My name is Gillian. I am a writer, playwright, and actor based in California.

Current Project

My aunt died a few years ago and her house in London was to be sold. My cousin salvaged boxes of papers, books, and photos and posted them to me–thankfully while the postal service still functioned in the US.

The contents of the boxes were hundreds of years old. I found phrenology readings, postcards written in the trenches, and piles of letters. The history was irresistible and I began to try to put it all back together.

On one exploratory mission, I uncovered a brown bundle of handwritten pages tied together with pale blue embroidery cord, and I saw they were stained with time and travel. Certainly crossing the ocean to me in California was not the first journey this little package had made. But whose neat French script described Lima, Panama, and Les Îles Marquises in 1847?

My maternal grandfather was French and his grandfather Georges was a Parisian journalist. Perhaps these pages belonged to him or came from a newspaper story? Consulting online genealogical records, it didn’t take long to discover Georges’ mother, Gabrielle Mathieu de Dombasle. My mother talked of an eccentric relative who had lost a fortune and was buried in Monaco. Curiously, Gabrielle’s occupation was recorded as ‘adventuress and illustrator.’ Searching for more about Gabrielle introduced me to Adele–via Emilie Dott-Sarout’s Pacific Mathildas research.

Armed with this new name, I consulted the manuscript again and found a signature across the bottom of a page–Adèle de Dombasle. Here she was! Her story was here with me in this little brown bundle of paper.

Now, several years later, much of Adèle’s writing has been gathered into this book by Frédéric de La Grandville who kindly transcribed the manuscripts for me and offered his scholarly insights. (At the moment, you can only read it in French but I hope to publish an English version soon.)

While I was at it, I decided to start a repository for all the Garreaus. Like every family, they have a few interesting stories to tell. (Maybe you know some of your own?)

You can get in touch with me by sending your email below. Direct links are in the site header.