The Chevalier d'Eon
Feb. 13th, 2024 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mildred_of_midgard posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rheinsbergThis is the first installment of my write-up on the Chevalier d'Eon based on the biography by Gary Kates' Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman. The book was an informative read, but veeeery much a product of its time, which is 1995 (preface added in 2001). The author is actually surprisingly liberal for that period, but, well, here's his take:
At first, I thought that d'Eon must have been Europe's first transsexual, the victim of a disorder that certain psychiatrists label gender dysphoria. I assumed that today he would have been a prime candidate for sex reassignment surgery. Indeed, since the 1920s communities of transsexuals and transvestites have thought of d'Eon as their patron saint. However, several conversations with a psychiatrist who had worked in a gender identity clinic convinced me that d'Eon was not sick. He did not hate himself. He did not hate his body. He did not think that he was trapped in the wrong body. But if d'Eon was not a transsexual, then, well, what was he? Of course, my book argues that d'Eon came to a cognitive decision that it was best for him to live life as a woman.
Kates then uses that argument to conclude that he doesn't need to respect d'Eon's pronouns, and decides the most useful approach to writing about d'Eon is to use masculine pronouns, in order to emphasize to the reader that the subject of this bio was not a transgender ("transsexual") woman, but a man, full stop.
Now, I was certainly not any more well informed than this in 2001, but since it's 2023 and discourse has moved on, I had to decide what to do about pronouns. At first I was going with what the Mob AU fanfic author did, which was conclude that we have no idea what the Chevalier d'Eon would have wanted, because we're not in a position to ask the right questions, so she uses they/them. But after reading this book (I think the Mob AU author has only read Wikipedia), it seems like–assuming this book is more accurate than Wikipedia–the Chevalier d'Eon did not go back and forth between presenting as a man and a woman, but switched from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman, and subsequently lived and died as a woman. So I'm going to use "she/her" pronouns.
However, since I've told this story using dialogue, characters are going to use whatever pronouns they would have used at a given time, both for accuracy and because their decisions make no sense if you don't understand how they were perceiving this individual.
I'm also, because Kates presents the Chevalier d'Eon as an unreliable narrator who was consciously refashioning her narrative to her advantage, going to allow Kates to argue with the Chevalier in this write-up. I will also be interrupting the narrative a lot myself. :D
Here goes! The story of the Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810).
Chevalier d'Eon: We'll begin in medias res. The most interesting part of my story is when I was sent as a French secretary to the envoy in St. Petersburg in 1756. The head of the King's Secret, the Prince de Conti–
Mildred: Salongoers may remember him as the Comte de Broglie's unofficial boss, who gave him orders that contradicted the orders from his official boss, the French foreign minister. Conti was the guy who wanted the Polish throne after August III died, and the King's Secret was invented to try to put him there.
Chevalier d'Eon: The Prince de Conti wanted Elizaveta of Russia's help getting the Polish throne, but Russia and France had always been rivals for influence in Poland.
Mildred: As you may recall from the first installment of my 1764-1772 write-up.
Chevalier d'Eon: So Conti proposed that Louis and Elizaveta should strike up a correspondence to overcome their mutual suspicion. Elizaveta was down with this, but her command of French was weak. So she asked Conti to send her a young lady "neither too young, nor too old, [but ] honest, well-informed, prudent, and discreet" to act as her tutor, and to encipher the letters with a secret diplomatic code.
Chevalier d'Eon: The Prince de Conti, who knew I was a woman in disguise as a man, realized I had all the qualifications, so he asked me to readopt my feminine identity and interact with Elizaveta as a lady. I thus had two trunks of clothes during my diplomatic stint in Russia, one for my masculine presentation, and one for my feminine presentation.
Kates: Lies! You invented that story in the 1770s, when you decided you wanted to be able to live as a woman in France but still wear men's clothes and participate in the military and diplomatic service. So you needed to make up a story about how the government had authorized you to do it before.
Chevalier d'Eon: How dare you call my honesty into question?
Kates: There is no record of any gender shenanigans in any of the correspondence for the King's Secret in the 1760s. Nor did you mention it in any of your writings from the 1760s.
