It is rather well known that the
origins of many English phrases are completely unknown. Nevertheless, many
people would claim, and with some conviction, that the quote “let them eat cake”
is attributed to none other than the high priestess of opulence, Marie-Antoinette
(1755-93), the Queen consort of Louis XVI. She is supposed to have said this
when she was told that the French populace had no bread to eat.
The original French is ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’, i.e. ‘Let
them eat brioche’. The usual
interpretation of the phrase is that Marie-Antoinette understood little about
the plight of the poor and cared even less.
There are two problems with that
interpretation:
1. There’s no evidence of any
kind that Marie-Antoinette ever uttered those word or anything like them and
2. The phrase, in as much as it
can be shown to be associated with the French nobility, can be interpreted in
other ways, for example, it could have either ironic or even a genuine attempt
to offer cake to the poor as an alternative to the bread that they couldn’t
afford.
As to the origin of the
expression, two notable contemporaries of Marie-Antoinette – Louis XVIII and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attribute the phrase to source other than her. In Louis
XVIII’s memoir Relation d’un voyage a Bruxelles et d Coblentz, 1791, he states
that the phrase ‘Que ne mangent-ils de la
croûte de pâté?’ was used by Marie-Thérèse (1638-83), the wife of Louis
XIV. That account was published almost a century after Marie-Thérèse’s death
though, so it must be treated with some caution.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 12-volume
autobiographical work Confessions,
was written in 1770. In Book 6, which was written around 1767, he recalls:
At length I recollected the
thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country
people had no bread, replied, “Then let them eat pastry!”
Marie-Antoinette arrived at
Versailles from her native Austria in 1770, two or three years after Rousseau
had written the above passage. Whoever the ‘great princess’ was – possibly
Marie-Thérèse, it wasn’t Marie-Antoinette.
Her reputation as an indulgent
socialite is difficult to shake, but it appears to be unwarranted and is a
reminder that history is written by the victors. She was known to have said “It is quite certain that in seeing the
people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged
than ever to work hard for their happiness”.
In honor of Elizabeth II a scrumptious Victoria
Sponge. Let us eat cake!