Murderous Maids: The Scandalous Crimes of the Papin Sisters

On a cold February night in 1933, retired lawyer Monsieur Lancelin was supposed to meet his wife and daughter Genevieve for dinner at his brother-in-law's house. When he arrived at his home to pick them up, he found the door bolted from the inside and no lights on, apart from a flickering candle in the attic window. Arriving at his brother-in-law Monsieur Renard's home, he discovered that the two women had not arrived. Returning to his home along with his brother-in-law, they brought along several policemen who forced the window to the parlor. Once inside, the men discovered that the electric lights did not work. With only a flashlight for illumination, the men crept upstairs to find a scene out of a horror film.

The two women had been beaten to a pulp, their faces unrecognizable. Their fingernails had been uprooted and most distressing, both women had had their eyes gouged out. Blood stained the carpet till it felt like red moss. When the policemen slowly approached the attic, they discovered the two family maids, Christine and Lea Papin, wearing kimonos, in one bed, clutching each other. The two women confessed readily to the crime. They had taken off their clothes which had been stained, and washed their hands and faces. They had also cleaned the murder weapons, which consisted of a carving knife, hammer, and pewter pitcher which had been so damaged as to render it useless.

The reason for their crime? The elder sister Christine (1905-1937) claimed that while ironing, the fuses blew, it was the second that week that it had occurred, which set off a confrontation between Christine and Madame Lancelin. The two sisters were arrested and marched off to the police station, still in their kimonos, despite the February weather. The crime shocked and stunned the town of Le Mans. The two sisters had worked for the Lancelin family for six years since 1926 when Christine was 21 and Lea fifteen. The sisters had a reputation for being good workers, quiet, who kept to themselves. They had no outside friends that anyone knew off. Their work references described them as honest, industrious and proper. They had no criminal record, appeared to have no vices and were regular church-goers. Yet suddenly, and without the slightest warning, these two quiet maids had turned into monsters. The citizens of Le Mans didn't rest easy in their beds, probably wondering which one of them, might be the next victims of their servants.

Overnight, the two sisters became infamous in France. It was the crime of the century according to the French press. Janet Flanner, under her pen name, Genet, wrote about the case for The New Yorker, spreading the sisters infamy across the Atlantic. There was speculation that the two sisters were lovers because they were found in bed together. Suddenly the names of Christine and Lea Papin were known throughout the land. The case piqued the interest of intellectuals such as Jean Cocteau, and Jean-Paul Satre, who believed that the crime was evidence of a class struggle, the working class rising up against the bourgeoisie. The two women routinely worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, with only a half-day off a week. At the trial, it was revealed that Madame Lancelin routinely wore white gloves to test that the furniture had been dusted to her expectations, that she commented on Christine's cooking by having formal notes delivered to the kitchen by her youngest daughter Genevieve who still lived at home. Madame had also once forced Lea to get down on her knees to retrieve a piece of paper she had forgotten while cleaning. Madame also allowed them to have heat in their attic bedroom (how kind!), and gave them enough to eat although Christine did not know if her employer was kind because she had never spoken to them in six years of service.

While in prison, Christine exhibited extreme behavior. According to witnesses, she had extreme visions and unholy reactions. She also kept calling for her sister Lea, who had been seperated from her in the prison environment. When the two sisters were reunited, Christine's behavior was inappropriately sexual towards her sister. In July of 1933, Christine experienced some kind of episode, where she tried to gouge her own eyes out, leading her to be restrained in a straight-jacket. After the episode, she recanted her statement to police, telling them that she had had a similar episode the day of the murder, and insisting that she alone had committed the crimes, not her sister. The judge dismissed her statement as a way of trying get her sister off, and the jury at the trial treated it with the same contempt. Also, Lea insisted that she had taken part in the murders.

Eight months after their arrest, the sisters were finally tried for their crime in September of 1933. The trial was a national event, attended by vast numbers of the public and the press. Police had to be called in to control the crowds outside the packed courthouse. The sisters denied having had a sexual relationship, but never made any attempt to deny the murders. Despite the evidence that insanity ran in their family, (their paternal grandfather had been given to violent attacks of temper and epileptic fits, and some relatives had died in asylums or committed suicide), the two women were convicted of the crime. Christine received the harshest sentence, death by guillotine, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Lea, received a lighter sentence, of ten years hard labor, because the jury felt that she had been so dominated by her sister.

Christine and Lea Papin had grown up in villages south of Le Mans. They had another sister, Emilia, who became a nun. Christine and Emilia had lived in an orphanage at Le Mans for several years. Lea had been looked after by an uncle until he had died, then she too had been placed in an orphanage until she was old enough to work. As they grew older, Christine and Lea worked as maids in various Le Mans homes, preferring, whenever possible, to work together. Later on, their mother revealed that Emilia had been raped by their father, who was a drunk, when she was only 9 years old. Their mother had visited the two sisters regularly but there was always a certain degree of friction between her and Christine. Two years before the murders, there was a complete rift between the girls and their mother, apparently caused by disagreements over money. Their mother wrote to them on occasion after this rift, but was ignored.

While in prison, Christine's condition deteriorated rapidly. Profoundly depressed over being separated from Lea, she refused to eat, becoming progressively worse. Transferred to an asylum in Rennes, she never showed the slightest sign of improvement and died in 1937. Lea was released from prison in 1941, her sentence being reduced for good behavior. She went to live with her mother in Nantes, where she got a job as a maid in a hotel under a false name. No one knows exactly when she died. Some people say 1982, but a documentary filmmaker named Claud Ventura claimed that he discovered Lea was still alive and living in a hospice in 2000, when he was working on a documentary about the sisters. This woman died in 2001, but the jury is still out on whether or not he was correct.

Christine Papin appears to have suffered from paranoid schizophrena which usually manifests itself in one's late teens or early twenties. However, in the 1930s there was no real treatment for the disorder. Now she would be treated with a cocktail of various drugs, which would have given her some quality of life. Lea, on the other hand, never showed signs of mental illness. She appears to have been very shy, anxious and prone to panic attacks when under stress. During the trial, doctors testified that Lea's personality seemed to have disappeared completely into Christine's personality. Their employers never had a bad word to say about Lea, whereas Christine had a "difficult" personality and had been dismissed for insolence on more than one occasion. Lea's tragedy was that she was so dominated by her sister. One employer had, in fact, suggested to Lea's mother that she should place the girls in separate jobs because Christine was a bad influence on Lea.

