Marie Joséphine Louise, duchesse de Gontaut

Marie Joséphine Louise, duchesse de Gontaut (1773–1857) was a French court office holder.

She was born in Paris on the 3rd of August 1773, daughter of Augustin François, comte de Montaut-Navailles, who had been governor of Louis XVI and his two brothers when children.

[1] Mother and daughter emigrated to Coblenz in 1792; thence they went to Rotterdam, and finally to England, where Joséphine married the marquis Charles Michel de Gontaut-Saint-Blacard.

[1] She followed the exiled royal family in 1830 to Holyrood Palace, and then to Prague, but in 1834, owing to differences with the head of the royal household, the Duc de Blacas, who thought her comparatively liberal views dangerous for the prince and princess, she received a brusque dismissal by Charles X.

She herself wrote in her old age some naive memoirs, which throw an odd light on the pretensions of a governess of the children of France.

Duchesse de Gontaut-Biron
The Duchess of Gontaut, governess of the children of France, walking Louise d'Artois and her brother, Henri, duc de Bordeaux, in the gardens of Saint-Cloud.