Guest Post - Queen Charlotte’s Fictitious Sister

I am delighted to welcome Geri Walton as my guest today.


Geri is a history graduate and writer. Her first book, Marie Antoinette’s Confidante: The Rise and Fall of the Princesse de Lamballe, examines the relationship between Queen Marie Antoinette and Marie Thérèse, the Princess de Lamballe. Based on a wide variety of historical sources it captures the waning days and grisly demise of the French monarchy. 

Guest Post - Queen Charlotte’s Fictitious Sister

When Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz arrived in England, no one would have called her a beauty. However, she did have other impressive qualities. She had an agreeable manner, "unaffected modesty," and a graceful and expressive way of speaking. Charlotte was also unbendingly loyal to her servants and there were no household upheavals related to party connections or political issues. Yet, of all the Queen's qualities, it was her goodness that shone the most and the thing that many people remembered.

Pastel of Queen Charlotte
 with her eldest daughter Charlotte
by Francis Cotes in 1767,
Courtesy of Wikipedia

An example of the Queen’s goodness was demonstrated around 1771. In June, shortly after the Queen delivered her son Ernest-Augustus, a woman name Sarah Wilson became a maidservant to Caroline Vernon. Vernon was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, and because of that, Wilson was allowed access to the Queen's apartments.

With access to the Queen's apartments, Wilson snuck in and pilfered clothing and other items belonging to the Queen. Wilson also broke open a locked cabinet, rifled through it, and stole several valuables. Of course, it did not take long for the thefts to be discovered and for Wilson to be charged as a thief.

After Wilson was apprehended, she was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. The Queen’s goodness showed when she intervened on Wilson's behalf and had Wilson's sentence reduced: Wilson would not be executed but rather sent to the colony of Maryland. Thus, Wilson arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, in the fall of 1771 and subsequently became an indentured servant to a William Devall of Bush Creek, of Frederick County.

Henrietta Maria, the French Princess
 and Queen Consort of Charles I
 after whom "Maryland," was named.
Courtesy of Wikipedia

Wilson did not remain with Devall for long. A few days after Wilson began working for Devall, she escaped to Charlestown, South Carolina, and there began to pass herself off as a sister to the Queen. Wilson called herself Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda. Apparently, Wilson had also retained some clothes of the Queen, some jewels, and a few other possessions, "among which was a miniature of Her Majesty." These possessions allowed Wilson to appear regal and royal.

To ensure the ruse worked, Wilson told everyone she left England to avoid an unpleasant marriage that was about to be thrust upon by her "august relations." Her ruse was so perfect that the Charlestown town crier announced her as "her Serene Highness," and she met some of the most respectable and important people of the area. In addition, under this pretense as the Queen’s sister, Wilson travelled from house to house making "astonishing impressions in many places, affecting the mode of royalty so inimitably, that many had the honour to kiss her hand."

Advertisement by William Devall
to Retrieve Sarah Wilson,
Public Domain

Despite Wilson’s skill at impersonating royalty, not everyone she met was gullible. Some people questioned why Wilson only spoke English, when, similar to Queen Charlotte, she was supposedly born in Germany. Another thing that raised people's suspicions was that most people were unaware Queen Charlotte had a sister, let alone a younger one.

Eventually, Wilson’s impersonation ruse came to an end when Devall received word that someone looking much like Wilson was claiming to be the Queen's sister. He published a notice in the newspaper that stated: "SARAH WILSON ... has changed her name to Lady Susanna Caroline Matilda, which made the public believe that she was his Majesty's sister; she has a blemish in her right eye, black rolled hair, stoops in the shoulders, makes a common practice of writing and marking her clothes with a crown and a B. Whoever secures the said servant woman, or takes her home, shall receive Five Pistoles, besides all costs and charges.”

The five pistoles went to a Michael Dalton who found Wilson near Charlestown in Virginia and dragged her back to Bush Creek. There Wilson remained for two years, until Devall became a rebel in America's War of Independence. At that time, Wilson once again fled. The last report of Wilson was when she married a Dragoon officer named William Talbot. They later opened a business in the Bowery area of New York and had a large family.

References:

“Advertisement,” in Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1773

"America," in Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1773

"America," in Reading Mercury, 28 June 1773

Appleby, Joyce and et al, Encyclopedia of Women in American History, 2015

Watkins, John, Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty Sophia-Charlotte, 1819

You can find out more about Geri and her book using the following links:

Website - http://.geriwalton.com/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/geri.walton

Twitter - @18thCand19thC

Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473853338/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1473853338&linkCode=as2&tag=geriw-21

Pen and Sword - http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Marie-Antoinettes-Confidante-Hardback/p/12260/aid/1154

Liberté, égalité, fraternité - but not for women

We are interested in all things French at the moment it seems form the BBC's new block buster drama on the life of Louis XIV and Versailles to Euro 2016. France as we all know is the home of revolution, of Liberté, égalité, fraternité but what is not so well known is that women were barred from political rights even as they were being proclaimed to be universal and inalienable and in 1793 were deemed to lack sufficient education to participate in the nation's political life and by the autumn of that year they were also barred from participating in clubs and societies.

But not all Frenchmen and revolutionaries were against women's rights. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (September 17, 1743–March 28, 1794) was one such man. In 1786 at the age forty-two, he married the twenty-two year old Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822), with whom he forged a loving relationship. The pair shared similar political convictions and developed a solid intellectual partnership.

