MY LADY SCANDALOUS by Jo Manning C 2005 is the primary reference here!
GRACE DALYRYMPLE (maiden name) ELLIOT (married name)
lived from 1754-1823.
THE TABLOIDS HELPED RUIN HER REPUTATION!
She may have been only 5'6 but that was tall for a woman then and her much older husband, who she was married to at 17, the ugly and fat Dr. John Elliot, was barely five feet tall. She was an 18th century trophy wife, a Scottish beauty married to the beast, though this one was also cheerful and a good conversationalist, if a snob.
Grace's marriage to Dr. John Elliot was arranged. They were opposites and incompatible. Then she met George James, Lord Cholmondelay, a British peer, the marriage breaker!
Image from Google Images - and Wikipedia
Their affair lasted maybe three years. Their relationship lasted fifty years, though there were rifts and separations, and most of the time they were just friends.
What made Grace different from her sister who married respectably and had little to do with her after her disgrace! Grace Dalyrymple met her father at age 11 when her mother, a very rare single mother, died, and was raised by her mother's parents. Raised still as a convent educated and literate woman, any divorce was scandal, especially when it was the woman who wanted out.
She went to France and she would eventually write her own book about her life.
She spent 18 months in a French Prison during the French Revolution at a time when between 18,000 to 40,000 were executed for being upper class, aristocratic, or royal! Was it charm that saved her?
She had one child and the DNA of the father will never be known... Could be the child of a Prince?
She's buried in the same cemetery as Jim Morrison of the Doors -
Cimetiere du Pere-Lacheaise.
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