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Every
so often in reading, one comes across a character so passionate,
so resourceful, so full of indomitable will that readers can't
help but be swept up and away in the story. In Bluebird,
or the Invention of Happiness, Lucy Dillon is such a character.
In short, the girl's got gumption.
Based
on the life of the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, a junior courtier
in the court of Marie Antoinette, this tale is set in the
years leading up to and during the bloody, revolutionary days
of The Terror. On one level, it's a story of survival and
courage and of one woman determined to save herself and her
young family even when all she's left with is wit and wiles.
On another, it's the story of an elite society too blinded
by their own absorption in pleasure and privilege to see that
their world is crumbling beneath them.
Born
into the aristocracy to an absent career military officer
father and a mother displaced by poor health as the Queen's
favorite lady-in-waiting , young Lucy's world is subject to
the whims of her tyrannical grandmother, the formidable family
matriarch. Forced to fend for herself in negotiating family
politics, Lucy comes of age wielding a finely nuanced sense
of the intricacies of human nature, etiquette and social protocol,
and pecking order.
Leaping
at the chance to escape the clutches of her villainess grandmother,
Lucy consents to be married at age sixteen to the future Marquis
de la Tour du Pin, a man she has secretly observed but never
actually met. Introduced to society by her husband's aunt,
Lucy begins to make a name for herself as a bit of a firebrand
in the highest circles. Most famously, she attends a party
given by the Duke of Dorset, defying his order that "all ladies
will wear white," by appearing dressed literally from head
to toe in blue: down to the two artificial bluebirds artfully
placed at the apex of her towering, blond hair-do.
Lucy's
daring serves her well. All too soon, she is caught in a perilous
struggle to survive. Her adventures see her hiding with her
children from revolutionary soldiers in the home of a friend,
confronting the very man at the helm of the slaughter of her
peers, struggling to keep her small family from starving to
death on a harrowing escape across the Atlantic Ocean, and
making a determined go of things as a dairy farmer in rural,
post-Colonial New York. Through it all, Lucy's curious mix
of frankness, pluck, aristocratic entitlement and sheer power
of will sees her through the destruction of the only world
she has ever known and the re-imagining of life as it could
be, lived on her own terms.
Lucy
Dillon and the sheer scope of her story are evocative of Scarlett
O'Hara, although the Marquis is softer around the edges and
decidedly smarter. Set in an era that predates modern feminism
by nearly two centuries, the particular model of feminine
strength evidenced by Lucy makes for a refreshingly unique
and human view into one of the most bloody and well-documented
revolutions in history.
In her
later years, the real life Marquise de la Tour du Pin once
described the "sublime" blindness of the aristocracy in those
days before the French Revolution, as "laughing and dancing
our way to the precipice." Told from the eyes of a most worthy
heroine, this story of an opulent world unraveling at its
spun gold seams is masterfully told. The prose is uncluttered,
straightforward and engaging, painting a sumptuous portrait
of the folly, finery and fumbling humanity of the French nobility
in their final days before succumbing to the wrath of the
mob and Mr. Guillotine.
(June,
2008)
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