19th century Duc de Broglie: Yeah, I reviewed all the documents when the French foreign ministry made the papers available and I was writing my book, and there is no contemporary evidence for this episode, though later historians will uncritically cite it as fact.
Kates: Now. Begin your story at the beginning, Chevalier.
Chevalier d'Eon: Well, my father wanted a son, but he got a girl instead. So he decided to raise me as a boy–
Kates: More lies! You got your mother and sister to cover for you out of love, once you decided you wanted to present as a woman, but when you wrote to your doctor, who had seen you naked, you didn't even pretend you were a woman to him. You even joked about impregnating his wife.
Chevalier d'Eon: No chance I was intersex?
Kates: Nope. Later historians notwithstanding, that was all unfounded rumors. How do I know? When you died in 1810, your flatmate, an old lady who thought you were female too, was washing your body for burial and was shocked to discover you were a man. So she brought in the authorities, who sent a dozen people, including a professor of anatomy, two surgeons, a lawyer, and a journalist, to inspect your corpse. They signed testimonies affirming that you had a perfectly normal penis! In fact, all your anatomy was within the range of normal for a man, even if your Adam's apple didn't protrude.
Kates: Now. Begin again.
Chevalier d'Eon: Fine. The interesting part of my story begins with the King's Secret. My biggest patron was the Comte de Broglie, who ran the King's Secret for a while, before he got in trouble and got exiled. I really was sent to St. Petersburg as a secretary in 1756, as the Seven Years' War was breaking out, and I really did help Elizaveta with her correspondence with Louis XV. In fact, I made many daring trips between St. Petersburg and Paris, carrying secret correspondence concealed inside a copy of Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois. I didn't disguise myself as a woman, although Elizaveta was famous for her cross-dressing balls.
Kates: And what was unusual about her balls was that normally in the 18th century, if one cross-dressed at an event–
Mildred: Like when Fritz dressed up as a widow for Carneval in 1733!
Kates: –one wore a mask. One was in disguise as someone else, and half the fun was trying to guess who was who. Elizaveta, in contrast, just made people cross-dress as *themselves*, unmasked. That may have given you some ideas, Monsieur Chevalier. But it's not true that you had one trunk of women's clothes and one trunk of men's clothes in Russia, and you operated out of one to consistently present as female to Elizaveta and the other to present as a man when acting as a spy and diplomat.
Chevalier d'Eon: At any rate, I remained in Russia through most of the Seven Years' War, and became so recognized as an expert on local affairs that when Elizaveta died, the Comte de Broglie and Louis XV asked me to explain the political situation.
Chevalier d'Eon: In 1762, after Peter III and Catherine happened in short succession, and France was no longer allied with Russia, the war with England was going badly enough that the French were ready to make peace. I got sent to England to be. Then this happened:
Broglie: Holy cow, one of the best spies in the King's Secret is doing a bang-up job in England! I see a golden opportunity here to two-time the English and plan an attack on them while we're making peace! Plus, I'd love to do what we did in Poland and Sweden: bribe one of the parties in Parliament to be our voting minions. Let's make sure we don't tell our ministers about this plan, because, to quote Kates, "Even an unprincipled Machiavellian like Choiseul would never have approved a plan for a direct attack on England at the very moment a peace treaty was being signed by the two kings."
Chevalier d'Eon: Great, I can again be in the position of having to please two sets of masters. As we know, that always goes well.
Kates: This is one reason people were so willing to believe Chevalier d'Eon was actually a woman. Every time anyone learned anything about what was really going on with French diplomacy, it was at least that weird.
Mildred: Like the time when I announced I was engaged to my shocked coworkers, and that was considered so implausible that one of them joked that he was pregnant.
Chevalier d'Eon: So here I am, in England, bribing everyone with wine. So much wine. Hey, I'm from Burgundy, we have the best wines! In fact, I import so much wine that the British government starts protesting diplomatic immunity and the prime minister threatens to impose tariffs. I make a big enough stink to win this round, and wine becomes my trademark.
