Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Edited by
Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin,
Russell Goulbourne and Valerie Mainz
Continuum UK, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
ISBN 978-0-82642-278-1
Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne, Valerie Mainz
6.1 Victor-Marie Picot after Charles Jean Robineau, The Assault, or Fencing
Match, which took place between/Mademoiselle La Chevalière D’EON
DE BEAUMONT and Monsieur DE SAINT GEORGE on the 9th of April
1787./At Carlton House, in the presence of His Royal Highness, Several of
the Nobility, and many eminent Fencing Masters of London, mezzotint,
17 cm × 19 cm, 1789, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.
6.2 George Dance, Charles Geneviève Louise Auguste André Timothée
Chevalier d’Eon, drawing, graphite with grey wash and watercolour,
25.6 cm × 19.2 cm, 1793, London, British Museum, Prints and Drawings,
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
6.3 Anon, Mademoiselle de Beaumont, or the/Chevalier D’Eon/Female Minister
Plenipo. Captain of Dragoons Etc. Etc., etching, 14 cm × 10.2 cm, from the
London Magazine of September 1777, xlvi, p. 443, University of Leeds,
Brotherton Collection.
7.1 Anon, Casque à la Minerve ou la Dragone, engraving, hand-tinted
gouache, 29.5 cm × 23.8 cm, from the Galerie des Modes, Rapilly, 1776,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Costume Council Fund, Photograph
©2009 Museum Associates/LACMA
7.2 Bodice, skirt and overskirt said to have belonged to the Chevalier d’Eon, silk
taffeta lined with white linen, lace, ribbons, c. 1779, Tonnerre Museum,
inv. 1991, fiche 449, gift of Madame Coeurderoy.
7.3 Francis Haward after Angelica Kauffmann from a painting by Latour,
Carola-Genovefa-Louisa-Augusta-Andrea-Timothea-D’Eon de Beaumont,
stipple engraving, 18 cm × 11 cm, 1788, University of Leeds, Brotherton
Collection.
8.1 Anon, The Chevalier d’___ producing his Evidence against certain Persons,
etching, 9.5 cm × 15 cm, from the Oxford Magazine, London, 3, November
1769, p. 184, London, British Museum, Prints and Drawings, © The
Trustees of the British Museum British Museum.
8.2 Anon, The Trial of M. D’Eon by a Jury of Matrons, etching, 9 cm × 17 cm,
from the Town and Country Magazine, 15, June 1771, University of Leeds,
Brotherton Collection.
8.3 Anon, La Découverte ou la Femme Franc-Maçon, mezzotint, 32.5 cm
× 24.5 cm, London, S. Hooper, 1771, University of Leeds, Brotherton
Collection.
8.4 Anon, Enlevement de Mlle d’Eon, etching, early proof, 16.5 cm × 23 cm,
1771, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.
8.5 Anon, No.3 The Nuptuals of Miss Epicæne d’Eon, etching, 19.5 cm × 25.5 cm,
1771, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.
8.6 Anon, Hail! Thou Production most uncommon/Woman half-man and man
half-Woman, etching, frontispiece to An Epistle from Mademoiselle d’Eon
to the Right Honorable Lord Mansfield – On his Determination in regard
to her Sex, London, M. Smith, 1778, © British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved 1562/290.
8.7 Anon, St George & The Dragon and Madlle d’Eon riposting, etching, 26 cm
× 34 cm, 1789, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.
9.1 After Jean-Baptiste Bradel, A La Chevaliere d’Eon, frontispiece engraving
to La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d’Eon, 1779, University of
Leeds, Brotherton Collection.
11.1 Anon, Charles Genovefa Louisa Augusta Andrea Timothea D’Eon de
Beaumont./Knight of the Royal & military order of St. Louis. Captain
of Dragoons. Aide de Camp to the Marechal Duke de Broglio;/Minister
Plenipotentiary from France to the King of Great Britain, mezzotint,
37 cm × 28 cm, 1773, London, S. Hooper, University of Leeds, Brotherton
Collection.
Preface
Griselda Pollock
historian and a French studies scholar, all with specializations in the history and culture
of eighteenth-century Britain and France. This took place at the University of Leeds
where, for reasons as curious as the case itself, and probably linked to the fact the
Chevalier was a Freemason, an archive of papers and images relating to the Chevalier
d’Eon had been deposited in the founding Special Collections of the Brotherton Library.2
Scholars interested in this case were obliged to come to Leeds to do their research. Thus,
it made sense for the University of Leeds to initiate an expanded study of the resources
on its doorstep by soliciting work on the Chevalier from a wide range of international
scholars, with the ambition of critically analyzing not only a fascinating episode from
eighteenth-century British/French relations and pre-Revolutionary political culture, but
also an historical case study full of resonances for contemporary queer and transgender
studies. D’Eon’s change of gender identity not only leads scholars to investigate his/her
own writings on self, gender and identity, which are shaped in late-eighteenth-century
modes of spiritual autobiography and theories of gender, but also demands visual analy-
sis of the prints, paintings and cartoons that this extraordinary personal transformation
inspired and troubled. While historians may draw on contemporary visual imagery as
supplementary evidence or as documentation, the art historian analyzes the semiotic
and visual conventions used in each different system of representation, from engraved
portraiture to political cartooning, each tradition in turn also being shaped by local and
national histories of image-making and political/aesthetic vocabularies. The images need
to be read as themselves specific sites for the articulation of the meanings of bodies,
genders, national and political identities.
D’Eon’s place in French regional history is as important as the part that such an
educated, travelled and literary figure played in international relations and the shifting
terms of British and French political discourse. Thus, papers in this volume defy the
tendencies in historical as well as cultural studies to remain within national boundaries
or to distinguish between local and national histories. D’Eon’s involvement in diplomatic
affairs also led him to Russia, and this international dimension can be tracked through
his work. As part of the history of his natal town of Tonnerre, in France, the complex
history of a cross-dressed or transgender member of a secret service who later welcomed
the Revolutionary overthrow of the regime for which he had worked, becomes a canvas
on which to plot out new aspects of both late eighteenth century society and contempo-
rary explorations of gender and sexuality on the one hand, and gender as an imaginary
identity, conventionally as well as imaginatively constructed across intersecting worlds
of intimacies, secrets and intrigues as well as public debate, diplomacy, war, military
training, courts and costume.
This collection of readings, studies, interpretations, debates and investigations does
not come to a single conclusion about who or what the Chevalier d’Eon was. Instead,
this group of international scholars and archivists seek to examine the complexities
of history through the interplay of distinctive and diverse disciplinary expertise, each
analyzing in depth one aspect of the multi-faceted figure whose interest and significance
lies precisely in his/her role in instigating questions that defy easy answers and breach
disciplinary boundaries. Far from fostering prurient curiosity about a scandalous
case, the collection makes subjectivity, politics, soldiering, spying, writing, theorizing,
celebrity-seeking, gender, power, and self-fashioning come into play on an international
historical stage, linking the political and intellectual ferment of the pre-Revolutionary
eighteenth-century in Britain and France with other trends in cultural-historical
examination of the relation between individual subjectivities and their fields of action
and self-realization.
P R E FA C E xi
This project was initially sponsored by the transdisciplinary initiative of the Centre
for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, then supported by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council, to which acknowledgement must be made for enabling the lively
encounters and debates of which this excellent collection of transdisciplinary scholarly
work is the considered product.
Notes
1 Gary Kates, Monsieur D’Eon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (New York:
Basic Books, 1995).
2 I am indebted to Chris Shepherd of the Special Collections of the Brotherton Library for this suggestion
as to how Lord Brotherton, when buying materials for the library he was creating for his scholarly niece,
made the decision to acquire this collection of materials.
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Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all those whose assistance, advice, financial and mate-
rial help, contributions or encouragement made possible the present volume and the
conference at Leeds in April 2006 at which many of its chapters were first presented
as papers.
In particular, we would like to thank Griselda Pollock and the AHRC Research
Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (Centre CATH) at the University of
Leeds for providing vision, drive, funding and administrative support for the Chevalier
d’Eon conference. We must also acknowledge the organizational contribution of Josine
Opmeer and Rosalind McKever in ensuring that the conference ran smoothly.
We are grateful, too, to Ben Hayes and his colleagues at Continuum books for their
help and support in the production of this book.
In addition, we would like to acknowledge the generous financial support from the
Royal Historical Society and from the School of Fine Art, School of History, School
of Modern Languages and Cultures, Centre for Gender Studies, and the Brotherton
Library at the University of Leeds. The Brotherton Library is also to be thanked for
kindly agreeing to waive reproduction fees for the many images that it supplied for
this book.
However, the most pleasurable sponsorship came in the form of a donation of
144 bottles of award-winning Chevalier d’Eon wine by Eric and Emmanuel Dampt
of Vignobles Dampt at Collan on the Tonnerre-Chablis border. It is difficult to think
of a more appropriate contribution. After all, d’Eon himself used imported Tonnerre
wines to forge enduring friendships with the British nobility, and the wines they sent
likewise helped to cement many deep friendships and lasting cultural links. These
included a new relationship between Leeds and d’Eon’s home town of Tonnerre, which
was represented at the conference by a municipal delegation. We would therefore like to
acknowledge the interest, input, encouragement and reciprocal hospitality of Raymond
Hardy, at that time mayor of Tonnerre; his deputy, Frédéric Billy; Marie-Christine
Beccavin of the Bibliothéque municipale de Tonnerre; Laurent Hardy; Christine
Rolland; Elisabeth Chaussin; and Philippe Luyt, as a representative of d’Eon’s wider
family. We hope that they and all other conference delegates are satisfied by the result of
our endeavours.
We are also grateful to all our contributors, and particularly Chris Sheppard, who
has worked tirelessly with the editors on behalf of the Brotherton Library, and Gary
Kates, who encouraged the project from the start and proved so very generous with
his time and resources, receptive to new ideas, and genuinely excited by papers that
revised aspects of his own work.
xiv ACKNOWLED GEMENTS
Finally, we would like to note our gratitude to Margaret Coutts, University Librarian
at Leeds, Professor Simon Dixon and Dr Mark Curran.
Cross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy, Charles d’Eon de Beaumont’s unusual
career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists,
playwrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with
manifestations of the extraordinary. D’Eon’s significance as a historical figure was already
being debated more than 45 years before his death. In 1763, a hostile writer predicted
that d’Eon’s memory would be associated with dishonour and scandal for both himself
and France:
‘Il outrage la France jusques dans les siècles à venir.’ . . . Le Livre du Plenipotentiare [i.e. d’Eon’s
Lettres, mémoires et négociations] sera un monument éternel de la division des Ministres
François . . . Les Historiens diront que son administration étoit mauvaise . . . que dans cette
Cour tout étoit livré à la cabale et à la prévention. Les Annales d’Angleterre citeront ces endroits,
pour . . . le Tableau de la France sous le règne de Louis XV. C’est ainsi que le plus petit mortel
déshonore souvent un grand Etat, et le flétrit jusques dans la dernière posterité.
[‘He outrages France right up to centuries to come.’ . . . The book of the Plenipotentiary will
be an eternal monument to the division of French ministers . . . Historians will say that its
administration was bad . . . that in that Court everything was given up to faction and prejudice.
The Annals of England will cite those places for . . . the picture of France under the reign of
Louis XV. This is how the smallest of mortals often dishonours a great State, and blackens it
for the whole of posterity.]1
This prediction proved erroneous, for the event that has most fixed the attention of
contemporaries and historians on d’Eon was his subsequent unique mid-career gender
change in the 1770s. Unsurprisingly, this has been a subject for intense speculation, often
to the exclusion of other aspects of his life and achievements as a scholar, diplomat,
soldier, duellist, feminist thinker, publicist and secret agent. Hence, most scholars have
seen him as a marginal and exceptional individual, and made little attempt to assess
d’Eon’s historical and cultural significance. The essays in this collection contribute to
d’Eon’s rehabilitation as a figure worthy of scholarly attention and display a variety of
disciplinary approaches. They offer significant new insights into d’Eon’s life and times,
and give nuanced readings of how a gender identity could come to be negotiated
over time.
