Marie Antoinette’s Letters to Her Dear Swedish Count, Now Uncensored

The 12 months was 1791, and whereas Marie Antoinette could not have had the favor of the individuals of France, she did have a pen pal. Her confidant, Axel von Fersen, was a Swedish rely, and one of many French queen’s shut buddies.

Between the summers of 1791 and 1792, although the queen was saved below shut surveillance after a botched escape try, she nonetheless managed to sneak letters to the Count of Fersen. He copied the letters, which at the moment are held within the French nationwide archives. But between the time the letters have been written and the time they arrived on the archives, some mysterious actor censored the letters, scrawling out phrases and contours with tightly looped circles of ink.

The content material of the censored traces — and the identification of the fastidious scribbler — eluded historians for almost 150 years. In a paper printed on Friday within the journal Science Advances, scientists have now revealed the redacted content material of eight of the censored letters between Marie Antoinette and the Count of Fersen. The researchers used a way referred to as X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, which may detect the chemical signatures of various inks with out damaging paperwork.

The uncensored contents of the letters present the depth of Marie Antoinette’s affections for her shut buddy throughout a time of turmoil. But in a blow to gossips, the contents don’t make clear whether or not they have been having an affair.

Emeline Pouyet, a researcher at Sorbonne University in France who was not concerned with the mission, referred to as the lifted redaction “a real technical breakthrough” that contributes to the sphere of conservation science.

“I think it’s absolutely fantastic,” mentioned Catriona Seth, a professor of French literature on the University of Oxford who was not concerned with the analysis. “Science is teaching us things we couldn’t have guessed.”

Marie Antoinette, who was executed in 1793, wrote many letters in her life.

Though the content material of the queen’s later correspondence with the rely is continuously political, the letters seize among the most excessive moments of her life. “She’s under house arrest, she fears for her life, she may be killed,” Dr. Seth mentioned. “She is writing with this awareness of her fate.”

But just a few of the letters had redacted content material, Dr. Seth mentioned. And many historians have questioned whether or not these censored traces might provide new insights into the French queen’s relationship with the Swedish rely.

The letters stayed within the Count of Fersen’s household till 1877, once they have been printed by the rely’s great-nephew Baron of Klinckowström. Many historians suspect the baron was the letters’ censor, maybe to protect his household’s repute amongst rumors that the Swedish rely and the French queen had been secret lovers.

In 2014, the National Archives contacted Anne Michelin, an assistant professor on the French National Museum of Natural History, to see whether or not she would possibly be capable of uncover the textual content.

Researchers can use X-ray tomography, or CT scans, to get well sure hidden texts, such because the inky insides of rolled papyri. These X-rays can visualize the textual content with out damaging the manuscripts.

But the redactions within the Marie Antoinette letters are a distinct kind of beast. The censor scratched out traces utilizing the identical ink as the unique writing, making a black tangle of superimposed ink. The two inks didn’t have sufficient chemical distinction for CT scans to detect the underlying textual content. The researchers brainstormed potential strategies that would break by means of the censorship; all however one didn’t illuminate the redactions.

The technique that prevailed was X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, or XRF, which differentiated the chemical signature of the ink utilized by the unique creator and the ink utilized by the censor. The preliminary XRF scans revealed that each texts had been etched with metal-gall ink, a typical ink made with iron sulfate. “But the iron sulfate is not pure most of the time,” Dr. Michelin mentioned. “It contains other metallic elements, like copper and zinc. With that slight difference, we can differentiate the inks.”

In some letters, copper was current solely within the authentic ink, so isolating the aspect by itself would take away the censor. “So just with the map of the copper, I can read the text,” Dr. Michelin mentioned.

Other letters proved trickier. With no single elemental smoking gun, the researchers mapped the ratios of sure parts, akin to copper-to-iron, to tell apart between the inks and to disclose the textual content. And extra letters nonetheless evaded deciphering completely, as the unique and redacting inks have been too related in composition to be separated.

The ink scans can also have uncloaked the true identification of the redactor: not the grandnephew Klinckowström, however the Count of Fersen himself. The scans confirmed that the rely began utilizing the identical ink to write down and redact after 1791. In one letter, the rely redacted a line and added textual content above it in the identical ink to make sure the road would nonetheless be readable, altering “the letter of the 28th made my happiness” to the milder “the letter of the 28th reached me.” A handwriting knowledgeable confirmed the tweak got here from the rely himself.

The group finally undid the censorship of eight of the 15 whole letters, revealing sentimental shows of affection between the French queen and the Swedish rely: phrases like “beloved, tender friend, adore and madly.”

“Very clearly, Marie Antoinette has a very deep affection for von Fersen, who at this stage of her existence is one of the pillars of her affection,” Dr. Seth mentioned.

But Dr. Seth says these moonstruck effusions are usually not proof of a love affair. She in contrast them to the kissy-face emoji.

“You might use it to mean ‘bye’ to a friend, and yet someone who doesn’t know about our emoji culture will assume you must be deeply in love,” she mentioned.

Besides, the rely was a busy man.

“He’s still having an affair with another woman at the time,” Dr. Seth added.

Before beginning the mission, Dr. Michelin was not conversant in the rumored relationship between the Count of Fersen and Marie Antoinette. Though she now has extra compassion for the maligned queen, she is considerably uninterested within the rumors.

“All the queens and all the kings in France had this love affair,” she mentioned dryly over a Zoom name. “It’s common.”