The two sisters seemed to suffer from what is called shared paranoid disorder. This condition tends to occur in small groups or pairs who become isolated from the world. They often lead an intense, inward-looking existence with a paranoid view of the outside world. It is also typical in shared paranoid disorder that one partner dominates the other, and the Papin sisters seem to be a perfect example of this.

Jean Genet was so taken by the case, that he loosely based his most famous play Les Bonnes or The Maids on it. In his play, the two women (or women played by men) role play the part of Mistress while the real mistress is out of the house. The crime has continued to fascinate writers and filmmakers in France as well as other countries. Ruth Rendall has written a novel based on the crime as have several others. Two films were released in the last ten years, an English film called Sister, My Sister, starring Joely Redgrave and Jodhi May, based on a play by the American playwright Wendy Kesselman, and a french film, Les Blessures Assassines (called Murderous Maids in English) by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Denis. Having seen both films, they deal with the relationship between the two sisters differently, particularly in regards to alleged sexual nature of the relationship. In Les Blessure Assassines, Lea looks to Christine as her protector/savior and is a willing participant in the relationsip. In Sister, My Sister, Lea seems more aware that what she is doing with Christine is very wrong. Both films are definitely worth watching, and the violence is wisely kept to a minimum or off-screen.

The Last Courtesan: The Life of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman

The life of a courtesan is not an easy one. She must be ‘on’ at all times, she must dress well, be a good conversationalist, spend her time focused on the male in her life not on herself, she must be able to entertain well, serve good food, keep abreast of current events but not be an intellectual. She’s one part geisha and one part siren. A courtesan is not a prostitute, although they both take money from men. A courtesan can have more than one protector, but she must cater equally to them. A courtesan must always keep an eye on the future, for the time when her protectors may leave her. If she’s smart, she’ll have arranged for an annuity to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed, long after she has moved on to other protectors. Is she’s lucky, like Elizabeth Armistead, and La Paiva, she might even get married.

Pamela Digby didn’t set out to be a courtesan. The daughter of the 11th Baron Digby, she was born on March 20, 1920. Her life was meant to be one of marriage to another aristocrat, and time spent in the country hunting and shooting, with spring and summer spent into town doing the season. Dull and conventional. But Pamela knew from childhood that she wanted a different kind of life. She was fascinated with the story of her great-great Aunt, Jane Digby who left her husband the Earl of Ellenborough in search of true love and adventure. It was a search that would take her from the court of Ludwig I of Bavaria all the way to the desert of as the wife of a Bedouin sheik.

The Digby’s had a long aristocratic lineage but very little money. At one point in her childhood, they lived in Australia to save money. Pamela was raised by governesses and taught the basics. When she was seventeen, she was packed off to the continent for ‘finishing off’ spending time in France and Germany to perfect her language skills before returning to England to do the season which was financed by her father’s win through a lucky bet on the Grand National. Pamela wasn’t a success in her first season. Red-headed and chubby, she was also seen as snobbish and arrogant, the product of her mother’s firm belief that she was the most beautiful, talented child around. Unfortunately her mother was the only one who thought so. Pamela found herself a wallflower at many of the balls and cocktails parties during the ‘deb’ season.

At 19, Pamela was fortunate enough to go on a blind-date with Winston Churchill’s son Randolph. He proposed to her on the night they met, and Pamela said yes. She wasn’t about to lose her chance at becoming the daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, despite the fact that her future husband had a habit of asking women to marry him. His record was three women in one night! Apparently Randolph was afraid he was going to die in the war and wanted to sew up having an heir before his death.They were married a few months later and Pamela found herself pregnant shortly afterward. The marriage to Randolph was a disaster, he was an alcoholic womanizing wastrel, who although gifted as a writer, was also lazy and focused. He suffered from ‘son of a great man’ syndrome. However, Pamela got on like a house on fire with her in-laws. Her mother-in-law Clementine had devoted her life to her husband, basically neglecting her children, and she advised Pam to do the same. It was advice that Pamela took to heart, just not with her husband.

After giving birth to her only child, Winston, Pamela parked him in the country and spent all her time in London where the action was, even though there was a war on. She spent weekends with the Churchills’ at the Prime Minster’s country home, Checquers. At the age of 21, she met Averell Harriman, a wealthy American railway heir (Union Pacific) and intimate of FDR who was 29 years her senior, through his daughter Kathleen, who she had befriended. The two were soon having an affair, despite the fact that they were both married, using Kathleen as a beard. Pamela proved her usefulness to Averell by introducing him to a host of important people including Lord Beaverbrook. But Averell wasn’t about to divorce his wife and marry Pamela. He’d already gone through one divorce from his first wife. However, he paid for Pamela’s Grosvenor Square flat in London, as well as established a yearly allowance for her.

Harriman was not the only wealthy and powerful American that Pamela had set her sights on. She also enjoyed romances with Jock Whitney and William S. Paley who called her the courtesan of the century. When Averell had to go back to the States, Pamela moved on to Edward R. Murrow, famous for his broadcasts from London. Murrow fell madly in love with Pam and her with him. But there was one little snag; while Harriman’s wife had been safely back in the States, Murrow’s wife was with him in London and Janet was not about to give up her husband without a fight. When Janet became pregnant, Murrow broke off the relationship with Pam.

In 1945, Pamela and Randolph Churchill were divorced. Pamela’s relationships with wealthy married men were well-known in English society, so she decided to head to Paris for a fresh start. Leaving her son Winston behind in the country, she settled down in Paris. She soon met the young Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune, who was intrigued by this woman who had so many powerful men at her beck and call. Although Pamela was received an annuity from both Jock Whitney and Averell Harriman, she desperately wanted to get married again. She even converted to Catholicism, hoping that Agnelli would pop the question. However, Agnelli had no desire to marry his mistress, not even when Pamela tried to make him jealous by having flings with Aly Khan and Stavros Niarchos. His sisters also didn’t like Pamela.

Pamela then moved on to Baron Elie de Rothschild of the famous banking family, who liked to call Pamela his “European Geisha.” Married to his cousin, with three children, Elie wasn’t about to divorce his wife and marry Pamela either. He found it amusing to have as a mistress a woman who had slept with so many powerful men. His wife, Liliane didn’t find it so amusing, she once bashed her car into Pam’s Bentley. Although like Agnelli, he to supported Pamela in the style to which she had rapidly become accustomed too. Pamela held the men in her life by taking up their interests, molding herself to their culture and by focusing her attention of them completely to the exclusion of everything else. With Agnelli, she even developed an Italian accent; answering the phone ‘Pronto Pam.’ Once she had moved on to Rothschild, it became ‘Ici Pam.’ She also made herself useful to them, by providing them with contacts in business, politics, and society. Smart as a whip, although not an intellectual, she managed to stay friends with all her former lovers, except for Rothschild, doing them little favors. For instance, she helped Jock Whitney buy jewelry for his wife.

