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Atypical Deaths of these Historical Figures

Khalid Elhassan July 14, 2020 34 min

Gouverneur Morris - Founding Father of the United States

38. The Exhibitionist

The Louvre Palace in the eighteenth century. Getty Museum

Gouverneur Morris was a nymphomaniac who liked to get freaky. A bachelor until the age of 57, he liked the ladies, and by all accounts, the ladies liked him back. Many of the surviving accounts come from his own diary, which he filled with details about his escapades, referring to intimacy as “celebrating”. He was especially active while serving as a diplomat in France just before and after the French Revolution.

Morris’ main mistress at the time was a married noblewoman, who lived in the Louvre – now a museum, then a royal palace that housed some of the king’s favorites. Both he and his lover liked taking risks. In one diary entry he wrote about a tryst: “Go to the Louvre…we take the Chance of Interruption and celebrate in the Passage while [Mademoiselle] is at the Harpsichord in the Drawing Room. The husband is below. Visitors are hourly expected. The Doors are all open“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.