The 19th Century loved a good compote. These serving dishes on pedestals were used for fruit, sweets, candy, or other foods, and were often the centrepiece on a table. I was struck by the design of Roesen’s compote, particularly the vividness of its whiteness against the luscious red of the strawberries.
Then, the design. The way it hugged and displayed the fruit put me in mind of a woman’s dress. And so, eventually, I came, to Madame Tallien (see pictures below), who was the “it” girl of the French Revolution.
Along with her bestie, the future Joséphine Bonaparte, Spanish-born Thérésia Tallien pioneered the Directoire style, revolutionising French fashion (the Tallyrand quote I’ve used in the poem below was based on a true story.) Madame Tallien played critical roles during the actual Revolution, while managing to scandalise society both during and after the Revolution. More on Madame Tallien’s history from the Library of Congress here.
Madame Tallien also had a very specific affiliation with strawberries.
Madame Tallien as a Compote Bowl
Naked at the opera under white silk
in the high-waisted, neoclassical,
translucent style she pioneered,
– looking like a neoclassical compote –
nipples like strawberries,
Thérésia (twice saved from the
guillotine by Tallien, the revolutionary,
who staged a coup against Robespierre,
Thérésia’s jailer)
was stopped by Napoleon’s
minister and right-hand man,
Talleyrand, who told Madame,
To be more sumptuously unclothed
was impossible.
An impossibility?
Oui merci, said Thérésia,
renowned through France,
as famously buxom, and so beautiful
that she daily bathed in strawberry juice,
freshly squeezed, for its medicinal properties
to enhance her white shoulders and arms,
(caressed by leagues of lovers,
– fruit fallen before the compote –
in scandals that drew a rebuke
from Napoleon himself, that her behaviour
might prompt another Revolution)
I do adore drama, Talleyrand,
And you?
©elsp 2025
More of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on free verse here.
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