By the end of the 50’s, Pamela knew that her days were numbered as a mistress. She was fast approaching forty. She needed to get married. Her days in Paris over, and feeling out of place in England, there was only one place that Pam could go and that was the land of opportunity, America.

She set her sights on Broadway producer and legendary agent Leland Hayward. So what if he was married, Pamela could see that his wife Slim Hayward was neglecting him. Hayward was dazzled by her attentiveness and quickly made her his fourth and last wife, much to Slim’s chagrin. Unfortunately for Pamela, she met Hayward at the peak of his career with the production of The Sound of Music. As soon as he married Pam, his career took a nose-dive and he started drinking heavily. Still Pamela made the best of it, for a brief time she ran a shop on Madison Avenue that specialized in expensive tchotchkes. Leland still had money, and Pamela spent it like water, buying a country house and an expensive apartment on Fifth Avenue. She also managed to alienate his three children.

After 11 years of marriage, Hayward passed away, leaving Pamela a widow. After the shock of his death, Pamela received another shock when his will was read. Under the terms of his divorce from his second wife Margaret Sullavan, Hayward was required to leave half of his estate, which totaled $400,000 to his surviving two children Brooke and Bill. Pamela now found herself at the age of 51, right back where she started but not for long. The good fortune fairy must have smiled on Pamela when she was born because within months, Pam had hooked up again with Averell Harriman, her war-time lover, who was now a widower. Six months after Leland Hayward’s death, she and Harriman were married.

The final chapter in Pamela’s life saw her becoming one half of a political power couple in Washington DC. Harriman was a life-long Democrat and now Pamela became one too as well as an American citizen. She established her own political action committee, PamPac, giving money to all the rising Democratic politicians including Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller and Bill Clinton. In her marriage to Harriman, despite her new interest in politics, she still made sure not to neglect her hubby. She partly learned her lesson from her marriage to Hayward, this time she didn’t alienate Harriman’s children, just his step-children. As Harriman grew older, he became more deaf and crotchety and he often took out his anger on Pamela. She took it in her stride, making sure that when she traveled, Harriman always had friends and family to come and look in on him.

She also cracked open the purse strings that Harriman had held tightly during his first eighty years. They bought a private plane, an estate in Virginia, and another in Barbados. Pamela also managed to remove any traces of Harriman’s late wife Marie from all the homes, including the art collection that Marie had lovely put together over the years, donating it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. When Harriman finally died at the age of almost 96 in 1986, Pamela even made sure that Harriman wasn’t buried anywhere near his late wife.

Pamela inherited his entire $115 million fortunate at his death, and used the money to position herself as power-broker in Washington. For the first time in her life, she didn’t need a powerful man on her arm, she was the power. She immersed herself in foreign policy issues, making speeches around the country, reveling in the publicity that named her one of the foremost hostesses in DC. She worked hard for Bill Clinton’s election as President and was reward with her appointment as Ambassador to France. Pamela threw herself into her role as Ambassador, studying briefs like she was about to take an exam, giving speeches in French, which she spoke fluently if not well. This time she was arriving back in Paris in triumphant.

While her public life was going great gang-busters, her personal life was going to hell. Her relationship with her son Winston was often strained. He’d been raised mainly by both sets of grandparents and only saw his mother when she needed an escort to a function. Despite bearing the same name as his illustrious grandfather, Winston’s career never equaled his grandfather’s success. He managed to screw up his career in Parliament, by opposing sanctions against Rhodesia and having an affair with the ex-wife of arms dealer Adnan Khasshoghi, and eventually lost his seat. Pamela found him an extreme disappointment. Her relationship with Harriman’s children and grandchildren also took a blow when they accused her of mismanaging the family trust funds after his death. The family sued her, she finally settled with them for $11 million dollars, after selling several art works by Renoir, Picasso and Matisse that had been earmarked for donation to the National Gallery after her death.

She also had to contend with an unflattering biography by Christopher Ogden. Ogden had actually been hired to help her write her autobiography, but Pamela balked when she realized the publisher Random House wanted her to be more candid then she had intended. After canceling the contract, she asked for the hours of tape back that she had made with Ogden. He refused unless he was paid for all the work he had done as her collaborator. She refused to pay him; although he did return the tapes (he’d made copies). Ogden then turned around and wrote his own biography of Pamela called “Life of the Party.”

Pamela Harriman died on February 5, 1997 at the age of 76, after suffering a stroke while swimming in the pool at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, a place of great significance in her life. She’d enjoyed a clandestine rendezvous with her second husband Leland Hayward there, and celebrated the liberation of Paris with her lover Edward R. Murrow at the bar.

Like her great-great aunt, Pamela refused to be hemmed in by the judgments of others. She never apologized for her series of affairs with married men, nor did she object when her name appeared in gossip columns. “I would rather have bad things written about me than be forgotten.” After her death, Jacques Chirac, the President of France, called her ‘probably one of the best ambassadors since Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson.” In the end, Pamela finally got everything she had ever wanted, fame, money, admiration and finally in the end respect.

Sources:



Life of the Party - Christopher Ogden

Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman - Sally Bedell Smith

The Fortune Hunters - Charlotte Hays

And the winner is...........

The winner of a copy of Susan Holloway Scott's novel The French Mistress is:


Kwana

Please email me at scandalouswoman@gmail.com with your address so that you can receive your copy!

Scandalous Women welcomes Susan Holloway Scott!

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome Susan Holloway Scott, author of The French Mistress today! Remember anyone who leaves a comment will be entered to win a copy of her new book.

Here is a brief description to whet your appetite:

The daughter of a poor nobleman, Louise leaves the French countryside for the court of King Louis XIV, where she must not only please the tastes of the jaded king, but serve as a spy for France. With few friends, many rivals, and ever-shifting loyalties, Louise learns the perils of her new role. Yet she is too ambitious to be a pawn in the intrigues of others. With the promise of riches, power, and even the love of a king, Louise creates her own destiny in a dance of intrigue between two monarchs—and two countries.

Tell us a little about yourself, what is your background, and how long have you been writing before you were published?

