1. Catherine Grand had a scandalous liaison with Bengal councillor Philip Francis in Calcutta.
28 Facts About Catherine Grand
1. 2.
In 1782, she relocated to Paris, where she was known as Madame Catherine Grand and became a popular courtesan having relationships with several powerful men.
3.
Catherine Grand became the mistress and later the wife of French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, the first Prime Minister of France.
4.
Catherine Grand was known for her exceptional beauty, which was captured in her 1783 portrait by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.
5.
Catherine Grand was Princess of Benevent by marriage from 1806 until her death.
6.
Catherine Grand Noel Worlee was born in the town of Tranquebar, India, in 1761 or 1762, then under Danish control.
7.
George Catherine Grand was born sometime after 1750, to a Swiss Huguenot merchant family.
8.
Catherine Grand was a clerk working for the English East India Company of French-Swiss stationed at Calcutta.
9.
Catherine Grand was educated in Lausanne and apprenticed in London, before joining a military cadetship in Bengal in 1766.
10.
Catherine Grand's diary, published in 1814, provides much information about their marriage.
11.
Exquisitely beautiful and very charming, the new Mrs Catherine Grand was well-received by the English ton of Calcutta.
12.
Once aboard, Catherine Grand began an affair with fellow passenger Thomas Lewin, a colonial official from Madras and later father of Harriet Grote.
13.
Catherine Grand restarted her relationship with Francis, who would rendezvous with her several times in Paris and the resort town of Spa.
14.
The oval painting shows Madame Catherine Grand holding a musical score.
15.
Madame Catherine Grand had the kind of beauty which is the rarest and most admired in Europe.
16.
Catherine Grand was tall and slight, with that languor in her carriage peculiar to creole ladies; her eyes were well open and affectionate, her features delicate, her golden hair playing in numberless curls, set off a forehead as white as a lily.
17.
Catherine Grand fled to Britain in 1792 during the French Revolution, but returned to Paris in 1797.
18.
Catherine's marriage to George Francois Grand was annulled in 1798 and she became Talleyrand's mistress in the same year.
19.
The scandal of Talleyrand, a secularized former bishop, living together with his concubine caused Napoleon Bonaparte to issue Talleyrand an ultimatum either marry Catherine Grand or give her up.
20.
Concerned that he meant to abandon her, Catherine Grand forced herself into a diplomatic dinner being hosted by Talleyrand and declared their engagement.
21.
The implied rebuke ensured that Catherine Grand was rarely invited to Napoleon's court.
22.
Catherine Grand was disfavoured by Pope Pius VII, who found her background as a courtesan repugnant.
23.
Catherine Grand refused to meet her when he attended Napoleon's coronation in 1804, referring to her dismissively as "".
24.
When Talleyrand was made Prince of Benevento in 1806, Catherine Grand became a princess of Napoleon's First French Empire.
25.
In 1808, Napoleon placed the Spanish royal family in the custody of Talleyrand; Catherine Grand was believed to have had a relationship with the Spanish Duke of San Carlos.
26.
Catherine Grand was with her husband when they welcomed Tsar Alexander I of Russia to Paris upon Napoleon's downfall in 1814.
27.
Catherine Grand returned to France in 1817, and settled into a life of quiet luxury from the income she received from Talleyrand and her own ventures.
28.
Catherine Grand died in Paris on 10 December 1835, and was buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.