Eglantine Wallace, Lady Wallace (née Maxwell; died 28 March 1803), was an 18th-century Scottish playwright and political commentator. She was the younger sister of society hostess Jane Gordon, Duchess of Gordon and a controversial figure in her own right.
Eglantine was the youngest daughter of Sir William Maxwell, 3rd Baronet, of Monreith, Wigtownshire. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she was "[a] boisterous hoyden in her youth, and a woman of violent temper in her maturer years."[1] She was married on 4 September 1770 to Thomas Dunlop, son of John Dunlop of Dunlop and Frances Anna Wallace, the daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Wallace (1702–1770) of Craigie, fifth and last baronet.
On his grandfather's death in 1770, her husband inherited Craigie, took the surname Wallace, and assumed the style of a baronet; however, the property was deeply indebted, and in 1783 he was obliged to sell all that remained of Craigie. It would seem to have been shortly after this that Eglantine obtained a legal separation, on the ground, it is said, of her husband's cruelty. It is probable that the difficulties were due to pecuniary embarrassment.[2]
A little later Lady Wallace was herself summoned for assaulting a woman—apparently a paid companion—and was directed by the magistrate to compound the matter. Leaving Edinburgh, she seems to have settled in London. Her comedy The Ton; or, Follies of Fashion was produced at Covent Garden on 8 April 1788 with a good cast, but, according to John Genest, was "very dull."[3] Reviewers were critical of Wallace's skills, audiences responded poorly, and the play was withdrawn after three performances in London and one failed performance in Edinburgh.[4] Her next play, The Whim (1795), was prohibited from the stage by the Lord Chamberlain and she left England in apparent disgust. In October 1789 she was arrested at Paris as a presumed English agent and narrowly escaped with her life. In 1792 she was in Brussels. There she began a relationship with General Charles François Dumouriez, and her social standing was apparently unaffected, she was the occasional subject of salacious satires.
She died at Munich on 28 March 1803, leaving two sons, the elder of whom was General [Sir] John Alexander Dunlop Agnew Wallace.[3]