Grace Elliott was an eyewitness to events detailed in her memoirs, Journal of my life during the French Revolution published posthumously in 1859.
14 Facts About Grace Elliott
2.
Grace Elliott was mistress to the Duke of Orleans and to the future George IV, by whom she is said to have borne an illegitimate daughter.
3.
Grace Elliott was arrested several times but managed to avoid the guillotine, and was released after the death of Robespierre.
4.
Grace Elliott was born probably in Edinburgh about 1754, the youngest daughter of Grissel Brown and Hew Dalrymple, an Edinburgh advocate concerned in the great Douglas case.
5.
Grace Elliott's parents separated around the time of her birth, and she was most likely brought up at her grandparents' house.
6.
Grace Elliott was educated in a French convent, and on her return to Scotland, was introduced by her father into Edinburgh society.
7.
Grace Elliott's beauty made such an impression on John Eliot, a prominent and wealthy physician, that he made her an offer of marriage in 1771.
8.
Grace Elliott accepted, although Eliot was about 18 years her senior.
9.
In 1774 Grace Elliott met and fell in love with Lord Valentia, with whom she entered into an affair.
10.
Grace Elliott was then taken by her brother to a French convent, but she seems to have been brought back almost immediately by Lord Cholmondeley, who became her lover and remained one of her principal protectors throughout her life.
11.
Grace Elliott helped to arrange false travel documents for several people wishing to escape the Revolution.
12.
Grace Elliott narrowly avoided death and was released after the Reign of Terror came to an end, not before she had been confined in a total to four different prisons by the Republican government.
13.
Grace Elliott died a wealthy woman at Ville d'Avray, in present-day Hauts-de-Seine, in May 1823, while a lodger with the commune's mayor.
14.
Grace Elliott appears as a major character in Hallie Rubenhold's novel The French Lesson.