The problem of reaching a realistic assessment has been compounded by the mystery
and myth that surround d’Eon as a historical figure. Much of it was encouraged by the
Chevalier himself, in a series of heavily fictionalized autobiographical accounts.2 These
2 SIMON BURROWS ET AL.
self-justificatory narratives attempted to explain how d’Eon was born a woman but had
lived the first half of his life as a (highly successful) man. In fact, this was the opposite
of the truth: d’Eon was really a man who in the mid-1770s took on a female persona,
thereby bringing his political career to a close.
Many of d’Eon’s fabrications – for example, the story of how he first dressed as a
woman, Lia de Beaumont, on a diplomatic mission to Russia in order to befriend the
Empress Elizabeth, are repeated in recent popular historical accounts.3 Other tales were
invented in the nineteenth century, particularly by the historian Frédéric Gaillardet, to
try to explain his gender transformation. A native of d’Eon’s home town of Tonnerre,
Gaillardet suggested that d’Eon dressed as a woman primarily in order to seduce other
men’s wives and daughters.4 This assumption was lent some credibility by the memoirs
of another famous early modern cross-dresser, the abbé de Choisy, which contain a
catalogue of amourous exploits.5 Gaillardet nonetheless pushed his claims to extremes.
Under his pen, d’Eon became the lover of George III’s Queen, Charlotte of Mecklenberg-
Strelitz, and sired George IV. As the dates of Charlotte’s marriage (8 September 1761),
d’Eon’s arrival in Britain (September 1762) and Prince George’s birth (12 August 1762)
made such a thing impossible, Gaillardet’s account suggests that d’Eon travelled to
England in December 1761 during a lull in fighting in the Seven Years’ War, and had a
secret interview with Queen Charlotte during which the Prince of Wales was conceived.
Despite Gaillardet’s later admission that he fabricated much of his evidence, the story
has been repeated persistently down to the present day.6
Not surprisingly, such sensational material has attracted the attention of enthusiasts,
scholars and litterateurs to ‘the strange case of the chevalier d’Eon’.7 He has also attracted
the attention of psychologists and sexologists, and for most of the last century his gender
transformation has been viewed through a Freudian lens. His cross-dressing, it was
usually assumed, must have a psychosexual explanation. Until the second half of the
twentieth century the terms ‘Eonist’ and ‘Eonism’ were the standard English words for
transvestites and transvestism respectively, but ‘Eonism’ was also, thanks to Havelock
Ellis, widely regarded as a psychological condition or compulsion.8 However, in the
mid-twentieth century, new ideas about gender-identity disorders led to d’Eon being
redefined not as a transvestite, but a transsexual – a person who considers their sex to
have been ‘misassigned’.9
In his 1995 study Monsieur d’Eon is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual
Masquerade, Gary Kates suggested a radically different interpretation of d’Eon’s case,
that seemed better geared to the known facts. Drawing on an untapped collection of
d’Eon’s autobiographical manuscripts and papers in the Brotherton Library in Leeds,
Kates suggested that d’Eon’s gender change had little to do with sexuality and everything
to do with politics. He presented evidence to suggest that d’Eon himself was responsible
for the first rumours that he was really a woman, and showed that they began to circulate
at a time when he was marginalized politically, troubled by debts and feared enemies in
high places, some of whom, d’Eon believed, wished to kill or kidnap him.
Using a sale catalogue of d’Eon’s library, Kates also revealed that d’Eon possessed
numerous books on the nature of women: indeed his collection of this so-called querelle
des femmes literature was the largest in any known private library of the period. D’Eon
had clearly read this literature for, among the manuscripts in the Brotherton Library,
Kates found a number of unpublished manuscripts in d’Eon’s hand which could only
be described as Christian feminist writings.10 These provided a further key to d’Eon’s
gender transformation, for they suggested that d’Eon came to view the adoption of a
female persona as a means of moral regeneration, leaving behind the corrupt world of
INTRODUCTION 3
male politics. From a ‘bad boy’ he had been transformed into a ‘good girl’.11 He then
went on to explore the rich implications of d’Eon’s gender change and the ease with
which he had been able to manipulate contemporary perceptions of himself.
Kates’ multi-layered analysis opened up rich possibilities for further study of d’Eon
and the worlds in which he operated, exploring, among other things, eighteenth-century
perceptions of gender; early feminist literature; his use of the media to reinvent himself;
d’Eon’s political links, both in France and in British radical circles; his gendered theol-
ogy; factional conspiracy and espionage in Louis XV’s France; the shadowy worlds of
underground pamphleteering and London’s French refugee community. His interpreta-
tion thus has been of considerable heuristic value to other scholars, as well as offering
a new interpretation of d’Eon himself.
In the wake of Kates’ work, d’Eon could no longer be dismissed as ‘a strange case’,
nor pathologized as a psychological condition. Instead, he emerged as a serious,
autonomous political actor, worthy of attention in his own right, but also a means by
which scholars could explore many facets of eighteenth-century life and culture. In
the decade following the publication of Kates’ book, several scholars explored d’Eon
in these wider contexts.12 Alexandre Stroev presented him as one of many ‘aventuriers
des lumières’ and Simon Burrows depicts him as a leading Grub Street pamphleteer and
political blackmailer.13 Anna Clark has used the Wilkes and d’Eon affairs as a vehicle
to examine changing views of manhood and citizenship,14 while Dror Wahrman used
d’Eon as a case study to support his challenging contention that the later eighteenth
century witnessed the development of modern perceptions of the self.15 This renewal
of interest inspired an academic conference at Leeds University in April 2006 under the
aegis of the AHRC Research Centre CATH, in which scholars and d’Eon enthusiasts,
including a delegation from d’Eon’s home town of Tonnerre, came together to discuss
d’Eon’s career, image and significance. Many of the chapters in this book are revised
versions of papers given at the conference, and several of them attempt to revise aspects
of Gary Kates’ original thesis.
From that conference it became apparent that the myth of d’Eon exists in the various
guises of visual representation alongside those culled from the texts of history, literature
and autobiography. Through the media of pictures, prints and paintings, constructions
of d’Eon can appear to be deeply embedded within past times whilst also continuing to
offer up significant material for contemporary cultural discourse and analysis. Since the
1770s, changing representations of d’Eon have been widely used to articulate societal
concerns about the nature of identity, gender and nationality, and they continue to
inspire reflections on these issues.
The essays in this collection are divided into three main sections, dealing with
d’Eon’s career and politics, gender and representation, and heroes and heroines. These
are followed by a note by Chris Sheppard on the provenance of d’Eon’s papers and a
conclusion by Gary Kates, which reflects further on the implications of new research
for our understanding of d’Eon and the thesis he advanced in his landmark study.
***
Charles de Beaumont was born on 5 October 1728 in Tonnerre, a small town approxi-
mately 100 miles southeast of Paris. His parentage, though noble, was relatively humble.
The Beaumonts were big fish in the small pond of the Tonnerrois, supplying mayors and
supervising their vineyards and estates, and they looked likely to remain so. A preco-
cious youth, d’Eon quickly distinguished himself by his scholarly aptitude, moving to
4 SIMON BURROWS ET AL.
Paris to attend the Collège Mazarin, followed by legal studies at the Collège de Quatre
Nations and admission to the Paris Parlement at the unusually young age of 19. His
first, rather dry publications, his Essai historique sur les différentes situations de la France
par rapport aux finances sous le règne de Louis XIV (1753) and Mémoires pour servir à
l’histoire générale des finances (1760) appeared in these years.
Application and brains were not enough to secure advancement in the rigidly hier-
archical society of ancien régime France. Charles needed patronage. Family connections
provided a start, helping secure him an appointment as secretary to the Intendant of
Paris, Bertier de Sauvigny. D’Eon gave complimentary copies of his publications to
leading nobles, drawing the attention of Directeur de la librairie Malesherbes, who
appointed him to the post of royal censor in 1758. This gave d’Eon more opportunities
to hone his style, as did shorter pieces for periodicals.
D’Eon went on to secure an appointment as secretary to Alexander Mackenzie, the
Chevalier Douglas, a Scottish Jacobite in French service sent on a diplomatic mission
to the Russian court. Once arrived at court in St Petersburg, d’Eon had to navigate the
troubled waters of international diplomacy in the attempt to improve French relations
with the rising northern power. France’s hope of detaching Russia from her alliance with
England proved unsuccessful. For ‘our little d’Eon’, there was plenty of opportunity to
show his capabilities.
Douglas’ mission to Russia had a second, covert aim, which cut across the declared
one of seeking a new ally. King Louis XV was becoming increasingly concerned at the
military successes of his talented cousin, the Prince de Conti. Although there is little
evidence to support later claims that Conti considered mounting a coup, the King was
nonetheless eager to find a stage for Conti’s talents at a safe distance from France.16
Working closely with his confidant, the Comte de Broglie, he mobilized le Secret du Roi,
a secret network of French agents in Poland, Russia and elsewhere to connive at Conti’s
election as King of Poland.17 Among them was d’Eon, acting in a double capacity long
before there was any question of his sex. Working for the King’s Secret arguably encour-
aged d’Eon’s tendency to show impatience or even indifference towards his nominal
superiors. As an agent he was working for the King, not his ministers.
D’Eon was keen to see action in the Seven Years’ War with Prussia and England, which
had broken out in 1756. His chance came in May 1761, when Minister of War Choiseul
agreed to appoint him to a cavalry regiment. He quickly transferred to a dragoon unit
in the regiment d’Autichamp, closer to the front, and saw action at Villinghausen. At
skirmishes at Ulstrop, Einbeck and Osterwick later in 1761 he showed conspicuous
bravery under fire, rescuing munitions from enemy capture and taking several hundred
prisoners. His service was brief, however, and ended early the following year with his
appointment as secretary to peace envoy, the Duc de Nivernais. In the years that fol-
lowed, d’Eon was rarely seen outside his distinctive dragoon uniform, which he shed
only with the greatest reluctance.
D’Eon’s appointment as secretary to Nivernais was in some ways a surprise given
his Russian expertise but the King’s Secret had now turned its attention to Britain, so it
accorded with d’Eon’s position as secret agent. Besides his public role, d’Eon also arrived
in London carrying a secret order, signed by Louis XV, to investigate possible routes
for invading Britain. D’Eon’s impact on the negotiations of the 1763 Peace of Paris was
less significant than he would later claim, yet he once again distinguished himself by his
remarkable diligence, slaving away at despatches for up to fifteen hours a day. He was
accorded the great, extraordinary honour of carrying the ratified treaty to Paris at King
George III’s behest in February 1763. On his return to London, Nivernais decorated
INTRODUCTION 5
him with the cross of the royal and military order of Saint-Louis, which raised d’Eon
to the rank of ‘Chevalier’. This honour remained with d’Eon for the rest of his life – the
cross of St Louis was the only male embellishment he continued to wear after adopting
female dress in 1777. With peace concluded, Nivernais returned to France, and d’Eon
was accorded the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary until the arrival of the new ambas-
sador, the Comte de Guerchy. Even before Guerchy reached London, he and d’Eon were
at loggerheads over money. Once the ambassador arrived, the dispute escalated rapidly
as d’Eon defied orders to hand over his papers to the new ambassador and ignored
letters of recall. Thereafter the affair degenerated into a mud-slinging pamphleteering
battle that led, in due course, to both d’Eon and Guerchy facing criminal charges before
British courts.
