the agenda would be to see the court. There was no particular problem with attending the public audience, but travellers wanted to see the court up close. Depending on several factors (date of the source, age of the writer, purpose of the journey, degree of intimacy with the court, etc.), the accounts of the court of Versailles vary from descriptions of royal apartments and ceremonies (both secular and religious), through to detailed reports of political events, and accounts of private conversations with the royal family and the French elite during meals. This article presents different depictions of the private and public spheres at the court of Versailles observed by travellers from Poland and Lithuania and attempts to show the various perspectives on privacy at the court of Versailles.

Notes

1 Joanna Orzeł, ‘Versailles dans le système éducatif des nobles et des magnats de la République des Deux Nations’, Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles 18 (2021), https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.19327.

2 Of the many extremely varied texts on Versailles, see its interesting portrayal as a model for the court presented in: Anthony Spawforth, Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (New York, 2008); Gérard Sabatier, Versailles ou la disgrâce d’Apollon (Rennes/Versailles, 2017); Gérard Sabatier, ‘Le mythe de Versailles (XVII^e–XIX^e siècle’, Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles 23 (2023), https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.27299. It is valuable to consider the etiquette of the court at Versailles from the perspective of: Bernard Hours, Louis XV et sa cour. Le Roi, l’étiquette et le courtisan. Essai historique (Paris, 2002), pp. 77-141.

3 Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York, 1983). See also the criticism of Elias’ theory: Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam, 1995).

4 Patricia Meyer Spacks, Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self (Chicago, 2003), pp. 13-14.

5 Spacks writes about this self-clarification: Spacks, Privacy, p. 12. Moreover: Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1989). However, there is truth to Lars Cyril Nørgaard’s statement that ‘the Habermasian analysis of the public sphere has left historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with more questions than answers […]’, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, ‘Past Privacy’, in Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard and Mette Birkedal Brunn (eds), Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches (Leiden/Boston, 2022), p. 2.

6 Rudolf Dekker, ‘Introduction’, in Rudolf Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages (Hilversum, 2002), pp. 7-20.

7 It is also worth mentioning that the absolutist rule of the French kings would have been unusual to the representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which was governed by a mixed monarchy system, whereby the king could not decide on the most important matters of state without the consent of the nobility). Filip Wolański, ‘Celebrations at European Courts as Viewed by “Sarmatian” Travellers’, Quaestio Rossica 8, no 4 (2020), pp. 1231-2.

8 Małgorzata E. Kowalczyk, Zagraniczne podróże Polek w epoce oświecenia (Łomianki, 2019), p. 281.

9 Letters from Anna Paulina née Sapieha Jabłonowska to Anna Szeptycka during her stay abroad (Listy Anny Pauliny z Sapiehów Jabłonowskiej do Anny Szeptyckiej podczas pobytu za granicą …), Львивська наукова библиотека имени В. Стефаника НАН України (Stefanyk Science Library in Lviv), collection 145, part II, no 21, p. 27.

10 About Marie Leszczyńska at the court of Versailles see especially: Anne Muratori-Philip, Marie Leszczyńska: épouse de Louis XV (Paris, 2010); Yves Carlier, ‘Wersalski żywot królowej: Maria Leszczyńska na francuskim dworze / Une vie de reine à Versailles. Marie Leszczyńska et la cour’, in Wersal Marii Leszczyńskiej: Sztuka dworska we Francji XVIII wieku / Le Versailles de Marie Leszczyńska. L’art à la cour de France au XVIII^e siècle (Warsaw, 2013), pp. 57-70; Katarzyna Kuras, Dwór królowej Marii Leszczyńskiej: Ludzie, pieniądze i wpływy (Cracow, 2018).

11 Listy Anny Pauliny z Sapiehów Jabłonowskiej do Anny Szeptyckiej … , p. 51v.

12 ‘Grzegorz Piramowicz do Ignacego Potockiego, 7 IX 1780’, in Bożena Michalik (ed.), Korespondencja Ignacego Potockiego w sprawach edukacyjnych (1774–1809) (Wrocław, 1978), p. 81.

13 ‘Grzegorz Piramowicz do Ignacego Potockiego, 7 IX 1780’, p. 82. Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, count of Aranda (1718–98), was a Spanish statesman and diplomat, an ambassador to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reign of Augustus III of Poland (1733–63) and later ambassador to France.

14 Mathieu da Vinha, Alexandre Bontemps. Premier valet de chambre de Louis XIV (Versailles, 2011). We do not have precise information on how Kossowicz came into contact with Alexandre Bontemps, but an intriguing detail offers one possibility: after arriving in Paris in 1684, Jan Stanisław and Aleksander Jabłonowski both began their studies at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, where one of their fellow students was Bontemps' son, Louis-Alexandre.

