Rute, Mme de (1831–1902)

French novelist. Name variations: Marie-Laetitia-Studolmine Wyse; Mme de Solms; Comtesse Rattazzi. Born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1831; died in 1902; daughter of Sir Thomas Wyse and Laetitia Bonaparte (daughter of Lucien Bonaparte); married three times.

Selected writings:

Bicheville (1865); Les Mariages de la Créole (1866).

Mme de Rute was born Marie-Laetitia-Studolmine Wyse in County Cork, Ireland, into a family whose fortunes were largely determined by political intrigue. Her father Sir Thomas Wyse was an English noble. Her mother Laetitia Bonaparte was the daughter of Lucien Bonaparte and his second wife Alexandrine Jouberthon Bonaparte . Lucien's relationship with Alexandrine was not condoned by his older brother, Emperor Napoleon I (who had attempted to bribe Lucien into divorcing her), and so their ten children and their children's children, including Laetitia and her daughter, were never recognized as Bonapartes by the French ruling family.

After her first marriage, Mme de Rute, then known as Mme de Solms, lived in France until forced to leave by Napoleon III's disapproval in 1853. She later returned to France, where her novel Bicheville (1865), which was set in Florence, was published. However, she was forced to leave the country again in 1865, after her subsequent novel, Les Mariages de la Créole (published the following year in Brussels), was refused publication.

sources:

Harvey, Sir Paul, and J.E. Heseltine, comp. and eds. The Oxford Companion to French Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Andrea Bewick , freelance writer, Santa Rosa, California