I graduated from Brown University with a degree in art history. It was at Brown that I learned the magic of working with primary sources, of being able to reach back through centuries of opinions to squirrel out the truth about the past. I loved art history and still do, but didn’t want to make a career of it, and so I went into graphic design and public relations. Public relations proved to be a wonderful background for fiction writing. I wrote my first novel while I was on maternity leave with my daughter, figuring I was going to be crazy and up all night anyway (which I was.) If I’d realized the horrible odds against getting a first published, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I had no agent or industry contacts, only what I’d read in an old issue of Writer’s Digest. However, being blithely ignorant, I finished my novel, sent it off to a publisher, and went back to my job at the end of my leave. It took nearly a year for me to hear, a year in which I was convinced I must have written such an abomination that the editors wouldn’t even deign to return it. In reality, the editor to whom I’d sent the book had left the company and deep-sixed my manuscript in an empty desk. A senior editor came across it in the drawer by accident, and was so horrified that it had been sitting there for so many months that she read it herself, and even better, bought it for publication. Pure luck all around!

You started out writing historical romance, what was the impetus that made you decide to write historical fiction, and in particular about real-life historical figures?

I wrote over thirty historical romances as Miranda Jarrett. When I first began, the market was for big, sprawling stories with lots of history behind the central love story. I wrote books set in colonial America, in 18th century London and Naples, even north Africa during the Barbary Wars. But in the last years, the historical romance market has narrowed its focus considerably. The books are much shorter (most are now in the 75,000-90,000 word range), there’s less and less history, and the overwhelming majority of the books are set in Regency England.

Fortunately for me, historical fiction has grown in the last decade, and it was an easy choice for me to make the switch. It was very freeing, too. I could dig deep in my research, and create a much richer story that encompassed more characters and more history. I’ve really enjoyed writing about historical figures whose untraditional lives wouldn’t have made them suitable heroes or heroines in an historical romance, but they’re considerably more interesting for it.

This is the third book that you have written set during the reign of Charles II, what is it about his reign that you find so fascinating?

Coming after the a horrific Civil War and a repressive Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration has much in common with other permissive eras that follow a repressive period, such as the Roaring 20s and the Swinging 60s. (All it’s missing is a snappy modifying gerund.) An entire generation of aristocratic children with royalist sympathies grew into adulthood without the stability of homes, families, or an expected position in society. In the most extreme cases, like Charles II himself, they had led impoverished, gypsy-like existences in exile on the Continent. As a result, many who would once again form a "ruling class" with the Restoration were rootless and wild, and often undereducated as well.

Traditional morality went out the window. Charles hoped England would be a country tolerant of all kinds of people and beliefs. There was a great deal of experimentation, not only in sexual behavior, but also in theatre, science, art, and music, even in fashion. But like all such times, the high spirits of the Restoration couldn’t last: by Charles’s death, society was exhausted by so much freedom, and the pendulum swung back to a more conservative era under the sterner, more restrictive reigns of James II, William and Mary, and Anne. It’s a fascinating time in which to set stories, looking forward to the humanist themes of the coming Age of Enlightenment, but still medieval enough for traitors to be hung, drawn, and quartered, their severed heads finally stuck on pikes on London Bridge as cheery warnings.

How do you start researching your historical fiction? Primary sources?

I try to rely as much as is possible on primary sources: diaries, letters, journals and newspapers of the times. While I’m writing, my I-tunes playlist even includes dance and court music and songs of the time. (The research for The French Mistress offered some special challenges since many of the sources were in 17th century French.) Since my historical novels are written in first person, it’s important to develop a “voice” for each character that’s historically accurate. The best way to do this is to immerse myself as much as possible in their time, and try to get inside their heads as much as I can. The trick, of course, is not to become so caught up in historical accuracy that one forgets to make a story and characters that are accessible to modern readers. We’ve all stumbled through those historical novels where the plot and dialogue have been overwhelmed by the author’s well-intentioned research; my favorite term for this was coined by a reviewer: “gadzookery.”

Louise de Keroualle seems to be the least well-known of Charles’s mistresses. She didn’t seem to have an oversize personality like some of his other mistresses. Was there anything that you discovered that you hadn’t known before you started researching? And did your impression of Louise change at all?

I’d known something of Louise after writing my previous two books about her rival-mistresses (Barbara Palmer in Royal Harlot and Nell Gwyn in The King’s Favorite), and though some of Nell’s witty attacks had made me feel a little sorry for Louise, it wasn’t until I’d begun researching her background in France that I developed an empathy with her. I hadn’t realized how she spent her life as a constant outsider. She had a difficult relationship with her parents, she never quite fit in at Louis XIV’s court, and she made virtually no true friends at the English court. The only one whom she seemed to trust was Charles. Learning that Louise never married nor became romantically linked to any other man, remaining constant to Charles’s memory for the remainder of her long life –– she outlived Charles by fifty years! –– seems especially poignant.

Louise saw no shame in her position as a royal mistress. Do you think this was because of the material wealth she amassed, the power she acquired, her ability to help her native France, or simply because of the love she felt for Charles?

My guess would be all of those. In addition, Louise came from the French court, where the royal mistress was officially recognized as a court position. Though there was no such formal arrangement in England, she chose to follow the French style, and considered herself as performing many more services to Charles than simply those in his bed. She regarded herself as his hostess, and he did in fact receive many official dignitaries and diplomats in her lavish rooms in the palace. She acted as an auxiliary representative of the French government, representing French interests to Charles. She also took great pride in offering a kind of respite to Charles, a peaceful, tasteful sanctuary in her quarters where he could be himself, away from the complicated politics of the court.

Charles’s mistresses were constantly faulted for their greed, and Louise was regarded as the most avaricious of them all, which is interesting considering Barbara Castlemaine’s greed. Do you think she was in fact greedy, or merely making the most of a brief and unpredictable opportunity to provide for herself and her children?

There’s no doubt that Louise had expensive tastes, and that she expected Charles to indulge her. She made such a haul for herself that when she returned to France after Charles’s death, several ships were necessary to carry away all her loot. And like everyone else at Court, she loved to gamble, and wasn’t very good at it, often losing heavily. But Louise was much more savvy in her acquisitons than either Barbara or Nell. Where those two begged prettily for this house or that jewel (and usually got them), Louise asked for more lasting prizes to pass along to her only child with Charles, the Duke of Richmond. Her best one had to be the royalty on coal dues. Every load of coal that came from Newcastle added to the fortunes of not only her son, but all future Dukes of Richmond, and helped make the dukedom one of the richest in Britain to this day.

Louise was almost universally hated by the people of England. Do you think it was solely due to Anti-Catholic prejudice? Or was there something about Louise that caused her to be so unpopular?

