Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott

Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott
Richard Holmes

Geoffrey Scott

‘Lives that Never Grow Old’ is a wonderful series– edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.Zélide lived in her father’s moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764. The rest of Zélide’s story was unknown until the brilliant young Boswell scholar Geoffrey Scott pieced it together from her intimate letters and essays.Subsequent affairs with a cynical cavalry officer, a celebrated but vacillating writer (aptly named Benjamin Constant), and a thoroughly reliable music master, took her eventually to another fairytale mansion in Switzerland. This tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a ‘belle-esprit’ is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written.

Scott on Zélide

Edited with an Introduction by Richard Holmes

The Portrait of Zélide

by

Geoffrey Scott

CLASSIC BIOGRAPHIES EDITED BY RICHARD HOLMES (#ulink_ddc4cc56-feef-5d69-8767-85ecb842cd18)

Defoe on Sheppard and Wild

Johnson on Savage

Godwin on Wollstonecraft

Southey on Nelson

Gilchrist on Blake

Scott on Zélide

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u9ad220d4-5b59-5749-a032-09b3f8004673)

Title Page (#u7563b849-3fa9-5af7-9063-58c8a184b6b5)

CLASSIC BIOGRAPHIES EDITED BY RICHARD HOLMES (#ub0d5bb72-b135-55e4-98cb-ed3802788106)

INTRODUCTION (#u40738acd-40bf-5331-892b-f2fbb3cb9629)

SELECT CHRONOLOGY (#uadee7bff-a6bf-57ae-95c5-4a3bf02cf062)

THE PORTRAIT OF ZÉLIDE (#u918a4e75-4c7e-5004-9102-628b12c0494e)

ONE (#ucea60f90-d39d-5caa-9300-b26554f5a71d)

TWO (#u288be194-823a-5edb-9f43-eabb9d1ed852)

THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)

FURTHER READING (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_90e70966-39fe-51d0-b60b-6f6ec2b94ae2)

1

In July 1764 a striking young woman was sitting at the window of a remote country château in Holland, carefully writing a secret letter. The château – with fairytale turrets, a deep moat, and lines of poplar trees stretching to a distant view of canals and windmills – was her family home: the seventeenth-century castle Zuylen, hidden away deep in the peaceful farmlands near Utrecht.

The young woman was Isabelle de Tuyll, the eldest daughter of the aristocratic de Tuyl de Serooskerken family, governors of Utrecht. The secret letter she was writing was addressed to her new-found confidante, a glamorous Swiss aristocrat and career soldier, the Chevalier Constant d’Hermenches. Isabelle was twenty-four years old, headstrong, and unattached. The Chevalier d’Hermenches was married, almost twice her age, and had the reputation of a libertine. He wore a dashing black silk band around his temples, to hide a war wound. Their clandestine correspondence was being smuggled in and out of castle Zuylen via a compliant Utrecht bookseller.

2

If it was an unusual situation, then Isabelle de Tuyll (known by the local landowners as ‘Belle de Zuylen’) was a thoroughly unusual young woman. If not exactly beautiful, she was extremely attractive and drew glances wherever she went. She had a full, open face, with large green eyes and wild auburn haired brushed impatiently back from a high forehead. She was tall, commanding, full-bosomed, and restless in all her movements. She was not only an accomplished harpsichord player (and composed her own music), but also an expert shuttlecock player, quick and determined in her strokes, with an almost masculine speed and self-confidence.