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Mme de Créquy was a real person, although sometimes her mémoires give one pause to think she was not. There is in fact some controversy as to whether the Souvenirs were not a fabrication by her grandson, Maurice Cousin, to whom they are addressed. For what it's worth, I believe them to be authentic, if possibly somewhat patted into shape here and there.
This remarkable woman was born to the high nobility — which she will never let you forget! — in around 1710: she writes that she herself never knew what year, exactly. Since she died in 1803, she witnessed almost a century of life at the French court, with an unpleasant blip during the Revolution (1789‑1799). At one point indeed, as a very old lady when she had just been presented to Napoleon, she comes back home in the evening and although she's very tired, writes a quick account of how the emperor kissed her hand in the same curiously sensuous way as Louis XIV had done when she was a very young girl. . . .
Her opinions are many and pronounced: sometimes quite wrong. Mostly, when she is not writing about people's family trees, she can be extremely funny, and that is what I like about her. I have no intention of putting all 3000 pages of her online, but I hope you will enjoy an excerpt from time to time.
Benjamin Franklin Eats Some Eggs
A telling account on all sides; she was placed next to him at a dinner party.
On the Perils of Latin Toponymy
A tired wife uses her husband's mania for Latin place names as an excuse to go back home to Hungary without him.
An attack on the French ambassador in Rome
Mme de Créquy, his granddaughter and a good Frenchwoman, has one version; as it turns out, the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, proud to be a citizen of Rome, has another, also on this site. What else could I do but link them?
Her entire memoirs are online in the original French on James Eason's site. If you read French, right from Chapter 1 you should find her enjoyable: why she herself has no idea what year she was born; how she came to steal a ring from the corpse of an abbess; forced labor of poodles in a kitchen; and other stories.
Les images comportant des bordures conduisent à des informations supplémentaires.
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Site mis à jour: 3 déc 12