Regency Era Spy Grace Dalrymple Elliott

Vulgar History Podcast

Regency Era Spy Grace Dalrymple Elliott  

February 25, 2026

Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and we are in our Regency Era, still ongoing. This season on the podcast, we’re talking about what was happening in England in the early 1800s, AKA the time period that Bridgerton takes place, and also the time period that featured in my book, Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, available in bookstores now everywhere. And today’s topic, we’re going to be talking about Grace Dalrymple Elliott, who was born in Scotland, and she spent some time in the French Revolution, like, in Paris, and then she returned to England to be there for the Regency era. 

There’s so much to her story, and I’m really excited to have a guest join me for this episode because it overlaps with part of what he’s doing in his podcast. It’s Gavin Whitehead from The Art of Crime podcast, who we’ve had on the podcast a few other times before; he did the episodes about Charlotte Corday, we also talked about Madame Tussaud, and this is another iconic crime, or I guess, sort of. Is being a spy a crime? I don’t know. Just sort of, like, intrigue-based saga. I’m so happy to have Gavin here again. So, he is, as I said, from The Art of Crime podcast. He has a new podcast series that’s just dropping this week, I think, that is called Raven, that I know you’re going to love as well. 

Anyway, I do want to say also in terms of my book being published, I’ve been doing a couple of events, and I have a few more coming up, and I’ll talk more about that at the end of the episode. So, this is your tantalizing cliffhanger. So, make sure you stay tuned after the episode for a bit more detail about where I’ll be and when and how we can all meet up. But in the meantime, here’s me and Gavin talking about the iconic Grace Dalrymple Elliott, AKA Dally the Tall. 

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Ann: Okay, so I’m joined by a returning guest. I think, depending on how you count episodes, this is either his third or fourth appearance on Vulgar History. It’s Gavin Whitehead from The Art of Crime podcast. Gavin, welcome. 

Gavin: Ann, thank you so much for having me back. I’m delighted to make either my third or fourth appearance today. 

Ann: Well, it’s because you were on… We did Madame Tussaud, we did Charlotte Corday, and then we talked about “Princess Caraboo”, but that was, like, on your podcast, but then I played it on my podcast. 

Gavin: Right, it’s a crossover. 

Ann: It’s a crossover moment. 

Gavin: It’s easy to lose count when you’re looking at crossovers. 

Ann: But also, when we’re having such a nice time, I was like, “Wow, we’ve recorded so much!” And I will just say, like, listeners out there are excited. Whenever I ask, I’m like, “Which guest should we have back?” Your name always comes up. Like, you’re a beloved returning guest. 

Gavin: Oh my gosh. Don’t flatter me right at the beginning. 

Ann: [laughs] Well, and then it turns out— So, I don’t even remember how we figured out that we were both researching the same person at the same time, but here we are. And so, it just made sense to bring you on for this episode, which is about Grace Dalrymple Elliott, who was a notable figure during the French Revolution, but then she lived on into the Regency era, which is why I’m able to still count her in my Regency Era season. 

So, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, almost everything that we know about her, she wrote a memoir. We love a memoir-writing courtesan on this podcast. [Gavin laughs] So, she wrote a memoir about her time in the French Revolution, and that’s where a lot of people got a lot of information about the French Revolution from. Now, like anyone writing a book – I myself just wrote a book, Rebel of the Regency, you should buy it. Just a casual, casual mention. 

Gavin: Love it. 

Ann: But, you know, she needs to make it juicy; she needs to make it sell. 

Gavin: I’ve pre-ordered my audiobook. I want everyone to know that. So, come on, people! Come on! 

Ann: It is available as an audiobook. That’s a great point, Gavin, thank you. Everybody, a book, an e-book, an audiobook. 

Grace Dalrymple Elliott, her book, it was published posthumously, so not during her life. But she wrote… It’s kind of like when you and I did the episode about Madame Tussaud, where it’s like, “Did this really happen to you? Or you just know people, and like, you just want to throw some famous names in?” So, like, Grace was certainly involved with some famous names, but, you know, her story is perhaps exaggerated at points. But we don’t hate that, we don’t mind that; she’s just making a good saga for us all. 

Gavin: Exactly. 

Ann: She was in Paris during the French Revolution. And honestly, who’s going to remember accurately exactly what happened [laughs] in a time of widespread, you know, blood running down the streets like a river. You know, you’re not going to be like, “Oh, actually, that happened two weeks later.” 

But Gavin, can you just let everyone know your feelings about Grace in general, just so they know where we’re both coming from? 

Gavin: So, I kind of have a soft spot for Grace Elliott. For reasons that we’ll discuss later on, I’m sure, we are not on the same end of the political spectrum. In fact, we would probably vehemently disagree on some points, but Grace shows such insane courage and self-possession in the course of the narrative that we are about to unfold for you that I cannot help but feel a certain respect for her, almost even in awe, in some of the more intense situations. 

Ann: I think that she is, you know, in terms of like, where does she land on the political spectrum and whatever, it’s like, as we tell her story, it makes sense why she feels— I mean, just to be honest, like in the French Revolution, she’s on the side of the royal family, she’s not on the side of the Market Ladies, on the side of, you know, the people on the street, the mob, because that’s how she experienced it. And like, of course, she’s on the side of the people who are her friends who are paying for her lifestyle. Like, why wouldn’t she be? 

Gavin: Exactly. I mean, her entire livelihood depends on financial support from the royal family, right? And she also knows them personally, and she would prefer not to see her friends, like, decapitated in public, for example. 

Ann: If you’re just hanging out at the opera with your friends or whatever, and then, like, a bunch of market ladies come in and start, like, cutting off people’s heads, it’s like…

Gavin: You’re just trying to have a great time at the opera, you know? 

Ann: Why would you side with those people who are ruining your good time? 

Gavin: Annoying! It’s like, “Get off your phone. I’m at the opera.” 

Ann: [laughs] “Get it together.” 

So, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, she wrote a memoir, Journal of my life during the French Revolution, posthumously published in 1859. And honestly, if you want to read about her life, read her memoir. But if you want to read a more contemporary book, I read a book called An Infamous Mistress by Sarah Murden and Joanne Major, and there’s a pretty healthy Wikipedia as well, just to get some information about her. But just enough for me to know that I was like, this is a saga I need to tell on this podcast. 

So, she is a Scottish person, shout out to all the Scottish people listening, and she was born with a Scottish name, which was Grissel, which… Grissel, it’s like, sometimes you hear the name like Griselda; it’s like the same initial name. So, Grissel. I had not come across this, but I guess it’s a very common Scottish name in olden times. So, she’s born Grissel Dalrymple; her mother also called Grissel. And then when she got to England, she like… Grace is basically the English version of Grissel, so she’s just like, “Let’s just play down this Scottish part and let’s fit in a bit better.” Scottish people, not beloved in England at the time. 

Anyway, so she was the youngest daughter of Grissel Brown and Hew Dalrymple, and then her parents separated around the time she was born. So, just, you know, not… You get into a lot of the family story in this book, An Infamous Mistress, but basically, all you need to know is she was a little kid, she had a sister called Janet, who changed her name to Jacinta. 

Gavin: Love it. 

Ann: Everyone’s just kind of like slightly changing their name, I don’t hate it. Anyway, so her parents separated, and she was raised mostly by her mother and her mother’s parents. And then, eventually, she was educated in a French convent. So, her father was a lawyer, like, this is a pretty well-off family; she’s not born into poverty at all. She’s educated in a French convent, and through the rest of her life, she is constantly going back and forth between France and Great Britain, like, in a real casual way, I would say. She’s like she’s bouncing back and forth like someone would casually, like a rich person, “I’m just spending the weekend in L.A., and I’m going to New York and back and forth.” Like, okay. [Gavin laughs] But she’s on ships. 

She was introduced into society, you know, if we picture like a Bridgerton-type moment, it’s like, “Oh, here’s Grace,” and she’s like, tall and striking. How would you describe her appearance, Gavin? Like, there’s a couple of portraits of her. 

Gavin: Stunningly beautiful, I think, just kind of an objective way, right? Like, you know, a gorgeous person when you see one in the street, and that was Grace. Honey-coloured hair, kind of pale skin, fair skin, you would say, slender, striking. Kind of ticking a lot of the boxes for conventional beauty, you might say. 

Ann: And what I notice, what jumps out to me looking at her various portraits, is she really likes a strong eyebrow. She’s got like a real dark eyebrow. 

Gavin: Yeah, it’s an eyebrow with attitude. 

Ann: Yeah. You know, like we’ve gone in our current culture from the thin brow to, like, a really strong brow, and it’s a more modest brow, but she’s like the Cara Delevingne of her time. She’s just, like, she’s bringing you brow. [Gavin laughs] 

So, she’s tall and willowy and gorgeous, and she’s, of course, on the marriage market; she’s 16 and well-off. And so, she catches the eye of this guy, John Elliot, who was a prominent and wealthy physician who proposed to her, and she accepted, and they got married in London. I think he was, I forget if he was Scottish or English, but they certainly moved to London. She was 17, he was 35. And this is a real, like, Sk8er Boi-type situation. [both laugh] Could I make it any more obvious? 

Gavin: [recited to the rhythm of “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne] She was a courtesan, he was a physician. [laughs]

Ann: [laughs] [sings] What more can I say? 

Gavin: [sings] What more can I say? 

Ann: It did not function from minute one, it did not do well, they did not get along. I would imagine the age gap was a large part of it. But also, as we’re going to see, she’s just not someone… He might have married a teenager thinking, like, “Oh, she’ll be like quiet and demure, and I can kind of groom her,” or whatever, but like, Grace is going to be Grace; she’s not going to do what she’s told, as we see throughout her life. And so, she right away… 

Gavin: She has several affairs, right? 

Ann: She had affairs. He had affairs. There was, like, various sagas where, like… So, in this time and place, to have affairs in London, you couldn’t do it in your own house, so you went to these sort of brothels, sort of bordellos; it’s just kind of like a fuck hotel. They have these in Japan; they are, like, love hotels. It’s just a place where you go to have affairs. 

Gavin: But in the 18th century, they called them fuck hotels. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah, that was the phrasing of the olden times: Fuck hotels. So, she would just go there and like see her lovers, and he would go there and see his lovers. There’s one instance where I think they both… 

Gavin: Oh, yes! This was so funny! [laughs]

Ann: Nearly missed seeing each other. [laughs] 

Gavin: Yeah. Did you ever hear that Eminem— Oh, no, it’s Pink, it’s Pink and Eminem, and they’re both playing characters in the same song, and they’re in a relationship, and they’re both cheating on each other. And there’s the bridge where they see each other; they’re driving past each other on the road, and they both see each other, and they both know they’re going to cheat at the same time. [Ann laughs] It’s great, it’s a really funny song. But yeah, it’s basically this. That exact moment. 