Chevalier d'Eon: Unfortunately, this, and other efforts that contribute to my success as a diplomat and spy, add up to a lot of expenses, which the French government is not happy with. I write increasingly testy letters. They're even less happy with testy letters.
In 1763:
French foreign minister Praslin: You're fired! Come back to France, but not to court.
Chevalier d'Eon: You mean my political career is at an end? Well, I'm not coming back to France, and you can't make me.
Louis XV: Oh, yes I can! I have written to the British, and they will extradite you for me.
British: Uh, actually, we can't do that.
Louis: ???
British: He hasn't broken any laws. This is a free country. We won't treat him as an ambassador anymore, but he's a private citizen not doing anyone any harm, so we can't arrest him or deport him or anything.
Chevalier d'Eon: Neener neener neener!
French ministers: This is treason!
Broglie: Eh, I don't know, I pulled similar stunts when I was a diplomat and y'all gave me orders I didn't want to follow. I will write a letter explaining that he's being obnoxious, yes, but forgivably so.
Louis: Are you seriously defending this guy and his pissy letters to his monarch?
Broglie: Psst, Louis, remember, he's got all the papers about the secret invasion of England we're planning. Do you want to provoke him into selling those papers to the English and starting a war?
Louis: I don't think they'll go to war even if they find out.
Broglie: International incident? Reputational damage for us?
Louis: Yeah, I see your point.
Broglie: May I propose that we leave him in England and pay him to continue spying for us?
Louis: I suppose I can live with that.
French foreign ministry: He still owes us money from all those expenses he wasn't supposed to run up, though!
Chevalier d'Eon: No, you owe *me* money for all the expenses I advanced out of my own pocket for *your* foreign policy!
Everybody: *writes anonymous pamphlets trashing each other*
Meanwhile, in 1764:
Pompadour: *dies*
Broglie: Now that my most powerful enemy is dead, can I come back to court? Maybe run the King's Secret?
Louis: Sure!
Chevalier d'Eon: Oh, wow! My most dedicated patron is now super influential! Surely this means good things for my career.
Broglie: *crickets*
Chevalier d'Eon: …I feel like I'm being scapegoated for the latest failures in French policy. Those anonymous pamphlets trashing my name are making me nervous. If no one promises me that I'm in good standing, then I'm sorry but I'm going to have to start selling secret papers to the British.
Chevalier d'Eon: Just to prove I'm not bluffing, I've published 200 pages of the least sensitive but still secret diplomatic correspondence already.
Kates:
The book naturally sent shock waves through the French government and transformed the nature of the affair. For weeks, diplomats on both sides of the Channel could talk of little else…It is impossible to overstate the sensational reception this book received. Within five days of its publication even King George III could talk of little else. "When Mr. Grenville went to the King," the British Prime Minister wrote about himself, "he found him very uneasy, and expressing great eagerness upon the publication of M. d'Eon's book." Indeed, Guerchy's prediction that it would become the topic everywhere in London was proven to be entirely too restrictive; it became the topic of conversation anywhere in Europe where politics was discussed…
The publication of the Lettres transformed d'Eon from someone known primarily among the intelligentsia and in diplomatic circles to a household name- at least in aristocratic households. Infamous or otherwise, few statesmen were as well known as d'Eon after the spring of 1764. Within a few months of its publication, d'Eon's book wasn't simply debated by powerful men at court, or even by the bourgeoisie in their cafés and newspapers, it was even discussed at home between mothers and daughters, as this fascinating excerpt from a letter from a sixteen-year-old aristocratic girl to a teenage friend testifies. (Because so many of us in the twentieth century would doubt that teenage girls during the eighteenth century would be interested in politics and intellectual life, the reader will forgive me for including such a lengthy citation. [Mildred: the reader will forgive me as well, because I thought this passage was cool.])
