Читать книгу Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott - Richard Holmes - Страница 5

In July 1764 a striking young woman was sitting at the window of a remote country château in Holland, carefully writing a secret letter. The château – with fairytale turrets, a deep moat, and lines of poplar trees stretching to a distant view of canals and windmills – was her family home: the seventeenth-century castle Zuylen, hidden away deep in the peaceful farmlands near Utrecht.

The young woman was Isabelle de Tuyll, the eldest daughter of the aristocratic de Tuyl de Serooskerken family, governors of Utrecht. The secret letter she was writing was addressed to her new-found confidante, a glamorous Swiss aristocrat and career soldier, the Chevalier Constant d’Hermenches. Isabelle was twenty-four years old, headstrong, and unattached. The Chevalier d’Hermenches was married, almost twice her age, and had the reputation of a libertine. He wore a dashing black silk band around his temples, to hide a war wound. Their clandestine correspondence was being smuggled in and out of castle Zuylen via a compliant Utrecht bookseller.