Ann: It’s exactly that. So, like, she’s having affairs, he’s having affairs, and then she kind of like focuses on one guy who is Lord Valentia, who I wrote in my notes is hot. I just assume he was because… 

Gavin: Okay. Well, if Grace is going after him…

Ann: She’s like, this intent on him, and he’s also closer to her age, which is like 17. 

Gavin: He’s not like twice as old as she is, probably. 

Ann: Yeah, I imagine he’s some sort of like a rake, he’s some sort of himbo. Like, she’s having a nice time with this guy.

Gavin: Oooh, a libertine!  

Ann: Yeah. And, you know, this is Grace’s vibe as well; she was not destined to be a little trad wife. She’s got libertine tendencies, you know? 

Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. 

Ann: Anyway, for some reason, this was one affair too much. Her husband hires a private investigator to get proof that Grace is having this affair, and so then the private investigator sees Grace going into the fuck hotel, and then he sues her for adultery, he wins. I think… I forget if she has to pay him money or something, but they’re not… I don’t think they get a divorce. Do they get a—? No. Do they? Because she’s Grace Elliott for the rest of her life. People always call her Mrs. Elliott. I think… You know what? Like, this isn’t stopping her, this is not getting in her way. I just know from my book, Rebel of the Regency, available in stores now, that the only way you could get a divorce in this time was to prove that the woman had an affair. So, potentially that’s why he was doing this, so he could marry somebody else who he liked better. 

Gina: It definitely led to a criminal conversation trial and was quite scandalous, for sure. 

Ann: Yeah. Like, he sued her for adultery, and she was found to have done it, so whether they divorced or not, like her reputation is ruined, probably. They must have divorced because later there’s a guy who she wanted to marry her and he didn’t, so they must have divorced. 

Gavin: Right. 

Ann: But the important thing here is her reputation is now ruined, right? She’s like, a fallen woman or whatever. 

Gavin: [deep dramatic voice] Fallen woman. 

Ann: [laughs] Coming this fall, on Lifetime. 

Gavin: [deeper dramatic voice] Grissel Elliott, fallen woman.  

Ann: [laughs] So, it’s interesting because she was an upper-class woman, and then this happened, so she’s a fallen woman. But that just makes her be an appealing mistress to other upper-class men. It’s not just like, “Oh, my god. Now she has to go and live in poverty and whatever.” She’s just like, “No, I’m going to do sex work, but it’s going to be, like, courtesan-level sex work. I’m going to be like…” It’s like a sugar daddy type situation, would be the closest thing we have now. 

Gavin: Like, “I sleep with lords and that’s it. If you don’t have a lord in your name, like, what are we doing here? What are we even talking about?” 

Ann: Well, and the lords are like, “Hey, do you want to…” We’re recording this in the break between part one and part two of the most recent series of Bridgerton, where the cliffhanger was. Benedict says to his maid, Sophie, like, “Would you be my mistress?” And everyone’s like, “[gasps] How dare you?” But for people like him, having a mistress was kind of a sweet deal. They would pay for you to have your own house, usually. They would pay for you to have like jewels… Like, she would be set up. 

Gavin: But also, she’s just to work with what she’s got. Like you mentioned, her reputation is completely shattered. What is she going to do? Seek out respectable work? It’s not really an option, right? 

Ann: No, and she can’t do any work, right? Because she’s a woman in olden times. Maybe she could be an actress, but that’s not “respectable.” 

Gavin: No, no. 

Ann: So, she just kind of like, meets some guys, and they love her, and they pay for her. This is where Gavin and I first bonded, about the French actress Rachel. 

Gavin: Oh, that’s right. Yes. 

Ann: It’s a Rachel-like situation where she just kind of, like, all these lovers would just pay for her to have jewels and homes, and she’s just like, “Great!” And that’s what you’re going to do. 

Gavin: [laughs] No, keep your jewels. 

Ann: Yeah. No, “Give me the jewels. Pay for my house. Thank you.” 

So, she just became a mistress to various men in both France and England. And I would imagine because she went to school in France, she’s clearly fluent in the French language. She can fit in there, and she’s gorgeous, [cat meows] just like you, Hepburn, who is here meowing next to me. So, she’s got like various, you know, lovers, but the major one who enters at this point is Lord Cholmondeley [pronounced Chum-lee]. [Gavin gasps] 

Now, there’s twice as many letters in that as you might think, [Gavin laughs] based on my pronunciation. But when I was helping out with the audiobook of my book, Rebel of the Regency, available now, I had to verify the pronunciation of a bunch of names for the audiobook reader. 

Gavin: You had to do that?! 

Ann: Yeah. 

Gavin: I’ve always wondered who tells narrators how to pronounce certain names. Is it always the author? 

Ann: I don’t know! In this instance, it was. 

Gavin: In this instance, it was. Amazing. Augh, the more you know.  

Ann: And I was just like, “Why did I put so many names in this book?” 

Gavin: Son of a bitch. Yeah. [laughs] 

Ann: Next time… If I’m so lucky as to get to write another book, I’m going to put a lot less names in it. So, I got my friend Isobel, who is an English person in England, and she actually stepped forward, she was just like, “Let me tell you how to pronounce these names.” Like, no one is angrier than a British person who hears an American person mispronounce a British word. 

Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. 

Ann: Anyway. So, it looks like it should be [phonetic] Lord Chol-mond-el-ee, but guess what? [ph.] Lord Chum-lee, because guess what? He’s in my book. Or Lady Cholmondeley is anyway. So, she meets Lord Cholmondeley at a masquerade ball in Paris. Amazing. Iconic. Bridgerton vibes. 

Gavin: Perfect. I mean, how many liaisons just start at a masked ball, you know? 

Ann: In the Sofia Coppola, Marie Antoinette movie, that’s where she meets Axel von Fersen, at a masquerade ball in Paris. It’s just, like, that’s where you meet.

Gavin: Yeah. 

Ann: So, he meets her, and he’s just like, “Oh, my god, she’s great,” which she is. She’s gorgeous, she’s witty, like, everybody loves her. She strives hard in her life to make do, but people just fall for her. Like, she’s beautiful, but also charming, her personality is obviously… 

Gavin: She’s attractive in every sense of the word, right? She just draws people in. 

Ann: And this guy Lord Cholmondeley is like, “Be my mistress. Come back with me to England.” She’s like, “Yeah. [laughs] Why would I say no? That’d be foolish.” But also, I want to say, like when she was in Paris, she was hanging out with like… I think she was at Versailles and stuff. She was up in the high society in Paris. She was there, she learned about all the outfits; we see later on, like, she’s very influenced by what they’re wearing, like the diaphanous white gowns and stuff, she’s got a real French style about her. 

So, she and Cholmondeley, they were together officially for like three years, during which time Cholmondeley commissioned the famous artist, Thomas Gainsborough, who is kind of the portrait artist in England at this time. Like, every famous person from this time who there’s a portrait of, it’s by Gainsborough. He’s the guy. But you would know more about this from your art-based podcast. So, he painted this full-length portrait of Grace. Can you… I don’t know, just describe the effect of this portrait? It’s like a full body, you see your beautiful eyebrows. 

Gavin: Yeah, I mean, it shows off her beauty. There’s this beautiful lighting that kind of falls upon her, really accentuates some of her features. It also tells you a little bit about the kinds of clothing that she liked to wear. She has on a choker that she was known to wear, for example. I think she altered the colour of her hair for this portrait as well, if I’m not mistaken. 

Ann: I’m sure she did. She was always keeping up with the trends. But in terms of the choker, I just wanted to say in all portraits of her, it’s like, she famously always wore a velvet ribbon around her neck. That was kind of her thing. She’s got the eyebrows, she’s got the velvet ribbon. That’s Grissel. That’s our Grace. 

Gavin: That’s Grissel! Grissel. 

Ann: Do you know the story, the like, children’s Halloween story about the girl with the yellow ribbon around her neck? Do you know what I’m talking about? 

Gavin: I don’t think so, no. 

Ann: This might be a Canadian thing, I don’t know. There’s this very famous children’s story that has traumatized generations of children and continues to. [laughs] 

Gavin: Love it. 

Ann: It’s a book that’s called like, “Very Scary Stories for Children” or something. Anyway, it’s about this woman, and she has a yellow ribbon around her neck. And then she’s like, “I just can’t take off the ribbon around my neck,” and she marries a guy, and he’s like, “Oh, I want to take off the ribbon on her neck,” and then one day he does, and her head falls off. 

Gavin: Oh, yes, I have heard some version of that. Yeah. 

Ann: So, I just feel like Grace is walking around with this ribbon around her neck, and I’m just like, “Why don’t you take off the ribbon, Grace? What’s going to happen, Grace?” [laughs] 

Gavin: It’s like, “Why are you afraid of going to the guillotine, Grace? You already lost your head.” 

Ann: Yeah. Are you hiding the, like, scar? [Gavin laughs] 

Anyway, so this beautiful painting, it’s currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And so, one day, Lord Cholmondeley is friends with the Prince of Wales, at this time, the future husband of Caroline of Brunswick, because this is like 20 years before they got married. 

Gavin: Wait, have you done work on Caroline of Brunswick? 

Ann: I actually wrote a book about Caroline of Brunswick. 

Gavin: Oh, you wrote a book? 

Ann: Yeah, it’s called Rebel of the Regency. 

Gavin: When is it available? 

Ann: It’s available now, actually. It’s available now in stores everywhere. And also, guess what? Audiobook. 

Gavin: Oh, shit. 

Ann: Mm-hmm. 

Gavin: Feel bad for whoever has to say “Cholmondeley.” 

Ann: [laughs] There’s two different Cholmondeleys in the book. When I sent this to my friend, Isobel, she was like, “You have two different spellings?” She’s like, “This is also [ph.] Chum-lee.”

Gavin: [laughs] That’s so funny. 

Ann: Anyway. So, this guy Cholmondeley, he’s friends with Prinny, which is the nickname of Prince George, the Prince of Wales, future George IV. It’s a shortened version of Prince because he is just a shitty person with a shitty nickname. So, we call him Prinny. That is his name. 

So, Prinny at this point is like a young man, he’s like, 18-ish, and he’s just entering his kind of fuckboy era. So, very briefly: Prinny was the oldest son of King George and Queen Charlotte. King George is the one who lost America in the American Revolution, famously. And then, Queen Charlotte is the one from Bridgerton. So, this is their oldest son, Prinny. Anyway, he was raised very, very, very, like… Not allowed to have fun. They tried to make him be a very serious person. And then, as soon as he had his own house when he was 18, he was just like, “All I’m going to do is party constantly, have mistresses and be drunk for the rest of my life.” So, that’s his vibe. 

Gavin: I mean, it’s how a lot of 18-year-old men would probably behave if, you know, they had endless wealth. 