D’Eon and Guerchy’s paths had crossed before, on the battlefield, in circumstances
which led the former to question the latter’s courage as an officer. Court politics also
played a role: Guerchy’s appointment was due to his links to the Choiseul-Praslin faction,
which Louis XV’s mistress the Marquise de Pompadour had successfully championed;
d’Eon clung to the disgraced Broglie clan. The way in which the Broglie-operated Secret
du Roi had survived this ministerial change naturally caused confusion and concern to
Pompadour and her favourites, who may initially have targeted d’Eon in order to flush
out the king’s clandestine espionage machine and its political allies.
By publishing a large quarto volume, the Lettres, mémoires et négociations in March
1764, however, d’Eon shifted the dispute up a gear.18 Larded with the laboured puns,
biblical and classical analogies and self-important posturing that characterized his later
works, the Lettres gave chapter and verse on d’Eon’s financial claims. They included
copies of ministerial correspondence that managed to be excruciatingly embarrassing
for Guerchy and Praslin, while holding back the genuinely sensitive material in his
possession. The book nonetheless enjoyed a succès de scandale on both sides of the
Channel. The British ambassador at Versailles was lending it out by the hour.19 D’Eon
had broken all the rules of polite and professional discretion. Although the British
government refused an extradition request, d’Eon was stripped of his rights to appear at
George III’s court. Guerchy was recalled to France in 1767 and died shortly afterwards.
With characteristic doggedness, death did not discourage d’Eon from publishing a final
pamphlet against him.
Louis XV’s death in 1774 would, one might have thought, have marked the end of
the Secret. In practice it survived in a somewhat ghostly form, and the 1763 plan for
revenge on Britain would eventually bear fruit in the secret arming of the rebel American
colonies. Remarkably, considering the scandals he had caused, Broglie and Louis XV
decided that it was best to keep d’Eon in London, even with all the compromising
papers he still held, rather than buying him off. D’Eon’s obstinacy helped here, as he
turned down repeated offers to return, scuppering several promising negotiations by his
petulant insistence that debts dating back to his Russian service be paid, with interest.
Although Louis XV did grant him a pension of twelve thousand livres in 1766, this was
fitfully paid and repeatedly suspended. The years between 1765 and d’Eon’s return to
France in 1777 thus represent an extended pas de deux between d’Eon on the one hand
and Broglie and the French King on the other.
During this period d’Eon’s closest English friend was Admiral Shirley, the 5th Earl of
Ferrers, who gave him the run of the library and estate at Staunton Harold, a pleasant
retreat in which to write Les Loisirs du Chevalier d’Eon.20 This series began appearing
in 1770, and eventually extended to 13 volumes, covering finance, history and political
theory. Staunton Harold also offered a convenient bolt-hole when rumours began
6 SIMON BURROWS ET AL.
circulating that he was a woman. The first documented rumours date to October and
December 1770. In London the Macaroni fad with its over-accessorized fops and
effeminate manners was just beginning, and so the question of d’Eon’s gender quickly
became the focus of fierce betting, which often took the form of life-insurance policies.
By late March 1771 d’Eon was frequenting the coffee houses where stock-jobbers met,
challenging anyone who bet on his sex to a duel. Such antics had the opposite effect of
silencing speculation, which continued until 1777 when, having heard perjurous but
uncontested evidence in a case concerning wagers on d’Eon’s sex, a jury concluded that
d’Eon was indeed a woman.
French Foreign Minister Vergennes had tasked Beaumarchais with picking up the
tangled skein of negotiations for d’Eon’s return. Vergennes was almost certainly not
fooled, but went along with Beaumarchais’ convenient fiction that d’Eon was in fact
a woman. For one thing it made it impossible for d’Eon to insist on one of his many
demands – that he have his audience de congé (farewell audience) with George III,
something a woman could never do without throwing ridicule on both monarchs. The
‘Transaction’, a document d’Eon signed on 4 November 1775, laid down the conditions
for his return to France.21
The most surprising of the conditions laid down in the ‘Transaction’ was that d’Eon
was to ‘re-adopt’ women’s clothing, accepting that he had in fact been a woman all along,
and not to wear his treasured Cross of Saint-Louis whilst at Versailles or Paris. Given
that tales of d’Eon adopting women’s dress in Versailles or in Russia in the 1750s are
now untenable, this transformation is indeed remarkable. Although d’Eon was presented
to Louis XVI at Versailles in 1777, otherwise he seems to have adopted female attire
reluctantly. His motivations for accepting this fiction were probably political in nature.
As a woman he was far less likely to become the victim of kidnap or assassination
by government agents, or Guerchy’s relations, who had not forgotten his role in the
Ambassador’s recall and death.
The transformation thus served Vergennes and d’Eon. The former could rest assured
that any revelations d’Eon now made would not be credited; the latter came – eventu-
ally – to appreciate the celebrity this transformation brought him. Although he spent
the next eight years an exile back in Tonnerre, and was refused permission to return to
London in 1778, he still enjoyed the freedom to play the notable in his home town.
When he finally secured permission to return to London in 1785 in order to rescue
his possessions from being sold to cover debts owed to his landlord, it was en femme.
He remained in female attire even after the fall of the French monarchy absolved him
of any residual loyalty to Louis XVI or his predecessor. It also robbed him of his pen-
sion, forcing him to sell off some of his impressive library in 1791, followed by other
possessions in 1792. He nonetheless came out in support of the revolutionary cause in
1792, offering to lead a regiment of Amazons in the war against Austria and Prussia.
His sympathy with the new republic faded however, following the execution of the
king in January 1793. D’Eon now capitalized on his combination of fencing skill and
female dress to display himself in theatres in London and later tour the country with
the actress and female fencer Mrs Bateman and the Chevalier de Saint George. This
career as performer was cut short in 1796, due to an injury d’Eon accidentally sustained
during a show at Southampton.
By this point d’Eon had already been obliged to quit his capacious lodgings under-
neath a wine merchant in Brewer Street and move into lodgings with Mrs Mary Cole,
a native Frenchwoman and widow of a British Navy engineer. In 1805 he secured an
advance from a publisher for his Memoirs, which he prepared, yet never published.
INTRODUCTION 7
The temper of the times had changed markedly since the Macaroni 1770s, and ‘he-she
things’ such as d’Eon were now the object of confusion or disgust rather than innocent
wonder and bemusement. Female clothing did not protect him from several months’
imprisonment for debt in 1804, from which he was released only at the price of selling
his Cross of Saint-Louis. D’Eon’s horizons, which had once encompassed the globe,
were now confined to a single room at 26 New Milman Street. Here d’Eon spent years
writing and rewriting the story of his, or rather her, life, shuffling reams of newspaper
clippings and in many cases amending original letters and documents to fit her fictional
story, a salvation-seeking pilgrim’s progress from ‘bad boy’ to ‘good girl’. D’Eon died
peacefully on 21 May 1810. The mystery of his male anatomy was now discovered and
rigorously documented.
***
The first set of essays in this collection deals with d’Eon’s career and politics in the period
spanning 1762–1785, when d’Eon enjoyed his greatest public prominence. D’Eon’s
activities have important implications for our understanding of Anglo-French political
culture. Following on from Gary Kates’ observations that the Chevalier d’Eon’s gender
transformation was effected for political rather than sexual reasons, Simon Burrows
considers the Chevalier d’Eon’s dispute with the Comte de Guerchy in 1763–64 to show
how the Chevalier d’Eon used the press to fabricate evidence and mould his public
identity. Guerchy’s alleged plot to poison the Chevalier d’Eon in October 1763 was
the kind of incident that brought the French government and its agents into disrepute,
reinforcing images of France as a despotism and Britain as a land of liberty. Edmond
Dziembowski’s examination of d’Eon’s correspondence with his paymasters in Paris
during 1762–3, when d’Eon was at the zenith of his diplomatic career, illuminates both
how d’Eon shaped the intelligence he supplied to suit his own agenda, and how French
politicians and diplomats interpreted and responded to British politics. It reveals how
difficult they found it to understand the new style of politics pioneered by Pitt the Elder,
which fascinated and terrified them by turns.
D’Eon himself was to exploit British political methods shortly afterwards in his
struggles with Guerchy, and later on behalf of the French government. Jonathan Conlin
examines how the Chevalier used Wilkite weapons of legal challenge, pamphlets and
mob violence to cause public embarrassment to Guerchy. In his writings of this period,
d’Eon promotes a pre-modern patriot politics in which pluralist political mediations
are criticized in the name of a classical model of traditional participatory citizenship,
founded on ideas of Republican virtue and the undistorted voice of the people. The
Chevalier d’Eon’s relationship with the playwright Beaumarchais is the subject of
an essay by Donald C. Spinelli. Whilst he was negotiating terms for d’Eon’s return
to France, rumours spread in London that d’Eon was a woman. Spinelli shows how
Beaumarchais capitalized on these rumours to advance and enrich himself at d’Eon’s
expense, coercing him into female dress. Finally, in Elisabeth Chaussin’s essay on
d’Eon’s activities during his stay in Tonnerre between 1779 and 1785, we encounter
d’Eon the builder, agriculturalist and local notable who succeeded in maintaining the
fiction of his femininity among and in cooperation with a community who shared the
secret of his gender. The town’s archives are mined to provide fresh information about
the Chevalier d’Eon’s background and behaviour during this period when, dressed as
a woman, he carried off the performance of his life while juggling the roles of woman
and minor nobleman.
8 SIMON BURROWS ET AL.
Amazon, drawing on a myth already associated with Russia and in particular with
the empress Catherine II. In the second essay in the section, Joseph Harris treats the
phenomenon of French cross-dressing in the early modern period, by examining the
two most celebrated cross-dressing narratives of the era, d’Eon’s autobiographical
writings and those of the abbé de Choisy. He argues that both Choisy and d’Eon sought
to ‘revalorize femininity’ as better than its male counterpart, and suggests that cross-
dressing is best understood as an activity with its own history rather than as a series of
transgressions of established rules and conventions. There were nonetheless important
divergences between the two cases: Choisy’s cross-dressing was aesthetic and sexually
predatory; d’Eon’s was ethical and spiritually regenerative. Whereas Choisy dressed up
to be a bad boy, d’Eon sought to be a good girl.
Anna Clark documents the evolution of d’Eon’s relationship with another renowned
exile and troublemaker: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher’s autobiographical
writings provided role-models for d’Eon’s self-fashioning, firstly as anti-courtier and
man of nature, then as master of his own passions and finally as a ‘unique self ’. Yet
d’Eon’s fashioning of his female self challenged the misogyny often imputed to the
philosopher and his novels, resisting slavish dependency on the Rousseauian hero(ine).
Simon Davies’ essay goes further, showing how d’Eon’s interaction with contemporary
authors and their fictional creations could be a two-way process. Davies highlights many
fascinating parallels with the cross-dressing hero of the sentimental novel Les Amours
de Faublas, suggesting that real events in d’Eon’s colourful career may have inspired
fictional accounts. Finally, Rachel Hammersley throws light on the production of d’Eon’s
translation of a seventeenth-century English political tract, The Excellencie of a Free State.
Teasing out links to several other fellow-travellers of the republican Commonwealth
tradition, she places d’Eon among an intriguing cohort of thinkers, active on both sides
of the Channel. They included men who would inspire Revolutions across the Atlantic
world, notably Thomas Hollis and Jean-Paul Marat.
D’Eon’s endless rewriting of his own history and doctoring of his personal archive has
made it necessary for scholars to wrestle with their subject, and to pay especial attention
to the provenance of the images and manuscript sources on which they work. Chris
Sheppard’s study of the background to the most important collection of d’Eon papers,
held at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, is especially timely, therefore. It
identifies Freemasonry as the thread linking Lord Brotherton and his librarian with
the Chevalier. The complex readings that d’Eon’s palimpsestuous nature demands
might be considered a source of frustration to those foolhardy enough to tackle him.
