A 19th-century diarist finds new life

I'm familiar with the extracts from the diaries of Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle that were published in the 1950's. She was a remarkable woman of her times, and her diaries shed a very interesting light on social life in England and on the Continent during the period of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the first half of the 19th century. Wikipedia notes about her:

Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle (born at Falkingham, now Folkingham, Lincolnshire, in 1779, died 1857) was the main author of the extensive Wynne Diaries and wife of the celebrated Royal Navy officer Thomas Fremantle (1765–1819), a close associate of Nelson.

Known in the family as Betsey, she was born Elizabeth Wynne, the daughter of Richard Wynne (1744–1799) and his wife Camille (born de Royer), who were Roman Catholics. Wynne was a fast liver, later a friend of Casanova. He got into financial difficulties in 1788, sold his Lincolnshire estate, and took his family abroad. Elizabeth married Fremantle in 1797, after he had rescued her and her family from Leghorn (Livorno) during the 1796 French invasion of Italy and taken them to safety in Corsica. The marriage took place in Naples on 12 January 1797, at the house of the British envoy, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, who took care of the arrangements.

Thomas Fremantle bought the manor of Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire, for his family in 1798 for 900 guineas. Elizabeth lived there for the rest of her life. The Fremantles' children included Thomas (1798–1890), a Tory politician later created 1st Baron Cottesloe, a daughter Emma (born 13 June 1799), Charles (1800–1869), a Royal Navy officer after whom the city of Fremantle in Western Australia is named, and William Robert (c. 1809–1895), who became Anglican dean of Ripon in Yorkshire.

Privately, Elizabeth lost sympathy with Lady Hamilton and Nelson when their conspicuous affair became known: "I had a letter from my husband today.... Lady Nelson is sueing for a separate maintenance. I have no patience with her husband, at his age and such a cripple to play the fool with Lady Hammilton." Fremantle, in command of the Ganges, distinguished himself at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 under Nelson's command. He was also prominent at Trafalgar in 1805. Elizabeth bore her husband's absences at sea with difficulty, especially as her family grew. They kept up an intimate correspondence, which is spliced into the 1952 edition of the diaries. They received a good deal of hospitality from the family of Lord Buckingham, who lived nearby at Stowe. Buckingham as a figure close to the government was a help to Fremantle in his naval career.

The early parts of the Wynne Diaries, which run from 1789 to 1857 in 41 manuscript volumes, provide a vivid and informative account of a well connected English family in Europe (mainly in Germany and Italy). The bulk of them were written by Elizabeth, but diaries of her younger sisters Eugenia (born 1780) and Harriet (born 1786) have also survived.

There's more at the link.

According to an English newspaper, more of her diary material has been discovered, sufficient to prompt a grant of £100,000 (about US $154,000) to an historian to write the first-ever biography of her life. The Independent reports:

As a young woman Elizabeth Wynne witnessed some of the key events of the 18th century, noting meticulously in more than 40 volumes of diaries experiences from nursing Admiral Lord Nelson following the loss of his arm to the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution. But despite her remarkable life, "Betsey" was lost to history.

Now a historian at Bath Spa University has been awarded a £100,000 grant to write the first definitive biography of Wynne after her journals were rediscovered at her ancestral home, Swanbourne House in Buckinghamshire.

They recount in detail Wynne's life as the wife of one of Horatio Nelson's famous "band of brothers", Admiral Thomas Fremantle, and whose bohemian relations included a lover of Casanova. Wynne was just 19 and pregnant when she cared for Nelson at sea after his amputation.

The project will cast new light on the role of women in 18th- and early 19th-century society, including their place on board the Royal Navy's ships as Nelson's fleet sailed around the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars.

The diaries were kept by Wynne, a striking beauty of her era, from the age of 11, just weeks before the start of the French Revolution, until her death in 1857. The cast of characters encountered by Wynne ranged from a key agent of the doomed French king Louis XVI to Lady Hamilton, the scandal-prone socialite who became Lord Nelson's mistress and organised Fremantle's wedding to the young Englishwoman.

. . .

Describing her first encounter with her future husband, Wynne wrote: "How kind and amiable Captain Fremantle is. He pleases me more than any man I have yet seen. Not handsome, but there is something in his countenance and his fiery black eyes are quite captivating. He is good-natured, kind and amiable, gay and lively; in short he seems to possess all the good and amiable qualities that are required to win everybodies [sic] heart the first moment one sees him."

A year later, after spending time on board various naval vessels where accommodating captains vacated their quarters to make way for the Wynnes, a newlywed Elizabeth found herself on board the HMS Seahorse, a warship conveying the wounded Nelson back to England after a disastrous raid on Tenerife.

She made clear her ability to handle the irascible hero, writing on 24 August 1797: "A foul wind which makes the Admiral fret, he is a very bad patient."

Dr Elaine Chalus, whose research grant comes from the British Academy, said: "Betsey lived in Europe at a time when it was on the cusp of revolution. She was a young woman who was incredibly unflappable and ambitious, and has left us with this remarkable record of what life was like for a woman in her position.

"She was 19 and pregnant on board a British warship when she nursed Nelson and showed herself able to cope with just about anything. She went on to have a family who were involved in the highest levels of British society. She is a fascinating and important character. I would love to be able restore her to her rightful place in history."

The journey back to the historical record for Wynne began when Dr Chalus discovered a worn paperback on a bookstall at a folk music festival containing a few extracts of the diaries. Further research located the journals in a private family archive, the vast majority of them unpublished.

Again, there's more at the link.

So much of the history of the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th century is occupied with war and politics that the social life of those involved is largely ignored. It's a period that's always interested me, and I hope this biography will shed new light on the human interaction that's at the heart of any historical epoch - even if it's often ignored. This should be a fascinating project.

Peter