Ann: Exactly. It’s just he just never stopped doing that. So, he was visiting his friend Cholmondeley, and he saw this full-length portrait of Grace and was just like, “Oh, my God! Who is this hot woman?” Because he’s Prinny and he just loves older women, he loves mistresses, and he’s just like, “Will you introduce me to this person?” And like, what’s Cholmondeley going to do? It’s like, he’s the prince. And so, at this point, Prinny— And you know what? You’ll probably come back on this podcast to do an episode about this person later. 

So, Prinny’s current mistress was an actress called Mary Robinson, AKA Perdita, who is a really interesting person and also wrote books. Anyway, he was with Perdita, and then he just saw this painting, and he’s like, “Never mind, I’m going to date this person.” So, he dumps Perdita and then starts dating Grace. And because Perdita was his actress and because Prinny is the Prince of Wales, like, this is the dawning of tabloid culture, there’s a lot of drawings of them. So, people are gossiping about, like, the Prince of Wales is dating an actress. And then he dumps the actress for Grace, who was kind of this notorious figure because of her divorce trial. 

Gavin: Right. 

Ann: So then, this alleged feud between Perdita and Grace, like, that… You know, people, the same way as back in the day, it was like Angelina Jolie versus Jennifer Aniston. People love the idea of two women fighting. 

Gavin: It’s the stuff of gossip columns, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. Since the invention of tabloids, just like, “Ooh! Two women we can pit against each other.” 

Gavin: Right. Right. 

Ann: There was another woman who was kind of part of this group, and she was really short. I want to mention at this point that Grace, because she had a nickname called Dally the Tall. I guess Dally’s short for Dalrymple. 

Gavin: Dalrymple, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. So, she’s Dally the Tall. And then, there was this other actress who is very short, and she was called the Bird of Paradise because she was small and liked to dress colourfully. 

Gavin: [laughs] Oh wow. 

Ann: So, it’s like Perdita, Dally the Tall, and the Bird of Paradise. 

Gavin: I mean, that’s pretty awesome. Like, a great collection of nicknames. 

Ann: It’s a fantastic collection of just, yeah…

Gavin: Like, personalities. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah. So, just like, these are the main characters in the newspapers of the day. Eventually, Grace becomes pregnant. So, she has a child, which is a daughter, and she claims that Prinny, the Prince of Wales, is the father of this daughter. 

Now, was he biologically? We’ll never know because she was actively still with Cholmondeley and also a few other people. So, she has this daughter, but on the birth certificate, or on the baptism record, she says the father is the Prince of Wales. And Prinny kind of seems to have accepted that that was his daughter, although Prinny’s whole family (because they were very inbred at this time), were all very blonde, and this little girl, whose name was Georgina Augusta Frederica, which is just the female versions of all of Prinny’s names, George August Frederick, she was a dark-haired child. So, Prinny made some sort of joke one time where he’s like, you know, “Until black is white and white is black, I don’t know if this is my child,” but, you know, recessive genes, et cetera. So, she has a child, Georgina. Prinny is just, like, widely understood to be the father of this child. 

And then, randomly (to me), but I guess this made sense at the time, Cholmondeley, the ex-lover who’s not married, he’s just a bachelor, is like, “I’ll raise this child, that is my friend’s child.” Like, did Prinny ask him to? I don’t know. 

Gavin: Maybe he suspected that it was his child, or maybe he just wanted to help out Grace. I mean, it’s interesting that he would take that responsibility. 

Ann: Cholmondeley, kind of throughout this whole story, even once they stop being lovers, he’s kind of always there for her. He just kind of liked to help out. 

Gavin: You get the sense that there were deeper feelings there, but also reasons why they could never marry, right? 

Ann: Yeah. She’s so scandalous. But the fact that Grace had, allegedly, the illegitimate child of the Prince of Wales made her even more famous as this kind of scandalous person. 

Gavin: Exactly. But also, having an illegitimate child is like a rite of passage for a Prince of Wales, right? 

Ann: Yes. Oh, my gosh. So, I think I was telling you this before we were recording, but when I was researching my book, Rebel of the Regency, because there’s a chapter about— The chapter is called “We Have to Talk About Prinny,” [Gavin laughs] and it kind of sort of like, who were his mistresses and who were the people he maybe had children with? I mentioned Grace just in the context of maybe that was one of his children. But yeah, he had various illegitimate children with various people. Prinny did, and all of his brothers did; that’s just what’s happening. But if you’re the mother of a girl who is… Georgina, we’ll talk later when we’re more into the Regency era of it all, but like, she was a desirable person to marry, you know? Because she was the illegitimate daughter of the king. 

Anyway, eventually, Prinny, as was his want, he got tired of her. But you know what? He didn’t just dump her, like he did to some other people, he handed her off to his friend, the same way he had stolen her from Cholmondeley. He was like, “You know what? I’m tired of her, but my friend, he has various mistresses. I think she would get along with him.” And that friend is Philippe, the Duke d’Orléans over in France. 

Now, if you listen to this podcast, Vulgar History, we did a whole Marie Antoinette series, we talked about the French Revolution. And I forget why, but I started calling him Ryan Phillippe, and that is who this is. Ryan Phillippe emerged in the Marie Antoinette season as sort of a stealth villain, honestly, because he was a cousin of the royal family, and he thought if he could get the royal family deposed, that maybe he could be the king, and that was guiding all of his moves. And then, he eventually got his head cut off because that’s not how the French Revolution works, sir. 

But I was just like, “My god! Grace was mistress of like, two of my least favourite men in history?” [laughs] Prinny and Ryan Phillippe? Like, these guys, they just liked to talk, you know? And just like, talk about nothing, and they thought they were so smart. She must have the patience of a saint, Grace, to put up with them. 

Gavin: I mean, as long as they keep the jewels coming, you know? 

Ann: Yeah. But wow. So, she’s with him, and he has various mistresses, like, that’s just his vibe. And she becomes one of his, like, harem. And so, she went off to Paris to go be the mistress of this guy. So, this is Paris, 1780s. I don’t know if you want to set the scene a little bit, Gavin. What was Paris like in the mid 1780s? 

Gavin: Oh, well, a great political awakening is underway and will ultimately culminate in the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. There’s growing resentment of the royal family, especially Marie Antoinette, who is both a foreigner and a woman, two strikes against her, but also, of course, known to indulge in all kinds of luxury, the kind of lifestyle that the vast majority of French people would never be able to enjoy. And then, again, especially toward the end of the decade, you start to see really severe shortages of both food and firewood. So, people are starving to death, freezing to death in particularly hard winters that then affect the harvest. And life is just getting really hard for ordinary French people. 

Ann: I’m trying to think of what would be similar today. To be like, “You know what? I’m going to go live in Paris now.” It’s like “Now? You’re going to move to Paris in the middle of this?” But she was living with Ryan Phillippe. So, he had, because he was related to the royal family, he had sort of a fake Versailles-type situation, like a house that he lived in that was attached to all these shops and stores; we call it his mall, his outdoor mall complex, which we call Lafufu Versailles. Because he was trying to be like, “I should be the king instead of them. I’m the king of the people.” So, he had like shops and stores and operas, so people could come there. And he was more popular than Marie Antoinette and her husband because he was like in Paris, they were like a bit far away in Versailles. Anyway, who could have known where this was all headed? 

Gavin: I know. 

Ann: Not her. But she was just like, “Great, I’m going to go be the mistress of Ryan Phillippe. I’m going to live at Lafufu Versailles in the mall.” And she had several years of just like, having a nice time. 

Gavin: Having a great time. 

Ann: Outfits, food. She’s gorgeous, she’s great. Like, this is where people are wearing those, like, really simple white muslin dresses, Marie Antoinette’s famous fuck dress, as I call it. Grace looked great in that, you know, powdering her hair. She’s having a great time. And then one day, the French Revolution started. 

Gavin: I love this. She describes this day, July 12, 1789, so two days before the Fall of the Bastille, which is, you know, obviously cited as the outbreak. But two days before, it’s a Sunday, and she’s just having a low-key, relaxing, lazy Sunday. She gets up, she and the Duke of Orléans, they go out of Paris. They go to one of his chateaux outside the city, and she’s sunbathing, and the men are off fishing, and then they have a great feast. It’s just, like, a killer time. They’re like, “All right, let’s go back into the city. We’re going to go to one of our favourite theatres, just cap off this lovely Sunday.” They come in, and all hell has broken loose in Paris [laughs] because the firing of Jacques Necker and people are, like, dying in the street. And they’re just like, “Oh, my God.” And, yeah, basically, it’s the first, you know, instance of kind of mass violence and demonstrations of the French Revolution. 

Ann: Right. And we were talking before about like, what side is she on? It’s like, she’s on the side of her and her friends who are in a cart trying to not be murdered, like, understandably. So, she’s like pro royals. She’s pro Marie Antoinette, pro Louis XVI, because those are her friends. And this is how she’s surviving, is by these people funding her lifestyle. And she’s not anyone who’s been like reading about, like, “Oh, my God, like the social conditions…” 

Gavin: Sovereignty! Like, maybe people should have a say in their government. That kind of shit. Like, no. 

Ann: That’s not of interest to her, and she was not raised and like… It would have been surprising if it was because… 

Gavin: Yeah, there’s an amazing example of Grace Elliott’s staggering tone deafness. So, the day after this shit goes down on July 12th, July 13th, again, like, riots in the street, people dying because of [laughs] just like, the abject poverty that so many French people were living in. So, she decides that it’s a good day to go see her jeweller because she wants another diamond. She gets in the carriage and, like, there’s a mob in the street, she can’t pass through, and she’s like, “Augh! Excuse me. I’m trying to go get some jewelry!” And apparently someone just shoved like a head on a stick, like, a severed head on a pike, through the window of her carriage, and she just fainted. But then she had to go home. She had to go home, didn’t get her diamond. 

Ann: I just want to mention heads on pikes. Heads on sticks comes up a lot in the French Revolution. There’s just a lot. It feels like you can’t go anywhere without a head on a stick being shoved at you. But yeah, this is giving me Madame du Barry, you know? 

Gavin: Oh, yes. Yes, yes! [laughs] 

Ann: At this time where she was like, “Oh, my God, someone stole my jewels!” And she put up posters all over, being like, “Did anyone see my jewels?” 

Gavin: “Starving peasant woman, have you seen my jewels?” 

Ann: “If you see my jewels, please return them to this, my manor house, where I have other jewels,” like, “Excuse me, my jewels.” 

Gavin: You can think of, like, one of those missing pet posters that you see on, you know, a phone, a telephone pole or something, but it’s just like diamonds instead of a dog. 

Ann: In the middle of the French Revolution, like, “Excuse me, if you find my jewels, can you please…?” So, the tone deafness. This kind of shows how much the wealthy people in Paris at this time didn’t understand what was happening, but also didn’t realize everything had changed, you know? They didn’t realize, like, you can’t just go buy your diamonds. 

