A Lady of the High Hills: Natalie Delage Sumter.

By Thomas Tisdale. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2001. Pp. [xx], 188. $29.95, ISBN 1-57003-415-X.)

Charting the extraordinary life of the displaced French aristocrat Natalie Delage Sumter (1782-1841 ), Tisdale' s biography follows its subject from her birth in the palace of Versailles to her death on a South Carolina plantation fifty-nine years later. Born Natalie de Lage de Volude, she was sent to New York at the age of eleven to escape the revolutionary turmoil of her native France. Living in the house of Aaron Burr, Sumter then became a lifelong friend to Burr's daughter, Theodosia, future wife of wealthy South Carolina planter Joseph Alston. On her return to France in 1801, Natalie was already romantically linked to Thomas Sumter Jr., another Lowcountry planter, whom she married against the wishes of her Paris-based family. Life on the Sumter plantation near Stateburg soon bored the young Frenchwoman, and a diplomatic posting for her husband in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a sojourn in her native Paris, came as welcome diversions from the rural South. Sumter returned to the family plantation, where she died, survived by six of her seven children.

Tisdale's aim is clearly to provide a well-documented and readable account of Natalie Delage Sumter's varied life. He follows his subject on her many journeys across three continents, using primary sources to reconstruct her feelings and activities at each port of call. Combining informed narrative of the historical background with this complete account of his subject's life, Tisdale succeeds for the most part in producing a biography that will be accessible to a wide audience. Occasionally, however, a smoother integration of history and biography would have made for a more seamless narrative; instead of using contemporary events and values to inform his discussion of Sumter, Tisdale tends to use them as a canvas upon which her life is then painted.

Although Tisdale's purpose with this biography is not to contribute to recent historical debates, his narrative nevertheless reveals some aspects of his subject's experience that may be of interest to historians. Sumter spent most of her life in the New World, yet Tisdale's account suggests that she missed France and was hopeful of settling there eventually. Hence, despite being a participant in the early modern Atlantic world in the fullest sense of the word, we are left with the impression that she was at her happiest in Paris, close to her family. In this way, Sumter presents an alternative, woman's outlook on this expanding world, one that is clearly at odds with the adventure and opportunity that the Atlantic world is usually seen to embody during this era. Hopefully, Tisdale's competent account will encourage further research into the life of this fascinating and extraordinary early modern woman.

EMMA HART

University of St. Andrews