Grace Elliott
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Grace Dalrymple Elliott (1758–1823) was a Scottish socialite and courtesan who was resident in Paris at the time of the French Revolution and an eyewitness to events. She was once mistress of the Duke of Orléans, who was cousin to King Louis XVI.
She was arrested and held awaiting death by guillotine but was released after the death of Robespierre. She wrote an autobiographical account of her experiences entitled Ma Vie Sous La Révolution published posthumously in 1859.
Unfortunately many of the above stories come from Grace's own highly coloured, exaggerated and partly fictional Journal of my life during the French Revolution (London: Richard Bentley, 1859) and the historian Horace Bleackley has shown that large sections of the journal have no basis in truth. She was never, for instance, in prison with Madame du Barry, and the records only show that she was imprisoned from December 1793 to 4 October 1794. Bleackley considered the beauty of 'Dally the Tall' as by no means superlative.