Gavin: Yeah. And in her journal, it’s important to note that she says almost nothing about the arguments in favour of the Revolution. You see no intellectual engagement with that at all, nor is there much acknowledgement of the widespread suffering of the vast majority of French people at this time. She seems just completely removed; she doesn’t give a shit. She does not give a shit. Yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. And it’s like, I don’t know… Fair enough! [laughs] Perhaps she should have, but like, in her life experience… 

Gavin: Total bubble. 

Ann: Like, everyone she was around, what she’s describing is how everyone was, not just her, like, everyone in her sort of social class. So, this is what? 1789. And then, because she was friends with Prinny and because there starts being sort of a clamping down of people, England and France, and like, sending letters back and forth is kind of tricky. So, she would secretly communicate some letters back and forth between members of the British government and members of the exiled French court in Belgium. So, she’s doing some, I would say, light spy-adjacent shenanigans. 

Gavin: It’s something like espionage for sure. Yeah. 

Ann: But this is also where you’re like, “Why doesn’t she just go back to England at this point?” And the reason she does not go back to England at this point is because she has so many debts that she is afraid that if she goes back, she’ll be put in debtors’ jail. So, she would rather stay in Paris during the French Revolution than risk going to debtors’ jail, seems like. So, she’s just kind of like… She stays like it’s 1789, time passes, we get up to 1792. She’s still there. She’s just hanging out. 

Okay, so what is this? Oh, this is just a bit after… We’ll talk about that in a sec because we’re going to get into some of her, like, active espionage adjacent shenanigans. So, 1792, the Tuileries, can you set the scene? What happens? 

Gavin: Sure. So, date is August 10, 1792. A kind of mass hysteria comes over Paris on this date because there is widespread fear of an imminent foreign invasion, I believe, by the Prussian army. And basically, the guy in charge, the Duke of Brunswick, has made very clear that he is just going— 

Ann: I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. The Duke of Brunswick, the father of Caroline of Brunswick? Rebel of the Regency. 

Gavin: Possibly. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah, absolutely is who it is. The Duke of Brunswick, that’s her dad. And I talked about that in my book, Rebel of the Regency. 

Gavin: [laughs] He has basically vowed to raze Paris to the ground. So, everyone is freaking out. It scares the holy hell out of Parisians, but it also has the unintended effect of touching off an armed insurrection. So, a bunch of people weapon up, and they march down both banks of the Seine toward the… Is it [ph.] Tool-er-eez? 

Ann: [ph.] Tool-er-eez.  

Gavin: I’ve always heard [ph.] Twee-ler-eez. I’m just going to say [ph.] Twee-ler-eez because that’s what I’ve heard. I took French for reading in grad school, but that doesn’t mean I know how to say any of it. So, I’ll just say Tuileries, I could totally be wrong. 

Anyway, so that’s where the royal family has been living since they relocated from Versailles, and there are, like, thousands of rioters descending on the palace. And Louis and Marie Antoinette are like, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” And they do that, they evacuate. The rioters arrive at the palace, they are looking for the royal family, and they are confronted by the guards. These are Swiss guardsmen, there are also national guardsmen there as well. There are about a little over 2,000, but they are vastly outnumbered. And the insurrectionists are like, “Listen, you need to take us to the royal family right now, or we’re going to fucking kill you.” And the Swiss guardsmen are like, “Guess what? We took a vow to protect the royal family. So, bring it on.” They fire on the mob, and the palace just descends into absolute carnage. 

What results is often called the laughter of the Swiss Guardsmen, like, 800 of them were brutally just massacred by the insurrectionists. And they would not just cut them down, they would do things like castrate their corpses and hold up their genitals as trophies out on the street. So, it was extremely brutal. This is often cited as, like, one of the most horrific incidents in the French Revolution. And terror spreads because, like, there’s just this intense bloodletting going on at the royal palace, right? And Grace Elliott happens to live not too far away. 

Ann: Nearby! [laughs] 

Gavin: Yep. She lives not too far away at all. 

Ann: And for once in her life, she’s like, “Huh, maybe I should get out of here.” 

Gavin: “Maybe now’s the time to go.” 

Ann: “Maybe now is the time,” yeah. But at this point, there was sort of like, because of everything that happened with the French Revolution – listen to my or Gavin’s various podcasts about this for more details – but, like, you couldn’t get in or out of Paris. There were guards, there was, like, a gate, there was a fence. You can’t just leave Paris. And so, she’s like, “Okay, I need to get out of here,” and her boyfriend, Ryan Phillippe, had gifted her this property outside of town. She’s like, “It’d be great to go there. But how can I get out? The gates to the city are closed.” 

And then, it’s sort of like, she tells the story herself, but her maid reminds her, “Oh, but you have this porter, one of your servants has a house,” like, there’s a hole in the wall near his house that “Maybe you can climb the fence,” or something like that. So, she’s just like, “We’re going to do it. Let’s get goin’. I’m tall. We can do it.” 

Gavin: That’s right. 

Ann: So, they go to this house that’s near the wall. But this is a part where, like, she hadn’t worn good shoes, where it’s just, like, she doesn’t get it. I don’t know what shoes she had that would be good for this walk. 

Gavin: Yeah. Well, I think she was also terrified. She’s like, “I need to get the hell out. I don’t have time to pack,” right? Like, “Just go! Get gone.” Like you said. 

Ann: Yeah. So, I mean, if you could describe what happens. She’s wearing these white silk slippers with no soles on them. 

Gavin: No soles, and it’s a pretty long walk to this nearby village where she has a property. So, she makes the walk, and by the time she reaches her house, her feet are just bleeding. She has a pretty frightening run-in with this unknown figure along the way, she’s worried that he might pose some kind of threat to her. But yeah, she eventually makes it there and just collapses. You know, it’s like very late at night, early in the morning, and yeah, it’s pretty dramatic. But she is able to make it. 

Ann: She does it. She climbs the fence, she gets to this house. So, she herself is safe. And then she’s, I presume, I don’t know, just like soaking her feet like you do. I don’t know. 

Gavin: That’s right. 

Ann: Just like, bandages on her feet. And she stays there for some period of time. And then a messenger boy arrives from Paris with a message from her friend, Mrs. Meyler. And so, Mrs. Meyler, like the message basically says, “There’s this guy. Only you, Grace, can help save his life. Can you return to Paris to save this man’s life?” And so, even just to return from this small town into Paris, she had to get a passport because things are so controlled. So, she got a 24-hour passport, which was a thing, I guess.

Gavin: Right. Like, you need to get in and out of the city. 

Ann: Yeah. And so, she goes there. So, they’re sort of— Oh, this is sorry. So, the Tuileries, that was August, yeah? 

Gavin: Yes. 

Ann: Yeah. So, this is September, it’s like a month later. So, during the, guess what? September massacres… 

Gavin: September massacres. I love this scene because she rolls up… [laughs]

Ann: Okay. Well, I just want to explain, the September massacres are, like, the mob just breaks into various prisons and just starts killing all the prisoners. And so, Grace gets her 24-hour passport, and she gets to Paris, and they’re like, “Girl, what? Why do you want to come in?” 

Gavin: They’re like, “Have you not heard?” And she’s like, “Heard of what?” But it’s another amazing moment where she arrives in Paris from another location and, like, while she was gone, all hell has broken loose. [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah. So, she gets to the border control, like to enter Paris, and she’s like, “Hey, I have this 24-hour passport.” And it’s funny because her friend, Mrs. Meyler, is like, “Hey, there’s a person I need to help.” She doesn’t say who it is or why Grace— But Grace is just like, “You know what? I’m being called upon to help, and I shall do it.” And this is where it’s like, I ride for her. She’s like, “Yeah, I will help this person.” So, the guards are like, “What are you doing here?” And she’s like, “My mother is sick. And I just got a 24-hour passport to come and see her as she dies.” 

Okay, so she goes to Mrs. Meyler’s house and explain who is there. Who is this man? 

Gavin: Okay. So, she discovers a man who she has seen before. He is an English-born aristocrat by the name of the Marquis of Champcenetz. She had never really had a substantive interaction with him, but she knew him from, like, royal circles and everything. He and the Duke of Orléans had had this really bitter falling out ever since the Revolution, so she hadn’t seen him in recent years, but he was the governor of the Tuileries Palace. And this is where we’re going to flash back in time to the slaughter of the Swiss Guardsmen, because he is present for that, again, on August 10th, and this is where the story just gets so intense. Like, from this point on, the story is so intense. 

So, the slaughter of the Swiss Guardsmen is happening, the Marquis of Champcenetz is in the palace, and he basically has two options. He can stay and fight; if he goes that route, there is virtually a hundred percent chance that he will not only die, but have his corpse desecrated like those of his comrades. Or he can flee. And he chooses to flee. So, he takes a running start and leaps out an upper-storey window of the palace, landing not on the ground, but instead literally in a heap of corpses. 

Ann: On a pile of bodies. 

Gavin: A pile of dead bodies. And he just lays there because he’s like, “It’s too dangerous for me to get up and make a run for it right now. I will be taken. There’s no way I’ll survive.” So, he just lies there, again, surrounded by his comrades, just like, drenched in their sweat and blood. And he stays there for several hours. And someone is combing through the pile of bodies later on and recognizes him, and it’s an ally. Takes off his jacket, gives it to him. He’s like, “Look, you’ve got to disguise, like, get the hell out of here. Go. Now is the time where you can make a run for it.” 

So, he leaves, and he tries to find help at various places across Paris, but he’s kind of thwarted wherever he goes. And there’s this one really intense moment where a horseman rides through the streets and makes a public pronouncement, and he’s like, “Listen, if anyone is caught aiding and abetting anyone who tried to defend the royal family at the Tuileries Palace today, you will be put to death.” So, basically, anyone who tries to provide assistance to the Marquis of Champcenetz is screwed, so nobody wants to help him. Finally, he thinks he remembers Mrs. Meyler, and for some reason, he’s acquainted with her, and he happens to know that she’s a pretty staunch royalist, and so is her maid, and she lives alone with her maid. So, he goes to her, finds her. I love this part of the story. 

He goes up to the building, and there’s a porter. It’s like, “Who are you here to see?” “Oh, I’m a Monsieur…” He comes up with some bullshit name, like, “I’m Charlie.” 

Ann: “Totally, totally, totally a Jacobin you guys. Totally, totally a revolutionary.” 

Gavin: Yeah, that’s right. “Monsieur Jacobin.” Yes. [laughs] So, he’s admitted. He goes upstairs, explains a predicament to Mrs. Meyler. So, Mrs. Meyler is like, “Okay, I will harbour you here, you have somewhere to stay,” and they devise this ruse. So, they’re like, “Listen, the porter has seen you enter this house, and he’s going to get suspicious if he doesn’t see you leave because he knows you don’t live here.” So, they go back downstairs and leave the property. And Mrs. Meyler makes sure that the porter sees both of them go, and then she sticks, she lingers, and she strikes up a conversation with the person, like, “Oh, my God, have you heard about all this bloodshed over at the palace? It’s crazy.” And he’s like, “Damn, I know. Right?” So, while they’re talking, Champcenetz sneaks around to the side entrance and is led in by the maid, and then he just hides up in the attic for about three weeks until Grace Elliott is summoned. 