"After lunch I took my design lesson, finished Locke and started Spinoza. After the lesson , I finished my writing assignment, and we took a walk on the rampart where we go practically every day. Yesterday, after Mass, unhappy at not having seen you, I practiced writing in Spanish and Italian, and then came lunch. I stayed in my mother's apartment until five o'clock. When everyone started to play, I retired. I worked on a play about the power of education and read [Montesquieu's] Spirit of the Laws until six o'clock. ... This morning I took my Italian and Spanish lessons and read twenty-three pages of Plato. We ate lunch, and now I am taking the most comforting recreation in writing to you. At this moment my mother is reading the memoirs of M. d'Eon. What insanity! Or even more, what treasonous impudence! This work is forbidden and can't be found in Paris; one is obliged to order it from England. He promises five volumes, of which the first has appeared. There he limits himself to mocking the conduct of M. de Guerchy, but they say that in the other volumes he clearly divulges state secrets."
John Wilkes, British radical: I too am having problems with my government due to publications in which I criticize the King and leading ministers. Let us become best friends, and maybe you can help out me and my colleagues in the British opposition with your secret papers.
Louis XV: On the one hand, traitor!
Louis XV: On the other hand, I've been interested in this radical Wilkes guy for a while now, as I'd love to start a rebellion in England. D'Eon, why don't you stay BFFs with him and play double agent for us? I notice you didn't actually publish anything incriminating against us, just critical.
Chevalier d'Eon: Can do!
Louis XV: None of which is going to stop me from continuing to extradite you, though. I'm very confused about how a MONARCH can't do something as simple as this. I'm a monarch, I know how these things work. You can't fool me about it not being possible, George III!
Kates:
Over supper one evening in Paris, Broglie talked for hours with David Hume, then secretary to the British ambassador to France, about why the British government could not simply deport d'Eon. In France, Broglie argued, nothing could stop the will of the King in a matter of this kind. The famous philosopher reminded Broglie that in England the King was not sovereign, the laws were, and while everyone who lived in the kingdom was subject to those laws, no one could be held against his will unless there was evidence that some law had been violated. Broglie went home that night amazed that a monarchy could develop strong political institutions based on such strange notions.
Mildred: Yeah, this is why I was always convinced BPC *was* risking his neck with that invasion. This isn't the Continent, where the royal bro code takes precedence. I'm also reminded of how Philip the Frog in the 1720s could never be convinced that G1 wasn't just playing with him when he said he couldn't give back Gibraltar to Spain. "I'm a monarch! I know monarchs can do this sort of thing!" "I'm not an absolute monarch, you idiot. Parliament makes the rules."
Louis XV: So failing extradition by the wilfully defiant British king, I'm going to try to have you kidnapped.
Guerchy: I, the French ambassador in England who replaced you, am furious at you trashing me, d'Eon, and I am going to try to have you assassinated!
British government: We will indict you for attempted murder, Guerchy!
Kates:
For the French, everything about the indictment was insulting that the official representative of the French king could be tried for attempted murder seemed a clear violation of diplomatic immunity. Besides, in France, where indictments were controlled by the crown, the prosecution of a diplomat could happen only if the monarch intended it as an act of war. David Hume again patiently explained to a skeptical Broglie that the English political system was different from the French. Laws in England were immutable. If a law was violated, Hume boasted, the government had the obligation to prosecute the criminal, no matter his status. In contrast to France, whose Old Regime was based on the notion of privilege–literally, private law–in England, no one, at least in theory, was above the law.
George III: Okay, but this is still awkward, I get that. Louis's taking it as a personal insult, whether we mean it that way or no. Let's maybe dial down the publicity on this trial a little?
Louis: *Meanwhile*, I want my spy and his papers back!
Broglie: I agree the papers are necessary, but I really think we should keep d'Eon in England and make use of his contacts and skills for our nefarious purposes.
1765-1766:
Louis: FINE. He can have a pension. But you can't come back to France, d'Eon, you hear?
Chevalier d'Eon: I hear you. And I'm not too happy about permanent exile. The whole point of getting prestigious appointments abroad is to parlay them into even more prestigious ministerial appointments at home. I like England's system of government, and I think ours sucks, and the more I see of the sausage-making the more I realize how *much* it sucks, but I don't want to be stuck here forever. I wish I could come home again, but without being arrested.
1770:
Rumors break out about the Chevalier d'Eon being secretly a woman. They spread across Europe like wildfire. People start *placing bets*, and bankers are acting as bookies.