The afterword by d’Eon’s biographer Gary Kates suggests otherwise, describing the
exhilaration he experienced when first uncovering the richness of the Leeds archive.
Here he pauses to reminisce, but also to reflect on the dramatic resurgence of scholarly
and public interest in this figure. Kates’ engagement in particular continues to draw
attention to the unique combination of feminism and salvationist theology that d’Eon
brought to bear in his later autobiographical writings.
Taken as a whole, this collection allows us to draw a number of conclusions. Close
attention to the ways in which d’Eon was perceived in Britain reveals the complexities
of eighteenth-century British attitudes towards France and the French. While some cari-
catures and satires on d’Eon reinforce stereotypes of the French ‘other’, much newspaper
commentary was supportive of d’Eon and far from xenophobic in character. Britons from
well beyond the political elite were capable of distinguishing between opposing sides in
French political battles, and identifying with groups whose struggles, political values
and interests appeared to parallel their own. Although he was French, the London mob
10 SIMON BURROWS ET AL.
lionized d’Eon. If, in fact, the political cultures of Britain and France diverged rapidly in
the 25 years before the French revolution, this was not fully visible to contemporaries,
particularly on the French side. Even after long exposure, Gallic statesmen and diplomats
struggled to grasp the realities of the new British politics, which was taking on a more
popular complexion. The similarities between Britain and France were often sufficient to
make them miss or misunderstand key differences. Only by embracing a more complex
and less fundamentally oppositional model of British attitudes to the French and vice
versa can we explain d’Eon’s career and the milieux in which he operated. Similar caution
is required as we turn to the question of his gender transformation.
Modern transgender studies have suggested that the transition from one sex to the
other can be accomplished as quickly and totally as flicking on a light switch, extinguish-
ing past gender identities. The findings presented here, however, suggest that in d’Eon’s
case the process was far more attenuated, presaged by experimentation and never fully
complete. D’Eon’s transition possessed a layered quality that defies two-dimensional
paradigms. His surreptitious donning of corsets and his stubborn insistence in con-
tinuing to wear his Cross of Saint-Louis above his female attire, suggests the need for
a model of gender identity that can accommodate stratification and gradation equally
well as homogenization.
Judith Butler’s model of gender identity suggests that the individual performs gender
before a passive audience. D’Eon’s audience, however, was far from passive. As the
evidence discussed here makes clear, many of the individuals and communities who
consumed d’Eon’s literary, visual or physical persona were aware of the fictions that
underpinned it. They were in short complicit in his self-fashioning. His transforma-
tion therefore was less of a confidence trick perpetrated on his contemporaries than a
masquerade at once public and intensely private.
In his search for role-models and alter-egos capable of helping him to express his
multiple selves, d’Eon drew inspiration from a breathtakingly wide range of contexts
and genres: historical and mythical, sacred and secular, classical and Christian, scholarly
and scandalous. To us, these may well appear to be antonyms, opposites, mutually
exclusive. Indeed, the bricolage by which d’Eon appropriated tropes and attributes
could be taken as symptomatic of an identity on the verge of collapse. In fact, d’Eon
drew strength from apparently contradictory sources, and even while his physical and
financial resources were drained by years of penury in old age, this apparently most
paradoxical of personalities established a strong sense of identity. Far from being the ‘le
plus petit mortel’, d’Eon’s refashioning of his self ensured his immortality.
Notes
1 [Ange Goudar], Examen des lettres, mémoires, et négociations particulières du Chevalier D’Eon (London:
Becket and de Hondt,1764), reprinted in Chevalier D’Eon, Pièces relatives aux lettres, mémoires, et
négociations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon (London: Dixwell, 1764), pp. 125–6.
2 See especially the ghostwritten account in La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d’Eon (Paris:
Lambert, Onfroi, Valade, Esprit et chez l’auteur, 1779) and the autobiographical materials in the
Brotherton Collection in the Brotherton Library, Leeds, many of which have finally been published;
Roland A. Champagne, Nina Ekstein and Gary Kates, trans. and eds., The Maiden of Tonnerre: the
Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and Chevalière d’Eon, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
2001).
3 This tale has been refuted convincingly by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, The True Story of the Chevalier d’Eon
(London: Tylston and Edwards and A. P. Marsden, 1895), pp. 50–7; Gary Kates, Monsieur d’Eon is a
Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (New York: Basic Books, 1995); En Russie
INTRODUCTION 11
au temps d’Élisabeth. Mémoire sur la Russie en 1759 par le chevalier d’Eon, ed. Francine-Dominique
Liechtenhan (Paris: L’Inventaire, 2006), p. 8.
4 Frédéric Gaillardet, Mémoires du Chevalier D’Eon (Paris, 1935 [original edition, 2 vols, Paris: B. Grasset,
1836]).
5 François-Timoléon, abbé de Choisy, Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy, ed., Georges Mongrédien (Paris :
Mercure de France, 1966 [reprint 2000]). On Choisy, see the chapter by Joseph Harris below.
6 Mémoires du Chevalier d’Eon, p. 128–40. Gaillardet’s admission appeared in a purified edition of his
work published in 1866. For recent repetitions of the story, see Nathalie Grzesiak, Le Chevalier d’Eon.
Tout pour le roi (Paris: Acropole, 2000), p. 120 and passim; L’Yonne Républicain, 30 juillet 2007. John
Rogister’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on d’Eon repeats Gaillardet’s story that d’Eon
seduced Madame de Pompadour while dressed as a woman at a Versailles ball in 1755.
7 The phrase is taken from the title of Edna Nixon, Royal Spy: the Strange Case of the Chevalier d’Eon
(New York: Reynal & Co., 1965).
8 See for example Havelock Ellis, ‘Eonism’, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 2 vols (New York: Random
House, 1936), II, pt. ii, 1–110.
9 See Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, p. xxii.
10 Many of these manuscripts have subsequently been published in Champagne, Ekstein and Kates, trans.
and eds., The Maiden of Tonnerre.
11 See Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds Library [Brotherton Collection], box 1, file 1, Chap.
VIII, p. 3.
12 Besides works mentioned in this paragraph, see Jonathan Conlin, ‘Wilkes, the Chevalier d’Eon and
“the dregs of liberty”: an Anglo-French perspective on ministerial despotism, 1762–1771’, English
Historical Review, 120, (2005), 1251–88; James Lander, ‘A tale of two hoaxes in Britain and France in
1775’, Historical Journal, 49, (2006), 995–1024.
13 Alexandre Stroev, Les Aventuriers des Lumières (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1997); Simon
Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London’s French Libellistes, 1758–1792 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006).
14 Anna Clark, ‘The Chevalier d’Eon and Wilkes: masculinity and politics in the eighteenth century’,
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32, (1), (1998), 19–48, and Scandal: the Sexual Politics of the British
Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 43–4.
15 Wahrman first outlined this case briefly in the final essay in, The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain
and France 1750–1820, eds. Colin Jones and Dror Wahrman, (Berkeley and London: University of
California Press, 2002). He elaborated on his argument and made several important references to d’Eon
in Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004).
16 Cf. John D. Woodbridge, Revolt in Pre-Revolutionary France. The Prince de Conti’s Conspiracy against
Louis XV, 1755–1757 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
17 The most detailed study of the Secret du Roi is Gilles Perrault, Le Secret du Roi, 3 vols (Paris: Fayard,
1992–6).
18 D’Eon, Lettres, mémoires, et négociations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon, Ministre . . . avec les Ducs de
Praslin, de Nivernois, de Sainte Foy, et Regnier de Guerchy, Ambassadeur extraordinaire, etc. 3pt., (The
Hague, 1764).
19 Conlin, ‘Wilkes, The Chevalier d’Eon and “the dregs of liberty”’, p. 1252.
20 Chevalier D’Eon, Les Loisirs du Chevalier d’Eon, 13 vols (Amsterdam, 1774). D’Eon explained to
Broglie that the Loisirs would contain nothing hostile to the French court. On the contrary, they
would provide a front for secret activities, by fooling observers into thinking he had abandoned covert
operations, ‘Note de M D’Eon du 31 Juillet 1770’, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères [MAE],
Correspondance Politique, Angleterre [CPA], Supplément 16, f. 377S.
21 On the Transaction, see Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, ch. 41; Lander, ‘A tale of two hoaxes’.
22 It was finally published in 2001 as Champagne, Ekstein and Kates, trans. and eds., The Maiden of
Tonnerre.
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1
The Chevalier d’Eon first honed his skills of media manipulation in his quarrel with
the French ambassador to London, the Comte de Guerchy, in 1763–1764. He did so
with such success that, by the end of their spat, d’Eon had become a household name
among Europe’s elite, while his allegations that Guerchy had conspired to kidnap and
murder him were widely accepted by the British public and had given rise to a criminal
prosecution against the ambassador. During the course of the dispute and his vitriolic
press campaign against Guerchy, d’Eon learned to fabricate evidence and to mould his
public identity. Thus the Guerchy affair laid the groundwork for d’Eon’s later celebrity
and manipulation of perceptions of his gender. It also provides a case study in the
construction of celebrity status in the later eighteenth century.
Recent explorations of eighteenth-century celebrity emphasize three points that are
salient here.1 First, although d’Eon’s contemporaries did not yet refer to individuals as
‘celebrities’, a phenomenon akin to ‘celebrity’ was emerging and, in Britain, from about
1760 until the eve of the French revolution it is possible to identify a veritable ‘cult of
celebrity’ characterized by prurient interest in individuals’ private lives alongside their
public distinctions or achievements.2 These developments were made possible by the
decline of the Hanoverian court as a focus of patronage, a vibrant consumer culture
and a burgeoning public sphere. However, ‘the cult of celebrity’ came to an abrupt
end with a hardening of moral attitudes from the late 1780s, whereupon, according to
Linda Colley, the British populace required of its heroes a ‘shift of style from peacock to
sombre man of action’.3 Second, despite the many apparent similarities, twentieth- and
twenty-first-century manifestations of celebrity differ from those that first emerged in the
eighteenth century. Stella Tillyard insists that while late eighteenth-century England was
not ‘a world full of celebrities’, cultural icons like Sir Joshua Reynolds ‘were nevertheless
extremely interested in, and avid consumers of, some of the attributes of celebrity that we
ourselves still recognise’.4 Finally, in the eighteenth century, fame, (that is, an enduring
reputation in the eyes of posterity), was considered to be different from the phenomenon
of being celebrated by one’s contemporaries. Whereas fame had always been considered
a legitimate concern, the pursuit by artists, writers, actors, courtesans, adventurers and
other cultural figures of a celebrity hitherto only available to statesmen, courtiers and
military heroes, was only made desirable and conceivable by emergent cultural, social
and market conditions. This distinction between fame and celebrity will be respected
throughout this chapter. It might be noted, however, that of the two, the pursuit of fame
was considered the more respectable, since it implied enduring achievement, whereas
celebrity was both transient and involved (often scandalous) exposure to the public
gaze. Moreover, women’s celebrity was associated with scandal almost by definition,
14 SIMON BURROWS
Chevalier d’Eon. This work simultaneously emphasized his claims to fame and made
him a celebrity across Europe almost overnight.13 But his diplomatic correspondence
was not the only reason why this work proved sensational, for it also took his pamphlets
against Guerchy to a wider audience.