The reason Grace Elliott is summoned is because she lives out of town, so it’s kind of a better idea for her to hide him because Paris, like, everything is popping off in Paris, right? But there’s a more specific reason, which is that the state has introduced this new form of terror and control, namely, what are called the domiciliary visits. So, these are visits that take place in homes and businesses, and when these occur, the entire city locks down. The pikemen are patrolling the streets, and if you’re seen out and about, it could look suspicious; things may not go well for you. Indeed, they almost certainly will not go well for you. And these domiciliary visits are getting ready to start tonight. So, that’s why Mrs. Mayer is like, “Grace, you have to get here now and get him out of here, because if I’m discovered harbouring this fugitive,” like, people know at this point that Champcenetz has escaped and they’re looking for him actively. So, she’s like, “This is too dangerous. You have to get him out of here.” 

Ann: I want to mention also, too, because this is part of the drama. Champcenetz is, like, very ill. 

Gavin: Right. Right. 

Ann: He’s got various oldey-timey symptoms. Well, just like, all the stuff that he’s gone through. 

Gavin: They call it a nervous fever, and I’m like, I don’t know what that means, but yeah. 

Ann: He’s like, I don’t know. He’s just sweating, he’s dehydrated, he’s not thriving. 

Gavin: He’s probably traumatized, honestly. 

Ann: Yeah. He’s probably just, like, in long-term shock and just, you know, immune system, not great. So, he’s kind of like sweaty, not doing great. So, Grace shows up, and she learns the situation, and she’s like, “Great. You know what? I will help this sweaty man.” 

Gavin: She’s like, “It’s totally fine. I have my passport. I got my passports. All we have to do, get to the city walls, get out of here,” because the city gates are going to close later tonight. Like, “Let’s just chill. Let’s let the sun go down because we don’t want to be seen out and about in the daytime. Let’s just let the sun go down, then we’ll get my carriage, we’ll go to the city gates. I’ve got my passports. Boom. We’re out of here.” 

Ann: But guess what? 

Gavin: Guess what? 

Ann: City gates are closed. 

Gavin: City gates are fucking closed. And now, [laughs] yes. So, Grace kind of starts to panic because again, like, the domiciliary visits are about to start, like, they could start at any time, and they need to be off the street when that happens. But luckily, for Champcenetz, Grace is like, “Oh, my God, I’ve escaped the city once before in the past 30 days. So, check me out because I know where there’s a breach in the wall. So, let’s go in there, hop in our carriage. We’ll go back to where my porter lives. It’s totally fine. We’ve done this before. If we hurry, we can make it.” They get in the carriage, then they get out in front, or near, you know, down the street from the breach. And they’re getting ready to go in, they round a corner, and at the opposite end of the street, they see a group of patrolmen armed to the teeth, and it just hits both of them. The domiciliary visits have already started; it’s too late. They’re not going to be able to escape the city. 

So, this is this amazing moment too, where you kind of have to, like, appreciate Grace Elliott because she starts to cry. Like, tears are streaming down her face. She’s like, “Oh my fucking God, what are we going to do? How can we ever escape the situation?” Champcenetz is like, “Listen, I’m not going to ask you to put your life in danger for me. I will turn myself in. You can just go home, like, you don’t have to do this.” And Grace is like, “No, dude. Ride or die. I’ve made a promise that I would protect you. We’re going to do this. So, let’s turn around.” They do a 180, they go the opposite direction. And eventually, they head to another part of the city, and they are able to… They happen to pass by Grace Elliott’s residence. 

Ann: Her residence at Lafufu Versailles. Because she had lodgings there from when she was being the lover of Ryan Phillippe. So, she’s like, “Oh, my God, I have a house right here.” Okay, I just wanted to set up, like, that’s where they are. They’re back at the mall.

Gavin: They’re at Lafufu Versailles, and some of Grace Elliott’s servants are, like, hanging out outside. Because remember, Grace Elliott has been out of the city for like, I don’t know, three or four weeks at this point. They don’t really have anyone to wait on hand and foot, but I guess she could come back at any time, that’s the thinking. 

So, she realizes that there’s no way she’s going to be able to get past them. And she tells Champcenetz to duck out of sight. She’s like, “Go hide in that building. I’ll see what I can do.” So, she just kind of materializes, like, “Hey, everyone! What’s up? Just popping back home.” And they’re like, “Okay, great.” And this is great. But Grace Elliott knows that her house is not going to be the most hospitable place for Champcenetz because she has a Jacobin cook, like a radical revolutionary who hates the aristocracy, which is fascinating that that person would be working for Grace Elliott. But anyway, they’re able to devise a way to sneak Champcenetz— Actually, they don’t even sneak Champcenetz into the property. 

Ann: He comes to the door, and he’s like, “Hello, bonjour. It’s me, Mr. Jacobin.” [laughs]

Gavin: [laughs] Yeah, they’re like, in the middle of coming up with a great scheme, because, yeah, the porter is, like, an ally, and he’s like, “Okay, we can sneak him into the house,” and then just, they hear a knock at the door and Champcenetz is there and Grace is like, “What are you doing?” 

Ann: “I happen to be in le neighbourhood. Totally chill, you guys!” 

Gavin: “Hey, what’s up?” And the Jacobin cook recognizes him and is like A) You should be dead right now. Like, people are searching for you to kill you. But B) You’re actually putting all of us at risk, even by showing up on our doorstep, because you are wanted. So, it’s a really dangerous situation. 

Anyway, Grace is able to get the cook out of the house and they kind of sneak Champcenetz in. And the porter has the idea of hiding Champcenetz between two of Grace’s mattresses in her bedchamber, and that’s what they do. 

Ann: Yeah, in the bed. I want to clarify it. Like, when I first read that he’s between two mattresses, I was picturing the mattresses were leaning up against the wall or something. But no, it’s literally like mattress, Champcenetz, other mattress, Grace gets into the bed. So, he’s just, like, smushed; this sweaty, panicky guy is just, like, smushed inside her bed. 

Gavin: Yes, yeah. And I guess they’re able to arrange the bedding some way that you wouldn’t be able to tell, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to kind of picture how exactly this was working. But yeah. So, he’s in between two mattresses and Grace just, like, hangs out there. At 4:00 a.m, the domiciliary visit begins at Grace’s residence. And the way she tells it in her memoir, word has reached these patrolmen that she is sheltering Champcenetz. So, they just, like, storm into her house, dozens of them, and just start tearing things to shreds, like, overturning furniture, rifling through any place where Champcenetz could be hiding. They’re just going for it. And finally, according to Grace Elliott, something like 40 men just enter her bedchamber, and she’s sitting in bed. 

Ann: In her nightgown. 

Gavin: In her nightgown. 

Ann: This is part of her cover story, because she’s like, “Well, they won’t get me to get out of bed if I’m in my nightgown. That would be improper.” 

Gavin: Exactly, right. I know it’s like, we’re decapitating everyone, blood and gore running down the streets, but chivalry hasn’t died, you know? [laughs] But still, imagine you’re in bed, 40 armed men just enter your bedroom. I mean, it would be this completely terrifying scenario if it played out exactly as Grace described it. And yeah, they kind of get into this back and forth. 

At first, she’s like, “Oh, you’re not going to make me rise and dress in front of you,” because they want to search her bed; they think that possibly Champcenetz could be hiding there. At first, she’s like, “Oh, my god, you’re not going to make me do that.” And then she kind of changes tack, and she’s like, “Well, wait a second. What if I actually pretend to be this gracious hostess? Maybe that could disarm them.” 

So, she’s like, “Well, actually, you know what? Why don’t I get up and get dressed? And then I’ll personally escort you through my house, you can totally be my guest, search wherever you want. And you know what? Maybe my Jacobin cook can throw together a pie for you. It would be great! You guys have been working all night. You need some nourishment, right?” They’re like, “Oh, my God, Grace, you’re so cool. Sorry for destroying all of your furniture. It’s just part of the job, it’s part of the job.” And so, they’re basically like, you know, “It’s fine. Like you can stay in the bed. Don’t trouble yourself. We still have to search it, but you don’t have to get out.” And someone does search the bed, but they don’t find… 

Ann: Just like, casually. 

Gavin: Yeah, casually. Like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe we’re doing this to her. She’s such a cool person.” Anyway, so they leave, and Champcenetz is undiscovered. 

Ann: [laughs] And he emerges from the mattresses, just like, drenched in sweat. 

Gavin: Drenched in sweat, barely able to breathe. She’s actually concerned that he might suffocate or something under there, because he’s, like, literally between two mattresses for a long time, too. He was hiding there for quite some time. And so, yeah, she sets him up in the boudoir, unbeknownst to quite a few of her housemates. Like, they don’t even know that a fugitive is being harboured in the house, and he stays there for several days while they figure out what to do.

Ann: Until finally, the city gates— Hepburn is here. She’s here for this exciting plot twist, which is that the city gates eventually reopen, and frankly, they just are able to leave. Well, actually, first, she called upon Ryan Phillippe. She’s like, “I know these guys had some beef, but like maybe he can help.” And Ryan Phillippe, “Girl, sorry, I can’t.” 

Gavin: Just like, “I fucking hate this dude.“ 

Ann: Like, augh, that’s the Ryan Phillippe I know. He’s never helpful. 

Gavin: But then he does come through for them. 

Ann: He does come through for them later. So, they escape back to her house outside of town, and he sent a message being basically like, “Okay, there’s this mail cart that he can sneak into, and if you bribe the driver, we can smuggle him out.” And Champcenetz, we didn’t mention, but he was originally from England, so he was able to eventually smuggle himself back to England. And Grace, like she got away with it. 

Gavin: She got away with it. Yeah, yeah. 

Ann: For now. 

Gavin: For now. 

Ann: But I mean, like everyone, it’s sort of it’s a real paranoid situation. Everybody is a spy everywhere. I’m sure the Jacobin cook is like telling everything to everybody. 

Gavin: Runnin’ her mouth, yeah. 

Ann: And eventually word got around that… Because Grace Elliott has been doing this, but also we mentioned before about, like, facilitating the secret correspondence. 

So, Ryan Phillippe had been bros with Prinny back in England for a long time. Both of them are like, “Oh, we’re two guys. Too bad we can’t be king, we’d be so much better than the current kings. Let’s share mistresses.” So, like, they were friends. And so, Ryan Phillippe had been corresponding with England because Ryan Phillippe wants to take over and be the king of France and stuff. Grace Elliott, friends with both of them. So, she’s just been helping, like, compared to what we just described, some low-key espionage-type stuff, just letter-based stuff. 

