Maria Versfelt

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Maria Versfelt (Ida Saint-Elme)

Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt (27 September 1776 – 19 May 1845), also known as Ida Saint-Elme, Elzelina van Aylde Jonghe, and by her pseudonym La Contemporaine, was a Dutch

memoirs.[1][2] Additionally , she is credited with "possibly the earliest satirical magazine produced by a woman."[3]

Life

Versfelt was born in

Lith to the portrayal in her fabricated memoirs, which erroneously claim an Tuscan origin.[4][5] Her parents were Gerrit Versfelt (1735–1781), a vicar, and Alida de Jongh (1738–1828).[6] and not Léopold-Ferdinand de Tolstoy and Van Aylde Jonghe, a corruption of her mother's name. After the death of her father, the family moved to Amsterdam and lived at Groenburgwal. In May 1792, at the age of 17, she married Jan Claasz Ringeling (1768–1801) the son of a helmsman from Buiksloot,[7] with whom she resided at Nieuwendijk and not in Lille, that was Louise Fusil. They had two children; one of whom died in April 1796.[8] In December 1795 they divorced on ground of adultery,[9] as she became the mistress of French General Jean Victor Marie Moreau,[2] with whom, she claims, she had an affair till 1799. He stopped seeing her when it became clear she was having an affair with Michel Ney
as well. Although she claims to have married Alfred Saint Elme in Paris in 1802, no official record supports this claim.

In her

Etienne-Maurice Gerard
.

Works

She published her memoirs with the help of

Directoire, the Empire and even the Restoration… and from each of these personalities, as a skillful courtesan, she had known how to extract things which should have died with the man and gone with him to his tomb."[13] Jehan d'Ivray recounts that Versfelt told the story of how the French diplomat and Minister of finance Talleyrand used thousand franc bills to roll locks of her hair into curls one night, while she pointed out to him the ones he had missed.[2]
The was one of the classic 'kiss and tell' books of the 19th century and competed with other memories of women. It was an instant bestseller in France.

In 1831 Versfelt published her second book, La Contemporaine en Egypte,[14] an account of her travels through France, Egypt, and the Mediterranean. "Give me the great highway, the pleasures and dangers of the road!"[14] she says. Her trip is remarkable when we realize that she was more than 50 years old, and travel to Egypt in the 1820s was not easy. She is graciously thankful to the people who are nice to her and those she finds admirable, but she roasts with exquisite sarcasm those whom she finds ungracious, sanctimonious bigoted or unkind. She tempts her audience with veiled descriptions of the sexual attraction she feels for a traveling companion who is twenty years younger.[14] Although Versfelt is clearly a French nationalist and a Bonapartist, this book often seems to go against the colonialist consensus: It presents very sympathetic portraits of Egyptians and Turks, appalling descriptions of the misery of the Egyptian people, and bitter criticism of the European community in Egypt and the flood of Europeans whom she sees arriving, "adventurers, swindlers and people with no talent whatsoever."[14] After further travels around the Mediterranean, Versfelt managed to get onto an official French ship on which she returned in triumph to Marseille, where her editor was waiting.[2]

Versfelt tried to repeat her success again in London with "possibly the earliest satirical magazine written, illustrated and published by a woman," according to an entry in the Princeton University graphic arts acquisitions catalogue it was called La Caricature francaise. Journal sans abonnees et sans collaborateurs (French caricature. A journal without subscribers and without collaborators). It was published in London to avoid censorship in France.

Louis Philippe of France, she was prosecuted for libel. She was not convicted because "the court could not prove that the published letters were actually falsified."[2] She died, aged 68, in Brussels, in the hospice of the Ursuline sisters.[2]

References

  1. ^ Ragan, John David (2000). A fascination for the Exotic: Suzanne Voilquin, Ismayl Urbain, Jehan d'Ivray and the Saint-Simonians: French Travelers in Egypt on the Margins (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science). UMI. pp. 405–418.
  2. ^ a b c d e f d'Ivray, Jehan (October 1936). "Une Aventuriere sous l'Empire". Les Oeuvres Libres. 184: 175–206, 201–202, 183–184, 197, 205.
  3. ^ a b [graphicarts.princeton.edu "Ida Saint-Elme, the Female Casanova / Graphic Arts/ La caricature francaise"]. Acquisitions, Caricatures and satire, Illustrated books, prints and drawings of the Graphic Arts Collection, Special Collection, Firestone Library, Princeton University. 2 October 2020. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  4. ^ https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/Dutch/1812/c_dutchmotivation1812.html
  5. ^ http://www.cubra.nl/idasaintelme/idatekst.htm
  6. ^ "Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland". Resources.huygens.knaw.nl. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  7. ^ https://www.europeana.eu/nl/item/92076/BibliographicResource_1000056181393
  8. ^ DBNL
  9. ^ "Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland". Resources.huygens.knaw.nl. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  10. ^ Memoirs of a Contemporary
  11. ^ http://www.cubra.nl/idasaintelme/idatekst.htm
  12. ^ Saint-Elme, Ida (1827–1828). Memoires de la Contemporaine (in French) (CreateSpace Independent publishing platform 2017 ed.). Ladvocat.
  13. ^ "Book sale catalogue extract pasted inside the cover of Ida Saint-Elme, La Contemporaine en Egypte (Paris: Ladvocat, 1831) found in the Jesuit Sainte Famille Library in Cairo, Egypt". Book Sale Catalogue Extract.
  14. ^ a b c d Saint-Elme, Ida (1831). La Contemporaine en Egypte (in French) (Adamant Media Corporation 2002 ed.). Ladvocat. pp. 1:X, 1:46, 1:91–92, 2:9–10.
  15. ISBN 0-87338-396-6
    .

External links
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