Though democracy is ostensibly the opposite of monarchy, the mass culture that is American democracy has betrayed in every age a deep atavistic yearning for royalty. From the days of “King” Andrew Jackson to those of the “Kingfish,” Huey Long; from the era of the Robber Barons to the age of the movie “kings” and “queens”; from the first black demagogues, Marcus Garvey and Father Divine, to the “Prophet,” Elijah Muhammed; from the earliest Mafia chieftains to the bowing, kneeling, and hand-kissing of The Godfather; from the regal F.D.R. to the “Imperial Presidency” of President John F. Kennedy to the Great Pretender, Richard Nixon (who ordered the White House police costumed in the Graustarkian uniforms of European palace guards), Americans have fulfilled their craving for royalty and the trappings of royalty in so many ways that the impulse to set up kings and worship them must be reckoned one of the basic features of the national character. —from Albert Goldman’s prologue to Elvis, 1981 Every king, no matter how humble or dubious his origins, requires a palace, a lavish sanctuary where he can hold court and hang with the homies, sign documents with a flourish, consign enemies to shackles, and seek comfort in the soft recesses of a favored mistress when the missus is in one of her “moods.” A noble pile where he can privately indulge his appetites for feasting, elaborate theatricals, and ample helpings of flattery, gossip, and groveling. Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, whose incarnation as Sun King was proclaimed by the gold lame suit worn with a swagger on the album cover of 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong: Elvis’s Gold Records, Vol 2, escaped the squealing throngs behind the gates of Graceland, where he relaxed and roistered until pudge and pharmaceuticals took over. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion West, described as “Versailles in miniature,” offered a distinctly American pairing of pagan hedonism and the Protestant work ethic. Michael Jackson, the diamond-gloved King of Pop, took his leave at the Neverland Ranch compound, about which the less said the better. They were all descendants of the original Sun King, Louis XIV of France, whose reign spanned a staggering seventy-two years, 1643 to 1715. He reigned over, and from, the clockwork operetta stage of Versailles, the star of this story. In South Florida, where dreams go to glisten, the incorporated vision of Versailles as palace, command center, and clubhouse for the elite resides at Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach enclave that functions as a personal estate, membership club, feeding trough for donors and dealmakers, and a theme park with a singular, irregular attraction: its owner President Donald J. Trump, the man who would be Sun King. For aspiring world conquerors and other overachievers, for supercity planners from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, Versailles remains the gold standard of grandeur — literally, symbolically, aesthetically. Other palaces may possess a touristy charm, museum-quality artifacts, a storied past, crenelations, buttresses, and whatnot, but when it comes to historical resonance, architectural beauty, stately grounds (gardens, fountains, topiary, statuary, the orangery, the Great Lawn), scientific advancement, political intrigue, legendary dalliances, epigrammatic witticisms, piercing repartee, sumptuous banqueting, and voluminous anecdotal lore, nothing surpasses Versailles for enduring transplendence. It was the birthplace of ballet and for that alone we should bend the knee and try not to creak. At its peak of importance, Versailles was immensely full of itself, chin high with hauteur and pinched in every orifice. And why not? Once Louis XIV relocated the royal court and government to Versailles in 1682, it supplanted Paris as the capital of France and considered itself a society apart (“ce pays-ci,” as it was known to its residents, “this country”), outfitted with its own distinctive mores, etiquette, protocols, code phrases, pecking order, and personal locomotion: the “Versailles glide,” in which women, encased in grand panniers covered in layers of rich, adorned fabric, slid across the floor as if on rollers. Since no one in court was permitted to turn their back to the king, the assembled would form ranks, bow, and back out of the room like little choo-choo trains. This reverse exit is one of the entertaining tidbits in the film Jeanne du Barry, starring Maiwen as Louis XV’s mistress and a rouged Johnny Depp drolly pursing his lips as the king. At one point in the film Marie Antoinette chucks a fit over being denied entry to the royal chamber, exclaiming, “This is ridiculous!,” only to be coolly corrected, “No. It’s Versailles.” The flipside of Versailles’ decorum, refinement, and strict politesse was a latrine funk swamping the air until it almost approached sentience. The shortage of bathrooms, urinals, bidets, and sanitation infrastructure resulted in a tidal buildup that turned parts of the palace into an indoor outhouse. The king had his own official Bearer of the Royal Chamberpot (it appears in the Versailles segment of Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part One), but nearly everybody else had to make do, relieving themselves against walls or wherever was handy. The royal dogs, unhousetrained, left their own deposits. Nimble reflexes were necessary when the contents of chamberpots were pitched out of a window — look out below! Snuff, spritzes of cologne, and scented handkerchiefs were liberally applied to ward off olfactory intruders, while others found unique approaches to personal plumbing. From the devourable memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, the recording-avenging angel of Versailles, we learn of a duchess who merrily chatted away while, crouched behind her and, hidden under the voluminous skirts, a maid engineered an enema, establishing a new frontier in multi-tasking. The panniers and tight bodices thwarted some women at royal receptions from being able to relieve themselves in time, and carriage rides could be a bladder-straining ordeal. Men were free to get out and pee; les femmes, not. Over time, hygienic improvements were introduced, and the collective body odor became less of a biohazard. Yet such is the grip of nostalgia that some former denizens of Versailles would remember its
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