Gavin: Well, I have to think… I often get the sense from reading her journal that we just don’t even know the half of what she was up to. 

Ann: True.

Gavin: It’s just a gut feeling, I can’t really prove it. But certain things in there make me suspect that she was doing more than she then she reveals. 

Ann: Well, that’s the thing, too, because it’s kind of like, how much does she want to reveal, like in this memoir? You know? 

Gavin: Yeah. Well, she says so, to jump ahead to the next major episode, she’s kind of like… Word has gone around that she’s a spy, et cetera, et cetera. And one night, this other aristocrat, the Comtesse de….

Ann: Perigord. 

Gavin: Is it [ph.] Pear-ee-gard or [ph.] Pear-ee-jard? I don’t know. 

Ann: I don’t know. 

Gavin: I don’t know. But she basically wants the Champcenetz treatment. And she’s like, “Hey, can you help me immigrate? I would prefer not to die here.” And Grace Elliott’s like, “Oh, yeah! Old habs.” So, she is hiding Perigord, or she has Perigord over, and it just so happens that the guards come calling, basically to search Grace Elliott’s residence and possibly to detain her. And so, Grace is like, “Fuck.” And so, she tells the countess to leap into a closet. 

Ann: So, she previously set this up. I feel like she’s running sort of like the safe house for runaway royalists. She has all these hiding spots. 

Gavin: Exactly. This is why I’m like, there’s no way, like, you do not set this up if you think you might use it just one time, right? But yeah, so she has this like safe house set up, and she’s removed all the shelves from inside the closet and also put up a sheet of paper so that someone can hide in there, and then there’s also a way to fasten the door from the inside of the closet. And I’m like, this is not her first rodeo, right? Like, I’m sure you would only set this up if you planned to help. If you were planning to help people, really. 

Ann: Like, “I’ve got an aristocrat in like hiding spot number one, hiding spot number two.” The secret bookshelf, we’ve got the secret passageway, someone’s up the chimney. [Gavin laughs] Like, she’s got this figured out. Ever since the mattress scenario, she’s like, “We’ve got to make plan B, C, D.” 

Gavin: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. [laughs] So, the countess, like, jumps in there, and the guards come in, and they’re searching. You know, they’ve heard that she’s a royalist, they know she’s suspect. They’re looking for any potentially damning evidence that they can find, and they come across a letter from a guy named Godfrey Webster addressed to Charles Fox, who was an English member of parliament. It’s unopened. 

Ann: Charles Fox we talked about in a couple of weeks ago. We did an episode about Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, who is very involved in politics. Charles Fox was one of the one of her main guys. That was her friend. He liked to, just for a fun fact, powder his hair fun colours like pink. 

Gavin: I love that. I didn’t— That’s awesome. 

Ann: He was a politician, but he was also like a fashion plate, Charles Fox.  

Gavin: Yes, I love it. I love it. I’ve come across in my research as well, but I didn’t know about the pink hair, which I love. 

Ann: And this is where it’s like, so I just wanted to say, like, they find this letter between her and him, and it’s like, guys, it could just be about, like, hair products. 

Gavin: Yeah, right. [laughs]

Ann: It could just be about like, “What are you using for your brows? They’re so lush. Like, do you have a gel?” Like, it’s probably just about that. 

Gavin: Well, the thing is that it’s not even from Grace Elliott, it’s from Godfrey Webster.  

Ann: To Charles Fox. 

Gavin: To Charles Fox, and Grace Elliott was sort of the go-between. So, she has no idea what is even in this letter that is being, you know, held up as incriminating evidence against her. So, they take her, they place her under arrest, take her to a guardroom. It’s miserable. She’s the only one there. 

Ann: I wanted to say. So, this is 1793. Like, I did my whole French Revolution season, and I was in it, and I knew all of it, and then, like, I’ve gradually started forgetting things. But this is like Robespierre era. This is like, every… The French Revolution is kind of like the heads on pikes era, and then Robespierre takes over, and now it’s just kind of like this sort of like fascist dictatorship situation, where just, like, people could just be arrested. So, it’s like that. There’s kind of like these… Like, you’re put in front of the place where she’s taken, she’s put in jail, and then she’s going to be put on trial. But it’s just in front of kind of like… The government of the time. 

Gavin: Yeah. And she eventually is going to go before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

Ann: That’s what I was thinking of, the Revolutionary Tribunal. Just these guys. 

Gavin: Yeah, yeah. She winds up there. And again, she’s just terrified. At this point, she really starts to fear for her life, because, again, she has no idea what is in this letter. She has no idea. And the contents of it are basically going to seal her fate. So, she stands before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and one of them starts attacking her. He’s like, “I know her. She’s a royalist. She is not to be trusted. Put her to death.” And another person breaks in and is like, “Wait a second. This letter is addressed to Charles Fox, and he’s actually sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. So, like, why would we just assume that something traitorous going on?” 

Ann: I want to just say, they have not opened the letter yet. 

Gavin: At this point, the letter is unopened. No one knows. And yet they’re still like… It’s like, who even cares? It’s almost an afterthought at this point in the conversation. It’s like, “Just kill her!” But yeah, so eventually they decide to have Grace Elliott open the letter and then read it, I think, because it was going to be in English and their English wasn’t good enough. 

Ann: [laughs] They didn’t want to embarrass themselves.

Gavin: It was just a darkly comic moment to, like, a life-or-death scenario for Grace Elliott, where she has to literally read this letter aloud for them, and she may have done some translation as well. But yeah, so she opens the letter and takes it out, and her hands are just trembling, right? And it turns out that the letter is just full of praise for France; there’s a French language manifesto extolling the virtues of the Revolution. And basically, everyone at the Tribunal is just delighted by what they hear in the letter. So, Grace is able to go free despite this brush with death, but that only lasts for so long. She does wind up in prison again later on, and that’s a whole saga unto itself. 

Ann: It is a saga unto itself that I think perhaps, one day, you will talk about on your podcast. But in terms of Grace, like she’s in jail, but then eventually, she just like… Everything falls apart when— Well, this whole thing kind of falls apart when Robespierre ends up dying, and just a lot of people just got freed at that point. And she was freed. She was in jail for like a year or so. She claimed that one of the people she met in jail was Joséphine de Beauharnais, who later became the wife of Napoleon and the Empress of France. 

Gavin: Also supposedly shared a cell with Madame Tussaud when she was in prison. [whispers] Probably didn’t. 

Ann: Yeah. A lot of people, it’s just kind of like, you want to throw the names in there to make your memoir be more like, “Ooh, I know them.” 

Gavin: Yeah, right. 

Ann: So, she’s released. And so, in terms of what happened to her, like, this is, you know, in The Hunger Games, the book and the movie, the first one— Oh, no, no, no, the last one. [laughs] The one where they overthrew the government and stuff and Katniss and Peeta, and then there’s an epilogue, and they’re like, “We live on a farm now, and we have children, and everything is quiet, and it’s just domestic, and we don’t do anything like that anymore.” And I read that the first time when I was younger, I was like, “That’s not a really great ending.” And now I’m just like, “Yes, this is what we all want. [Gavin laughs] Living through the shit we’re living through.” What Grace is living through, it’s like, yes, all we want is just to live in a little house and live a soft life. And that is effectively what Grace does. 

Gavin: Yeah. She’s living her best Hunger Games epilogue life. 

Ann: Exactly. Like, remember, her daughter, Georgina, was being raised by Cholmondeley back in England. And so, Grace wants to go back there and see her. Eventually, she is given, it’s called an annuity from Prinny, which is just kind of like “Thanks for services rendered. Here’s your like pension for having been my mistress.” And she’s like, “Peace! Great.” And so, it seems like part of the guidelines of that, sort of like NDA adjacent, it’s like, “But please don’t live in England anymore.” So, she goes back to France, which at this point, Napoleon has taken over, and the Revolution is certainly not happening anymore. She’s got friends there, she’s having… Like her whole life, like she just depends on rich men to pay for her, and as she’s getting older, you know, like, that becomes more of a requirement because she’s maybe not winning over as many new admirers. But Cholmondeley is still there for her. And then, Prinny, as is his want, stops paying this pension to her because he… 

Gavin: Sucks.

Ann: [laughs] Does that to most of his mistresses, and actually, side note. So, we talked about this mistress from earlier, Perdita, AKA Mary Robinson. So, he had sent all these letters, being like, “Be my mistress, I’ll pay you all this money.” So, Mary Robinson left her husband to be with Prinny. And then, when he dumped her, Mary Robinson was like, “I’m going to publish these letters if you don’t give me a payment.” 

Gavin: Love that. I love a good letter blackmail. Like, it’s so good. 

Ann: It’s just like, she saved all those letters because she knew this was going to happen eventually. 

Gavin: Yeah. 

Ann: So, she comes back to England, Grace. So, at this point, she is reliant on her aunt, who is named Janet, and she also had a friend, who we’re going to talk about in a later episode, Lady Worsley, Seymour Fleming Worsley, [Gavin gasps] The Scandalous Lady W. 

Gavin: By who? Who wrote that one? 

Ann: Oh, Hallie Rubenhold. 

Gavin: Hallie Rubenhold. Yes, we’re mutual fans of Hallie Rubenhold. 

Ann: Friend of the podcast, Hallie Rubenhold. 

Gavin: That’s right. 

Ann: So, she and Grace, they had been friends for a while. Anyway, so she’s back in England, and she gets to reconnect with her family, like, the Dalrymples. Dally the Tall gets to see the other Dalrymples. 

Gavin: Dally the Tall! [laughs]

Ann: But basically, she’s with her aunt. I think her aunt, Janet, she… She went to be with her elderly aunt, and she’s helping out, so the aunt is like, “Guess what? You’re my heir now.” So, it’s like, “Great,” she knows she’s going to have some money, she’ll be taken care of. So, she’s writing her memoir at this point about, like, “My time in the French Revolution,” because I think she’s just kind of like, “I need money. I lived through all this shit, I’ll write a book about it.” But at this point, the three exiled sons of Ryan Phillippe show up in town, and they’re like, “Can we hide out with you? We heard you do that.” So, she’s kind of like, you know, the French Revolution era is never quite gone from her life. 

Gavin: That’s right. She’s like, “I never got rid of my panic rooms. I have always had at least a half dozen panic rooms, like, aristocratic panic rooms in every house.” 

Ann: “I have these fake mattresses with a little person-fake hole in them. You’ll be fine.” 

So, she’s back there. Eventually, I haven’t had this segment in my podcast for a while in this Regency era, but it’s called Caroline’s Corner, where we talk about the connections between the person talking about and Caroline of Brunswick. 

Gavin: Okay. 

Ann: And what happened is that Grace’s daughter, Georgina, because she is the illegitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales, she has various opportunities presented to her in society. And one of them is she becomes a lady-in-waiting to Caroline of Brunswick. 

Gavin: Hell yeah, there you go! 