Louise really was did represent the triple-whammy where the English people were concerned. She was Catholic, she was French, and she seemed to have an unnatural hold on their king’s affections. She had few allies or friends to defend her at Court or in the press, and her uneasy English often made her seem haughty and aloof. For the most part, Charles was enormously popular with his people, and when occasionally he made an unpopular decision, it was much easier for those same people to find a scapegoat -- and Louise made the best public scapegoat of all.

What made Charles’s relationship with Louise so different from his relationships with Nell Gwynn and Barbara Castlemaine? Derek Wilson believes that Louise modeled herself after Madame de Montespan, that she had learned not to outshine Queen Catherine, unlike Barbara Castlemaine.

Historian and biographer Antonia Fraser suggests that Charles’s three most prominent mistresses each offered different things to Charles at different times in his life. Barbara was the uninhibited wild-child of his early reign, appealing to him as a sexual adventuress. Nell’s saucy wit made her a kind of court fool, delighting Charles as she dared to skewer the stuffier members of his court even as she was his “country lass”, happily fishing and skinny-dipping with him at Windsor. Louise became the perfect bonne femme of his later years, representing not only the hospitality but also the French opulence and elegance that he’d always envied in his cousin Louis’s court.

Charles II had always been surrounded by strong women, his mother Henrietta Maria, his grandmother Marie de Medici, his sister Minette. He seemed to really enjoy the company of women and treated them as equals. Some of his courtiers felt that Charles was too influenced by the women in his life. Do you agree?

You’re right: Charles did love the company of women. In a way that’s appealingly modern, he enjoyed them as companions rather than simply as bedroom conquests, and the fact that his favorite women were clever as well as beautiful made him different from many of his more libertine contemporaries. But though Charles often used Louise as a sounding-board, there’s no real proof that she was able to influence towards France in any tangible way. He seemed to have remained his own man in matters of state.

Can you tell us what you might be working on next?

My next heroine has already made her appearance here as a Scandalous Woman: Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester. The only daughter and heiress to one of the wildest of Charles II’s courtiers, Catherine grew up into a pretty wild lady in her own right, blessed with a brilliant wit and sense of humor to compensate for her lack of beauty. Though her fortune and family made her much-sought-after as a wife, she refused to marry and let any man take control of her life. Instead she blazed a scandalous course of independence that included being a mistress to a king and a wife to a general, and a career at court that spanned nearly forty years. Look for Catherine’s adventurous life in The Countess and the King next summer.

And thank you again, Elizabeth, for inviting me here today!

Thank you Susan for stopping by. The French Mistress is officially on sale starting July 7th but you might be able to find copies at Borders! Or leave a comment and you might just win a copy!

Juana of Castile: Mad for Love or Political Pawn?

History has been written by men about men for centuries. So for writers of women’s history, one has to take the written record with a grain of salt, wonder if there are hidden agendas. This is especially true when it comes to the life of Juana of Castile. While most people are familiar with the story of her sister Catherine of Aragon and her marriage to Henry VIII, not many are familiar with the story of her older sister Juana. If she is known at all it is as Juana la Loca, Joanna the Mad, a woman who lost her mind after the death of her husband, the object of her obsessive love, prone to jealous rages who kept her husband’s moldy decrepit coffin nearby so that she could spent her nights talking to him. But is this true, or was Juana a political pawn, torn between her loyalty to her husband and her loyalty to Spain and her parents. Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

Juana was the third child and second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. While the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella helped to rid Spain finally of the Moors, Ferdinand was only the King Consort in Castile while King in his own right in Aragon. Castile was the richer, larger kingdom, and Ferdinand during his marriage to Isabella was treated like a foreign interloper by the grandees of the Cortes in Castile. From childhood each of the daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella were groomed from an early age to marry and expand their parents’ influence. Born on November 6 1479, (making her a Scorpio which explains alot!) Juana was betrothed as a baby to Philip of Flanders, the Duke of Burgundy and son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian. His sister Margaret had also been betrothed to Juana’s brother Juan. Juana was taught French, needlework and dancing, everything to make her a pleasing consort.

Married by proxy, Juana was sent to Flanders in 1496 to finally meet her groom and to marry for real. From the one moment the two set eyes on each other, it was lust at first sight. Philip lived up to his nickname ‘Philip the Handsome.’ He insisted that the two get married that night so that they could consummate the marriage immediately. While the sex was great, Philip was not too happy by his wife’s divided loyalties. Juana wasn’t too happy that her husband was only to happy to share his favors amongst the women of the court. It didn’t help that she was kept busy giving birth to six babies in nine years; healthy and happy babies who lived in an age when the infant mortality rate was extremely high. This was when the first rumors that Juana was a little bit crazy began.

Apparently she took exception to one of her husband’s many mistresses and attacked her, cutting off her hair. While most women probably wouldn’t find that behavior insane, it was definitely not the behavior of a royal princess. No doubt some of it could be contributed to post-partum depression, a condition that wasn’t diagnosed until the 20th century. While Philip was good-looking and great in the sack, he was also proud, vain, and insecure. His mother had died when Philip was young, and his father had withdrawn and left his children to be raised by governesses with very little interaction with their father. Juana’s relationship with Philip took a turn for the worse when Juana’s brother Juan died, and then her sister Maria who had married the King of Portugal and had a son Miguel who also died. This left Juana the heiress to Castile definitely. Aragon on the other hand, followed Salic law which meant that only a male could inherit the throne. It was hoped that Ferdinand could change the mind of the Cortes. In 1502, Juana was recognized as heiress to the throne of Castile and given the title Princess of Asturias, the title traditionally given to the heir to Castile (Felipe, the son of King Juan Carlos II of Spain, the current King of Spain, is titled the Prince of Asturias).

Philip however was not on board for being King Consort. He wanted to rule Spain as King. Juana was torn between her parents and her husband. Juana and Philip traveled to Spain where Juana gave birth to her son Fernando. One night Juana ran out of the castle and refused to come back inside for thirty-six hours despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside. Isabella died in 1504, leaving Juana Queen of Castile but the grandees were slow to crown her Queen. They had clearly heard the rumors that Juana was a little off her rocker, which Juana thought Philip and his advisors were spreading. Her mother's will allowed for Juana's father Ferdinand to rule if Juana was unwilling or in her absence, although he was no longer King of Castile.



Ferdinand was not a happy camper at the news. In fact he had coins struck that said Ferdinand and Juana, King and Queen of Castile. Philip, on the other hand, had coins minted with his name and Joanna's. Meanwhile behind her back, Ferdinand and Philip signed a treaty, agreeing that Juana was too mentally unstable to rule, and promising to exclude her from the government. The estrangement between Juana and her husband was unresolved because Philip died at the age of twenty-eight in 1506 of typhus, leaving her pregnant with her sixth child, a daughter that she named after her sister Catalina.

