Infamous Mistress: The Life, Loves and Family of the Celebrated Grace Dalrymple Elliott

I enjoyed the start of this, and it’s clear that courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott had a rich and complex life, one that crossed the social contours of America, France and England. Whilst I overall liked this book, at times it was rather dry and some pizzazz was needed in the writing, in order to, engage me at least, a little more potently.I really wish the portraits and other images positioned at the end had been integrated throughout the book (as appropriate), as this would have added a nice dimension to the book.Don’t think I’ll re-read this.£1.98 on Amazon 8th September 2019.

Rubbish

This is the most complete biography of a figure who is largely forgotten in histories of the late 18th century. Women’s voices, of course, are seldom quoted in conventional histories, and courtesans, although famous in their day, have had even few advocates. Harriette Wilson, who bedded the Duke of Wellington and myriad others, famously wrote her memoirs, offering to leave out names for a consideration (it was a sort of friendly blackmail) but there were not many others.Grace Dalrymple Elliott was not like Harriette or indeed Emma Lyons (later Hamilton), both of whom were from humble backgrounds. She was well born and well connected (her father was an Edinburgh advocate who abandoned his family when Grace was a child). Tall (her nickname as Dally the Tall) and stunningly beautiful, she had natural charm and intelligence.Of course, as a female, Grace's options in life, even as a member of the gentry, were limited. She married young (aged 17) and, worse, married the wrong person (a rich and much older society doctor) and then had an ill-judged affair and was promptly divorced when scarcely legally an adult. As a divorced woman she was a social outcast and there was only really one way to go: liaisons with Lord Cholmondeley, the Prince of Wales and the duc d’Orléans followed. She bore a child who was widely accepted to be the Prince’s daughter.In order to receive a maintenance allowance from the Prince, Grace was forced to live abroad. She had been educated in France and spoke the language well so off to Paris she went, but before long she was struggling to survive amidst the Revolution and subsequent Terror. This is where her story becomes truly remarkable.Grace later wrote her reminiscences of this time, when she smuggled friends and acquaintances out of the city and lived by her wits on few resources. Arrested and imprisoned several times, she used her skills of persuasiveness to convince the authorities of her loyalty. There are some hairy moments, including the time her house is thoroughly searched by men with bayonets who stuck them in all the mattresses. Grace remained in her bed, feigning modesty, all the while protecting a fugitive hiding behind her.The authors Joanne Major and Sarah Murden have uncovered new sources for Grace’s life as well as unravelled her hugely complicated family tree. They are genealogists and it shows in their meticulous detective work amongst the vital documents. For instance, they have tracked who was present at baptisms and marriages, using this information to document who was in touch with whom in a vast network of friends and family. The detail is astonishing.Major and Murden, who write a much-loved blog All Things Georgian, have given themselves a wide remit, including the stories of various members of Grace’s family, amongst them her brother Henry Hew Dalrymple, a republican sympathiser and supporter of abolition who was a driving force behind a little-known inept plan to colonise Bolama (now in Guinea-Bissau).The tone of the writing is friendly and informal, pulling the reader along and pointing up the humanity of the subjects. The authors are to be applauded for their achievement.

I picked this book up quite by chance, and I’m very glad I did. The book is a wonderful attempt to tell the life (and what a life!) of a most interesting woman, Grace Dalrymple Elliott. Grace was born in about 1754, and died in 1823. In her lifetime she crammed in more adventure, love, tragedy and living than many people before or since. She was the daughter of a reputable family with a respectable background, but her marriage failed miserably, leaving her with a tattered reputation, and she seems to have decided to live up to that reputation as a ‘demi-rep’ from then on. She moved in the most illustrious of circles, despite her status as a courtesan, and her daughter is reputed to be the child of the Prince of Wales, the future George IV. Clearly, Grace was a woman who had bearing, intelligence, wit and presence, as well as beauty and great charisma. She was very tall and striking looking, and it’s easy to see from her portraits (there are a number of illustrated plates in the book) that she was clearly a woman who faced life head-on. She was the mistress and friend of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and the friend of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and she wrote her own record of her time trapped and imprisoned in France during the Terror.Grace was not the only member of her family to live a life crammed with adventure and the other members of her family are also explored in original source documents and records by the authors. The whole adds up to a book which allows the reader to not only understand to a great extent how and why Grace Dalrymple Elliott was the woman that she was, and how and why she lived the life that she did, but the broader family and even broader societal context and times in which she lived. The book covers not only the life of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, but also the lives, as much as can be known of them, of her family, in the previous generation, her generation, and the generation following. Through a time of great change and even revolution in the world, Grace’s family by birth and marriage, and her contacts, lovers, colleagues and friends, appear in virtually every important moment from the eighteenth through to the nineteenth century. The result is a book which is full of drama, intrigue, fascinating detail and great daring.This book is a labour of real love on the part of the authors, which shines through in the detail and wonderful narrative. I found it a book which was best absorbed by being read in chapters, with time allowed to absorb each section, as the amount of information provided throughout is quite boggling. The authors have clearly researched deeply and widely, and yet there never seems to be a piece of information in the book which feels superfluous. The narrative is the unfolding of the lives of many members of a family, and while Grace may be the most ‘infamous’ member of the family known to us today, all the others written of are completely fascinating to read about. A wonderful book, and one which offers a real ‘life and times’ memorial to a most intriguing and interesting woman, and her family.

Although impeccably researched, "An Infamous Mistress" is filled with anecdotes related to a vast number of people who interact with Grace. I was disappointed in this, as I wanted to learn more about this fascinating woman, but instead read volumes about her aunts, her father, her brother... True they were part of her life, but should remain in the side lines and not abduct the story. As well, the writing style is academic and does not captivate the reader. It became a bore to continue to read pages after pages of dry writing about Grace's relatives when her life was anything but a bore. This was a woman who captivated the powerful and famous men of both England and Europe, surely her passion and enchanting style could have been conveyed in this novel. It was disappointing to me, although I was intrigued enough to continue to the end.

I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet. But I have read the introduction and can’t wait to get into the rest of the book. I love history and I think this book will tell me a lot.

This is a fascinating book. The research that Jo and Sarah put into the book and Grace's life is incredible. Other than Grace's memoirs as an eyewitness to the French Revolution and "news" accounts from London's gossip rags, there isn't a whole lot of information to go on when documenting Grace's life. The authors have done a wonderful job of piecing it all together. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Not as informative as had hoped.