Ann: And Caroline of Brunswick, who would have known— Like, Caroline of Brunswick, as you will know, when you read my book, Rebel of the Regency, she was a very maternal figure; she loved caring for children and being sort of a mentor to people. And so, I think the fact that, like, this was her estranged husband’s illegitimate daughter, I think she probably would have known Georgina’s parentage, and I think she would have been very nice to her and taken her, because she was similar age to Caroline Brunswick’s own daughter. Like, I think that was probably like a nice situation. 

Eventually, Georgina finds herself a good marriage, she gets married. And some other of Grace’s friends, like from back in the day, name her their heir, like the Duke of Queensberry, who was like a major figure, I think he invented boxing rules, it’s like the Duke of Queensberry’s rules. Anyway, when he died, he left a bunch of money to her as well as to some other people, including the Chevalière d’Éon.

Gavin: [gasps] Ooh! Also in my season! We haven’t mentioned this, but I’m doing a season on spies on The Art of Crime, and the Chevalière d’Éon is in it. 

Ann: So, I love that the Queensberry just like, gave money to kind of all the cool people. Like, love that for them. The end of Grace’s story, like, as told by… She wrote her memoir, and that’s what you’ve read, and that’s what people should read. But if you want to see what happened to her later, like I read this other book, An Infamous Mistress, and it’s just a lot of like, various people die, various people leave her money, but then someone contests the will, so then she doesn’t get the money. It’s just like, that’s what the later part of her life seems to entail a lot of, court cases. But I like this description of somebody who saw Grace as an older woman described her as “A tall, handsome, much rouged old lady.” 

Gavin: Ooh! Much rouged. [laughs] 

Ann: “Dressed in white muslin draperies.” 

Gavin: Love it. Still looking good. 

Ann: Yeah, I love it, I love it. It’s sort of like… Augh! What’s the thing with Little Edie? Grey Gardens. It’s giving me Grey Gardens. 

Anyway, so her daughter, Georgina, she was married, she got a good marriage. You know, she debuted and, like, we’re in the Regency era for the record, 1811. This is the actual Regency era, and Grace is still there, but she’s just like, again, living her soft Hunger Games life, which must be possible. Like, she lived through enough shit, all I want is for her to just sit around having a nice time, writing her memoirs. Her daughter had a daughter who she named also Georgina. But this is how Grace, there are descendants today of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, through her daughter, which I guess would also be descendants of Prinny or Cholmondeley. 

Gavin: Possibly, yeah. I don’t know. 

Ann: Or one of those other guys, I don’t know. 

Anyway, her daughter pre-deceased her. It was a weird… Not a lot of details about this, but her daughter had a child, was pregnant again, and then, while heavily pregnant, had a fall that injured her spine and then she died. 

Gavin: Ahh! Did Grace Elliot ever have any other children? 

Ann: No! Just the one daughter. 

Gavin: I wonder how she managed that. 

Ann: Well, if you read my book, Rebel of the Regency, [both laugh] I do have part of the book where I talk about contraception. 

Gavin: Birth control, yeah. 

Ann: I do, I do. But it’s true, like, Grace Elliott was having all these affairs with all these people, and I don’t know, there’s different herbs and things you can do. A lot of these men, these lords, they knew about, there were kind of these reusable condoms you could have that you, like, tie at the top with a ribbon, which didn’t help against disease, but did help prevent pregnancy. And there was various abortion options. 

So, her daughter died, the child she was carrying died. And so, Grace outlived her child. She’s still in it. Just a lot of money-based things are happening. She had invested in the stock market; she was able to cash out some bonds she had invested. Like, she was doing what a woman could for herself in this situation. She had always been dependent on men to help her out, and then she kind of got some inheritances, but she’s trying. She handled her money better than a lot of other people we’ve talked about on this podcast, like Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, who is just wildly in debt, constantly. [Gavin chuckles] But she did get to spend time with her granddaughter, Georgina, part two, who I feel like the Cholmondeleys might have also raised or something like that. 

Anyway, so Grace Dalrymple Elliott dies May 16, 1823. She was back in France at this point. So, she kind of went to spend her, like, you know, retiree era back at one of these houses she had access to in France. Her death was registered the following day as “Georgette Dalrymple, born in Scotland, widow of Elliott,” is how she was remembered. 

Gavin: There you go. 

Ann: Which is like, out of all of the men in her life, Elliott? The husband? It’s like, I forgot he was even there. She had so little to do with him after their marriage. 

Gavin: I mean, why would you remember him when she’s, like, going to bed with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Orléans? 

Ann: Yeah, she honestly moved up in the world after he broke up with her. But just the fact that she’s like, “Oh, the widow Elliott.” Like, euhhh. 

Gavin: I mean, she made it all the way to the top, right? I mean, she made it all the way to the top. Can’t go higher, really. 

Ann: So, as you know, Gavin, on my podcast, we score people in four different categories. 

Gavin: Of course.

Ann: And what you may not know is that this season, the Regency Era, I’m giving a score to all these biographical episodes in these four categories, and then at the end of the season, like on Bridgerton, I’m going to have like an audience vote for who is the Diamond of the Season. So, everybody gets their scores from the episodes, but then there’s going to be sort of like a public vote, and then we’ll combine them, sort of like on Dancing with the Stars, to see who will be the diamond of the season. 

So, Grace Elliott, she lived through the Regency era and the French Revolution, she was the mistress to the regent. And so, on a scale of 0 to 10, the first category, Scandaliciousness. It’s not just like, what do we think now, but like, what did people think then? And I feel like the fact that she was divorced by her husband, and then she became a mistress. 

Gavin: To the prince. May have had an illegitimate child by Prince of Wales, like, pretty scandalous. At once, like, totally expected and yet also scandalous. [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah, like I feel like people, you know, she could go to the parties, but no one would be like, “Oh, I want my son to marry her.” It’s like she was a scandalous person, and people loved it. 

Gavin: It was a kind of scandal that was seductive, right? I mean, to a certain set. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of like, accepted to be that level of scandaliciousness. But then, in the French Revolution, her espionage era is literal scandal. 

Gavin: Right. Right. Yeah. So… I think she has a score pretty high, right? Who’s a 10 on Scandaliciousness? Like, what is a 10? 

Ann: A 10 on Scandaliciousness, I feel like if she had murdered somebody in addition to everything else. A 10 on Scandaliciousness would be somebody who, like… I’m trying to think of someone who you might know, you know, like Lola Montez or somebody who just like… I’m scrolling, I’m scrolling. We gave Madame Tussaud a 3 on Scandaliciousness. 

Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not a high score. I would say for like Grace Elliott, it feels like maybe a 7 or 8, right? 

Ann: I would say most of the sort of courtesan-type people have a pretty high score in this. I’m going to say an 8 for Scandaliciousness. Because, between the like, public affair of the divorce, you know, that ruined her name was literally a scandal, having an illegitimate child with the Prince of Wales, and then just the spy stuff, I think. I don’t know how she’s going to score in other areas, but I think Scandaliciousness is pretty high. 

Gavin: She’s got it. She’s got it. She’s an infamous mistress. 

Ann: Exactly. Exactly! Like, if that’s the title of your biography. 

Gavin: I mean, you gotta come by that honestly, and Grace Elliott certainly does. 

Ann: A fallen woman. 

Gavin: Yes, a fallen woman.

Ann: For the next category, again, a 0 to 10 score, and it’s Schemieness. 

Gavin: Schemieness. Okay, I mean, it’s like 9 or 10, right? [laughs] 

Ann: I think it’s like, both the literal schemes of her like espionage era, like the mattress scenario, to the secret panic room bunker. 

Gavin: “Jump into my secret panic room.” [laughs] 

Ann: Like, she came up with lots of plans, she was sending these letters and stuff, but then also just the schemieness of being a woman in her situation, finding ways to thrive. 

Gavin: Yeah, totally. 

Ann: Like, figuring out how to live the life of luxury she wanted when she couldn’t work herself, when her name was ruined. I mean, even just the pivoting, like, when she’s there with the guy, and she’s like, “Okay, we need to flee Paris. We’re going to climb the wall. Damn it, we can’t climb the wall. We’re going to go to my house. Wait, we’re going to…” I think, when called upon, her Schemieness… I’m going to… I feel like a 10. 

Gavin: I feel like a 10, too. I’m just always wary of, you know, giving the 10, but I feel like she totally has earned it. I feel like she’s earned the perfect score. 

Ann: The number of schemes and, kind of, the Bugs Bunny-ness of some of these schemes, [Gavin laughs] that’s quite charming to me. You can picture her, like, sawing a hole in the floor. It’s just so preposterous, but yeah. 

Okay, the next category is her Significance (to history). And I think as a memoirist, that’s where I feel like her significance is. 

Gavin: I was going to say. I mean, her journal is considered one of the most important English-language eyewitness accounts of the Reign of Terror. Like, if you haven’t studied the French Revolution, you probably wouldn’t have heard of her. But for those who for people who do look at this period of history, like, yeah, her writing is considered really important. 

Ann: It’s mostly her memoirs. Her actions, you know, she personally saved, clearly, several people; she helped convey some letters back and forth. We don’t know the ripple effects of all of that stuff. But I think just her recording of what happened, no one else in her situation wrote so candidly. I’m going to counterbalance that, though, with sort of like the fact that you don’t really hear about her unless you’re studying the French Revolution. There’s not statues of her. There is, I will say, one movie. It’s called The Lady and the Duke, and it’s about her and Ryan Phillippe. What I know about this movie is it’s French, and if you make a movie about the French Revolution and you’re based in France and you don’t side with the revolutionaries, then people will riot. 

Gavin: Revolt, yeah. [laughs] 

Ann: How dare you suggest that the revolutionaries were anything other than correct? And I think this movie really does try to portray how she talks about just, like, the brutality of it all, and I think it debuted at Cannes or something, and there was, I think, a riot, which is like, “You’re kind of proving the point here, people of France.” 

Gavin: Right. I think I read about this, too. They saw it as like royalist propaganda, basically. 

Ann: Yeah. 

Gavin: So, I don’t know for Significance. For me, I’m feeling like a 6 or 7? Or maybe should it go lower? I don’t know. I mean, again, like her journal is really important as a document. 

Ann: I think her journal is really important as a document. I think the fact that she pops up, like just in my research of Caroline of Brunswick, who I wrote about in my book, Rebel of the Regency, like, I don’t know the— Actually, I’ll check right now. I don’t think she’s in the index of my book. I’m just checking, one sec… Because I was looking at people of the time who were writing about stuff, and I just don’t remember. Oh! She is in. 

Gavin: [gasps] Yes. 

Ann: She’s in the index, but just in the context of the affair with Prinny and her illegitimate daughter. 

Gavin: There you go. 

Ann: But I feel like any book about this era, she’s going to be in the index. I feel she was just like always there. 

Gavin: Anyone who finds out about her will be fascinated about her and can work in a line in a book. Like, she gets a few sentences. 

