Read Online Marie Antoinette by Kathryn Lasky - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kathryn Lasky
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sitting up in bed. She had a blush on her cheeks and a dim sparkle in her eyes, and she wanted to know all I was doing. So I told her not much, seeing as she had been too ill to teach me etiquette. Then she told me that she had heard that I was reluctant to practice my drawing. And she said she did not know why, as my handwriting had improved so much. I think people would truly be astounded with my improvement if they could read you, dear diary. It is amazing when I compare not just the shape of my letters but the ease with which the words flow compared with the first entries I wrote. I brought Schnitzel with me as Lulu always enjoys him so much. He crawled right up on the bed with her and pounced on her lap. I saw her wince a bit. Her hip must still hurt.
Later: Lulu came up with this wonderful idea. She says I should ask Abbé de Vermond if instead of the usual still-life paintings of baskets of fruit and the like which he requires, I might try my hand at drawing the horses at the riding school. Is that not a wonderful idea?
December 13, 1769
I went this morning to draw the horses. I began in the stables. I decided it might be easier at first if I focused just on the head of a horse as it eats from its manger. To draw a horse performing one of its complicated figures would be too difficult. I decided to try the stallion Mars. His head is so large and noble.
December 14, 1769
Drawing Mars is the most challenging thing I have ever done. It has taken hold of my mind, my imagination, completely.
December 17, 1769
My drawing of Mars is really improving. Titi and Ferdinand and Max have been complaining bitterly about no snow. Usually by this time we have enough to go sledding. I don’t even care, for now I have decided to do a full portrait of Mars. I stay at the school for two hours after my lesson and watch the Riding Masters exercise Mars on a long line. I have set my goal to make a picture of Mars trotting.
December 20, 1769
Mama has ordered snow brought in from the mountains so we can sled. Titi and Ferdinand and Max are ecstatic. Christmas is almost upon us. Our play is simple this year. Mostly songs, but a tableau vivant of the Nativity passage. Elizabeth plays the Virgin Mary. Ferdinand is Joseph. Mama, my brother Joseph, and I are the Three Kings. Mama says it doesn’t matter that she is an Empress or that I am to be the Dauphine. “Rulers are rulers,” she says. These are not the only liberties she takes with the Gospel text. Schnitzy and other Court dogs have been transformed into “sheep,” thanks to some fuzzy little cloaks the tailors have fashioned for them from wool.
December 21, 1769
Herr Francke says that my drawing has improved my riding. I am doing Piaffe “perfectly,” in his words. The horse does not move one bit forward but merely prances or trots in place as he is supposed to do. It seems that drawing the picture has fixed the image in my mind of the horse’s feet, and this in some mysterious way makes me sit correctly and give just the right commands at the right pace to the horse.
December 26, 1769
Lulu took part in our Christmas celebration, and although I was very happy, it was something of a shock to see her. Her dress hung on her like the clothes of a scarecrow in the fields we pass on our way to Schönbrunn. Her face seemed all hollows and perhaps worst of all she could not walk without a cane. It was as if she had become an old lady overnight. She had shrunk, and although the hairdresser had fixed many plaits and switches of hair to her head, I could see that beneath them, even her skull seemed smaller, as if its bones rattled beneath the shell of false hair. I think she had overpainted her cheeks in an effort to look like her old self. But there was this new self instead, a self that I almost did not recognize. However, she sat through the St. Nicholas Day feast and then stayed for the entire tableau of our Gospel of St. Luke nativity, and she clapped her hands very merrily when Schnitzy
Later: Lulu came up with this wonderful idea. She says I should ask Abbé de Vermond if instead of the usual still-life paintings of baskets of fruit and the like which he requires, I might try my hand at drawing the horses at the riding school. Is that not a wonderful idea?
December 13, 1769
I went this morning to draw the horses. I began in the stables. I decided it might be easier at first if I focused just on the head of a horse as it eats from its manger. To draw a horse performing one of its complicated figures would be too difficult. I decided to try the stallion Mars. His head is so large and noble.
December 14, 1769
Drawing Mars is the most challenging thing I have ever done. It has taken hold of my mind, my imagination, completely.
December 17, 1769
My drawing of Mars is really improving. Titi and Ferdinand and Max have been complaining bitterly about no snow. Usually by this time we have enough to go sledding. I don’t even care, for now I have decided to do a full portrait of Mars. I stay at the school for two hours after my lesson and watch the Riding Masters exercise Mars on a long line. I have set my goal to make a picture of Mars trotting.
December 20, 1769
Mama has ordered snow brought in from the mountains so we can sled. Titi and Ferdinand and Max are ecstatic. Christmas is almost upon us. Our play is simple this year. Mostly songs, but a tableau vivant of the Nativity passage. Elizabeth plays the Virgin Mary. Ferdinand is Joseph. Mama, my brother Joseph, and I are the Three Kings. Mama says it doesn’t matter that she is an Empress or that I am to be the Dauphine. “Rulers are rulers,” she says. These are not the only liberties she takes with the Gospel text. Schnitzy and other Court dogs have been transformed into “sheep,” thanks to some fuzzy little cloaks the tailors have fashioned for them from wool.
December 21, 1769
Herr Francke says that my drawing has improved my riding. I am doing Piaffe “perfectly,” in his words. The horse does not move one bit forward but merely prances or trots in place as he is supposed to do. It seems that drawing the picture has fixed the image in my mind of the horse’s feet, and this in some mysterious way makes me sit correctly and give just the right commands at the right pace to the horse.
December 26, 1769
Lulu took part in our Christmas celebration, and although I was very happy, it was something of a shock to see her. Her dress hung on her like the clothes of a scarecrow in the fields we pass on our way to Schönbrunn. Her face seemed all hollows and perhaps worst of all she could not walk without a cane. It was as if she had become an old lady overnight. She had shrunk, and although the hairdresser had fixed many plaits and switches of hair to her head, I could see that beneath them, even her skull seemed smaller, as if its bones rattled beneath the shell of false hair. I think she had overpainted her cheeks in an effort to look like her old self. But there was this new self instead, a self that I almost did not recognize. However, she sat through the St. Nicholas Day feast and then stayed for the entire tableau of our Gospel of St. Luke nativity, and she clapped her hands very merrily when Schnitzy
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