Francine du Plessix Gray on that interesting office

And who was it, who could have known

that into our time there would fall

an attention upon the conjugal engage-

ments of the Bourbon court, with Mrs.

Rodd still in print? Never wasting,

never wanting anxiously the by-ways

of the Petit Trianon, Francine du

Plessix Gray's publishers have given

to our August distractions her study

of Axel von Fersen, The Queen's Lov-

er, just in time for an afternoon's

browse at the University bookstore.

No less than that infallible atten-

dant upon genital activity in High

Places, Edmund White has waved his

knowing wand of favour over its roil-

ing covers, and Adam Gopnik (fast

contending for docent in all displays

Parisian) praises the text for dis-

covering a novel poignancy in the

admittedly familiar mechanics of the

amorous act. Who, then, could escape

the shop, uninformed?

We are not, in our reticent station,

about to compete with these sages in

the distinguishing of the historic

from the merely mundane tweak and par-

ry of furtive heterosexuality; when,

may it be remembered, the template

for registering their seismicity is

safely etched in the masterpieces of

Nancy Mitford, of the previous mid-

Century. Her Pompadour, Sun King and

Voltaire in Love all satisfy the

question of whether anyone were busy

in this way, with persuasive conjec-

tures on what this could have meant

for Statecraft and the lumens of the

Enlightenment, itself. 

Now, in Gray - a writer I have con-

sulted in the overhang of parents

(Them) and at The New York Review - 

we meet a refresher course in how 

turmoil of social change might en-

hance the morbidity of concupiscent 

escape. What's it like, in other

words, when all else is not going

according to plan? In this new nov-

el, I cannot raise expectations of 

Stendhal or Manzoni, Lampedusa or 

even Genet; but I think I can tes-

tify to its satisfying the fast-food 

connoisseurship of puberty, such as 

we can recall it from Catullus. Here, 

again, are all the marvels of the 

responsive features, lavishly ad-

dressed, here the exegesis of the 

immortal undercurrents' purgations, 

and mercifully without any bio-

graphical obligation. There will 

be no quiz, Class: it is presumed 

that you have mastered this material.

Yes, I do now understand that Marie

Antoinette's boyfriend lent his ar-

dour to the liberation of the Amer-

ican colonies, and was probably a

pretty good guy in his indulgence

of his own sovereign's hideous ho-

mosexual exploitations of his court.

How modern and accessible our dear

Marshall of Sweden does seem to us

in this light, as a fellow traveler

in the getting through of a time of

fiscal indiscipline. But the revolu-

tion in France cannot be said to

have been accelerated by his hap-

pening to have been in a consoling

place at an abject moment in a mon-

arch's day, and so one cannot as-

sign this text to anyone but lay-

about gossips in the prurience of

of our forbears, whose body count 

mounts well enough, already. Read-

ers, however, who accept a publish-

er's representations of historical

purpose in the product at hand, are

warned of acquiring a vapid tease.

Francine du Plessix Gray

The Queen's Lover

Penguin Press, 2012©