While the truth of d’Eon’s allegations remains uncertain, it is clear that he fought a
shrewd media campaign across a wide front. For example, his attempts to link Guerchy’s
agent Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy to a conspiracy against him in his Lettres, mémoires
et négociations were accompanied by cloak and dagger attempts to defame him by
other means. Chief among them was a four-page pamphlet entitled Lettre de Mlle Le
Bac de Saint-Amant à Monsieur de la M*** écuyer, &c de la Société roïale d’agriculture,
dated variously 29 and 30 December 1763. An account of d’Eon’s printer James Dixwell
proves that the publication of this curious pamphlet was financed by d’Eon, and it is
therefore possible that he was also the author.14 If so, the pamphlet represents d’Eon’s
first experiments with taking on a female persona.
The Lettre de Mlle le Bac offers a first person narrative account of Mademoiselle Le
Bac’s coach journey from Paris to Lille in Vergy’s company the previous August. En route
Vergy told her he was going to London to replace d’Eon and made clumsy attempts
to seduce her. These began with kissing games among the coach passengers, in which
Le Bac participated willingly, but culminated in attempted rape at a coaching inn. The
spirited Le Bac parried Vergy’s attentions directly enough to put him ‘hors de combat’,
and Vergy departed the next day with despair in his eyes. ‘Le Bac’ ends by recording
that Vergy had just been arrested for debt, but had escaped. The pamphlet portrays
Vergy as a contemptible and ungallant braggart, debtor, lecher and failed adulterer. He
has abandoned his wife in a convent but is incapable of storming the flimsy moral or
physical defences of the feisty Le Bac.
This rather puerile character assassination followed other revelations about Vergy’s
character. D’Eon, who was assiduous in gathering information on his enemies, revealed
in his very first pamphlet against Guerchy, that Vergy’s title was usurped and that the
Paris police (in which d’Eon’s uncle served) considered him a gambler, libertine, and
thief. He was being pursued by creditors and had been chased from the home of the
Comte d’Argental, French ambassador to Parma.15 Notwithstanding these claims,
d’Eon later endorsed a very different account of the relationship between d’Argental
and Vergy.
Unlike Guerchy, d’Eon quickly realized the potential of British newspapers, which
appeared much more frequently than their heavily censored French counterparts: by
the 1760s, London had several daily titles, whereas France did not have a daily paper
until 1777. Newspapers had several advantages over pamphlets for conducting political
feuds. Whereas pamphlets appeared just once and needed to find their own audience,
newspapers appeared regularly and served an audience which already enjoyed a rela-
tionship of confidence with their chosen title. Newspapers were thus ideal vehicles for
repeated insinuation, or campaigns of denigration or self-defence; British newspapers
also carried considerable amounts of what would today be considered ‘celebrity gossip’.
Moreover, eighteenth-century newspapers across Europe borrowed material from one
another. Thus, reports in the British press were often recycled across the continent.16
Although d’Eon’s political role had included summarizing the content of the London
press for Nivernais and Praslin, his books of press cuttings suggest that he only grasped
the full potential of newspapers once his dispute with Guerchy was under way.17 It is
probable that he was educated about them by British Wilkite politicians. They wished
to draw parallels between John Wilkes’ situation and that of d’Eon, suggesting that both
16 SIMON BURROWS
became renegades by struggling for justice from their respective governments.18 They
even suggested that the government intended to exchange d’Eon for Wilkes, who had
fled to France to avoid prosecution for libel.19 However, they also erroneously believed
that d’Eon’s diplomatic correspondence would reveal that British ministers had been
bribed to make territorial concessions to France following Britain’s victory in the Seven
Years’ War.20 According to d’Eon, they also wooed him assiduously and repeatedly
offered to buy his papers.21
To mobilize opinion in his favour, d’Eon and his Wilkite allies launched a concerted
press offensive, traces of which are discernible among d’Eon’s newspaper cuttings. It
began on 21 June 1764, when d’Eon announced in the Gazetteer that he had no debts
and paid bills in cash to ensure he could not be arrested and kidnapped. This announce-
ment alluded to an incident at Easter 1752, when the Marquis de Fratteaux was seized
in London by French agents with the connivance of a corrupt bailiff named Blaisdell.
Fratteaux, the author of a manuscript pamphlet attacking key courtiers, spent the rest of
his life in the Bastille.22 He was thus a key point of reference for those wishing to suggest
that d’Eon ran similar risks. Thereafter, and throughout the summer of 1764, newspaper
reports repeatedly insisted that French agents were in London to kidnap d’Eon.
Two days after the Gazetteer announcement, d’Eon and his allies published a one-off
broadsheet newspaper entitled The Extraordinary Intelligencer, which was soon reprinted
by other papers.23 It warned of ‘a dangerous and unconstitutional measure . . . to take
from this country by force, a gentleman who has thrown himself under its protection’.
It then described the dispute of M. Frugalité [Guerchy] with M. Verité [d’Eon], before
alleging that a skiff was waiting on the Thames to spirit d’Eon away to an ocean-going
boat moored at Gravesend. But it also asserted that Guerchy’s enmity towards d’Eon
stemmed from d’Eon’s disapproval of Guerchy’s ‘mean and scandalous practices’. These
included encouraging British artisans to emigrate to France; fomenting misunderstand-
ings between the two countries; compensating his poorly paid servants by allowing
them to bring contraband goods into the country, shielded by ambassadorial immunity;
forcing his retinue to picnic in open fields en route to London to save the cost of eating
at an inn; and offering crowds celebrating a royal birth only four pots and a pint of
porter, rather than the customary fountain of wine, thereby risking public disorder.
This story covered Guerchy in ridicule and incited popular complaints about the abuse
of prerogative by Guerchy and his household, while ignoring the real grievances of the
ambassador and French government against d’Eon.
Over the following days and weeks, the story received further amplification. On
25 June, the Gazetteer claimed to have received intelligence from a correspondent
‘concerning an intention of carrying off a certain gentleman, for which purpose, he
says, a boat with six rowers is kept on the river, and an armed vessel with twenty hands
at Gravesend’. It added that the gentleman (i.e. d’Eon) had confirmed the truth of this.
The story also alluded to the Fratteaux affair, suggesting that the present government
would not suffer such an attempt ‘with impunity’. However, for present purposes, the
most important aspect of the story is that it identifies d’Eon as a source.
Thereafter journalists, rumour-mongers and d’Eon’s allies picked up and spun the
story. The Gazetteer of 28 June predicted that ‘French bravoes’ come to kidnap d’Eon
would surely fail. They would arouse public indignation and bystanders would be sure
to come to d’Eon’s assistance. The next day, the Public Advertiser called on Britons to
prove they were not ‘the savages of Europe’, as a French writer alleged, by providing
d’Eon with hospitality and saving him from Fratteaux’s fate. Nor was Fratteaux’s the
only kidnapping invoked: on 24 August a correspondent to the Public Advertiser writing
T H E C H E VA L I E R D ’ E O N A N D M E D I A M A N I P U L A T I O N 17
under the pseudonym ‘Phileultheros’ declared that French police had recently made
attempts on a mysterious ‘Chevalier S’, who had written pamphlets attacking French
grandees.24 In September, the Lloyd’s Evening Post published allegations that the British
ministry intended to seize d’Eon (who had by then been convicted of libelling Guerchy)
and exchange him for Wilkes – sourcing the story, somewhat improbably, to the Brussels
Gazette. Pressure on the British government was also stepped up. On 4 July, ‘Libertas’
wrote to the Public Advertiser demanding a government inquiry into allegations that
Guerchy was involved in racketeering and conspiracy to kidnap, while ‘Publicus’ reported
that several gentlemen had pledged to defend d’Eon and accompanied him everywhere.
Further pseudonymous denunciations of the ambassador’s abuse of diplomatic privilege
followed sporadically over the next few months, including a letter to the Lloyd’s Evening
Post by ‘Britannicus’, a known partisan of the Chevalier.25
Although using pseudonyms was standard practice among eighteenth-century
newspaper letter-writers, the insider information that ‘Publicus’ provided, together
with an almost formulaic reference to Fratteaux, indicates that both his letter and that
from ‘Libertas’ probably originated in d’Eon’s entourage. The persistence of ‘Britannicus’
in writing on the Chevalier’s behalf also suggests a personal association. Likewise,
‘Phileultheros’ purports to show a suspiciously intimate knowledge of d’Eon’s work (he
claimed it could be used to identify the ‘Chevalier S’), which suggests that his letter, too,
emanated from the d’Eon camp.26
Despite these rumours, only once was there a suggestion that an attempt to seize
d’Eon had actually been made. The story clearly came from d’Eon’s entourage and
appears in an anonymous letter to the Lloyd’s Evening Post dated 3 September 1764. It
recounts that on 26 August, d’Eon, two male friends and an English lady were walking
in Hyde Park when Colonel Glover and two other gentlemen informed him that ‘a sett
of kidnappers’ were lying in wait at Spring Gardens. The lady, who was just taking her
leave, secretly resolved to drive to Spring Gardens, where she saw ‘six fellows standing
together arm-in-arm, and a seventh who seemingly headed them’, waiting for d’Eon and
his companions. However, when they saw her coach they said ‘“That is the lady with
whom he was walking and her coach is waiting for him”’ and their lookout added ‘“That
is very true, our scheme will not answer this night, but it may tomorrow or some other
time.”’ For good measure, the paper added ‘Such are the words which were expressed
by those treacherous kidnappers, as this lady informs us’.
Although this story contains several intriguing details, there are reasons to doubt
its veracity, even if we ignore both the villains’ contrived melodramatic dialogue and
the question of how ruffians waiting at Spring Gardens had seen the lady in Hyde
Park. A summary of these reasons is provided by the pseudonymous ‘Simon Magus’,
writing to the St James’s Chronicle of 6 to 8 September 1764. He opens by equating the
attempt against d’Eon with the great hoaxes of the previous few years: ‘Wonders, I find,
will never cease. The Rabbit Woman surprised us in the last Age27 – Ashley’s Jew,28
the Bottle-Conjuror,29 and Elizabeth Canning,30 amused us in their Turn for some
Time, and the Scratching of the Cock-Lane Ghost is scarce out of our ears,31 before
our Appetite for the Wonderful is arrived [sic] by the kidnapping of Chevalier d’Eon.’
In explanation, he argues, the ruffians must be conjurors to hope to carry away ‘a Man
from Spring Gardens in the Day-Time, in the Face of a Multitude through this populous
Town, and through a frequented high Road to Gravesend’ without interruption from
the magistrates or population.
A key feature of articles concerning d’Eon over the summer of 1764 is the patriotic
language in which they are dressed. For example, the Extraordinary Intelligencer
18 SIMON BURROWS
denounced Guerchy’s alleged intentions as ‘a scheme against all our laws and liberties,
which overthrows at once those sacred prerogatives which this nation always knew
how to preserve, and by which we have been hitherto triumphant’. ‘Britannicus’, writing
to the Public Advertiser, went a stage further and juxtaposed British liberty to French
servitude and degradation:
. . . they [the French] are the slaves of a despotic power; we are a free people whose country is
the asylum of the oppressed; to violate it is a breach of public liberty and a crime against our
country: let us never, therefore, suffer a stranger who flies to us for shelter, to be a sacrifice to
a misguided fury or the horrors of the Bastille.
Moreover, d’Eon made a better patriot Briton in his defence of liberty than the British
ministry.32 Hence ‘a British Swiss’ wrote to the printer of the St James’s Chronicle of
11–13 September 1764:
Ever since Wilkes and Liberty left this kingdom, we have been alarmed for the chevalier d’Eon –
we are now told that this champion of liberty is to be kidnapped and carried to France. The Vox
Populi or in other words, the Minority [in Parliament], accuses the Majority of a determined
resolution to extirpate . . . even the dregs of liberty, and not suffer the least appearance of it,
even in a Frenchman. As I am a Swiss, I don’t care a farthing either for the Majority or the
Minority: but, pray, what have we to apprehend from the Spirit of Liberty in a Frenchman?
