Life
1773-1831 [née Stephanie Caroline Ann Syms]; described in marriage certificate as b. Newfoundland and rumoured to be dg. of American officer on Fogo Island; appar. adopted by Madame de Genlis; became companion to the children of the Duc d'Orleans, and rumoured to be his illegitimate dg. by the former; came to England in 1791 and met Sheridan; met Lord Edward at Paris Opera; m. 1792, at Tournay; returned to Dublin, living at Frascati House, Blackrock; danced and entertained; visited Lord Edward in prison; compelled to leave the country after the confiscation of his lands; travelled in Europe, and briefly m. J. Pitcairn, the American consul in Hamburg, retaining the Fitzgerald name; passionately devoted to memory of Lord Edward; three children, Edward
Fox (1794-1873), Pamela (afterward m. Sir Guy Campbell); Lucy Louisa (m.
Capt. Lyon, RN); d. in poverty in Paris, aetat. 57; painted by Mallary in Hamburg, c.1800; painting presented to NGI by descendent of her dg. Lucy; in 1976. DNB EB
[ top ]
Criticism
Cheryl Herr, For the Land They Loved
(Syracuse UP 1991), p.47 [Introduction].
Gerard Campbell, Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald, An Account of their Lives, compiled from the letters of those who knew them (London: Arnold 1904), ill.
Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763-1798 (London: Chatto & Windus 1997), 240pp., sequel to Aristocrats by same author.
[ top ]
Encyclopaedia Britannica [under Edward Fitzgerald], give
bio-details, travelled from city to city in Europe, and died impoverished
and obscure in Paris, 1831; bibl., Gerald Campbell, Edward and Pamela
Fitzgerald (1904); Memoirs of Madame de Genlis (1825); Georgette
Ducrest, Chroniques populaires (1855), and Thomas Moore, Memoirs
of R. B. Sheridan (1825).
Portrait of Pamela in the Louvre; portrait of Pamela in muslin dress with a young
child (dg., holding corn-flowers and wheat), made in Hamburg by a virtually unknown artist Mallary, now held in National Gallery of Ireland, having been presented by a descendent of her second child;
another a portrait of Lady Pamela and her children in R. R. Madden, United
Irishmen, V (1916), cited as being ‘from an engraving by Scriven,
after the celebrated painting by George Romney’ [see Cheryl Herr, For the Land They Loved, 1991, plate 10, p.85 facing].
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)