Unusually, my reading group read two biographies about non-Austrian women this year, Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s book on Freya Stark (my review) in January and now, this month, Caroline Moorehead’s book Dancing to the precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution on the French aristocrat Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet. Interestingly, Moorehead has also written a biography of Freya Stark. Moreover, while Caroline Moorehead is an English writer, it turns out that her father was the Australian war correspondent and historian Alan Moorehead. How tangled is all this!
But now the book itself. Dancing to the precipice chronicles the life of French-born aristocrat Lucie, from her birth in 1770 to her death in 1853, a period which, you’ll realise, covers some of Europe’s and, in particular, France’s most tumultuous times. Lucie de la Tour du Pin, as Moorehead calls her, saw most of it up close and personal, but somehow managed to survive. The evocative title conveys a sense of how tenuous that survival could be. It comes from Lucie’s own words written just before the storming of the Bastille. She wrote:
Amid all these pleasures we were laughing and dancing our way to the precipice.
Lucie, Moorehead tells us, went on to say that while this blindness was pardonable among the young, it was “inexplicable in men of the world, in Ministers and above all, in the King”. She wasn’t wrong – and the rest of the book tells us how often throughout their lives they nearly went over the precipice.
Dancing to the precipice is a thorough work, thorough in its description of Lucie’s life, and thorough in the research carried out by Moorehead. The biography is footnoted (though not intrusively) and contains an extensive list of sources at the end. It is also well-indexed. All of these are important – to me, anyhow! The reason the book is able to be so thorough – without Moorehead ever needing to resort to gap-filling – is because her life is so well documented, by herself primarily.
Lucie, in fact, has been described as the Pepys of her generation because of the memoir she started writing when she was 49. Titled Journal d’une femme de 50 ans, it was published posthumously and covers her life through the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, to the time of Napoleon, until March 1815 when he returned from exile on Elba. In her Afterword, Moorehead explains that in addition to this memoir, which apparently has never been out of print, she had access to an extensive collection of letters written by Lucie to a god-daughter and many others, and the papers and correspondence of her husband. A wealth of resources that I suspect many biographers would die for.
Except, it’s perhaps this wealth that has caused my one little criticism of what is, really, an excellent biography. My criticism, as you’ve probably guessed, concerns the amount of detail in the book. There were times when I wondered whether I really needed to know as much as she gave, for example, about the wedding of a half-sister or the love-life of her friend. In terms of social history, perhaps yes, but there were times I wanted a tighter focus, and to not be inundated with quite so much information about so many people. That said, Dancing to the precipice is a fascinating story about an astonishing period of history and an engaging and resilient woman.
There were many aspects of the book I enjoyed, starting with refreshing my old high school and university history studies in the French Revolution. As Moorehead revealed each new phase in that tortuous process by which France moved from the ancien regime to the final republic, I remembered. I loved the description of Lucie and her husband’s time as émigrés in Albany, NY, in America, and the resourceful way they fit into the life there, despite their aristocratic training. I also loved the descriptions of fashion and food in Paris, and of the salons, and the role played by women in encouraging intellectual discussion and debate. Every time the émigrés felt it was safe to return to Paris, the salons started up again (until, eventually, they didnt!) Moorehead draws a stark comparison between the engagement of women in public debate in France versus that of their English counterparts:
Englishwomen remained, to the surprise and annoyance of their French guests, firmly in their segregated and inferior places, expected to withdraw after dinner to allow the men to talk literature and politics. In England, a visitor smugly remarked, women were ‘the momentary toy of passion’, while in France they were companions ‘in the hours of reason and conversation’. As Jane Austen put it, ‘Imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms’, something that Lucie, brought up to talk intelligently, would find extraordinary. (Loc 4713)
What most retained my interest in the book, though, was Lucie herself. Always the aristocrat but also believing in the need for change, her resilience and resourcefulness in the face of blow after blow was inspiring. Besides the escapes from France and the returns, only to have to escape again, there was the loss of her children. Only one from her ten pregnancies outlived her, something Moorehead argues was extreme, even accounting for the times. Lucie was also unusual for a more positive feat, that of having a successful, loving marriage for 50 years. She and Frédéric were, it appears, true partners.
So, there was more to enjoy about the biography than to criticise, and I’m very glad I read it. I’ll conclude with a quote from the book describing Frédéric’s last days, and his statements about the importance of studying history:
He now spent much of his time in his room, reading and writing to [grandson] Hadelin, long letters mulling over his own life and urging the young man to study, to think on serious matters, to develop a taste for reflection. He should turn, he wrote, towards ‘the vast questions of humanity: there you will find true riches’. […] It was in history, he told Hadelin, that he should seek to find ways of understanding the world, and to learn how to make his mark on it; for it was to history that ‘one must look to discover motives and judgements, the source of ideas, the proof of theories too often imaginary and vague’. Reflection, he added, was ‘the intellectual crutch on which the traveller must lean on his road to knowledge’.
It’s astonishing that this couple who, Moorehead writes, stood out “for the reckless ease with which they challenged political decisions they considered to be lacking in morality or common sense”, regardless of who was in power, survived into their old ages. It says, I suspect, something about both the respect with which they were held and their ability to judge when it was time to skedaddle. A most interesting read.
