Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, the writer of these letters, which give
so vivid a picture of the brilliant court of the last Napoleon, is the
wife of the present Danish Minister to Germany. She was formerly Miss
Lillie Greenough, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived with her
grandfather, Judge Fay, in the fine old Fay mansion, now the property of
Radcliffe College.
As a child Miss Greenough developed the remarkable voice which later was
to make her well known, and when only fifteen years of age her mother took
her to London to study under Garcia. Two years later Miss Greenough became
the wife of Charles Moulton, the son of a well-known American banker, who
had been a resident in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe. As Madame
Charles Moulton, the charming American became an appreciated guest at the
court of Napoleon III. The Paris papers of the days of the Second Empire
are filled with the praises of her personal attractions and exquisite
singing.
After nine years of gaiety in the gayest city in the world came the war of
1870 and the Commune. Upon the fall of the Empire, Mrs. Moulton returned
to America, where Mr. Moulton died, and a few years afterward she married
M. de Hegermann-Lindencrone, at that time Danish Minister to the United
States, and later successively his country's representative at Stockholm,
Rome, and Paris.
Few persons of her day have known so many of those whom the world has
counted great. Among her friends have been not only the ruling monarchs of
several countries, and the most distinguished men and women of their
courts, but almost all the really important figures in the world of music
of the past half-century, among them Wagner, Liszt, Auber, Gounod, and
Rossini. And of many of these great men the letters give us glimpses of
the most fascinatingly intimate sort.