Talking Location With … author Anna Mazzola 18th Century PARIS

12th March 2022

#TalkingLocationWith... Anna Mazzola, author of The Clockwork Girl – 18th Century PARIS.

Why Paris? Well, firstly because it was one of the centres for automata-making in the 18^th century, and I wanted to write a novel about an automaton-maker. I’ve always been interested in – and slightly horrified by – moving dolls and creatures. Secondly, because, quite frankly, I wanted an excuse to go to Paris and to delve into its fascinating history.

This was a Paris where some starved in the streets while others were weighed down by the heavy jewels on their bodices. Within another fifty years, anger had spilled over into the French Revolution. In 1750, however, it was still fomenting, and the scandal of the vanishing children (which partly inspired the book) helped bring that anger to the boil.

LE BAS PEUPLE

The story begins with our protagonist, Madeleine, winding her way through the Quartier Montorgueil, ‘the alleys too narrow, the houses too high, so that the sun was kept out and the stench kept in, the streets dark and rank as the devil’s connard.’ Paris grew rapidly in the 1700s, and people put up houses wherever and however they wanted, with poor areas narrow and squalid. Throughout Paris, the streets ran with filth. ‘Paris is always dirty,’ a British visitor complained. ‘By perpetual motion dirt is beaten into such a thick black unctuous oil, that where it sticks, no art can wash it off.’ Mercier agreed that no foreign nose could abide the black mud of Paris: ‘it is sulphurous, with a tang of nitric acid. A spot of this mud left on a coat will eat away the cloth.

FROM BROTHEL TO CLOCKMAKER’S HOUSE

Madeleine tells us of how, aged twelve, she began working as a prostitute in ‘a soot-stained building, bowed and blackened like a filthy finger, beckoning customers to the door.’ The house is in a poor area north of the market of Les Halles, which I knew to have contained brothels.

When she’s recruited to act as a police spy, Madeleine is sent to work for Dr Reinhart, the most gifted automaton-maker in Paris. I located his polished and peculiar house in the elegant and triangular Place Dauphine on Île de la Cité, which was at that time the residence of ‘gem dealers, pearl traders, mirror makers and watchmakers’.

THE LOUVRE

In Part 2, Madeleine and her mistress, Veronique (the clockmaker’s daughter) move to the Louvre palace, which in the mid-18^th century was used as a home for craftsmen, the subdivided floors housing ‘portraitists, poets, sculptors and scientists.’ It is the old Louvre palace which appears on the cover of the hardback. Now, of course, the Louvre is a world-famous gallery, containing a treasury of 18^th century art, including the portrait-work of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

VERSAILLES

Part 3 of The Clockwork Girl takes us to the Palace of Versailles, our guide Louis XV’s most famous mistress: the beautiful and highly intelligent Madame de Pompadour. She also appears in the Louvre, painted by Boucher.

The palace was built by Louis XIV, the Sun King, as a giant status symbol. With over 700 rooms, a hall of Venetian mirrors, elaborate gardens, 600 tinkling fountains and a menagerie, it was the most extravagant court that Europe had ever seen. The eight-foot high throne was built of solid silver, as was the furniture in the Hall of Mirrors. The gardens even had an early rollercoaster on which Louis would give rides to his guests. Sadly, the roulette no longer exists, and much of the silver furniture was melted down, but Versailles is still the most astonishing place to visit. One aspect which fortunately has also disappeared is the stink. In the 18^th century, a lack of adequate toilets meant that visitors often defecated behind statues or pissed against tapestries. The courtiers themselves would have rarely washed, as bathing too often was considered unhealthy.

The author at Versailles

By the time Louis XV took the throne in 1715, the stink wasn’t just olfactory. The public increasingly regarded Versailles as immoral. Heedless to this, Louis set about a series of affairs, including with four de Mailly sisters. For the youngest sister, he installed the ‘Flying Chair’, one of the first lifts in history, to save her the climb to the mistresses’ apartments.

I went on a tour of the apartments when I visited Versailles, seeing Madame de Pompadour’s apartments and the tiny room in which her chambermaid would have lived. Pompadour was a great lover of books, amassing a considerable library. You can still see some of her books at Versailles, bound in morocco leather.

Anna Mazzola

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