Note
T
he following memoir was discovered in a bank vault belonging to my great-great-grandmother Ann, upon her death, in 1925, at the age of seventy eight. The account was written over many years, in a barely decipherable hand, in the pages of seven leatherbound diaries, a pattern of forget-me-nots adorning the corners of the paper. Some light corrections had been made, evidently by Ann’s husband, my great-great-grandfather, with some words blacked out. Errors of grammar, punctuation, and usage were, however, left intact. Pasted in were newspaper clippings, correspondence between Ann and a respected New York City charity, and letters from Ann’s sister, her lawyer, and others. Perhaps due to its controversial nature, this material was hidden by the family for almost a century, mysteriously ending up in a hatbox in the attic of my father’s house, where I stumbled on it last year, after his death. My siblings and I were most astonished to discover that our family had such a scandalous American character among our forebears.“Madame”had not been mentioned in the stories handed down to us by our parents and grandparents, who include doctors, bankers, academics, barristers, and politicians. In spite of sharp disagreement in the family over certain matters described here, in the interests of future scholars and historians—and to correct the public record—I have decided to make this account public without further comment. —Teresa Smithhurst-O’Rourke, PhD Trinity College, Dublin
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