A friend of Marie-Antoinette (Lady Atkyns)

Madame Charlotte Atkyns.
( After a miniature in the possession of Count Lair. )
A FRIEND OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE (LADY ATKYNS)
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF FRÉDÉRIC BARBEY
WITH A PREFACE BY VICTORIEN SARDOU OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd. 1906
When I brought out at the Vaudeville in 1896 my play, entitled Paméla, Marchande de Frivolités , in which I had grouped together dramatically, with what verisimilitude I could, all the various Royalist attempts at rescuing the son of Louis XVI., the Dauphin, from the prison of the Temple, there were certain scholars who found fault with me for representing an Englishwoman, Lady Atkyns, as the protagonist, or at least the prime mover in the matter of his escape. Some of them went so far as to accuse me of having invented this character for the purpose of my piece.
Lady Atkyns, certainly, has left but few traces of her existence; she was a Drury Lane actress, pretty, witty, impressionable, and good—it seems there were many such among the English actresses of the time. Married (we shall see presently how it came about) to a peer, who gave her wealth at least, if not happiness, and who does not appear to have counted for much in her life, Lady Atkyns became a passionate admirer of Marie-Antoinette; she was presented to the Queen at Versailles, and when the latter was taken to the Temple, the responsive Englishwoman made every effort to find her way into the prison. She succeeded by the use of guineas, which, in spite of the hatred professed for Pitt and Coburg, were more to the taste of certain patriots than the paper-money of the Republic.
Lady Atkyns suggested that the Queen should escape dressed in her costume, but the Royal prisoner would not forsake her children. There is a tradition that in refusing the offer of her enthusiastic friend, Marie-Antoinette besought her good offices for the young Dauphin, while putting her on her guard against the intrigues of the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois. However, most of these facts were still in doubt, resting only on somewhat vague statements, elliptical allusions, and intangible bits of gossip, picked up here and there, when, one day, my friend Lenôtre, who is great at ferreting out old papers, came to me, all excitement, with a document which he had come upon the evening before in a portfolio among the Archives of the Police.