Here’s where the story gets strange. Juana, heavily pregnant, grief-stricken, became a little bit unhinged. While accompanying his body to Granada for burial, she demanded that the coffin be opened, greet his remains. She insisted that they travel at night so that women would not be tempted by him. Still, Juana was determined to rule Castile as her mother had before her. It was her birthright and Juana wanted to honor her mother and hold the kingdom until either her son Charles or her son Fernando was old enough to rule after her. Juana refused to surrender her rights as Queen of Castile.

However, the greatest betrayal was still to come, her father Ferdinand used her behavior to grab Castile from her, which he ruled until his death in 1516. He imprisoned Juana in a room in the castle at Tordesillas in 1509 where she spent the rest of her life. It appears that years of resentment of having to play second fiddle to his wife had finally spilled over. But it wasn’t just Ferdinand; many of the Castilian grandees had also resented having a woman rule Castile, and were prepared to make sure it would never happen again.

If Juana hadn’t actually been mad before, being locked up in a castle sent her round the bend. Manic-depression or bi-polar disorder as it is now called seems to have run in the Trastamara blood. Juana’s grandmother had also been considered insane and locked up for years. Karma is a bitch though. Ferdinand spent the rest of his life plagued by paranoia. He remarried to Germaine de Foix, niece of the King Louis XII of France, Spain’s traditional enemy. Germaine was also Ferdinand's great niece (ick!). Despite taking the 16th century version of Viagra, he never sired the son that he wanted.

After his death, Juana’s son Charles became Charles V of Spain. Juana was briefly released after 11 years in prison, but she had no idea what was going on, that her father had died or that her son was now king. Charles finally went to visit his mother after a twenty year absence but no one knows what the two of them talked about. According to Castilian law, Charles would not fully be recognized as King until Juana’s death, and he refused to release her from her imprisonment. He finally abdicated in 1555, retiring to a monastery, dying three years later. His son became Philip II of Spain, husband of Mary Tudor, who ushered in Spain’s Golden Age. Juana’s other son, Fernando, inherited the Holy Roman Emperor.

Juana’s youngest daughter Catalina remained at Tordesillas with her mother for sixteen. However in 1625, Catalina was stolen away in the night and married off to King Juan III of Portugal. Juana was plunged into deep despair at losing her last child. After forty-six years of captivity, Juana of Castile died at the age of seventy-six. She was buried beside her husband Philip in the cathedral in Granada, across from the tombs of her parents Ferdinand and Isabella.

In recent years, a film called Mad Love, has been released, and a new novel about Juana, called The Last Queen, by C.W. Gortner. Mad Love depicts the passionate sexual relationship between Juana and Philip and her jealousy over his attentions to other women. Although it does delve into the political context, it's a small portion of the film. The performances are stellar and it is worth viewing. Pilar López de Ayala in the title role won a Goya for her role; the film was nominated for a total of 12 Goyas. The film was directed by Vicente Aranda.It received 3 Goya awards, in the categories of Best Actress, Best Wardrobe, and Best Makeup and Hair.


While Mad Love clearly falls into the ‘Juana was one crazy bitch,’ camp, The Last Queen has to be one of the best historical fiction novels I have read in recent years. Gortner tells Juana’s story in the first person, with compassion, emphasizing her passion and her courage. The Last Queen turns Juana into a three dimensional human being. Gortner puts Juana squarely in the historical and political context of the times. Her story is both personal and political. The novel deals with the realities of royal marriages, that they were more based more on shifting alliances than compatibility. It was very interesting to see, if however briefly, what it was like for Catherine of Aragon in the years after her marriage to Prince Arthur and before her marriage to Henry VIII, and how difficult her situation must have been, being in limbo.

Was Juana sane? Mental illness seemed to run in the Trastamara/Hapsburg dynasty(along with an unfortunate tendency towards incest), Juana's own maternal grandmother was mentally ill. It's been speculated that Juana was either schizophrenic or bi-polar. It should also be noted that 'insanity' was an all purpose diagnosis used to control women who were considered out of hand, too intelligent, or dangerous. Could she have ruled her country? Historians have been debating this question for centuries. Since she never got the chance, the world will never know what Juana might have been capable of but it seems clear given how her sister Catherine fought against Henry VIII’s attempts to divorce her that the women of Castile were fighters.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Agatha Christie

On December 3, 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Sunningdale, in Berkshire. Her car was found at eight o’clock on Saturday morning, abandoned several miles away, with some of her clothes and identification scattered around inside. There were no signs of foul play but newspapers immediately reported that the car was believed to have been deliberately run down Newlands corner with its brakes off. All that weekend, the police searched for her on the North Downs. Agatha had written several confusing letters to her husband, her secretary Charlotte Fisher and others before vanishing. One, to her brother-in-law, said she was simply going for a vacation in Yorkshire; another, to the local chief constable, said she feared for her life. A quarter mile from where her car was found there was a lake called Silent Pool that she had used in one of her books; one of her characters had drowned there. The policy promptly had the lake dredged, without result. Hearing of the husband's infidelities, the police tapped his phones and followed him wherever he went. They also organized 15,000 volunteers to search the surrounding countryside.

Her husband, Colonel Archie Christie told reporters that she was suffering from a nervous breakdown, but suspicion was immediately raised that perhaps the Colonel had done away with his wife, like one of the plots in his wife’s mystery novels. For eleven days the nation was riveted as the newspapers speculated about what had happened to the author of The Mystery of Roger Ackroyd. When she was discovered at a spa in Harrogate; she claimed to been suffering from temporary amnesia. What led Agatha Christie to leave her home that cold December night? Was it a publicity stunt? Revenge against her husband? A simple misunderstanding? Even today, her biographers differ on what exactly happened during those two weeks in December 1926.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller (1890-1976) was born in the Victorian resort of Torquay in Devon. Her father Frederick Miller was an American from New York, although he had gone to school in Switzerland. Blessed with an independent income, he lived the life of a Victorian gentleman of leisure. Like Winston Churchill, Agatha was very proud of being half-American. She even insisted on visiting her relatives’ graves in Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn on a trip to New York, even though she had never known them. The youngest of three children Agatha was raised almost as an only child. Unlike them, she had no formal education, she was taught at home by her mother and father. When she was eleven, her father did suddenly from a heart-attack leaving the family in straightened circumstances. Instead of selling the family home, her mother let servants go, and when money became tight, rented out the house while they moved to France for a year.

