Henrietta Lucy Dillon

The Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin are blowing my mind. She studied experimental physics and tried to learn everything possible... at all times... and then there are the descriptions of her dresses covered with pearls and silver and the court etiquette. Totally fascinating. I'm in the middle section at the height of the terror... I keep sneaking off from Moomin and reading more bits of it. Since he keeps sneaking off from me to read more of his Marvel Team phonebook-sized thing... it's working out okay.

She studied experimental physics! And medicine! and everything possible. She was in Versailles when it was stormed by peasant women. Then, strange contrasts of being a diplomat dancing at the court of the Princess of Orange, and then back in France in hiding, sneaking around, plotting escapes... guillotines... She describes the looting of the cathedrals and churches in Bordeaux, a procession led by "some horrible creature impersonating the Goddess of Reason"... where the treasure was burned.

After her 2nd child was born (really more like her 4th or 5th if you count stillbirths and miscarriages) the doctor was afraid to leave and then ended up in hiding with them for 6 months. She made him teach her medicine and surgery while she taught him how to cut out and sew clothes, knitting and embroidery. Constant danger... adventure... riding fast at midnight... her husband vaulting onto his horse and escaping...

I can't write coherently - I'm too exhausted. I wish I could convey how exciting and cool these memoirs are. Last night I stayed up till two, falling asleep and then jerking awake to read another paragraph... I kept repeating... "in the morning, the book will still be there...." but then "just a couple more pages!" What will happen with her - servant? slave? Zamore, who keeps not leaving her when he is invited to join black regiments? At least I know she has several more children, so her husband can't die just yet.

Touching thoughts are scattered throughout the first half of the book - where she apologizes for how she was brought up and how she thought - as an aristocrat - and even a bit for her nostalgia for childhood luxury from the perspective of a 71 year old who can't afford a cab to go to church on a wet day - & she explains how she came to change her thinking.

Her descriptions of her upbringing and life at court - make it so clear how she thought of herself like one of us would think of ourselves - the automatic privilege - the assumption that things are better for women, upper class ones anyway, in her country - It is this sort of thing that makes me crazy with annoyance when people talk as if women were never interesting, or learned anything, or it was only like, mme de stael.. when actually she was one of quite a lot of women who were powerful, respected, interesting... the 4 princesses combinees... I'll go back and write up better notes on them all.

Does she *really* not have a wikipedia entry - how is it possible? Surely I'm just missing it somehow.

A link - Diary of a woman of fifty

Comments

[minnie]

can i borrow that book?

[badgerbag]

Are you fucking kidding me... of course I'm going to force this book into your hands and stand over you sternly until you finish.

Damn, but wait till you get to the point where she suddenly becomes a farmer in Albany and boasts about her very clean dairy and the pretty designs she stamps on her pats of butter. Then for the rest of it she is all like "omfg why did i stupidly go back to paris to be an aristocrat when i could have been on my nice farm wearing a kerchief around my head."

Also she is never seasick and spends long voyages crumbling weevily biscuit into wine for the seasick people, and mending all the sailors' clothes, and hanging out with the sea cook asking questions about his home life and education.

Fucking rad!

I think it is super clear she was a spy for Napoleon.... she protests a little too much that she wasn't.

[badgerbag]

Oh and as a complete afterthought she mentions at the end how she grew up with Wellington & family visiting all the time. they played together as children. i think Wellington's mom was best friends with her grandmother or something. She knows absolutely everyone.

think of how many similar documents... and collections of letters... of amazing women must have not had the luck that her memoirs did. people borrowed the manuscript and read it and returned it a bunch... so many wars and accidents and stuff... then she gave them to her nephew who gave them to his nephew or something, until finally someone published them.

[Sarah]

Just came across your entry whilst searching for the very same entry on Wikipedia - which is still lacking! I love her memoirs, which are far more interesting and accurate than most 'historical fiction' published around famous figures today; I can't believe it's the same woman throughout, to tell the truth!