Ladies of the Grand TourLadies of the Grand Tour
British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-century Europe
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Book, 2001
Current format, Book, 2001, First edition, Available .Book, 2001
Current format, Book, 2001, First edition, Available . Offered in 0 more formatsChapter OneUnbeknown to Mary Berry, two days before she wrote to her confidant Bertie Greatheed in Gö ttingen, Admiral Nelson's fleet had destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte's army in the battle of the Nile, quashing the French Egyptian expedition and effectively ending French plans to aggravate Britain further by thrusting at India. As far as Mary Berry was concerned, writing from her home in Mayfair on 2 August 1798, Napoleon was still running riot in Europe; the prospect of a French invasion of Britain was on everyone's lips, and the Continent was closed off to travellers. Twelve months earlier, Mary thought she would by now be on the Continent -- her much looked forward to third trip there -- conversing personally with Bertie Greatheed. But, alas, she was stranded, left to lament through correspondence her inability to escape. 'Most thoroughly, ' she wrote, 'do I begin to feel the want of that "shake out of English ways, English whims, and English prejudices, which nothing but leaving England gives one.'This was hardly an appropriate time to condemn 'English ways' and a desire for the continental lifestyle. Mary Berry could have been accused of being a French sympathiser -- a Jacobin (a radical activist in support of the principles of the French Revolution), or, with equivalent indignity, a Catholic. Mary was politically aware, but her restlessness with forced domestic residence overrode her sense of discretion. And anyway, she could have claimed with some j
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- New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, c2001.
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