These reports transformed d’Eon from a participant in a factional dispute about power
and money into a symbol of British liberty. As a ‘worthy’ foreigner he could also be
juxtaposed against an ‘unpatriotic’ British ministry. Thus d’Eon, the French diplomat
and spy, had become an unlikely celebrity and hero of the British opposition. The print
media’s role was vital to this extraordinary transformation. Yet it must also be admitted
that d’Eon played his part to perfection, and was not, in any case, without sympathy for
the struggle for liberty. A quarter century later, he supported the French revolution in its
opening stages, and he often encouraged other French renegades in the struggle against
ministerial despotism. Those he aided even included the blackmailer and pamphleteer
Charles Théveneau de Morande, who had the run of d’Eon’s library while preparing a
pamphlet exposé of the Bastille.33
Having examined the printed propaganda put out by d’Eon and his allies, it is time
to consider whether there was any substance to their allegations of poison and kidnap
plots.34 Let us turn first to the poison plot. D’Eon asserted that while Guerchy was
behind the conspiracy, it was Stephen Chazell, Guerchy’s ‘master of horse’, who actually
slipped opium into his wine while he dined at the embassy on 28 October 1763. As the
poison took hold, d’Eon alleges that Guerchy’s servants offered him assistance and a
carriage to his lodgings in the hope of kidnapping him, but he refused their entreaties
and struggled home alone.35 However, there are three problems with d’Eon’s testimony.
First, it is self-interested; second, it relies on supposition and finally, d’Eon himself admits
that other diners fell sick after eating with him at the embassy.36 We might suspect food
poisoning or dirty pans were the real culprit.
Nevertheless, there is corroborating evidence for d’Eon’s allegations, for in October
1764, Vergy confessed that Guerchy and Praslin employed him to assassinate d’Eon.
Moreover, in 1767, d’Eon claimed that Vergy’s testimony so terrified Chazell that he had
abandoned his newly wed bride and fled to Naples. This assertion was disingenuous.
Chazell’s departure offers no proof that he was a poisoner, since he had fled several
T H E C H E VA L I E R D ’ E O N A N D M E D I A M A N I P U L A T I O N 19
weeks before Vergy’s confession and for other reasons.37 In fact, he was evading arrest for
arson, having threatened to burn down the house where his wife had taken refuge from
his excessive violence. On 15 June 1764 a warrant was issued for Chazell’s arrest and six
days later three officers attempted to arrest him at Guerchy’s house, which doubled as the
French embassy. This action nearly resulted in a significant international incident, for
Guerchy tore up the warrant, throttled one of the officers, imprisoned them briefly, and
protested to the British government against the violation of diplomatic immunity. The
French wanted the officers to be punished, but the British government was fearful that,
in light of Chazell’s crime and the ambassador’s ‘highly improper and illegal’ behaviour,
a jury would acquit them. Thus, with considerable difficulty, they succeeded in placating
the French without bringing the men before a court.38 Although this extraordinary tale
appears to confirm the truth of d’Eon’s insinuations that Guerchy was out of his depth in a
diplomatic role, it also shows that his evidence against Chazell was at best circumstantial
and that d’Eon knowingly distorted facts to reinforce his own allegations.
Similarly, many details of Vergy’s confession were almost certainly invented, in par-
ticular claims that he was recruited by d’Argental; that Praslin told him that d’Eon must
be destroyed; and that Guerchy ordered him to assassinate d’Eon after Chazell’s poison
failed.39 The first assertion is probably false because – as we have already noted – before
Vergy turned against Guerchy, d’Eon himself had asserted that Vergy had been evicted
from d’Argental’s home.40 The second statement is demonstrably mendacious. Although
Vergy met Praslin before leaving Paris, their subsequent correspondence demonstrates
that Vergy’s account of their interview is a fabrication.41 Vergy’s assertion that the plot
originated in July 1763 – i.e. at least six weeks before problems emerged between d’Eon
and Guerchy – also appears devoid of truth.42 In consequence, Vergy’s statement that
Guerchy ordered him to kill d’Eon also cannot be accepted uncritically, particularly as
Vergy had resentments of his own against the ambassador.43
Nevertheless, Vergy’s behaviour towards d’Eon on his arrival in London was suspi-
cious. Indeed, in the days before the poisoning incident, d’Eon became so mistrustful
of Vergy that he challenged him to a duel.44 Thus, although there may be grains of truth
somewhere among Vergy’s allegations, which certainly involved huge personal cost
for little gain, most of the details were invented or distorted to suit d’Eon’s purposes.45
D’Eon – who probably secured Vergy’s release from debtor’s prison – was almost
certainly complicit in the fabrication of this evidence.
Vergy’s tale shattered Guerchy’s reputation. Indeed, following his confession, the
Attorney-General agreed to lodge a bill of indictment against Guerchy for hiring Vergy
to ‘kill and assassinate d’Eon’, and an Old Bailey grand jury found against the ambas-
sador.46 This provocative insult to the French king and his representative embarrassed
British ministers, who pressurized the Attorney-General without success to suppress the
case. The jury’s decision that there was a prima facie case for the ambassador to answer
vindicated d’Eon and effectively negated his conviction for libelling Guerchy. To avoid
the embarrassment of the case proceeding to trial, the government transferred it to the
Court of King’s Bench, where it remained in stasis.47 The dispute broke Guerchy. Recalled
in 1767, he was snubbed at Versailles and died within weeks.48 In all probability he was
innocent of any murder attempt, having fallen victim to elaborate attempts to prove an
ungrounded suspicion, or even to frame him.
However, although the story of the attempted ambush at Spring Gardens seems far-
fetched, there is documentary evidence that Guerchy and the French ministry considered
abducting d’Eon. Shortly before Guerchy arrived in London, Choiseul and Praslin sent
an agent to London to investigate a possible kidnap.49 Guerchy himself also proposed
20 SIMON BURROWS
to the British that d’Eon should be abducted, but was rebuffed.50 Thereafter, in April
1764, Louis XV authorized a three-pronged approach. The British would be pressured
to extradite or deport d’Eon. If that failed, Guerchy could bring a libel prosecution. As
a final resort, Praslin was to proceed with kidnap plans.51 The extradition request was
duly refused,52 but the British government consented to bring a libel case against d’Eon.
In July, d’Eon was duly found guilty but went into hiding, failed to turn up at court for
sentencing, and was declared an outlaw.53 In these circumstances, the kidnap phase of
Louis XV’s plan was rendered obsolete: nothing in French diplomatic correspondence
suggests that agents were sent to seize d’Eon. This contrasts with the surviving evidence
for abortive attempts against Théveneau de Morande in 1772–1774 and the Comte de
La Motte in 1786, which are well documented.54
By the late 1760s, therefore, d’Eon had learned valuable lessons about the print media.
He had learned that celebrity could be constructed out of unpromising materials and
serve to protect him against the machinations – real or imaginary – of his enemies. He had
also seen that the media had the power to redefine events, transforming a personal and
factional dispute into a struggle for British liberties. He had also learned to fabricate and
manipulate evidence, and may even have started to experiment with a female persona.
These lessons made it possible for d’Eon to imagine his next breathtakingly audacious
step towards life-long celebrity and enduring fame. For the gender transformation that
he effected between 1770 and 1777 would require both the fabrication of evidence about
his past and present identity, and the manipulation of public perceptions.
The gender change, moreover, was surely motivated in part by d’Eon’s emotional and
practical need for celebrity and the protection and opportunities it provided. Thus while
Gary Kates is surely correct in his contention that far from being motivated by sexuality,
d’Eon’s gender transformation was driven by political and spiritual considerations and
a desire to escape a career deadlock and disillusionment, his interpretation appears to
underplay two important ancillary motivations. First, as a woman, d’Eon marginalized
himself politically and greatly reduced the threat of kidnap or assassination, though he
continued to fear both until his dying day. Although d’Eon probably fabricated or exagger-
ated the most serious plots against him, the experience of other exiled dissidents proves
that his fears were not without foundation. Second, the celebrity status d’Eon gained by
becoming Europe’s most accomplished woman would keep him in the public eye.
Although d’Eon sought fame, he needed celebrity, for it brought him the attention
and security he craved. It attracted the rich and powerful into his orbit and allowed him
to cash in on the commercial opportunities the newly emergent public sphere offered
to the most celebrated writers and public figures. More importantly, perhaps, celebrity
shielded him from assassination or kidnap, because – in contrast to fame – it involved
a plebian appeal, and hence it was possible for d’Eon and his political allies to mobilize
the London mob in his defence. This important social distinction – so crucial in d’Eon’s
case – between those who respectively confer and consume ‘celebrity’ (plebs) and
‘fame’ (educated elites, present and future) has been largely ignored in recent literature,
and deserves further reflection. Nevertheless, fame also played an important role in
protecting d’Eon, particularly once he adopted a female role. For, because he had, and
insisted on having, prior claims to ‘fame’ independent of the causes of his ‘celebrity’,
he was assured of enduring recognition across his lifetime and hence escaped much
of the scorn reserved for other public women. Thus, d’Eon’s career trajectory becomes
more comprehensible in the light of the eighteenth-century public sphere and its cult
of celebrity. By 1770, d’Eon was intensely aware that his public persona was a media
construct, and that only continuing celebrity status could maintain his position and
T H E C H E VA L I E R D ’ E O N A N D M E D I A M A N I P U L A T I O N 21
safety. His subsequent gender change must therefore be seen in part as an extreme
response to the realization that, in a fallen world, female celebrity could afford him a
security that masculine fame never could.
Notes
1 See for example the various essays in Joshua Reynolds. The Creation of Celebrity, ed. Martin Postle,
(London: Tate Publishing, 2005); Michael Rosenthal, ‘Public reputation and image control in late-
eighteenth-century Britain’, Visual Culture in Britain, 7, (2006), 69–92.
2 Stella Tillyard, ‘“Paths of Glory”: fame and the public in eighteenth-century London’, in Joshua Reynolds,
ed. Postle, pp. 61–9.
3 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1993), p. 187
4 Tillyard, ‘“Paths of Glory”’, p. 62.
5 Monthly Review, (June 1764), p. 432 in Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds Library [Brotherton
Collection], box 8, file 58, between pp. 15 and 16.
6 Stephen Brogan, ‘Contemporary British perceptions of the Chevalier/Chevalière d’Eon affair’, unpub-
lished B.A. diss., Birkbeck College, University of London, 2004, p. 8.
7 Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris [MAE], Correspondance Politique, Angleterre
[CPA] 541 ff. 255–6, Chevalier d’Eon to Guerchy, 22 September 1763; ff. 268–71, Chevalier d’Eon to
Guerchy, 25 September 1763; Brotherton Collection, box 3, file 23, Nivernais to Chevalier d’Eon, Paris,
11 September 1763.
8 D’Eon also blamed Guerchy for several débâcles, including the loss of the French baggage train at
Minden. On these incidents see: Chevalier d’Eon, Pièces relatives aux Lettres, mémoires et négociations
particulières du Chevalier d’Eon (London: Dixwell, 1764), p. 15; Brotherton Collection, box 2, file
9, pp. 216–17; box 4, file 24, p. 13; box 11, file 69, pp. 8, 59; Chevalier d’Eon, Lettres, mémoires et
négociations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon, ministre plénipotentiaire de France auprès du roi de la
Grande-Bretagne (London: Dixwell, 1764), passim; and Ange Goudar, Examen des Lettres, mémoires et
négociations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon (London: Becket and de Hondt, 1764), reprinted in d’Eon,
Pièces rélatives aux Lettres, mémoires et négociations, p. 117.