At the end of 1912, she met Archie Christie at a party. He was tall, lean and intense. He immediately demanded that Agatha dance as many dances as possible with him, crossing out names on her dance card and filling his in. A whirlwind courtship followed. Archie somehow found out where she lived and showed up unannounced one day. Within days, he had asked her to marry him. Soon they were engaged, but they didn’t marry until Christmas Eve 1914. Her mother Clara was suspicious of Archie. He was too good-looking, and he only had eighty pounds a year. In the army, he had trained to be a pilot, transferring to the Royal Flying Corps. Her main concern however was that Archie and Agatha were too different. While Archie was intense, Agatha was child-like and full of the zest for life. There was also the fact that Agatha was already engaged to someone else, another soldier named Reggie Lucy, although the engagement was not formal. The young couple broke up, made up, and broke up again until their sudden wedding on December 24, 1914.

During the war, Agatha worked as a nurse and then as a pharmacist where she learned all about the poisons that she would use so effectively in her mysteries. She also started her first detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles which she finished in 1916. However, like her short stories, the novel was rejected by several publishers. While other marriages floundered after the war was over, the Christies seemed solid. In 1919, Agatha became pregnant with their daughter Rosalind. Archie was happy that the baby was a girl, because he feared a son would be a rival for Agatha’s affections. Encouraged to submit her book to one last publisher, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was finally accepted for publication by Bodley Head in a five book deal. Agatha Christie was now a published author.

Over the next few years, Agatha published several more novels, introducing Miss Marple, and Tuppence and Tommy, and short stories, each more successful than the last. The Christies bought a house in London, and then eventually moved to a house in the suburbs. Archie left the army and went to work in the city. Everything in Agatha’s life seemed to be going perfectly. But in 1926 everything changed. It should have been the greatest year of Agatha’s life, the book that put her on the map as an author; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published. However, 1926 was also the year that her mother Clara died. Ignoring her mother’s advice to never leave Archie alone for long, Agatha went down to Torquay to go through her mother’s things, while Archie stayed in London.

Just before they were to leave for a holiday in Italy, Archie told Agatha stunning news. He had fallen in love with a woman of their acquaintance, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. Agatha pleaded with Archie to give their marriage another chance, and he reluctantly agreed, but it was clear that his heart was not in it. After twelve years of marriage, the differences between their two natures had torn them apart instead of closer together. While Agatha was social, emotional, imaginative, with a zest for life and travel, Archie was taciturn, rational, and circumspect. He hated illness or any extreme emotions. Agatha had also let herself go in the looks department, she had gained a great deal of weight, and looked older than her age. Nancy Neele, on the other hand, was young and beautiful.

On that fateful day in December, Archie had told Agatha that he was going to spend the weekend with some friends, The James, and would not be coming home. Agatha realized that the other woman, Nancy Neele, was going to also be spending the weekend. It was then that Agatha put the plan in motion that would cause such a scandal. At 9:45 that Friday night, she told her secretary that she was going out, got into the car and drove to Newland Downs where she left the car. From there, she walked back into town and caught the train to London. In London, she went shopping for a winter coat and posted a letter to Archie’s brother Campbell, telling him that she was going to a spa in Yorkshire. Having set up the clues for Archie, she took a train to Harrogate and checked into the Hydro spa under the name of Theresa Neele. It was there that she planned to wait for Archie to come and find her the way that he had done fourteen years ago when they had first met.

But Archie didn’t come and meanwhile the police were looking for her, suspecting foul play. Everyday, Agatha waited at the spa in Harrogate, reading the newspapers, seeing what was being said about her. The press stories initially had been small, but as her disappearance went on, and the police were convinced that it was foul play, the stories became bigger. Even though Archie’s brother Campbell finally told the police that Agatha had said that she was at a spa in Yorkshire, his story wasn’t believed. He had unfortunately burned the letter that Agatha had sent him although he kept the envelope. Deputy Chief Constable Kenward who was in charge of her case didn’t believe his story. Even the newspapers didn’t believe it, although no one thought that perhaps Agatha was traveling under an alias. Reporters discovered that Archie had spent the weekend in the country with friends and in the company of a mysterious woman. They didn’t out and out name Nancy Neele but the speculation was enough for her family to be alarmed.

At any time, she could have ended the suspense but she didn’t. Instead she placed an advertisement in the London Times saying that Mrs. Theresa Neele was interested in getting in touch with her relatives and they could find her at the Hydro in Harrogate. It wasn’t until several of the patrons noticed the resemblance between the guest named Mrs. Neele and the pictures of Agatha in the paper that the suspense was ended. Archie arrived at the Hydro in Harrogate and issued a statement that Agatha was suffering from amnesia. Agatha was immediately whisked away from the Hydro to her sister’s house which was protected by a large iron fence to keep reporters out.

When the press got wind of the fact that Mrs. Agatha Christie was not dead in a ditch but had been enjoying herself for eleven days at spa in Yorkshire, they were livid. If anyone remembers the outcry after the Runaway Bride in Georgia was found, can imagine what it must have been like in England at the time. The press was immediately suspicious of the Christie’s story that Agatha had amnesia, whether temporary or otherwise. Not even several statements from doctors who apparently examined Agatha swayed the press and the public. The papers were out for blood, insisting that huge amounts of public funds had been wasted on a fruitless search for an author who wasn’t even missing. Even when the police issued a statement that the search had only cost less than a hundred pounds, didn’t change public opinion. Agatha, for her part, couldn't understand why people were so angry. She hadn't asked the police to look for her, in fact she had made it perfectly clear in her letter to her brother-in-law exactly where she was going.

So what really happened? Was it an elaborate publicity stunt to increase sales of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? A revenge plot to embarrass her husband? Or was it less obvious, that Agatha had simply had an emotional breakdown, and tried a last desperate attempt to save her marriage that backfired? I’m inclined to agree with the latter theory. Christie seems to have been in a fugue state while she was in Harrogate, one part of her mind was aware of what was going on in the newspapers, but another part of her clearly thought she was Mrs. Neele. No one who was thinking rationally could have come up with such a scheme. If Agatha had been plotting one of her novels, she wouldn’t have left so many holes in the plan.

Any chance that Agatha had of repairing her marriage to Archie ended once the press and the police got involved. The embarrassment and humiliation of being considered a suspect was too much for Archie. The Christies were divorced, and Archie married Nancy Neele. They had a son named Archie and lived happily until Christie’s death in 1962. Agatha Christie too remarried to an archeologist named Max Mallowan, who was fifteen years younger than her. They were married until Christie’s death in 1976. She disliked discussing what happened to her that December of 1926.

