Maria Versfelt

Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt (27 September 1776 – 19 May 1845), also known as Ida Saint-Elme, Elzelina van Aylde Jonghe, and by her pseudonym La Contemporaine, was a Dutch courtesan and author celebrated for her tumultuous life alongside French generals of Grande Armée.

[8] In December 1795 they divorced on ground of adultery,[6] as she became the mistress of French General Jean Victor Marie Moreau,[2] with whom, she claims, she had an affair till 1799.

In her Picaresque novels she maintains that General Ney was the love of her life, but he married Aglaé Auguié and left hastily to become ambassador in the Helvetic Republic in 1802.

She published her memoirs with the help of Armand Malitourne, Amédée Pichot and Charles Nodier in eight volumes from 1827 to 1828, Mémoires d'une Contemporaine,[5][10] which made her famous.

The front piece of the book showed a marble sculpture of Versfelt "representing her at the age of 19, lying naked on an ancient Greco-Roman bed."

In the words of one outraged reviewer, she was the "indiscreet and immoral confidante of the men of the Directoire, the Empire and even the Restoration… and from each of these personalities, as a skillful courtesan, she had known how to extract things which should have died with the man and gone with him to his tomb.

"[11] Jehan d'Ivray recounts that Versfelt told the story of how the French diplomat and Minister of finance Talleyrand used thousand franc bills to roll locks of her hair into curls one night, while she pointed out to him the ones he had missed.

[2] Versfelt tried to repeat her success again in London with "possibly the earliest satirical magazine written, illustrated and published by a woman," according to an entry in the Princeton University graphic arts acquisitions catalogue it was called La Caricature francaise.