9 On the Secret du roi see Albert, Duc de Broglie, Le Secret du roi: correspondance secrète de Louis XV avec
ses agents diplomatiques, 1752–1774, 2 vols (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1878); Gilles Perrault, Le Secret du
roi, 3 vols (Paris 1992–6); Correspondance secrète du Comte de Broglie avec Louis XV, edited by Didier
Ozanam and Michel Antoine, 2 vols (Paris: Klincksieck, 1956–1961).
10 MAE, CPA supplément 16 ff. 111–12, annotation of d’Eon on Tercier to Chevalier d’Eon, 27 December
1763 (copy).
11 See, for example, MAE, Mémoires et documents, France, vol. 539 ff. 153–8, Broglie to Louis XV, Broglie,
9 December 1763. The document has been published in Ozanam and Antoine, eds., Correspondance
secrète de Broglie, I, 186–96; an abridged translation appears in Gary Kates, Monsieur d’Eon is a Woman:
A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 112–14.
12 Chevalier d’Eon to Tercier, 23 March 1764, in Correspondance secrète inédite de Louis XV, ed. M. E.
Boutaric, 2 vols (Paris: Plon, 1866), I, 313–16.
13 On the reception of d’Eon’s Lettres, mémoires et négociations see Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, pp. 119–21.
14 Account from Dixwell to d’Eon, 13 March 1764, in the Brotherton Collection, in Ernest Alfred Vizetelly,
The True Story of the Chevalier d’Eon (London: Tylston and Edwards and A. P. Marsden, 1895) extra-
illustrated edition compiled into seven volumes by A. M. Broadley, vol. VII, f. 3.
15 ‘Note remise à Guerchy’, in d’Eon, Pièces relatives aux Lettres, mémoires et négociations, pp. 21–5, 42.
16 On the press across Europe see Hannah Barker and Simon Burrows, eds, Press, Politics and the Public
Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760–1820 (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), esp. the current author’s
chapter on ‘The cosmopolitan press’.
17 D’Eon’s main collection of press cuttings for this period is found in Brotherton Collection, box 8, file
58, which is chronologically arranged. Unless otherwise stated, cuttings for all newspaper references
cited below can be found there.
18 On the links between the Wilkes and d’Eon affairs see: Jonathan Conlin, ‘Wilkes, the Chevalier d’Eon
and “the dregs of liberty”: an Anglo-French perspective on ministerial despotism, 1762–1771’, English
Historical Review, 120, (2005), 1251–88.
19 Lloyds Evening Post, 5–7 September 1764; Simon Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London’s
French Libellistes, 1758–92 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 194–5.
20 Colley, Britons, p. 101; Chevalier d’Eon to Tercier, 23 March 1764, in Boutaric, ed., Correspondance
secrète inédite de Louis XV, I, 313–16; Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, pp. 123–6.
21 Brotherton Collection, box 2, file 8, ‘Etat des services’, [1777?], pp. 5–6; MAE, CPA 16 supplément ff.
24–53, ‘Etat abregé des services militaires et politiques de Mlle d’Eon’, at f. 29.
22 SIMON BURROWS
22 On Fratteaux, see also Comte d’H****, The Unfortunate Officer, or the History of M. Bertin, Marquis
de Fratteaux (London: Woodfall, 1755). This was a translation of L’Histoire de M. Bertin: Marquis de
Fratteaux (Paris, 1753).
23 Original copies can be found interleaved between Brotherton Collection, box 8, file 58 ff. 11 and 12,
and in the Brotherton Collection’s unique extra-illustrated edition of Vizetelly, True Story, vol. VI. The
Public Ledger, 26 June 1764, republished The Extraordinary Intelligencer verbatim.
24 The pseudonym and place from which the letter was addressed (‘Great Burlington Street, 18 August’)
are not available from the handwritten translation of the article in Brotherton Collection, box 8, file 58,
but an unattributed cutting of the original letter survives in the Brotherton Collection’s extra-illustrated
edition of Vizetelly, True Story, vol. VII, unpaginated folio.
25 Lloyds Evening Post, 10–12 September 1764. An earlier letter from ‘Britannicus’ is described below.
26 Phileultheros suggests that the ‘Chevalier S’ was a correspondent mentioned in the fourth volume of
d’Eon’s Lettres, mémoires et négociations. Unfortunately, it is a one-volume work.
27 On the ‘rabbit woman’, Mary Toft, see Valerie Mainz’s chapter in the present volume.
28 ‘Ashley’s Jew’ was a reference to the case between Henry Simons, a Jew of Polish descent, and James
Ashley in 1753. Simons had accused an innkeeper named Goddard of robbing him, but Goddard
was acquitted and Simons was charged with perjury. After Simons was acquitted also, Ashley
alleged that Simons had tried to frame him, too, for robbery by slipping money into his pocket.
This time Simons was found guilty, but a retrial was ordered after it emerged that there had been a
misunderstanding between judge and jury. This was the first retrial after conviction in English legal
history and resulted in Simons being acquitted once again. Occurring in the same year that Parliament
granted citizenship to Jews, the trial unleashed a wave of anti-semitism, fanned by Ashley’s own
pamphleteering.
29 On the ‘bottle-conjuror’ (‘bottle imp’) see Valerie Mainz’s chapter in the present volume.
30 Elizabeth Canning was at the centre of a notorious legal case in 1753 to 1754. She claimed to have
been abducted on behalf of a brothel-keeper, who attempted to force her into prostitution, but was
later convicted of perjury.
31 The Cock Lane ghost was a notorious hoax conducted in January 1762 and subsequently exposed.
32 Public Advertiser, 29 June 1764.
33 MAE, CPA 502 ff. 177–9, Chevalier d’Eon to Broglie, London, 13 July 1773, at f. 178. On Morande see
Simon Burrows, A King’s Ransom: A Life of Charles Théveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger
and Master-Spy (forthcoming, London: Continuum, 2010).
34 The analysis of these plots here expands on material in Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution,
pp. 92–3.
35 The allegation first appears in MAE, CPA supplément 13 ff. 118–31, Chevalier d’Eon to Broglie and
Louis XV, London, 18 November 1763, in Frédéric Gaillardet, Mémoires du Chevalier d’Eon, réédités
à Paris (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1935 [original edition, Paris, 1836]), pp. 199–205 and (abridged) in
Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, pp. 106–8. Chazell’s role is identified in MAE, CPA supplément 16 ff. 113–14,
‘Note de M. d’Eon’, and Brotherton Collection, box 1, file 2, pp. 87–95, ‘Extrait de la lettre de . . . d’Eon
à . . . d’Autichamp’ at p. 91; file 19 f. 43, unpublished memoir drafts (1805); Political Register, (October
1767), p. 377.
36 MAE, CPA supplément 13 ff. 118–31, Chevalier d’Eon to Broglie and Louis XV, London, 18 November
1763, in Gaillardet, Mémoires du Chevalier d’Eon, pp. 199–205 at pp. 200–1.
37 Chevalier d’Eon to Guerchy, 5 August 1767, in Political Register, (October 1767), p. 377. In Brotherton
Collection, box 11, file 69, pp. 7–8, d’Eon records that Chazell secured a place in the Lazaroni regiment
through the Vicomte de Choiseul, French ambassador to Naples, but fled when d’Eon’s complaints
reached Italy. He joined the Polish confédérés, and was killed by Russian forces.
38 Documents concerning the incident survive in the National Archives, London, [National Archives],
SP78/262 ff. 85–97, 131–7, 138, 146, 149, 151 and 202.
39 Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy, ‘Seconde lettre à Monseigneur le Duc de Choiseul’, in Chevalier
d’Eon, Suite des pièces relatives aux Lettres, mémoires et négociations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon
(London: Dixwell, 1764), pp. 19–62; National Archives, SP78/264 f. 59, Treyssac de Vergy to Choiseul,
15 November 1764.
40 ‘Note remise à Guerchy’, in d’Eon, Pièces relatives aux Lettres, mémoires et négociations, pp. 21–5, 42.
41 MAE, CPA 451 f. 237, Vergy to [Praslin], London, 16 September 1763, refers to Vergy’s presentation
to Praslin by d’Argental, and begs for employment. Praslin annotated the letter ‘point de reponse’, the
standard phrase when no reply was to be given.
42 MAE, CPA 507 ff.. 46–8, Will of Pierre-Henri Treyssac de Vergy, 24 July 1774, at f. 47.
43 Guerchy had apparently reneged on a promise to employ Vergy as a secretary, and later refused to pay
his release from debtor’s prison.
44 See MAE, CPA 451 f. 468, Chevalier d’Eon to Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax, 26 October 1763; f. 469,
Vergy to Chevalier d’Eon, 27 October 1763; ff. 470–1, note of d’Eon, 27 October 1763; CPA supplément
16 ff. 113–14, ‘Note de M. d’Eon’; Chevalier d’Eon, Letter Sent to His Excellency, Claude-Louis-François
Regnier, Comte de Guerchy (London: Dixwell, 1763).
T H E C H E VA L I E R D ’ E O N A N D M E D I A M A N I P U L A T I O N 23
45 Indeed, Morande claims d’Eon and Vergy fabricated Vergy’s affidavits: see British Library, Add. MS.
11,340 ff. 8 and 34, cuttings from Westminster Gazette, 20–24 August and 10–14 September 1776.
46 Gazette britannique, 8 March 1765; London Chronicle, 29 September–1 October 1767; Political Register,
(September 1767).
47 Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, pp. 133–6.
48 MAE, CPA 474 ff. 143–5, Guerchy to Choiseul, 7 July 1767; Political Register, (September 1767),
p. 295.
49 Ozanam and Antoine, eds., Correspondance secrète du Comte de Broglie, I, 238n.
50 MAE, CPA supplément 13 ff. 132–3, Guerchy to Louis XV, London, 6 November 1763 (copy). National
Archives, SP78/259 f. 39 Halifax to Guerchy, St James, 24 November 1763.
51 Louis XV to Tercier, 10 April 1764, in Boutaric, ed., Correspondance secrète inédite de Louis XV, I. 320.
National Archives, SP78/261 f. 54, Hertford to Halifax, Paris, 11 April 1764, confirms that Praslin
applied diplomatic pressure.
52 See National Archives, SP78/261 ff. 206–7, Memorial delivered by Guerchy, 17 May 1764.
53 Kates, Monsieur d’Eon, pp. 129–30.
54 On these attempts see Simon Burrows, ‘Despotism without bounds: the French secret police and the
silencing of dissent in London’, History, 89, (2004), 525–48; Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution,
chs 3–4.
Index
narratives 9, 177–86 dragoon uniform 4, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 106,
see also Charke, Charlotte; Choisy, abbé de; 109, 110, 117, 127, 152, 159 n.31
Faublas, transvestites, transvestism dragoons 161–2
Cumberland, Henry, Duke of 118 d’Eon’s identification with 4, 48, 64, 83, 84–5,
Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of 29 101, 102, 104, 109, 115, 125, 127–8, 141,
152, 159 n.31-n.32, 161–3, 169, 172, 180,
Damer, Anne 195 182, 187, 189, 196, 234–5, 236.
Dance, George 88, 108 see also dragoon uniform.