Ann: She was just a significant person. And the fact that she was, like, yeah, she was upper class, et cetera, but a lot of people were. She was, like, the abandoned daughter of an Edinburgh lawyer; she was like the Forrest Gump of this era. [both chuckle] She was in every significant thing. I am going to say 6.5. 

Gavin: Okay. I like it, I like it. 

Ann: And then the final category, just to explain to listeners who may not know, and to you as a reminder, it’s what we call the Sexism Bonus. This category is mostly there for people who maybe don’t score highly in the other categories, but that’s because of the patriarchy; they weren’t able to really thrive and do what they wanted. So, this is a way to give them points. 

In terms of sexism, like, how much did this get in Grace’s way? I feel like it certainly did, but she pivoted and, like, figured out how to make it work for her. She became this fallen woman, but then she became a courtesan, and like, she could not have found more powerful people to be the mistress of. She had a child, but that clearly didn’t stop her in her ascent. There’s other people who, like, they marry, and their husband is terrible, and then they just have baby after baby, and they’re not able to pursue their dream of being a scientist or whatever. But nothing really stopped her. 

Gavin: Nothing stopped her. I mean, she was bad-mouthed in the press over and over again, you know? I mean, her reputation did take a serious hit because of the criminal conversation situation. So, I feel like, yes, she was able to rise pretty much as high as she possibly could have, but I also do feel like she’s not like a 0 or a 1. I feel like she did contend with some, you know, with some sexism. 

Ann: In her case, it was really sort of like slut shaming type behaviour, where it’s just like, “How dare this woman have affairs,” or “How do these women be a mistress?” 

Gavin: They were literally cheating on each other at the same time. 

Ann: Yeah. So, the double standard of it. Like, I think for sure, the way that she was dumped… It’s a tricky category for her. I’m just going to say, what about 5? 

Gavin: 5 sounds fair to me. 

Ann: Halfway there, yeah.

Gavin: Like, I feel like any higher than 5 would not be right, yeah. 

Ann: So, this gives her a final score of 29.5. And let me see, I’m just looking up… If you want to see the whole scale, you or listeners, anyone, if you go to VulgarHistory.com, there’s the full scale of all the people we’ve ever judged is there. 29 is certainly in the highest echelon of people. Mary Shelley has a 29. Let me see who else. There’s Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s sister, has 29.5. So, I think this is a good neighbourhood. I would put her in… I think all of them would get along. She was one generation older than Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont. But I think it’s kind of like… 

Gavin: Was it—? Yeah, Mary Shelley, didn’t she go over to cover the French Revolution? 

Ann: Mary Shelley… 

Gavin: Oh no, that was Mary Wollstonecraft. 

Ann: Yes. Mary Shelley’s mom went over to Paris during the French Revolution to chase after a man that she wanted to be with. And it was a similar thing to Grace— No. Well, similar to Grace Dalrymple Elliott in the sense of, like, going to Paris in 1792 is, like, a bananas decision. 

Gavin: It’s like, “Let’s go to North Korea. Let’s just go see what’s up over there.” 

Ann: Yeah! Like, Mary Wollstonecraft knew what she was getting into, and she was on the side of the revolutionaries. She’s like, “I want to be there to watch this beautiful thing unfurl.” And she got there, and she’s just like, “Ahh! Rivers of blood.” Like, yeah. That’s what it looks like. Mary Wollstonecraft is a 32, for the record. 

Gavin: Okay, yeah. That’s cool. 

Ann: I think she had a much more of a sexism angle to her story because she – as a lower-class person to Grace – the struggles she had about having illegitimate children and stuff just really fucked up her life in a way that Grace didn’t. I think when you have an illegitimate child, and the father is the Prince of Wales, it doesn’t fuck up your life as much as having an illegitimate child and the father is just some guy. 

Gavin: Some dude. 

Ann: Basically. Oh, no, but she’s 29.5. Just making sure I put her appropriately. This list is getting very unwieldy. [Gavin laughs] 29.5 So, exactly the same as Claire Clairmont. Interestingly, Lady Jane Grey has a 29.5. Some other French Revolutionary people, Olympe de Gouges, 29.5. 

Gavin: [gasps] Olympe de Gouges! Love her, yes. 

Ann: And then another spy, I don’t know if you know about her, Etta Palm d’Aelders. 

Gavin: Is she the one… Where is she from? 

Ann: The Netherlands. 

Gavin: Yes. I actually listened to your episode about her, yes. 

Ann: Yeah, because that’s some spy. 

Gavin: Spy. I was like, “Ooh, spy!” 

Ann: Yeah. So, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, she’s hanging out with, like, the other French Revolutionary lady spy type people. I think that’s a great place for her to be. 

Gavin: Seems like they would get along, I’m sure. 

Ann: I think, yeah. “Come over and hide in my panic room.” 

Gavin: It would be like a game recognizes game situation. 

Ann: Yeah! And I think as much as, like, the press played up the Grace Elliott versus Perdita rivalry, I feel like she was a girl’s girl as well. Like, I don’t think she was ever jealous of other women who were mistresses of people is just like, “Well, the guy I was with chose a new mistress. Okay, that’s fine.”: 

Gavin: Moving right along. 

Ann: I feel like she was chill about stuff, which I appreciate. 

Gavin, thank you so much for joining me. Tell everybody about your exciting podcast project that is available now. 

Gavin: Yes, it is available now. I’ve been working on it for a long time, but February is Black History Month, and this project is suitable for such a month. So, it’s called Raven, and it is about an unforgettable man with an unforgettable name, Raven Chanteicleer. He was not a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, in case you were wondering. 

He’s this amazing figure who moved to New York in the ‘50s. He was born in 1928, completely reinvented himself, became a multi-talented artist, just did everything you can imagine. And for 30 years, he had a very unusual dream of opening his very own wax museum devoted to Black history, and after three decades, he finally fulfilled that dream and opened it in Harlem, obviously the kind of capital of Black America, you might say. So, the African American Wax Museum, as it’s called, gets all kinds of attention; it’s written about in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, et cetera, et cetera. 

In 2002, Raven dies, and his family members disregard his dying wishes to keep the museum open and gut it, sell the property, and rumour circulates that they’re going to destroy all of his wax figures that he made himself. So, various community members in Harlem get very angry and try to intervene to no avail. It’s believed that all of Raven’s wax figures are trashed by the family by 2010, except! Plot twist! That is not true, and I’ve been reconstructing what happened to this amazingly unusual, unforgettable museum in New York. 

So, Raven is part character study, it looks at this guy, Raven Chanticleer, who is a volume 11 personality, and it’s also part detective story, trying to work out what happened to some of Raven’s wax figures that miraculously survived. So, it’s kind of like, I would say, S-Town, Serial, This American Life, sort of in that vein. Yeah, so if you’re interested, you should listen to it. Again, it’s called Raven. 

Ann: And this is available… I mean, is it like a weekly drop, or are all the episodes coming out all at once? What’s your strategy? 

Gavin: It’s going to drop weekly and there are five episodes at this point. 

Ann: I can’t wait. This is such a fascinating thing. I mean, you know, you and I talked before about Madame Tussaud and wax figures. I think just anyone who starts a wax figure museum is just like an interesting person I want to know more about. 

Gavin: Yes, yes. It’s a bizarre, strange, it’s like… an unusual dream. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah, if that’s your dream, then I’m like, you’re an interesting person, and you deserve a five-part podcast. 

Gavin: Yes, exactly. 

Ann: That’s fantastic. So, Raven, everybody listen for that. 

I don’t know if I mentioned, I have a book, it’s called Rebel of the Regency. Grace Dalrymple Elliott is mentioned on pages 23 and 24. [both laugh] So, you can see her there in my book as well. Anyway, thank you so much, Gavin. And so, Raven is like, that’s just happening right now. But then your ongoing podcast series is The Art of Crime, which people can also find. 

Gavin: Yep. The Art of Crime, doing spies this season. A lot of really cool female spies on the show, so I think fans of Vulgar History might be able to get into it. In fact, there might be a very special guest in one episode who also hosts Vulgar History, maybe. 

Ann: That sounds like a guest that I would love to hear what that person has to say about various lady spies. I think that’s worth listening to. [both laugh] 

Thank you so much, Gavin. It’s always such a treat to talk to you. And I mean, like, Grace, what a character! It’s been a great conversation and I love letting people know about her because more people should. 

Gavin: Ditto. Thank you for having me on. 

—————

So, I have a few things to remind you about. Firstly, go listen to Gavin’s podcast mini-series Raven, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you just love hearing his voice, listen to episodes of his podcast, The Art of Crime, which is also available wherever you get podcasts. 

I wrote a book. It’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. It is now available! It’s out there, it’s out in the world. I’ve been so excited to see people sending me pictures of you with the book, or the book in bookstore windows. Keep sending me those pictures, it makes me so happy. Groups of people having a book club meeting about it. I’m just so delighted that you’re all embracing this book and really supporting this book and Caroline of Brunswick, who so many people will now know her story. And that’s what it’s all about for me, just because everybody should, and everybody should hate her husband, Prinny, which, more and more people will. 

So, because my book has just been published, I’m doing a little mini book tour. My next stop is I’m going to be on Friday, February 27th, I’ll be in Vancouver, British Columbia, at Iron Dog Books, and I can’t wait to see a bunch of you there. I’ll do the event, and then we’re going to be having an after-party afterwards as well. So, more information about that coming soon. So, to RSVP for this event, which is free, but Iron Dog Books just loves the RSVP because they know how many chairs to set up. So, you can get the information about that Vancouver appearance February 27 at RebelOfTheRegency.com, and then click on “Events” and all the information is there. 

And I’m so excited to say that my next stop after that is, I’m coming to London, England, which is going to be really fun to go back there and see a bunch of sites I plan to see. But one of the sites I want to see is all of you. So, I’ll be having an event, details TBD. I don’t know exactly where we’re going to be. That depends on how many of you are coming. It’s going to be on Sunday, March 15th. So, if you’re going to be in or around London, England, please, please, please RSVP to me so I can see how many people are coming and make a plan of what is a good place for us all to meet. And the RSVP for the London event will be VulgarHistory.com/RSVP. I’m so excited to be going there, to a place where Caroline of Brunswick once lived. I’m excited to hang out with all the people who will be able to come to that event as well. 

So, next week, there will be another episode of Vulgar History. I’m never not releasing episodes, as you all know. I’m just double-checking what the next episode is because I don’t want to lie to you. So, yeah, we’re staying within the Regency era. Next week is another iconic, iconic woman from the Regency era you may or may not have heard of before, but you’re never going to forget her story once you hear it. And until next time, all my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Regency Era artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

References:

Listen to Gavin’s new podcast, Raven, wherever you get podcasts!

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RSVP to Ann’s upcoming live events in Vancouver, BC and London, England!

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Buy a copy of Ann’s book Rebel of the Regency

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