The Englishman is a figure of some note in the Royal Society. He has an older half-brother who makes money in more ways than I can enumerate. The family has old connections to the goldsmith’s shops that used to be situated around Cornhill and Threadneedle, and newer connections to the banca that was set up by Sir Richard Apthorp after Charles II put many of the goldsmiths out of business. If you are not familiar with a banca, it means something akin to a goldsmith, except that they have dropped any pretense of goldsmithing per se; they are financiers dealing in metal and paper. Odd as it might sound, this type of business actually makes sense, at least in the context of London, and Apthorp is doing well by it. It was through this connexion that I became aware of the trends in silver and gold mentioned earlier, and was able to make the right bets, as it were.
Lacking the refinement of the French, the English have no equivalent of Versailles, so the high and mighty, the adherents of diverse religions, commercants, and Vagabonds are all commingled in London. You’ve spent time in Amsterdam, which may give you some idea of what London is like, except that London is not nearly as well organized. Much of the mixing takes place in coffee-houses. Surrounding the ‘Change are diverse coffee- and chocolate-houses that, over time, have come to serve specific clientele. Birds of a feather flock together and so those who trade in East India Company stocks go to one place and so forth. Now as the overseas trade of England has waxed, the business of under-writing ships and other risky ventures has become a trade of some significance in and of itself. Those who are in the market for insurance have recently begun going to Lloyd’s Coffeehouse, which has, for whatever reason, become the favorite haunt of the underwriters. This arrangement works well for buyer and seller alike: the buyer can solicit bids from diverse underwriters simply by strolling from table to table, the sellers can distribute the risks by spontaneously forming associations. I hope I am not boring you to death, Monsieur, but it is a fascinating thing to watch, and you yourself have now made a bit of money from this quarter, which you can use to buy yourself a picaroon-romance if my discourse is too tedious. Tout le monde at Versailles agree that L’Emmerdeur in Barbary is a good read, and I have it on high authority that a copy was spied in the King’s bedchamber.
Enough of business; now, gossip.
Madame deigns to recognize me now that I am known to be a Countess. For the longest time, she regarded me as a parasite, a strangling vine, and so I expected she would be the last person at Court to accept me as a noblewoman. But she astonished me with a welcome that was courteous and almost warm, and begrudged me a few moments’ polite conversation, when I encountered her in the gardens the other day. I believe her previous coldness toward me came from two reasons. One is that like all the other foreign royals, la Palatine (as Liselotte is sometimes referred to here) is insecure about her rank, and tends to exalt herself by belittling those whose bloodlines are even more questionable than hers. This is not an attractive feature but it is all too human! The second reason is that her chief rival at Court is de Maintenon, who came up from a wretched state to become the unofficial Queen of France. And so whenever Madame sees a woman at Court who has aspirations, it reminds her of the one she hates.
Many nobles of ancient families sneer at me because I handle money. Liselotte is not, however, one of these. On the contrary, I believe it explains why she has accepted me.
Now that I have spent two years in the household of Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax, surrounded by the very type of ambitious young woman Madame despises so much, I can understand why she takes such care to avoid them. Those girls have very few assets: their names, their bodies, and (if they are lucky enough to have been born with any) their wits. The first of these-their names, and the pedigrees attached-suffice to get them in the gates. They are like an invitation to the ball. But most of those families have more liabilities than assets. Once one of those girls has found a position in some household at Versailles, she has only a few years to make arrangements for the remainder of her life. She is like a plucked rose in a vase. Every day at dawn she looks out the window to see a gardener driving a wagon loaded with wilted flowers that are taken out to the countryside to be used for mulch, and the similitude to her own future is clear. In a few years she will be outshined, at all the parties, by younger girls. Her brothers will inherit any assets the family might have. If she can marry well, as Sophie did, she may have a life to look forward to; if not, she will be shipped off to some convent, as two of Sophie’s beautiful and brilliant sisters were. When that desperation is combined with the heedless irresponsible nature of young persons generally, cruelty becomes mundane.
It’s only reasonable for Madame to want to avoid young women of that type. She has always assumed that I was one of them-having no way to distinguish me from the others. But lately, as I mentioned, she has become aware that I handle investments. This sets me apart-it tells her that I have interests and assets outside of the intrigues of Court and so am not as dangerous as the others. In effect, she is treating me as if I had just married a rich handsome Duke, and gotten all my affairs in order. Instead of a cut rose in a vase, I am a rose-bush with living roots in rich soil.
Or perhaps I’m reading too much into a brief conversation!
She asked me if the hunting was good on Qwghlm. Knowing how much she loves to hunt, I told her it was miserable, unless throwing stones at rats qualified-and how, pray tell, was the hunting here at Versailles? Of course I meant the vast game parks that the King has constructed around the chateau, but Liselotte shot back, “Indoors or out?”
“I have seen game taken indoors,” I allowed, “but only through trapping or poisoning, which are common peasant vices.”
“Qwghlmians are more accustomed to the outdoor life?”
“If only because our dwellings keep getting blown down, madame.”
“Can you ride, mademoiselle?” she asked.
“After a fashion-for I learned bareback style,” I answered.
“There are no saddles where you come from?”
“In olden days there were, for we would suspend them from tree-branches overnight, to prevent them from being eaten by small creatures in the night-time. But then the English cut down the trees, and so now it is our custom to ride bareback.”
“I should like to see that,” she returned, “but it is hardly proper.”
“We are guests in the King’s house and must abide by his standards of propriety,” I said dutifully.
“If you can ride well in a saddle here, I shall invite you to St. Cloud-that is my estate, and you may abide by my rules there.”
“Do you think Monsieur would object?”
“My husband objects to everything I do,” she said, “and so he objects to nothing. ”
In my next letter, I’ll let you know whether I passed the riding-test, and got the invitation to St. Cloud.
And I will send the quarterly figures as well!
Eliza de la Zeur
Therefore it happeneth commonly, that such as value themselves by the greatness of their wealth, adventure on crimes, upon hope of escaping punishment, by corrupting public justice, or obtaining pardon by money, or other rewards.