Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet , , was a French aristocrat famous for her memoirs entitled Journal d'une femme de 50 ans.
Background
Henriette-Lucy Dillon was born into a prominent Irish Wild Geese Jacobite military family in France. She was daughter of Arthur Dillon colonel-proprietor of the Dillon Regiment and his first wife, Therese-Lucy de Rothe (1751 – 7 September 1782). Her father had been born in England, so she was often regarded in France as English.
Career
The memoirs are a first-hand account of her life through the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, and the Imperial court of Napoleon, ending in March 1815 with Napoleon's return from exile on Elba. Madame de la Tour du Pin, as she is frequently called, was a witness to the private lives of the royals, and her memoirs serve as unique testimony to much unchronicled history. Following her mother she served as an apprentice lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, from the age of 16.
From the memoir a strong self-portrait emerges of a simple but straightforward woman of charm, heroism, and breeding. This she saw as her happiest time. She vividly describes the reality of owning slaves, and life amongst the local Dutch families and the few remaining Native Americans of the area.
She was close to Talleyrand during his exile in the United States, and like him she returned to France after the establishment of the Directorate. She was able to promote his career under Napoleon, who was looking for aristocrats to lend legitimacy to his court. He escaped France but was condemned to death in his absence.
The family sold up its possessions in France soon after. Her memoir was written as a letter to her only surviving child after the age of fifty. It remained in the family and was not published until 1906.
She is the subject of a biography by Caroline Moorehead published in 2009. Memoirs of Madame de La Tour-du-Pin translated by Felice Harcourt 1971 the McCall Publishing Company 230 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 Library of Congress Catalog card number 70-122144.