Chevalier d'Eon: This is an outrage! Who told you I was a woman? How dare you bet on my sex? I hereby challenge you to a duel!
Banker: Sorry about that, but you have to remember that in England, it's legal to place bets on anyone except the King, the Queen, and their children.
Chevalier d'Eon: A DUEL, SIR. Duels for everybody placing bets on the state of my genitalia!
Everyone: No one is going to fight you. Calm down.
Chevalier d'Eon: "Calm down." My honor is at stake here! And next thing I know, I'm going to be kidnapped so people can determine my sex. I am a victim of slander.
Kates: Ahem. While as a historian I cannot document the origin of rumors, by definition, all evidence points to you as the one who started them.
Chevalier d'Eon: That's nonsense! The only person I confided my true sex to was the Princess Dashkova, one-time BFF of future Catherine the Great, when I lived in Russia. She must have told someone!
Kates: Much like the correspondence of the King's Secret from that time contains no reference to you being hired to work as a woman and a man, Dashkova's memoirs make no reference to this. All evidence from your own correspondence points to you making this story up in the 1770s.
Chevalier d'Eon: Why would I do something as silly as that??
Kates: Because you wanted to go back to France, but you didn't want to be arrested and thrown in the Bastille when you got there. You figured this would both drum up some sympathy for you and give you a reason to leave England, as well as give you so much notoriety that Louis couldn't just throw you in a deep dark dungeon and expect the public to forget about you. Look, you were a double agent. You were one of the best damn double agents France ever had. Starting rumors without letting on that they came from you was part of your day job! You had both motive and opportunity, is what I'm saying.
Kates: Plus, don't forget the signed testimonies about the state of your penis upon your death.
Ghost of Fritz: *waves*
Kates: PLUS, even late in life, when you were dressing in women's clothes and presenting as a woman, random observers kept commenting on how masculine your body was. People would not have spontaneously looked at you, living as a man in England, and gone, "Oh, hey, must be a woman!" You made this up.
Chevalier d'Eon: *grumbles at future historians and their detective work*
Chevalier d'Eon: Anyway, it worked. In 1776, Louis XVI finally acknowledged I was a woman, and in 1777, after 15 years in England, I finally got to return to France safely.
Louis XVI: Well, Madame Chevaliere, now that you are a woman, you will obviously wear women's clothes and retire from the military and diplomacy.
Chevalier d'Eon: What?! I wanted to come back to France safely, not give up everything that made life worth living! I will be a woman wearing men's clothes and a man's life.
Louis: I will arrest you if you do that!
Chevalier d'Eon's fellow dragoons: We protest! Not because we want women in the army, but because wearing the uniform of a captain of dragoons is an honor! You're supposed to wear it every time you go out in public for the rest of your life. If the King can violate one of his own laws, he's a tyrant who can do anything. None of us will be safe!
Louis: I have the arrest warrant right here in my hand…your call, Chevalier.
Marie Antoinette: Don't worry, you can borrow my dressmaker, the famous Rose Bertin! We'll teach you how to be a lady again.
Chevalier d'Eon: *banging head against wall*
Chevalier d'Eon: FINE. I guess it's better than the Bastille, but not by much. The stays hurt my
shoulders, stomach, and groin. “I find women's clothes too complicated for dressing and undressing promptly. Full of inconvenience, unseasonable for winter, impractical for all occasions except those uniquely suited for embodying vanity, luxury, and vice." Also, narrow high heels are the worst; I'm going to keep wearing low rounded heels.
Mildred: More proof that men had stopped wearing high heels by mid-century. The Chevalier d'Eon was born in 1728.
Chevalier d'Eon: Also, I'm afraid that if I put on women's clothes, everyone's going to treat me like a woman, and if there's one thing I value in life, it's liberty.
Kates: I will talk a lot about Joan of Arc in this book. I will dedicate an entire chapter to Joan of Arc. But bizarrely, I will not mention the drama around her wearing men's clothes at all. There will be one passing reference to the Chevalier d'Eon pointing out that Joan refused to wear women's clothes, but I am apparently completely ignorant of the role it played in her trial and condemnation, leading Mildred to google me to see if I'm a serious historian at all.
