Louis XVI
hobby
By Marielle Brie de Lagerac
Art Historian
There’s a key for every lock:
Louis XVI knew all about that, except perhaps in his own bedroom!
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The stereotype of the most famous royal couple in French history usually depicts Marie-Antoinette as a fickle fashion victim and Louis XVI as an introverted locksmith. This is far from the truth. If the queen did indeed have a generously-stocked wardrobe, it was because the strict etiquette of Versailles demanded it. And it was precisely to evade it that Louis XVI almost literally forged the keys capable of keeping the court back for a few hours. He was not the first king to take an interest in this art, but he was certainly the first to use it to avoid having to put up with his sycophantic courtiers! Fully aware that if you want something done, you must do it yourself, Louis XVI decided to get his hands dirty and learn how to forge keys and locks. His great-grandfather Stanislas Leszczynski had the same taste for locksmithing, but his interest never went beyond admiration.
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Determined to satisfy his curiosity for the applied arts and sciences, Louis XVI had a workshop for physics, chemistry, carpentry, mechanics, clockmaking and locksmithing set up on the top floor of the Cour des Cerfs in Versailles, as well as a forge and an electricity gallery. Enough to create a fortress of solitude worthy of the name.
This royal workshop, closed to courtiers, was the talk of the town. One can imagine anything going on behind these locked doors: does the king hold secret political meetings here? Does he meet a mistress there? Ironically, and not without a sense of humor, in March 1777, Louis XVI abandoned his passion for locksmithing in order to make the court believe that he had a mistress capable of distracting him from his hobby. This royal pastime is thus capable of arousing everything and its opposite, without ever revealing the key to the mystery: the king wants more
than anything to be left in peace.
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That is the mystery of a locked door: whether the owner of the key is on one side or the other, the hidden room is the object of fantasy. Louis XVI was well aware of this advantage in Versailles,
where from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to bed, his every move was watched, interpreted and reported on. By concealing the royal person from the eyes of the court, he created
a mystery capable of keeping the court in awe! Yet the reality is simply what Louis XVI claims. In his workshop, Nicolas Gamain, locksmith to the King's buildings, taught the sovereign the art of
making keys and locks. Louis XVI is even said to have made a lock and key for a small box signed with the pseudonym Feutry. This amused a lot the Parisian pamphleteers, who used smutty
metaphors in a field in which the king did not shine. Married in 1770 to Marie-Antoinette of Austria, the king did not become a father until eight long years, and scandalmongers wondered if
the locksmith king had the right key, or even if he was capable of finding the keyhole! Not very elegant, but certainly funny.
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