The pleasure of not being there
Peter Brooks, 18 November 1993
Benjamin Constant: A Biography
by Dennis Wood.
Routledge, 321 pp., £40, June 1993,0 415 01937 0 Show More
by Dennis Wood.
Routledge, 321 pp., £40, June 1993,
Isabelle de Charrière (Belle de Zuylen): A Biography
by C.P Courtney.
Voltaire Foundation, 810 pp., £49, August 1993,0 7294 0439 0 Show More
by C.P Courtney.
Voltaire Foundation, 810 pp., £49, August 1993,
“... formidable wit and independence. One of the more durable of the ‘épouseurs’ was the young James Boswell, who on first meeting her composed some doggerel beginning: And yet just now a Utrecht lady’s charms Make my gay bosom beat with love’s alarms. Who could have thought to see young Cupid fly Through Belgia’s thick and suffocating ... ”