Scan barcode
bellatora's review against another edition
5.0
I can't recommend this biography highly enough. It's brilliant. It reads like a novel and Lucie was a strong, vibrant woman who puts all those anachronistic trying-to-be-tough-and-modern-but-coming-off-as-super-annoying historical fiction heroines to SHAME.
You couldn't make up Lucie's life. Any author that did would be accused of Forrest Gumping through history. Lucie was a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. She lived through the terror of the French Revolution, in Paris, in exile among the emigres and in the French countryside. While in the United States (to escape the Terror) she was friends with the exiled Talleyrand and entertained Alexander Hamilton. Her husband met George Washington. She attended Josephine Bonaparte at Napoleon's request. And when political enemies maneuvered her husband out of his job she rode from Belgium to Paris to personally demand a job for him from Napoleon (Napoleon apologized profusely to her and promptly gave her husband a new post). She lived in France, the Netherlands, the United States, England, Belgium and Italy. She survived the Revolution (at one point her husband had to be hidden or he would've likely been arrested and executed), worked on a farm in America, met royalty and emperors and did it all while nearly constantly pregnant.
Her childhood was lonely and sad. Her marriage was typical of the time, in a way: it was a love match in the sense that she had some choice, it was arranged in the sense that it was limited to eligible bachelors that were acceptable to her status. But she loved her husband Frederic and their marriage is touchingly supportive and stable. Her and her husband's fidelity to each other shocked many in the pre-Revolution French nobility, who hopped in and out of each other's beds like they were in Gossip Girl. Both Frederic and Lucie loved their children fiercely and perhaps the greatest tragedy of Lucie's life was the mournfully high death rate of her children (Moorehead notes that even for the time, Lucie's children had a very high mortality rate).
Lucie was a woman of true grit. She didn't complain. She was born to privilege and lost everything in the Revolution and had to fight to gain it back and she refused to wallow. In fact, she was ashamed of her fellow French exiles who refused to accept their reduced circumstances. She worked for years on her farm in America. Not overseeing it, but actual physical labor. And she loved it.
She was incredibly kind. She had an old-school grace and charm I strive to emulate and will never master. Contemporaries found her sweet and charming. While in America she bought slaves to work her farm and promptly freed them. She tracked down one of her ex-slave's family members and re-united them. She treated everyone with courtesy and kindness. And yet she truly believed the aristocracy was born to rule and could be rather classist (both she and Frederic supported a constitutional monarchy, not a republic).
I'm tired of (poorly written) historical fiction women who have to be "strong" by being anachronistic. Lucie de la Tour du Pin was strong, but completely a woman of her time. She supported her husband and raised her children and she did it with courage and strength of character. But she wasn't running around with ideas two hundred years before her time. I feel like all historical fiction authors should be forced to read this biography and learn what a strong woman of the time was actually like and use Lucie as their model.
And I mentioned this already, but I will reiterate: Moorehead does a brilliant job with Lucie's story. She does a masterful job interweaving Lucie's biography and a sense of the overall time period. She doesn't slow down the narrative with too many details but she gives you enough sense of the time and place that you really feel like you understand the world Lucie lived in. Not only do you learn about the amazing Lucie, but also truly learn the history of France in the 1700s & 1800s, as well as glimpses into the other countries Lucie lived in.
You couldn't make up Lucie's life. Any author that did would be accused of Forrest Gumping through history. Lucie was a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. She lived through the terror of the French Revolution, in Paris, in exile among the emigres and in the French countryside. While in the United States (to escape the Terror) she was friends with the exiled Talleyrand and entertained Alexander Hamilton. Her husband met George Washington. She attended Josephine Bonaparte at Napoleon's request. And when political enemies maneuvered her husband out of his job she rode from Belgium to Paris to personally demand a job for him from Napoleon (Napoleon apologized profusely to her and promptly gave her husband a new post). She lived in France, the Netherlands, the United States, England, Belgium and Italy. She survived the Revolution (at one point her husband had to be hidden or he would've likely been arrested and executed), worked on a farm in America, met royalty and emperors and did it all while nearly constantly pregnant.
Her childhood was lonely and sad. Her marriage was typical of the time, in a way: it was a love match in the sense that she had some choice, it was arranged in the sense that it was limited to eligible bachelors that were acceptable to her status. But she loved her husband Frederic and their marriage is touchingly supportive and stable. Her and her husband's fidelity to each other shocked many in the pre-Revolution French nobility, who hopped in and out of each other's beds like they were in Gossip Girl. Both Frederic and Lucie loved their children fiercely and perhaps the greatest tragedy of Lucie's life was the mournfully high death rate of her children (Moorehead notes that even for the time, Lucie's children had a very high mortality rate).
Lucie was a woman of true grit. She didn't complain. She was born to privilege and lost everything in the Revolution and had to fight to gain it back and she refused to wallow. In fact, she was ashamed of her fellow French exiles who refused to accept their reduced circumstances. She worked for years on her farm in America. Not overseeing it, but actual physical labor. And she loved it.
She was incredibly kind. She had an old-school grace and charm I strive to emulate and will never master. Contemporaries found her sweet and charming. While in America she bought slaves to work her farm and promptly freed them. She tracked down one of her ex-slave's family members and re-united them. She treated everyone with courtesy and kindness. And yet she truly believed the aristocracy was born to rule and could be rather classist (both she and Frederic supported a constitutional monarchy, not a republic).
I'm tired of (poorly written) historical fiction women who have to be "strong" by being anachronistic. Lucie de la Tour du Pin was strong, but completely a woman of her time. She supported her husband and raised her children and she did it with courage and strength of character. But she wasn't running around with ideas two hundred years before her time. I feel like all historical fiction authors should be forced to read this biography and learn what a strong woman of the time was actually like and use Lucie as their model.
And I mentioned this already, but I will reiterate: Moorehead does a brilliant job with Lucie's story. She does a masterful job interweaving Lucie's biography and a sense of the overall time period. She doesn't slow down the narrative with too many details but she gives you enough sense of the time and place that you really feel like you understand the world Lucie lived in. Not only do you learn about the amazing Lucie, but also truly learn the history of France in the 1700s & 1800s, as well as glimpses into the other countries Lucie lived in.
gguerra8225's review against another edition
5.0
How I wish I could have known this remarkable woman, who witnessed a remarkable time in history. Thank goodness she wrote her memoirs providing us with a front-row seat to the events leading up to French Revolution and through it, the Terror and Napoleon's rule. This book mines her memoirs and places them beautifully in a greater historical context.
scubaski's review against another edition
3.0
Recommended by The Economist. Life and times of nobles during the French revolution.
teumessians's review against another edition
4.0
"In an age when rivers mattered, when life unfolded along their waterways and banks, she had lived in the Seine, the Hudson, the Thames and the Garonne, and she died by the Arno."
It seems impossible to have lived so many lives, and it is even stranger to think that history is not actually broken up in shards that you get to play around with, even if they cut you.
It seems impossible to have lived so many lives, and it is even stranger to think that history is not actually broken up in shards that you get to play around with, even if they cut you.
More...