Mildred: History professor at Pomona College. Not to be a snob, but meh. Research profile also meh; I wouldn't be surprised if he never picked up a medieval history book in his life. It was just weird to see ~75 mentions of Joan's name in the book and nary a discussion of the cross-dressing battle.
Chevalier d'Eon: Meanwhile, I have a fantastic track record in both the military and diplomatic services; that means I can continue to serve, right?
Louis: No. You are a woman. Please to be behaving like a woman.
Chevalier d'Eon: I knew it! I knew dressing like a woman would limit me to a woman's life. At the very least, I'm going to continue acting like a man in terms of body language, chivalry towards ladies, etc.
Chevalier d'Eon: And in the meantime, I haven't given up on the military idea. The American Revolution has started, I'm a huge fan of liberty, and more than anything I want to go to America and fight for the cause! I will begin a letter-writing campaign in which I bother everyone with any power or influence at all, to try to get myself a post with the French troops in America!
Louis XVI: OMG WTF. I hereby order you to leave Versailles and return to your hometown in Burgundy and stop making a nuisance of yourself.
Chevalier d'Eon: *is still in Versailles, complaining about boredom*
Louis XVI: Fine, arrest her.
Chevalier d'Eon: This is just like the time Joan of Arc was arrested for wearing a military uniform, an episode on which Kates will not elaborate at all!
Chevalier d'Eon: Like any good French noble, I think life in the provinces sucks. If I can't have Paris, I want London! Please can I go to London, pretty please?
French ministers: No, you idiot, we're at war with England. That American Revolution thing? Ever heard of it? In France you stay, at least until the war's over.
1783:
Chevalier d'Eon: Okay, now that the war's over, can I go to England? I have a lot of creditors there, and I need to straighten out my finances.
French ministers: No.
Mildred: Evidence that French nobility weren't allowed to travel abroad without permission either? It's not just you, Lehndorff!
1785:
Chevalier d'Eon: This is becoming critical! My creditors are about to sell the books and papers I left behind! Do you want my books and papers in the hands of the general public?
French ministers: FINE. I guess that would be the worst possible outcome here. Go.
Chevalier d'Eon: Sweet! I may have supported the Yankee tax dodgers against England, but the English political system is at least better than the stupid French one.
1789:
French revolution: *breaks out*
Chevalier d'Eon: Score! Now France will become more like England. I will write a letter to the National Assembly offering to help fight against Austria!
National Assembly: *laughter and applause when the letter is read aloud*
Some people: Yeah, let her come! She can be our new Joan of Arc!
1793:
French government: Okay, yeah, get her a fake passport so she can leave England and come here.
Chevalier d'Eon: Shit, I have no money! Even selling off all my books won't cover all my debts. I am forced to enter fencing tournaments for money, and become known as the world's best swordswoman. Even the Prince of Wales will watch me.
Chevalier d'Eon: Alas, the 1790s were not a good time for me: plagued by money problems, hitting my 70s, and getting injured and forced to discontinue fencing.
Kates: It's probably for the best you never made it to France. The Terror started shortly after you would have come, and you were nobility after all. "Someone with d'Eon's flair for the dramatic would have had difficulty maintaining a low profile."
Mildred: *choke*
Mildred: Understatement of the year!
1810:
Chevalier d'Eon: *dies, aged 81*
So this was an interesting book. Despite the fact that the whole Joan of Arc treatment made me question everything about his credentials, the book is jam-packed with more information about the 18th century and the Chevalier's life than I could report here.
In particular, if you want to read the book, there's a ton on how 18th century society and intellectuals understood gender roles, and how that differed from the 19th century. There's also a lot on the Chevalier's intellectual and spiritual life, the books she read and what she wrote, her experience as a born-again Christian, and how both of those things led her to believe women were morally superior to men in a way that must have contributed to her desire to live life as one.
There's also a lot more on how famous figures interacted with her, what she thought of them, and what they thought of her, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, John Wilkes, and this entire ~dramatic~ episode with Beaumarchais. It's worth a read even if it's not the most rigorous history ever.cahn, you might like this one.
