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Amélina’s journal: 19th Century society through the eyes of a Parisienne
Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, the family home of William Henry Fox Talbot. The journal of Amélina Petit de Billier was written in French, with a few entries in English or Italian. It has been preserved at Lacock Abbey since she wrote the last volume in 1835, and is now being transcribed and translated for the Fox Talbot Museum with the permission of the owners of the journal, Janet Burnett-Brown and Petronella Burnett-Brown of Lacock Abbey. Amélina is thought to have been born in Paris in 1800, and she died at Lacock in 1876. Among the treasures of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire are fifteen worn notebooks, the journal she kept from 1820 to 1835. The range and value of their contents are only now being discovered. The surviving journal ends in 1835, but she re-read it in 1870, adding some comments, and making many deletions. A text of such length (over 3000 pages) is naturally uneven in interest, and there are lists of hundreds of art works seen and appreciated, accounts of minor French political scandals, and dull days when the weather and the letters she has received are her only topics, but they are far exceeded by the treasures to be found, in a new view of places and events, and in unusual and privileged glimpses of the great or celebrated. Was Amélina the daughter of impoverished French acquaintances of the well-connected Feilding family with whom she lived? Whatever her exact status, it is clear that Amélina Petit de Billier had to sing for her supper, but she did it successfully with voice, harp or piano, in the company of celebrities such as Thomas Moore, with professionals, and with aristocratic amateurs, in the best country houses and the highest social circles of London, Paris, Nice, Florence, Venice and Rome. Nor did she neglect the opportunities which such journeyings brought her: evidently blessed with a lively intellect and a thorough education in the arts, she revelled in opera, theatre, museums, libraries, diaramas, and intelligent conversation, as well as the usual tourist attractions (and some of the more unusual ones), the parties, the riding and hunting, the dancing and the charades. The translations which are published here do not attempt to correct any unusual spellings or punctuation in the original. Amélina frequently refers to her companions using the following abbreviations:
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