Like her husband, de Grouchy was committed to bringing about major judicial and political reforms in France; and her own experiences of convent schooling had left her with fierce dislike of the Church and a commitment to secular values. They both dreamed and worked towards a liberal, rational and democratic France. 

In 1790 as the French Revolution was well under way her husband called for “the admission of women to the rights of citizenship” but he was widely opposed on the grounds that women were innately inferior and destined to only to be wives and mothers.

In 1791, along with Thomas Paine, the Condorcets founded la Société républicaine [the Republican Society], sometimes credited as the first republican society in France; and Mme de Condorcet translated Paine's writings for the journal of the Society, La Républicain ou défenseur du gouvernement représentatif [The Republican or defender of representative government].

In the autumn of 1792, the Marquis was elected to the National Convention of the newly constituted first French Republic, and became chairman of the Committee on a Constitution. He proposed what became known as, “La Girondine” a constitution that was rejected in favour of the Jacobin Constitution, in June 1793 and his impassioned defence of La Girondine led to an order for his arrest and he was forced to flee from his beloved France.

Separated from one another de Condorcet wrote until he was found dead in prison cell under suspicious circumstances while his wife worked on her own text known as Lettres à Cabanis sur la sympathie [Letters to Cabanis on Sympathy], in which she sets forth her own ideas on achieving “a society of happiness” and struggles with the question of what holds society together while her own life and the life of the nation was being rent asunder as the Terror raged.

Sophie was rendered penniless by her husband's proscription and death and to support herself, her child and her sister she opened a shop and put aside her writing and translation work for years until she eventually published a translation of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in 1798, adding eight letters, Lettres sur la Sympathie, commenting upon this work.  This became the standard French translation for the next two centuries. Her eight letters on sympathy were however ignored by historians of economic thought, and were only recently (2008) translated into English.

In the French Revolution we see for the first time the issue of gender as a constitutional condition for the possession of political rights and it is a sad irony that the women of France would not achieve the ballot until 1944, and many of the advancements in civil law passed in the euphoria of the 1790s were withdrawn by Napoleon, and not again fully secured until the last half of the twentieth century.

The Marquis de Condorcet was symbolically re- interred in the Panthéon in 1989, in honour of the bicentennial of the French Revolution and Condorcet's role as a central figure in the Enlightenment. He started his academic life as a mathematician then transferred those skills into social and political affairs developing a model he called “social arithmetic”. He could be called the ‘father of statistics’ because he advocated the use of statistics and probability theory, to the financial reforms, the reform of hospital care, jury decision-making and voting procedures.

Sophie's contribution to modern political and economic thought is now being properly evaluated and recognised particularly in the United States where her contribution to the discussion on the nature of liberty is now being widely acknowledged. In a world of political and social turmoil she advocates that educators and social reformers should nurture 'sympathy'  the feeling for others induced by imagining yourself in another’s place and imagining how you would feel. In this way, people would be led to strive to maintain good relations with their fellows and provide the basis both for specific benevolent acts and for the general social order. 

Sympathy may be an old idea but I think its a good one and many of our politicians and economists would do well to consider it once more.

Sources:

The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought edited by Robert William Dimand, Chris Nyland

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/histfem-condorcet/

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/rousseaus-theory-of-sentiments-57752.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_de_Condorcet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet

Euro 2016 Liberté, Égalité, Footé

In Europe we are obsessed with all things French at the moment. No it's not because of terrorism, the Euro, fashion, the strikes or the sophistication of French culture - it's the football or more precisely the UEFA Euro 2016 Competition.

The BBC has tapped into the trend with a new multi-million pound drama, Versailles which is proving to be a hot, steamy romp of sex and violence at the court of Louis XIV and with an impressive trailer for the football with a host of commentators and sports stars dressed in 18th century costume, parading with the tricolour in hand and proclaiming - Liberte, Egalite Foote! Who says 18th century history is not relevant today?

Hail, Cake and the French Revolution

• Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette in the 2006 Movie

The weather in England is unseasonably cold at the moment and for the first time in my life I find myself with hay fever; I am allergic to tree pollen, driving through squalls of hail and sleet in the car, and huddling in front of the fire in the evening for warmth!

England's weather is notoriously unpredictable but this spring has been particularly cold with the wind blowing from the north for days on end. Historians and archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware of the influence of weather on the world’s great events and as someone who has been researching life in 18^th century Britain and France I was amazed to find that the weather could be said to one of the causes of the French Revolution.

The summer of 1788 was a particularly warm one in London that year. As temperatures soared in the capital the incidence of Scarlet fever and Typhus spread through the city and in August over 1000 deaths were attributed to fever alone but as Londoners sweltered the French baked. The spring and summer of the year before the Revolution were characterised by searing drought.

The French were not particularly good farmers at the time, the aristocracy and major land owners were not interested applying of developing improvements to agriculture and food production unlike their British counterparts and food production was already pretty poor. At the end of this unprecedented dry period the skies opened and hail the size of fists fell bashing the fruit from the trees and the smashing the crops in the fields to smithereens so when the French entered the winter of 1788-9 food stocks were at an all time low.

To make matters worse the disastrous harvest was followed by months of freezing weather. The temperature barely rose above freezing for three months through November, December and January. In London the river Thames froze but in France the effect of frozen earth meant that root crops had to be chiselled out of the ground.

So when Marie Antoinette reportedly said on hearing there was no bread to be had in Paris, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," it was because of the weather.