Oh, and final note from our 19th century Duc de Broglie, he is predictably not a fan of the Chevalier d'Eon and gets eyerolly at the whole "I'm a woman!" thing, and thinks of it as shenanigans that just made it harder for the Comte de Broglie to focus on important things, like the First Partition of Poland. (Note that the rumors about the Chevalier being a woman started in 1770, and the First Partition was playing out in 1771-1774, so these two events overlapped.)
At first, I thought that d'Eon must have been Europe's first transsexual, the victim of a disorder that certain psychiatrists label gender dysphoria. I assumed that today he would have been a prime candidate for sex reassignment surgery. Indeed, since the 1920s communities of transsexuals and transvestites have thought of d'Eon as their patron saint. However, several conversations with a psychiatrist who had worked in a gender identity clinic convinced me that d'Eon was not sick. He did not hate himself. He did not hate his body. He did not think that he was trapped in the wrong body. But if d'Eon was not a transsexual, then, well, what was he? Of course, my book argues that d'Eon came to a cognitive decision that it was best for him to live life as a woman.
Kates then uses that argument to conclude that he doesn't need to respect d'Eon's pronouns, and decides the most useful approach to writing about d'Eon is to use masculine pronouns, in order to emphasize to the reader that the subject of this bio was not a transgender ("transsexual") woman, but a man, full stop.
Now, I was certainly not any more well informed than this in 2001, but since it's 2023 and discourse has moved on, I had to decide what to do about pronouns. At first I was going with what the Mob AU fanfic author did, which was conclude that we have no idea what the Chevalier d'Eon would have wanted, because we're not in a position to ask the right questions, so she uses they/them. But after reading this book (I think the Mob AU author has only read Wikipedia), it seems like–assuming this book is more accurate than Wikipedia–the Chevalier d'Eon did not go back and forth between presenting as a man and a woman, but switched from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman, and subsequently lived and died as a woman. So I'm going to use "she/her" pronouns.
However, since I've told this story using dialogue, characters are going to use whatever pronouns they would have used at a given time, both for accuracy and because their decisions make no sense if you don't understand how they were perceiving this individual.
I'm also, because Kates presents the Chevalier d'Eon as an unreliable narrator who was consciously refashioning her narrative to her advantage, going to allow Kates to argue with the Chevalier in this write-up. I will also be interrupting the narrative a lot myself. :D
Here goes! The story of the Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810).
Chevalier d'Eon: We'll begin in medias res. The most interesting part of my story is when I was sent as a French secretary to the envoy in St. Petersburg in 1756. The head of the King's Secret, the Prince de Conti–
Mildred: Salongoers may remember him as the Comte de Broglie's unofficial boss, who gave him orders that contradicted the orders from his official boss, the French foreign minister. Conti was the guy who wanted the Polish throne after August III died, and the King's Secret was invented to try to put him there.
Chevalier d'Eon: The Prince de Conti wanted Elizaveta of Russia's help getting the Polish throne, but Russia and France had always been rivals for influence in Poland.
Mildred: As you may recall from the first installment of my 1764-1772 write-up.
Chevalier d'Eon: So Conti proposed that Louis and Elizaveta should strike up a correspondence to overcome their mutual suspicion. Elizaveta was down with this, but her command of French was weak. So she asked Conti to send her a young lady "neither too young, nor too old, [but ] honest, well-informed, prudent, and discreet" to act as her tutor, and to encipher the letters with a secret diplomatic code.
Chevalier d'Eon: The Prince de Conti, who knew I was a woman in disguise as a man, realized I had all the qualifications, so he asked me to readopt my feminine identity and interact with Elizaveta as a lady. I thus had two trunks of clothes during my diplomatic stint in Russia, one for my masculine presentation, and one for my feminine presentation.
Kates: Lies! You invented that story in the 1770s, when you decided you wanted to be able to live as a woman in France but still wear men's clothes and participate in the military and diplomatic service. So you needed to make up a story about how the government had authorized you to do it before.
Chevalier d'Eon: How dare you call my honesty into question?