Daniell, William 88 dress, see clothes
Dashwood, Sir Francis 117 dressmakers 106, 107
David, King of Israel 136 complicity with d’Eon 109–10
Davies, Simon 9 du Barry, Comtesse 60, 142, 193
Death and Life Contrasted, or an Essay on Man 92 du Bouciquault, Louis Le Maingre 167, 168
death, of d’Eon 89, 109 du Deffand, Mme 100
Decker, Michel de 105 duels, duelling 129, 190, 213 n.35
Déclaration de la femme et de la citoyenne 173 Duffy, Michael 115
decoding, of satires 124 Dufour, Mme 94 n.29
Découverte ou la Femme Franc-Maçon 120–2, Dugazon, Jean-Henri 162
125–6 Duke of B-d’s Reception at Exeter 116
Dekker, Rudolf 178 du Portail, fictional character 204–5, 209
Delaval, Thomas 223 Durand de Distroff, François Michel 26–7, 33
De l’éducation physique et morale des femmes 172 Durival, Jean 68
Delille, Jacques, Abbé 162 Duval, Jean 70 n.45
De Republica 218 Dziembowski, Edmond 7, 47, 53, 54 n.20, 54 n.22,
Desaives, Jean-Paul 74 217
Deschamps, Charles Antoine 79
Desfontaines, Pierre François Guyot 167 early writings, of d’Eon 48–9
Desjardins, Jeannette 77 education, of d’Eon 4, 135–6
despotism 7, 18, 37, 46, 49, 94 n.10, 170, 171, 173, effeminacy 84, 94 n. 30, 94 n.31, 95 n.32 125, 126,
216, 219, 223, 224 127, 129, 130
Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célèbres of d’Eon 99, 117, 194
169 Egremont, Lord 34, 35, 38, 44 n.72, 44 n.74
Diderot, Denis 189, 193, 211 Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman 220
Dighton, Robert 92, 131 n.46 Elizabeth I, Empress of Russia 2, 97, 136–7, 141,
diplomatic correspondence 7, 26–41, 47, 48, 235 158 n.3, 160 n.64, 166, 168, 171
published by d’Eon 5, 116 Ellis, Havelock 2, 93 n.10
Discourse on Inequality 189, 191 Emile 187, 189, 197
Dissertation extraite d’un plus grand ouvrage, ou English Civil War 31, 223
Avis important à la branche espagnole 58, English language skills, of d’Eon 28, 46
69 n.2 English Masculinities 84
divine grace 148 English Revolution, see English Civil War
divorce(s) 118, 119 Enigma of the Age 81
Dixwell, James 15 Enlevement de Mlle d’éon 122–3
Dolbois, Sieur 106 Enlightenment 8, 171, 189, 193, 233
Don Quixote (character) 122, 124–5, 132 n.57 Eon de Beaumont, Françoise d’ (d’Eon’s mother)
Don Quixote (novel) 124–5 75, 78, 101, 107, 139, 140, 150, 181, 190, 191,
Donald, Diana 125 237
Dorat, Claude-Joseph 134–5, 168, 169–70 Eon de Beaumont, Louis d’ (d’Eon’s father) 73, 75,
Dorset, 3rd Duke of, see Sackville, Frederick John 140, 147, 181
Douglas, Chevalier de, see Mackenzie, Alexander Eon de l’Etoile 134
Downie, Miss 107 Eon, Mme. d’ (d’Eon’s grandmother) d’ 181
drag kings 86 eonism 2
drag queens 86 Epinay, Mme d’ 173
246 INDEX
Machiavelli, Niccolo 219 Mémoires secrets d’une femme publique 51–2, 142
Mackenzie, Alexander 4, 14, 141, 166, 171, 175 n.33 Mendelssohn manuscripts 230
Mademoiselle de Beaumont, or the Chevalier d’Eon Mercier-Faivre, Anne-Marie 8
90–1, 126, 132 n.73 Mercurius Politicus 215–16
madness, alleged, of d’Eon 39, 44 n.80 Merteuil, Marquise de, fictional character 202, 208
Magdalene institution 220 Mesmerism 209, 210
Magna Carta 50 mezzotint process 120
Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Michaux, Madame 106
Chevalier and Chevalière d’Eon 8, 147–158 military service, of d’Eon 4
Maillet de Régnière, Françoise Charlotte 78 see also dragoons
Maillet de Régnière, lieutenant 78 Milton, John 216, 217
Maillot, Antoinette 103, 106, 109 Minden, battle of 21 n.8
Maillot, Génévieve 77, 103, 106, 109 Minerva 63, 87, 91, 102, 127, 142, 168, 173
Maillot, wigmaker, cousin to Geneviève and Mirepoix, ambassador to Britain 34
Antoinette 106 misogyny 117, 120, 127, 129, 157, 167
Mainz, Valerie 8 missions of d’Eon
Mairobert, see Pidansat de Mairobert, Mathieu- to London 4, 5, 26–41, 82, 83
François to Russia 4, 136–7, 141, 166–7, 171, 175 n.33
make-up 85 Mohammed the Prophet 168
Making of the Modern Self 188 Molas, Marquis de 134
Malesherbes, Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon Molesmes 78
de 4 Molière 201
Mallet, Mrs 107 mollies 194
Mandar, Théophile 224 Moncrif, François-Augustin Paradis de 167
manhood, see masculinity Monet, General 84
Manon Lescaut 169 Monica, mother of Saint Augustine 237
Mansfield, William Murray, Earl of 91, 117, 125, monkey, satirical image 115, 190
126, 194–5 Monsieur d’Eon is a Woman 2–3, 82, 229
Marat, Jean-Paul 9, 222–4, 228 n.58, 228 n.69 see also Kates, Gary
Mariage de Figaro 59–60, 170, 177, 202, 203, 211 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 157
Marie-Antoinette 58, 77, 97, 99, 102, 105, 106, 109, Montesquieu 28, 49, 226 n.39
150, 152, 161, 211, 217 Monthly Review 14
Marivaux 64, 167, 169, 201 Montmorency-Bouteville, Duchesse de 103, 107,
Marphise 165 149, 184, 234–5, 236, 237, 238
Marriage à la Mode 127 Moore, Lisa 156
masculinity 120, 156, 181–3, 184, 190, 196, 236 Morande, see Théveneau de Morande, Charles
d’Eon and 8, 21, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90–3 More, Hannah 194, 195
passim, 98, 125, 136, 141, 154, 162, 172, Moreau le jeune, Jean-Michel 162
192, 195 Morel, Jean-Marie 76
masquerade balls 97, 98, 193 Morning Chronicle 193
Maupeou 74, 217, 224 Morning Post 63, 65, 66
Maurepas, Comte de 60 Morris, Marilyn 8
Maurepas, Comtesse de 103, 107 mouches 127
Mayor, Godefroy 231 Mouffle d’Angerville, Barthélemy 133
Maza, Sarah 133 Moullet de Monbar, Abbé 165
medical fraternity 122 Mount Olympus 123
Medmenham Abbey 117 murder, see plots, to murder or kidnap d’Eon
Meister, Henri 162 Musée de Tonnerre 107, 109, 112 n.87
Mémoire pour la chevalière d’Eon 77 Musgrave, Dr Samuel, 51, 55 n.48, 55 n.50, 114–16
Mémoires du Chevalier d’Eon (Gaillardet) 201, 209 Muslims 168
Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire générale des Musson, painter 142
finances 4, 25 Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light by ye
Mémoires secrets 100–1, 105 Gormagons 122, 125
INDEX 251
translations, of English republican works 216–17 Vergy, Pierre-Henri Treyssac de 15, 18–19, 22 n.41,
transmen 151 22 n.43
transsexual(s) 8, 86, 150–1, 152 commits perjury for d’Eon 19, 23 n.45
definitions of 148 d’Eon’s defamation of 15
female to female (FTF) 154 Vernet, Joseph 162
female-to-male (FTM) 150, 151 Versailles 19
identities 150–1 Vie de Marianne 169
male to male (MTM) 151 Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d’Eon 8, 77,
male-to-female (MTF) 150, 151, 156 133–44, 145 n.36, 235
narratives 147–8, 150–4 Vie politique et militaire de M. le maréchal duc de
scholars 150 Bell’Isle 133
writers 159 n.46 Vie privée de Louis XV 133
transsexualism, transsexuality 8, 147, 148, 150, 152, Vie privée et criminelle d’Antoine-François Desrues
253, 159 n.22 133
d’Eon and 2, 147–8, 153–4 Vies des femmes illustres de la France 168
transvestite(s) 84, 98, 203 vies privées, literary genre 8, 133–44 passim
memoirs 177–86 Vignoles, Jean-Joseph de 77
transvestitism 2, 8, 84, 93 n.10, 94 n.29, 98, 177–86 Vignoles, Mademoiselle 77
Treaty of Paris 4, 27, 34, 114–15, 116 Villinghausen, battle of 4
Trenchard, John 222 Vilmorin-Andrieux, M. 76
Tressan, Comte de 165 Virgin Mary 124, 139, 142, 145 n.24, 234–5
Trial of M. D’Eon by a Jury of Matrons 117–18, 119 virginity 140, 141, 151, 153, 154, 172, 189, 196
Trinity 153 Viry, Comte de 28, 38, 44 n.20
True Story of the Chevalier d’Eon 81, 231 visual images of d’Eon 3, 8, 86–92, 108–10, 113–29,
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques 233 139–40, 161, 162, 166
Turkey 168 as fraudster 120–2
two-sex model 151 reading of x
tyranny, tyrants, see despotism market for 88–9
viticulture 73–5
underpants 98 Vizetelly, Ernest 81, 231
unicorn, symbolism of 116 Voltaire 28, 93, 95 n.32, 162, 168, 169, 209, 212
United States 41 n.14, 219, 221, 233–4
University of Leeds Library, see Brotherton Library Vorontsov, Count 166
University of Leeds x, 2, 3, 9, 82, 97, 147, 220, Voyage dans l’île des plaisirs 167
229–32, 234
University of Leiden 222 wagers, on d’Eon’s sex ix, 6, 63–4, 66, 90–1, 117,
Urquhart, bookseller 224 120, 123, 126, 140, 149, 194, 195
Wahrman, Dror 3, 11 n.15, 113 188–9, 194
Valade, publisher 134 Wales, Princess of 36
Van de Pol, Lotte 178 Walpole, Horace 84, 100
Van der Cruysse, Dirk 183 Walpole, Sir Robert 39–40.
Van Dyck, Antonis 125 Walpole, Thomas 28
Vane, Lady Frances 155, 200, 227 n.42 wardrobe, of d’Eon 97–110
Vanguin, Sieur 106 bills 97
Vanneck, Sir Joshua 28 list 105
Vaucher, Paul 28 Warens, Mme de 204
Vaulavré, Jacquillat de, (cousin of d’Eon) 74, 78, 79 Watkins, Owen C. 148–9
Vaulichères 73–4 Westminster Gazette 193, 194, 195
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens 87 Whately 55 n.48
Venus 142 Whigs 29, 195
Vergennes, Charles Gravier, Comte de 6. 41, 47, Whisperer 193
52, 58–9, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71 n.51, Wikipedia ix
99, 142 Wilkes affair 3
256 INDEX
Wilkes, John 17, 19, 53, 54 n.9, 56 n.66, 63, 190, pornographic publications 193
227 n.52, 228 n.69 rumoured to be in French pay 51
and Catherine Macaulay 221 Wilkites 7, 15–16, 35, 46, 47–8, 49, 50, 53, 114, 116,
and Commonwealthmen 221–2 117, 121–2, 222–4 passim, 228 n.64
and d’Holbach 222, 227 n.54 Willermawlaz, Thérèse de 70 n.14
and Marat 222–3, 228 n.58 Willis, Dr 210
and North Briton 30, 48 wine 73–5, 79 n.6, 95 n.35
attacks on Bute 30, 48 Wode 137
condemns sodomy 194 Wollstonecraft, Mary 157
d’Eon sees as potential French tool 35, 48 women, political influence of 193
d’Eon’s relationship with 114, 221, 233 women’s autobiographies 157
election in 1772 194 women’s novels 157
emulated by d’Eon 193 Woronzow, comte 137–8
flees to France 16 Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary 8
lampooned with d’Eon 115–16, 122–4, 124, 221 Woulf, banker 74
outlawed 193
parallels with d’Eon 15–16, 45–6, 53, 94 n.10, Zeus 123
193, 198