[1] After the death of her father, Charles Clarke, Mary, at age 8, her mother, Elizabeth, and grandmother moved to France in 1801.

Her Scottish grandmother had hobnobbed with thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith in Edinburgh and before the French Revolution lived in Dunkirk.

[2]Ties with England were not lost; in 1808 Mary's sister, Eleanor, married John Frewen-Turner, a member of parliament.

[1] Eventually, Mary's charm became almost universally admired, and as a result she had a number of notable suitors and important contacts in both France and England.

[1] Mary was on very good terms with Madame Récamier, who was both the landlady of their sub-let accommodation at the Abbaye-aux-Bois,[3] as well as a leader in French intellectual salon society.

Chateaubriand – author of Memoirs from Beyond the Grave – was by now a grumpy old man, but he cheered up when entertained by "la jeune anglaise".

Florence Nightingale recorded that "Clarkey" was a stimulating hostess who did not care for her appearance and although her ideas might not always agree with her guests, "she was incapable of boring anyone."

However Clarkey made exceptions including George Eliot, Lady Augusta Stanley, Elizabeth Gaskell[1] and Florence Nightingale in particular.

[2]In 1854, Florence Nightingale set off with a team of women to assist in nursing the wounded men from the Crimean War in Scutari.