Margaret Mercer Elphinstone

Margaret Mercer de Flahault, comtesse de Flahault de la Billarderie, 2nd Baroness Keith and de jure 7th Lady Nairne (12 June 1788 – 11 November 1867) was a Scottish society hostess.

Born Margaret Mercer Elphinstone in Hertford Street, Mayfair, she was the only child of George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith and his first wife, Jane. She was early brought into the circle surrounding Princess Charlotte of Wales, over whom she exercised considerable influence, which was not universally welcomed: Cornelia Knight made some criticisms of her in her autobiography, and the princess's husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Saafeld, wrote that she had been one of those most determined that Charlotte should not be a "good and obedient wife", and that the princess had been afraid of her. She was involved in the intrigues surrounding the relationship between the princess and her separated parents, much to the displeasure of the Prince of Wales.

On 20 June 1817, at Edinburgh, she married Auguste Charles Joseph, comte de Flahault de la Billarderie, an aide-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been educated in Britain, and took refuge there at the time of the Bourbon Restoration. The countess, who was one of the Lady Patronesses of Almack's and took a prominent place in society, succeeding her father as Baroness Keith, and her cousin as Lady Nairne in 1837, although she was not recognised in the latter. When the count was restored to favour in France, she became a noted hostess in Paris. She died at the Palais de la Légion d'honneur on 11 November 1867, and was buried at Tulliallan Castle, Perthshire. The eldest of her five daughters, Emily Jane, who married Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne, succeeded as Lady Nairne (and was recognised in 1874), but the two baronies of Keith, limited to heirs male of her body, became extinct.

Source

• K. D. Reynolds, Flahault de la Billarderie, Margaret de, suo jure [sic] Lady Nairne and suo jure Baroness Keith, and Countess de Flahault de la Billarderie in the French nobility (1788–1867), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 7 July 2008