In 1979, a film called Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie, and Timothy Dalton as Archie, dealing with Christie’s disappearance was released. Rosalind Christie filed an injunction to try and have the film stopped, claiming emotional distress, but the motion was denied. The film, written by Kathleen Tynan based on her book, suggested that Agatha secretly planned a dark revenge against Archie Christie that could only be averted by Wally Stanton (played by Dustin Hoffman and a completely fictional character), an ambitious American journalist who falls in love with her. The film is only available on VHS.

In 2004, Agatha Christie Her Life in Pictures was shown on the BBC, another retelling of the story of how she managed to disappear for 11 days following her husband's request for a divorce in 1926. Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley of the Harry Potter films), Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) and Anna Massey (Possession) portray the famed British author at three different stages of her prolific career. This movie is available on Netflix.

In 1996, a book by Jared Cade was published called Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days. It was based on a version of events told to the author by the daughter of one of Agatha's friends. The daughter, Judith, stated that Agatha had been out for revenge against Archie because of the affair. However, the daughter was only 10 at the time of Agatha's disppearance, so the story is all hearsay. Rosalind Christie Hicks vehemently denied this version of events.

Sources include:

Agatha Christie, An English Mystery: Laura Thompson, Headline Review, 2007

Aristocrats: Ladies Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox

Ah, the BBC, nobody does it quite the way you do. For every piece of crap like the recent Merlin and the god-awful Robin Hood, they give us a sumptuous costume drama like Aristocrats. Aristocrats is a 1999 mini-series, based on the biography by Stella Tillyard about the fabulous Lennox sisters. The Lennox sisters aren't just any aristocrats, no they are the creme de la creme of aristocrats, the great-grand daughters of Charles II and his mistress Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth. Their story, spanning almost the whole of the 18th century, is one of one of the noblest families in England and the changes that they see in their life-time.

The sisters grow up in a world of immense privilege. From childhood, they are surrounded by servants, and family members. Both their parents were courtiers to George II, consequently the children grew up around the Royal Family, waiting for the time with they too will make their debut and take their place amongst the elite of the country. They are also brought up with the romantic story of how their parents arranged marriage turned into a love match. The 2nd Duke of Richmond was married to Lady Sarah Cadogan to pay off a gambling debt between their fathers. Soon after the wedding, the groom (only 18) took off on a grand tour of Europe, not to return for 3 years. When he returned, he attended the theater, and was immediately taken by a beauty sitting in one of the boxes, surrounded by admirers. Too his surprise, it turned out to be his own wife.

With this story swirling around in their brains, it was no wonder that each Lennox sister grew up to expect to have happy marriages, and to choose their own husbands, while their parents of course felt that since their own marriage was arranged, they knew best for their daughters. Caroline (played by Serena Gordon) is the first to rebel. Unmarried at twenty, and almost on the shelf, she becomes fascinated by Henry Fox (Alun Armstrong). An atheist, and a former libertine, twenty years her senior, he was no one's idea of a perfect match, certainly not Caroline's parents. Although he was a rising politician, he was impoverished. Still Caroline and Henry fell in love and eloped, leading her parents to refuse to see her.

The next sister Emily (Geraldine Somerville), the beauty of the family and the favorite daughter, is pursued by the Earl of Kildare (and future Duke of Leinster played by Ben Daniels), the leading arisocrat in Ireland. He's no more to her parents liking than Henry Fox. Their chief objection? He was Irish. However, Emily was used to getting what she wanted, and she soon managed to sway her parents to letting her marry the Earl of Kildare at the age of 15. The day after her marriage, with the consent of her husband, Emily hightails it over to her sister Caroline's house, for a reconciliation. It is only after Emily has her first child, that Caroline and her parents are reconciled, although they apparently never warm to her happy and successful marriage to Henry Fox (future Lord Holland). After bearing her first husband 19 children, Emily later scandalizes both the aristocracy and her sisters when she remarries after Leinster's death to her children's tutor, a younger Scotsman named William Ogilvie with whom she had been having an affair. Her youngest son, although acknowledged by Kildare was Ogilvy. She and Ogilvie had three children after their marriage.

Lady Sarah Lennox (Johdi May), the second youngest, has the longest road to happiness of all the sisters. She arrives back in England at the age of 14, after having spent most of her childhood in Ireland with her sisters Louisa and Cecilia after their parents' death. The future George III falls in love with her, and her family encourages the idea that a match might be made between the two. But after George becomes King, a more suitable match with the German princess Charlotte of Mecklinburg-Strelitz is arranged. Sarah feels embarrassed and humiliated at the rejection. She rushes into marriage with George Bunbury, who turns out to be indifferent and boring, stumbles into a love affair with Lord William Gordon by whom she has an illegitimate child. Ostracized by society after her husband divorces her, Sarah lives in a kind of purgatory with her brother until she finally finds happiness as the wife of a career soldier, George Napier.

The mini-series is six hours of glorious costumes and sweeping drama, narrated by Emily as played by Sian Phillips as an old woman. At the heart of the story is that of a family. The Lennox family suffers from petty quarrels, jealously, heartbreak, just like any other family, it's just they are extremely rich and privileged. The sisters fight over their parents will, and then later Emiy and Caroline are estranged for years over Lady Sarah's scandalous behavior. It also gives the viewer a good idea of what it was like for a woman of that time period, if she transgressed, and got caught. The performances are uniformly wonderful, although I found Jodhi May as the young Sarah Lennox a bit boring and bland, but I find her a particularly boring actress. I was also disappointed that George II was portrayed as a jolly Englishman, when he barely spoke English.

The final episode spends most of its time telling the story of Emily's son Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a passionate supporter of the United Irishmen, who sought to rid Ireland of the English. Unfortunately because the episode was only an hour, the story seemed truncated. A whole mini-series could be done just on Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The mini-series also never seems to address Lady Louisa's (played by Ann-Marie Duff and later Diana Quick) inability to have children, whether or not that caused her distress. She is the least interesting or knowable of the sisters. She seems to have spent her life trying to be good and doing good works, which is noble but doesn't make for interesting drama. Apparently after her husband's death, she discovered that he'd kept a mistress in another town for their entire marriage.

If you loved The Duchess, the recent movie about Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire, then you will really love this mini-series. It has all the depth that the movie, in my opinion lacked, precisely because the film-makers had six hours to detail their stories. There is also an amazing companion book to the series chock-full of photos and details about the sisters.