Madame Serbat's Great-Great-Great Grandmother by Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun

You've seen portraits by Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun, even if you don't know it. They are usually of young women, or young women and children. The women are dressed in pseudo-Grecian or pseudo-pastoral robes, with big hats and/or big hair, and everyone shines like a fresh apple. She did lots of portraits of the royal family, particular Marie Antoinette and her children.

What Vigee LeBrun was most remarkable for was her uncanny ability to get out of town the day before the tumbrils rolled. She left Paris moments before the Revolution broke out, just so happened to be tired of St. Petersburg a week before crowds with cudgels and torches came looking for her hostess Catherine the Great, and on and on and on. Her autobiography is untainted by any self-reflection or political acumen, but is supremely entertaining as the story of a gifted, cheerful little ditz who liked celebrities.