Note 200 — JOURNAL OF ELIZABETH LADY HOLLAND (continued 4)
Reading edition
His wife, whose origin is shrouded in mystery. The probability is that she was a daughter of Madame de Genlis and Philippe Egalité, Duke of Orleans. Madame de Genlis, however, always declared that when she adopted her in order to assist the Orleans children, whose governess she was at the time, to learn English, she was the five-year-old daughter of Nancy Sims, living at Christchurch; that she had been born in Newfoundland, and that her father was one Guillaume de Brixey. Lord Edward first met her in Paris in 1792, and married her within a month. After her husband’s death she went to Hamburg, where she married, in 1800, Mr. Pitcairn, the United States Consul. The marriage, however, was not a happy one, and they were soon separated. After leaving Hamburg, she went to Vienna, and finally settled near Montauban, in Chambord.