Grace Dalrymple Elliott (–1823)
Teoksen Journal of my life during the French Revolution. tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Image credit: Portrait of Grace Dalrymple Elliott by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1788 (The Frick Collection)
Tekijän teokset
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Kanoninen nimi
- Elliott, Grace Dalrymple
- Syntymäaika
- c. 1754
- Kuolinaika
- 1823-05-16
- Hautapaikka
- Cimitière de Père Lachaise, Paris, France
- Sukupuoli
- female
- Kansalaisuus
- Scotland
UK - Syntymäpaikka
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Kuolinpaikka
- Ville-d'Avray, France
- Asuinpaikat
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Paris, France
London, England, UK - Koulutus
- convent school
- Ammatit
- memoirist
sex worker
spy - Suhteet
- George IV, King of England (employer)
- Lyhyt elämäkerta
- Grace Dalrymple Elliott was born in Edinburgh, a daughter of Hugh Dalrymple,, a barrister, and his wife Grissel Brown. Her parents separated around the time of her birth, and she spent her early life in the home of her grandparents. After her mother died, she was sent to a French convent school to be educated. On her return to Scotland at age 17, she made her debut in Edinburgh society and was acclaimed as a beauty. John Elliott (later Sir John), a prominent and wealthy physician 18 years her senior, quickly made her an offer of marriage, and they wed in 1771. In 1774, Grace fell in love with Arthur Annesley, an Irish peer, with whom she had an affair. Her husband divorced her and her social reputation was ruined. Grace became a professional courtesan supported by men such as the Earl of Cholmondeley, the Prince Regent (future King George IV), and Louis Philippe II, duc d'Orléans, later known as Philippe Égalité. By 1786, she was living permanently in Paris at the center of social life during her liaisons with the duke and others. During the French Revolution, she smuggled correspondence on behalf of the British government as well as messages between Paris and members of the exiled French court in Coblenz and Belgium. She also risked her life several times to assist and hide aristocrats pursued by the revolutionaries. In 1793, however, after the fall of her protector Philippe Égalité, she was arrested and imprisoned, narrowly averting death, until being released in October 1794. She returned to England in 1798 but her former patrons were not pleased to see her and she returned to France. Her memoir, During the Reign of Terror: Journal of my Life during the French Revolution, published posthumously, became one of the best-known English-language accounts of the Revolution.
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
L'anglaise et le duc
1988
Far more interesting and better written, despite the lazy typos left by the publisher, than the fictional account featuring the same woman which lead me to find her memoirs! Grace Dalrymple Elliott was an English courtesan and former mistress of the Duc d'Orleans. During the French Revolution, Grace maintained her Royalist sympathies and even saved the lives of two enemies of the Republic, hiding the governor of the Tuileries under her mattress while the guards ransacked her house! Mrs Elliott was arrested and sent to various prisons, along with Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's future wife, and spent the next eighteen months in fear for her life, watching hundreds of people around her, from nobles to peasants, perish on the scaffold. She survived the Revolution, lived in England as a friend of the Prince of Wales for 10 years, before returning to France with the briefly restored Bourbon monarchy, where she died in 1814. What an incredible life!
As a fan of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series, this was a fascinating - and very familiar - real life account of the Revolution. Grace's descriptions of life during the Revolution are perhaps a little biased but terrifying all the same:
From that period everything bespoke terror. Robespierre became all powerful. People did not dare to speak above their breath. Two people, the most intimate, would not have dared to stop and speak. In short, even in your own rooms you felt frightened. In short, they were sending soldiers every hour to search houses for papers of conspiracies. These soldiers generally robbed people or made them give them money, threatening in case of refusal to denounce them.
In fact, the details are so vivid that I can imagine the Baroness maybe reading the original memoirs and using Mrs Elliott's memoirs to fire her imagination!
A terrible abridged version full of misspelled words and typos but a powerful account of history from a charismatic woman who actually lived through the French Revolution.… (lisätietoja)
As a fan of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series, this was a fascinating - and very familiar - real life account of the Revolution. Grace's descriptions of life during the Revolution are perhaps a little biased but terrifying all the same:
From that period everything bespoke terror. Robespierre became all powerful. People did not dare to speak above their breath. Two people, the most intimate, would not have dared to stop and speak. In short, even in your own rooms you felt frightened. In short, they were sending soldiers every hour to search houses for papers of conspiracies. These soldiers generally robbed people or made them give them money, threatening in case of refusal to denounce them.
In fact, the details are so vivid that I can imagine the Baroness maybe reading the original memoirs and using Mrs Elliott's memoirs to fire her imagination!
A terrible abridged version full of misspelled words and typos but a powerful account of history from a charismatic woman who actually lived through the French Revolution.… (lisätietoja)
«Rubia, elegante y simpática...», tal como la describe el historiador francés Guy Breton, Grace Dalrymple nació hacia 1757 en una de las más arraigadas familias de la nobleza escocesa. Debe su nombre de Mrs. Elliott a un infortunado matrimonio con Sir John Elliott, noble de la edad de su padre. Los ecos de su belleza llegaron a palacio y pronto se convirtió en amante del Príncipe de Gales, que la dejó embarazada. La familia real, los Windsor, deciden que Grace tenga a su hija en secreto para después enviar a la madre a Francia, lejos del príncipe Jorge. Ya en París, Mrs. Elliott frecuenta los círculos de la nobleza en los años que precedieron al estallido de la Revolución en 1789, y tiene una historia de amor con el duque de Orléans (que ha inspirado una reciente película del prestigioso cineasta francés Eric Rohmer).
Es la crónica de aquellos años intensos y terribles, que cambiaron el rumbo de la Historia, lo que nos narra Mrs. Elliott de modo privilegiado y emotivo en este Diario de mi vida durante la Revolución Francesa, en un crescendo que va de la batalla en las calles de París a la caza y ejecución de nobles o al terrible recorrido de las turbas por la ciudad, recuerdos de una testigo de excepción, a un tiempo monárquica (sufrió prisión durante año y medio por ello bajo la sombra de la guillotina) y amante del duque de Orléans (Felipe Igualdad, para los revolucionarios), uno de los principales cabecillas de la Revolución que acabaría siendo guillotinado también. Además del infortunado duque, por estas vívidas memorias transitan también Robespierre, Madame Buffon, Lafayette, la futura emperatriz Josefina, Sieyés, el general Hoche y muchas otras figuras de relieve para la historia de Francia.… (lisätietoja)
Es la crónica de aquellos años intensos y terribles, que cambiaron el rumbo de la Historia, lo que nos narra Mrs. Elliott de modo privilegiado y emotivo en este Diario de mi vida durante la Revolución Francesa, en un crescendo que va de la batalla en las calles de París a la caza y ejecución de nobles o al terrible recorrido de las turbas por la ciudad, recuerdos de una testigo de excepción, a un tiempo monárquica (sufrió prisión durante año y medio por ello bajo la sombra de la guillotina) y amante del duque de Orléans (Felipe Igualdad, para los revolucionarios), uno de los principales cabecillas de la Revolución que acabaría siendo guillotinado también. Además del infortunado duque, por estas vívidas memorias transitan también Robespierre, Madame Buffon, Lafayette, la futura emperatriz Josefina, Sieyés, el general Hoche y muchas otras figuras de relieve para la historia de Francia.… (lisätietoja)
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