{"id":1377,"date":"2024-07-26T19:05:57","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T18:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2025-08-06T08:29:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:29:06","slug":"the-sisters-on-the-place-cassini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1377","title":{"rendered":"The sisters on the Place Cassini"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
The Palais Astraudo on the Place de l’\u00cele de Beaut\u00e9, July 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am fortunate to have a tolerant family\u2014one that supports and indulges my interest in Macintosh, even when that interest intrudes a little on our summer holidays. This week they were, once again, kind enough to let me take them on a small detour, this time to visit the site in Nice where two of Macintosh’s granddaughters lived in their final years: what was in their time the Place Cassini, but is now the Place de l\u2019\u00cele de Beaut\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The widowed sisters\u2014Mathilde and Anna\u2014lived in the Palais Astraudo<\/a>, an elegant colonnaded apartment block built on the north side of the place<\/em> in the mid nineteenth century, next to the Eglise Notre Dame du Port<\/a>. The sisters, who had begun their lives as \u00e9migr\u00e9s<\/em> in England, died only a few years apart in the 1870s in aristocratic comfort. Mathilde (by then a baroness) died in July 1872, at number 11, the day before her 80th birthday, and Anna (by then a countesses) followed in April 1879, at number 7, aged 84. The pair lived, and died, in apartments belonging to (or rented by) Mathilde’s son, George-Fernand Dunot de Saint-Maclou, whose wife, Marie-Sidonie de Gombault Razac, was Anna’s daughter, and thus his first cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have mentioned before<\/a>, I have no intention of following the lives of Macintosh’s grandchildren (and great grandchildren) across nineteenth-century France in my book, but it matters to me, for reasons that I cannot fully articulate, to know something of their stories\u2014their beginnings and their endings, and the lives they led that are now largely forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am fortunate to have a tolerant family\u2014one that supports and indulges my interest in Macintosh, even when that interest intrudes a little on our summer holidays. This week they were, once again, kind enough to let me take them on a small detour, this time to visit the site in Nice where two of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}