Caroline Moorehead
Dancing to the precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution
London: Vintage, 2010
ISBN: 9781409088929 (ePub)
Whispering Gums 
I say – Damn you Moriarty (oops, WG)! Just as I was getting my TBR pile under a bit of control – there you go again- writing one of your absolutely teaser I-must-have reviews! Lucy -in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds aka Lucy-of-the Pine-Tower now purchased! What sprang immediately to mind with your description of this extraordinary woman was Hilary MANTEL’s A Place of Greater Safety – and Peter CAREY’s Parrot and Olivier in America. Again – thank-you!
Lucy of the Pine Tower! Love it Jim. You bought the ebook version I presume. Any how, I’m sure you’ll find it interesting Jim. I’ll wear my Moriarty label with pride.
This sounds, unfortunately, rather timely.
I think you’re right, unfortunately, Jeanne!
I just finished Chateaubriand’s memoirs (well the first 1/4) and it covered the French revolution too. It made for interesting reading.
How fascinating Guy. Does he talk about Claire de Duras? If there’s an index and you can fnd it easily I’d love to know. (l’ll tell you why if you respond) Talleyrand and to a lesser degree Chateaubriand feature several times in Moorehead’s book
Not that I recall but I’ll check the index
It would be interesting to know … Lucie de la Tour du Pin was frustrated with Claire de Duras’ chasing Chateaubriand who was, Lucie felt never going to settle with Claire. Still, Claire kept working to improve Chateaubriand’s chances of preferment etc.
Well reviewed! This sounds like my sort of book. I’m going to buy this one.
Oh good Theresa. I love that this review has interested people. Show’s how much we all love history doesn’t it?
I’m currently reading a new release set in that period so coincidental timing. Into the World by Stephanie Parkyn.
Ah, love those synchronicities!
She is someone I’ve enjoyed in the past, with her book A Train in Winter, about women working in the Resistance in France during WWII. This sounds, too, like a period which would naturally appeal on the page. I particularly enjoyed the bit about differences between English and French women’s roles; overseas, we tend to assume similarities in Europe but obviously things aren’t that simple.
Ah that sounds interesting too, Buried.Yes, I was fascinated by the difference between French and English women. It wasn’t quite as positive for the French as it sounds because despite the salons etc, women were not mentioned, she says in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, so some French women came up with their own declarations and statements.
BTW Is there are reason your blog isn’t linked to your name when you comment? It means people can’t check you out if they like what you say and I reckon some would like to! (I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while.)
And while I’m at it, I wrote a comment on your blog via my WordPress App on Monday, having already written comments on other blogs. All the other comments were “sent”, but yours “failed” and I was told to “try again”. I’ve learnt that trying again never works, so I didn’t. But then I went to your blog (the normal way via a browser) on my laptop, and darned if I could get a post to display. I’d click on “Boundary” say under recent Bookchat, and nothing would happen. Today, though, it’s working perfectly!! I have no idea why your theme, and I think it must be the theme (?), behaves so erratically on my platforms!! I’m telling you mainly so you know that I do try to visit you and comment!!
How timely is this review? Apart from the temptations of another book that sounds fascinating (thank you, although my TBR pile is groaning) you’ve reminded me how readers really don’t love all the details that biographers thrive on. And when I’m the reader, I don’t love it either. [Heads back to manuscript to keep cutting…]
Haha, Michelle … glad I’ve reminded you of the reader’s point of view! Only one other in my reading group felt this – though only half of us finished so maybe when those finish it, they might think the same.
I second Michelle’s comment. I’m currently cutting many hard won details from my biography, and now no-one will ever know, for example, the full story of Katharine Prichard’s headmaster’s affair with a student after she left. Hard to get the balance right.
I understand how hard that is, Nathan. I guess you’ll just have to write that headmaster’s biography too (or, the student’s). I reckon the challenge is to decide what is the the essential story you want to tell and what do you need to tell THAT story. (Easier said than done I’m sure.)
Yes!
I’ve been in and out of the various French revolutions for the last couple of years – starting with Les Miserables – I didn’t do much history at school so I’ve been playing catch up ever since. Tiny point: would like to mention Rose Scott’s salons in Sydney at the end of the C19th, leading into suffragism
Thanks for mentioning Rosa Scott’s Sydney salons Bill.
Actually, I have said before that some bloggers could almost be seen to host online salons. I think there could be a PhD in that – and I want to be acknowledged if someone does it!
What a gorgeous title it is, WG, and how fitting it is for so many of us who really danced our ways to the precipice!
Thanks Deepika – it’s a really wonderful title isn’t it. I bet she was thrilled when she came across that and realised it would be a great title.
Sounds a fascinating read. Check out Lucy Moore’s Liberty: 5 Women Of the French Revolution for a revealing study of a whole range of women’s attitudes to and experiences of this period.
Thanks Ian. I don’t know of that – but it sounds very interesting. I’ve just checked it in GoodReads and I see three names all of which are mentioned by Lucie, including one whom Lucie knew well and who, in fact, helped her escape France on one occasion, Thérésia Tallien.
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