Thérèse Bentzon

Marie-Thérèse Blanc, better known by the pseudonym Thérèse Bentzon (21 September 1840 – 1907), was a French journalist, essayist and novelist, for many years on the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes. She was born at Seine-Port, Seine-et-Marne, a small village near Paris, traveled widely in the United States, and wrote of American literature and social conditions.

Childhood

Marie-Thérèse was the daughter of Edward von Solms, consul of Württemberg in Paris, and Olympe Adrienne Bentzon. She was born in the family house, owned by her grandparents. She had a brother, of whom we know nothing. Her grandmother, a woman she never mentions in her letters except to say she was a "witty and sound Parisian" was at that time remarried to the Marquis de Vitry, an old French aristocrat, born before the French Revolution, who used to tell her stories about this era.

Although her biological maternal grandfather died when her mother was very young, she mentions in her letters to Theodore Stanton that she was raised with an admiration for this unknown grandfather, Major Adrian Benjamin Bentzon, governor of the Danish West Indies from 1816 to 1820. The major, after Denmark lost the Virgin Islands, went on to file a case in the US Supreme Court arguing he should have his sugar cane plantations back. After living in America with his family, Adrian Bentzon went back to Europe, but died later in the Caribbeans. His wife later married the Marquis de Vitry, installed in the small village of Seine-Port.