15 Jan Michał Kossowicz, Diariusz podróży po Europie (1682–1688), edn Anna Markiewicz (Warsaw, 2017), pp. 345, 355.

16 Kossowicz, Diariusz, p. 659.

17 See: Stéphane Castelluccio, ‘La Galerie des Glaces: Les réceptions d’ambassadeurs’, Versalia. Revue de la Société des Amis de Versailles 9 (2006), pp. 24-52.

18 Kossowicz, Diariusz, pp. 269-72, 263-4, 390-1.

19 See: Filip Wolański, ‘Le Transfert culturel des modèles courtisans français à la lumière des récits polonais de voyage des XVII^e et XVIII^e siècles’, Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles 18 (2021), https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.19698. Compare other records mentioning the splendour of the palace and gardens in Versailles: Felicjan Junosza Piaskowski, Pamiętnik Felicyana Junoszy Piaskowskiego podstolego podlaskiego, majora J.K. Mości począwszy od roku 1690 (Lviv, 1865), pp. 83-4; Teodor Billewicz, Diariusz podróży po Europie w latach 1677-1678 (Warsaw, 2004), pp. 291-2; Michał Zdzisław Zamoyski, Dyaryusz zajęć Michała Zdzisława Zamoyskiego bawiącego na naukach w Paryżu w r. 1699, The National Library of Poland, Biblioteka Ordynacji Zamoyskich, no 1455, pp. 1-8.

20 Katarzyna Kuras, ‘Le Polonais à la cour de Marie Leszczyńska’, Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, vol. 18 (2021), https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.19272.

21 Marek Dębowski (ed.), Pamiętniki króla Stanisława Augusta. Antologia (Warsaw, 2016), p. 116. Original version: Stanislas Auguste, Mémoires, edn Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz and Dominique Traire (Paris, 2012), p. 76. About his impressions from Versailles see: Joanna Orzeł, ‘Le château de Versailles à travers le regard de jeunes voyageurs, futurs rois de Pologne: Auguste III et Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski’, Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles 17 (2020), https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.18642.

22 Joanna Orzeł, Arvydas Pacevicius and Stanisław Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno 1752–1754 metų kelionės dienoraštis / Dziennik podróży Józefa Jerzego Hylzena z lat 1752–1754 (Vilnius, 2013), p. 203.

23 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 203.

24 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 206.

25 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 204.

26 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 206.

27 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 251.

28 Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 255.

29 If Hylzen’s diary is to be believed, the wife of King Frederick II of Prussia, Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel made similar statements when this young magnate was leaving Berlin: ‘I’m angry that you must leave. I would be very happy to see you here again.’ Orzeł, Pacevicius and Roszak (eds), Juozapo Jurgio Hilzeno, p. 287. For more about Hylzen’s boasting of being attractive to women, see: Joanna Orzeł, ‘Józef Jerzy Hylzen’s Diary as an Example of an Ego-Document’, in Renata Skowrońska et al. (eds), Selbstzeugnisse im polnischen und deutschen Schrifttum im Spatmittelalter und in der Fruhen Neuzeit (15.–18. Jahrhundert) (Toruń, 2014), p. 243.

30 Teofila Konstancja z Radziwiłłów Morawska, Diariusz podróży europejskiej w latach 1773–1774, edn Bogdan Rok (Wrocław, 2004), p. 72.

31 Morawska, Diariusz podróży, p. 73.

32 Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Pamiętniki czasów moich, edn Jan Dihm (Warsaw, 1957), vol. I, p. 219.

33 Niemcewicz, Pamiętniki, p. 220.

34 Niemcewicz, Pamiętniki, p. 220.

35 Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Podróże po Ameryce 1797–1807, edn Antonia Wellman-Zalewska (Wrocław, 1959), p. 336.

36 See especially: Anna Markiewicz, ‘Różne sztuki wód i Bernini. Wersal Ludwika XIV w relacjach polskich podróżników (1661–1715)’, Modus. Prace z Historii Sztuki 20 (2020), pp. 99-113. More generally: Adam Kucharski, Theatrum peregrinandi. Poznawcze aspekty staropolskich podróży w epoce późnego baroku (Toruń, 2013), pp. 229-49, 299-300.

37 This does not mean, however, that in the second half of the eighteenth century, the palace of Versailles was not full of admiration. See the travel journal written by Franciszek Ksawery Bohusz, Dzienniki podróży, edn Filip Wolański (Cracow/Wrocław, 2014), pp. 145-7.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Orzeł

Joanna Orzeł

Joanna Orzeł is assistant professor at the Department of Early Modern History in the Institute of History, University of Lodz in Poland. Her main scientific interests focus on the history of the culture of the nobility within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the cultural and intellectual history of the Enlightenment, and the history of travel in the early modern period. She is the author of the book Historia — tradycja — mit w pamięci kulturowej szlachty Rzeczypospolitej w XVI–XVIII wieku [‘History — Tradition — Myth on the Cultural Memory of Noblemen in the Commonwealth of the 16^th–18^th centuries’] (2016), and co-editor of the diary of Józef Jerzy Hylzen’s journey through Europe in the years 1752–1754 (2013).