For good reason, there is a never-ending literature about Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, which Harvey Mansfield in the introduction to his own translation calls “the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.”
But there has never been much written on Tocqueville’s wife, born Mary Mottley, a native of England. Now that gap has been filled by Sheila LeSueur and Claudine Martin-Yurth’s book Open Every Door: Mme. Marie de Tocqueville. It’s plainly not the work of a professional historian but of someone who has become a strong admirer of Alexis de Tocqueville, and it presents information and context about Madame de Tocqueville which has previously not been available.
A personal note: Sheila was a close friend of my aunt Eleanor Peterson, whom I first met many years ago; more relevant to this book, she is a native of the Channel Island of Jersey, which is located not far off Tocqueville’s ancestral residence on the Cotentin Peninsula of France—and not too far from Portsmouth, England, Mary Mottley de Tocqueville’s home town. Sheila remembers the Nazi occupation of Jersey, which continued until the last day of World War II; she immigrated to the United States in 1952 and worked in nursing in the Detroit area for many years, where she and my aunt were colleagues, and now lives in Arizona.
Here is a review of Open Every Door by Maureen E. Mulvihill in the Florida Bibliophile see page 13, with 3 images from the book):
“While most of us are familiar with Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic, Democracy in America, 2 vols (1835, 1840), few know the extraordinary woman behind the man: Mary Martin Mottley of Hampshire UK, later Mme. Marie de Tocqueville (1799- 1864), the subject of Sheila Le Sueur’s biography, Open Every Door (AZ: Dandelion Books, 2015; 307 pp., e-book, paper, cloth; $26.95; Amazon). Drawing upon contemporary accounts, archival records, and four research trips to France and the UK, Le Sueur has recovered a substantial individual who sustained a long and loving marriage, and whose views on matters political, feminist, and domestic proved useful to her important, very public husband.
Adding historical context and texture to her narrative, Le Sueur depicts the challenges of an English wife in the charged diplomatic world of Nineteenth Century Paris. Sheila Le Sueur, originally of Jersey (Channel Islands), and presently a retired nurse in Mesa, Ariz., is herself a remarkable figure. A survivor of the Nazi Occupation, and with training in medicine, she brings to her writings a large canvas of experience and empathy.
Her book’s valued collaborator is Claudine Martin-Yurth of Normandy, France, currently in Salt Lake City, Utah, who provided translations of selected de Tocqueville letters (Chap. 9, pp. 253-290, with, impressively, 13 photo-facsimiles). For further information, view Le Sueur’s Remembrance webpage of her heroine, with touching personal asides. Truly, a labor of love. We are indebted to Le Sueur.”
