Essay: Novelist Emma Tennant tells the story of the extraordinary life of her great-great grandmother, Pamela Sims, wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald
Mystery women seem to run in my family. My mother's grandmother, Lily, reputedly a "pretty woman from Ireland", hung out with the Mrs Keppel, Edward VII set - but no more was known of her as she was unable to remember the name of the father of her sons when it came to registering for school. Robina, a way-back, flame-haired Glaswegian, refused to marry a pompous factory owner, John, despite bearing his children. But none is more mysterious than La Belle Pamela.
Born - no-one knows where but this became crucial as the war over her birth and thus the proof of her identity consumed her all her life - Pamela was reared under the name Pamela Sims until 1780 by a humble washerwoman at Christchurch, Dorset.
Then, aged six, she was bought by an emissary of the Duc d'Orléans in Paris who had been sent to find an English companion for his twin daughters: she must be perfect in appearance and her nose must not be too long. Oh, and please bring back a fine mare from England as well . . .
Pamela became a famous beauty before she reached the age of 13. Plunged into the revolutionary politics instigated by the Duc d'Orléans (he was named Philippe Égalité as the uprising against Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette grew to terrifying proportions, but he didn't like to give up his pleasures: as Paris starved, a new silver service, as reported by Pamela, was delivered to the door of the Palais Royal), the washerwoman's daughter was loved and applauded wherever she went.
For, as the stunning young woman, generally considered to be the illegitimate daughter of the Duc d'Orléans and the ambitious, scheming Mme de Genlis, tutor of his children, reached the age of 18, the perfect husband presented himself, and he brought further rebellion and political fervour with him.
Pamela fell in love and married Irish rebel leader Edward Fitzgerald. In a series of miniatures executed at the time, we can see her at the height of her ideal beauty, sporting a glorious coiffure topped by the Bonnet Rouge, symbol of the Revolution. Like the woman thought by all to be her mother, Mme de Genlis, Pamela went in for radical chic.
But was this going to go down well in Ireland? The short answer was no. The Anglo-Irish Ascendancy turned their backs on poor Pamela, and a warm welcome from Edward's family was her sole consolation.
At a society ball that took place on the day Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Pamela, wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and sister-in-law of the Duke of Leinster, appeared all in black. The grandees from their country estates, supporters of the French monarchy, approved - until they saw her attaching red ribbons to her hair. A signal of Jacobin sympathies, the ribbons streamed, as she danced, from the head of the beautiful woman known in Paris as La Belle Pamela. And, despite the red cravat invariably donned by Lord Edward, it was Pamela who bore the brunt of Ascendancy disapproval.
Not that the aristocrats would have appealed to Pamela anyway. An exception was Edward's "dear Mama", who had married Mr Ogilvie, tutor of her large brood by her late husband, the Duke of Leinster. Pamela thrived in the house at Frescati, near Blackrock, where her new mother-in-law had fashioned a charming and simple existence and the garden was planted by her adored husband, Edward, in orange, white and green colours. Pamela's daughter, known as Little Pam, remembered the joys of Frescati, a house Mr Ogilvie sold so the family could move to the Lodge at Kildare. And Pamela and Edward, in the happy early days of their marriage, were considered excessively democratic when they insisted the servants join them after supper in dancing a jig.
But, as is well known, the insurrection failed after the French had tried to invade at Bantry Bay and fell back in a thick mist. The price of £1,000 was put on Edward Fitzgerald's head by the British, and Pamela led an increasingly hunted existence, taking shelter sometimes in the huge, gloomy rooms of Leinster House and finally in a small house in Denzil Street in Dublin.
Here, the French maid who had attended her in Paris - her name was Julie and she had married Tony Small, Edward's rescuer on the battlefield at Eutaw Springs in the American War of Independence - may have been responsible for the last betrayal of Pamela. Giving away Edward's hiding-place at a feather merchant's in Thomas Street to an envoy from the British, the French maid assured his capture and he died from septicaemia following a stab wound in Dublin Castle on June 4th, 1798.
Fitzgerald's life may have been over, but Pamela's wasn't. The question of her true identity came up again when, staying in the free town of Hamburg with her daughter, Little Pam, she found herself a celebrity, a Princess Diana of her day, whose portrait was on sale in all the shops. As a widow, beautiful in black veils and robe, as a young girl in the Bonnet Rouge, perfect profile turned to the painter, and as the child brought over from an English coastal village back in 1780, running after a golden ball in a meadow, Pamela brought about a worshipping frenzy we can all recognise today.
And she was Royalty, wasn't she? Everyone assumed her to be the daughter of Orléans, cousin of the beheaded King.
But the clever, conniving woman, Mme de Genlis, believed to be the mother of La Belle Pamela, had no intention of endangering her reputation by owning up to an illegitimate daughter. Pamela was plain Pamela Sims.
When the grieving Pamela finally accepted an offer of marriage from the American consul in Hamburg, Joseph Pitcairn, an announcement was expected from Mme de Genlis, on the true relationship between the older woman and the ravishing widow. The wedding was close to being called off when "Maman", as Félicité de Genlis had instructed Pamela to address her since arrival at the Palais Royal as a bewildered six-year-old, insisted that Pamela had been bought as a child for hard cash.
Pamela's life, when the romance of Revolution had died down, was a sad one. She and Pitcairn parted, her debts were horrendous, and her daughter, Little Pam, had to dress as a boy to gain a passport on a boat from London to Calais. Sadder still was her subjugation both to Mme de Genlis and Edward's mother, Mrs Ogilvie. Pamela and Edward's son was taken from her by her mother-in-law and money for her daughter dried up as the Fitzgerald family edged away from the bride of the dead Irish rebel leader. Perhaps the name she was given on her passport spells out her history as well as that of France and Ireland: "Pamela Sims Égalité Capet Fitzgerald Pitcairn".
A descendant through the mitochrondial (maternal) line of La Belle Pamela declared recently that he had been approached by an American historian of European royalty and their progeny in search of the true origins of La Belle Pamela. Could he supply DNA?
If that means digging up Mme de Genlis, I'd rather not know what is discovered. Little Pam was my great-great-grandmother and in my view her mother, La Belle Pamela, was the daughter of Mrs Sims from Christchurch, Dorset.
The Harp Lesson, by Emma Tennant, is published this month by Maia Press (£8.99)