"Dancing to the Precipice": The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin (Caroline Moorehead)

Une biographie de Lucie Dillon, marquise de la Tour du Pin, basée sur ses propres souvenirs et sur les mémoires du temps:





Editorial Reviews:

From Publishers Weekly

Educated to wait on Marie Antoinette, the marquise Lucie de la Tour du Pin (1770-1853) instead precariously survived a devastating revolution, an emperor, two restorations and a republic. Drawing on Lucie's memoirs and those of her contemporaries, Moorehead (Gellhorn) uses Lucie's descriptions of both personal events and the ever-changing French political atmosphere to portray the nobility's awkward shifts with each new event and the impact they have on Lucie and her diplomat husband, Fréédric. A woman with both court-honed aristocratic manners and rough farm skills (earned in the Revolution's wake during her rural New York exile), Lucie benefited from passing platonic relationships with Napoleon and Wellington, Talleyrand, and countless salon personalities. Lucie's terror during the anarchy of the Revolution remains palpable in her memoirs centuries later. Moorehead obviously admires Lucie, but she gives a convincing and entertaining portrait of an intelligent, shrewd, unpretentious woman and the turbulent times she lived through and testified to in her memoirs. 16 pages of b&w photos, 19 illus. throughout.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From The New Yorker

In 1820, at the age of forty-nine, Lucie Dillon, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, started writing her memoirs, an endeavor that went on for thirty years and produced one of the great monuments of French history. Lucie began life as an aristocrat, débuting at Versailles at the age of eleven; at the beginning of the Terror, as friends and relatives fell to the guillotine, she fled France with her husband and children. Resilient and resourceful, the family thrived on a farm in upstate New York, where Lucie churned butter, traded with Indians, and played hostess to Talleyrand. A return to France brought Lucie and her husband into Napoleon’s inner circle; in later years, following an exile in London, they found favor with the restored Bourbon monarchy. Moorehead’s biography, drawing on a trove of previously unpublished correspondence, captures the rhythm of the radical contrasts in her subject’s life. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


Review

"Utterly captivating... brings to life both Lucie and the glorious and terrible years through which she lived with a novelistic vividness, full of sights and sounds and flavours" Sunday Times "A scintillating biography...Moorehead succeeds triumphantly [and] brings an assured grip on contemporary politics and a colourful sense of place" Daily Telegraph "A rich and satisfying book which not only adds to our appreciation of Madame de la Tour du Pin's story but brings the whole tumultuous period and its characters to life" Spectator "Lucie de la Tour de Pin has found a biographer worthy of her own storytelling skills. With a light-handed touch, Moorehead sets Lucie's story in its wider social and historical context, sketching the complicated political twists and turns in a way that makes them memorable without ever dumbing down" -- Kathryn Hughes Mail on Sunday "Never less than a gripping story of an extraordinary life" Literary Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From the Back Cover

Her canvases were the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the Great Terror; America at the time of Washington and Jefferson; Paris under the Directoire and then under Napoleon; Regency London; the battle of Waterloo; and, for the last years of her life, the Italian ducal courts. She witnessed firsthand the demise of the French monarchy, the wave of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the precipitous rise and fall of Napoleon. Lucie Dillon—a daughter of French and British nobility known in France by her married name, Lucie de la Tour du Pin—was the chronicler of her age.

In this compelling biography, Caroline Moorehead illuminates the extraordinary life and remarkable achievements of this strong, witty, elegant, opinionated, and dynamic woman who survived personal tragedy and the devastation wrought by momentous historic events.


About the Author

Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo, and Martha Gellhorn. Well known for her work in human rights, she has published a history of the Red Cross and an acclaimed book about refugees, Human Cargo. Her previous book was Dancing to the Precipice, a biography of Lucie de la Tour du Pin. She lives in London and Italy.
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