Madame de la Tour du Pin’s Journal d’une Femme de Cinquante Ans, with its vivid descriptions of her experiences during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, is one of the most enthralling memoirs of the age: a hard act, one would think, for a biographer to follow. Caroline Moorehead succeeds in doing so triumphantly in a rich and satisfying book which not only adds to our appreciation of her story but brings the whole tumultuous period and its characters to life.
Born in 1770 into the highest reaches of the French nobility, Lucie-Henriette Dillon spent a lonely and unhappy childhood, brought up by a tyrannical grandmother after her mother’s death when she was 12. Although she was heiress to a great fortune, she knew she faced banishment to a convent if she displeased her grandmother; forced to dissimulate, she learnt the importance of keeping her own counsel very early. Later, as a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, she observed the corruption of the court with the same privately judgemental eye.
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