Kates: There is no record of any gender shenanigans in any of the correspondence for the King's Secret in the 1760s. Nor did you mention it in any of your writings from the 1760s.
19th century Duc de Broglie: Yeah, I reviewed all the documents when the French foreign ministry made the papers available and I was writing my book, and there is no contemporary evidence for this episode, though later historians will uncritically cite it as fact.
Kates: Now. Begin your story at the beginning, Chevalier.
Chevalier d'Eon: Well, my father wanted a son, but he got a girl instead. So he decided to raise me as a boy–
Kates: More lies! You got your mother and sister to cover for you out of love, once you decided you wanted to present as a woman, but when you wrote to your doctor, who had seen you naked, you didn't even pretend you were a woman to him. You even joked about impregnating his wife.
Chevalier d'Eon: No chance I was intersex?
Kates: Nope. Later historians notwithstanding, that was all unfounded rumors. How do I know? When you died in 1810, your flatmate, an old lady who thought you were female too, was washing your body for burial and was shocked to discover you were a man. So she brought in the authorities, who sent a dozen people, including a professor of anatomy, two surgeons, a lawyer, and a journalist, to inspect your corpse. They signed testimonies affirming that you had a perfectly normal penis! In fact, all your anatomy was within the range of normal for a man, even if your Adam's apple didn't protrude.
Kates: Now. Begin again.
Chevalier d'Eon: Fine. The interesting part of my story begins with the King's Secret. My biggest patron was the Comte de Broglie, who ran the King's Secret for a while, before he got in trouble and got exiled. I really was sent to St. Petersburg as a secretary in 1756, as the Seven Years' War was breaking out, and I really did help Elizaveta with her correspondence with Louis XV. In fact, I made many daring trips between St. Petersburg and Paris, carrying secret correspondence concealed inside a copy of Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois. I didn't disguise myself as a woman, although Elizaveta was famous for her cross-dressing balls.
Kates: And what was unusual about her balls was that normally in the 18th century, if one cross-dressed at an event–
Mildred: Like when Fritz dressed up as a widow for Carneval in 1733!
Kates: –one wore a mask. One was in disguise as someone else, and half the fun was trying to guess who was who. Elizaveta, in contrast, just made people cross-dress as *themselves*, unmasked. That may have given you some ideas, Monsieur Chevalier. But it's not true that you had one trunk of women's clothes and one trunk of men's clothes in Russia, and you operated out of one to consistently present as female to Elizaveta and the other to present as a man when acting as a spy and diplomat.
Chevalier d'Eon: At any rate, I remained in Russia through most of the Seven Years' War, and became so recognized as an expert on local affairs that when Elizaveta died, the Comte de Broglie and Louis XV asked me to explain the political situation.
Chevalier d'Eon: In 1762, after Peter III and Catherine happened in short succession, and France was no longer allied with Russia, the war with England was going badly enough that the French were ready to make peace. I got sent to England to be. Then this happened:
Broglie: Holy cow, one of the best spies in the King's Secret is doing a bang-up job in England! I see a golden opportunity here to two-time the English and plan an attack on them while we're making peace! Plus, I'd love to do what we did in Poland and Sweden: bribe one of the parties in Parliament to be our voting minions. Let's make sure we don't tell our ministers about this plan, because, to quote Kates, "Even an unprincipled Machiavellian like Choiseul would never have approved a plan for a direct attack on England at the very moment a peace treaty was being signed by the two kings."
Chevalier d'Eon: Great, I can again be in the position of having to please two sets of masters. As we know, that always goes well.
Kates: This is one reason people were so willing to believe Chevalier d'Eon was actually a woman. Every time anyone learned anything about what was really going on with French diplomacy, it was at least that weird.
Mildred: Like the time when I announced I was engaged to my shocked coworkers, and that was considered so implausible that one of them joked that he was pregnant.
Chevalier d'Eon: So here I am, in England, bribing everyone with wine. So much wine. Hey, I'm from Burgundy, we have the best wines! In fact, I import so much wine that the British government starts protesting diplomatic immunity and the prime minister threatens to impose tariffs. I make a big enough stink to win this round, and wine becomes my trademark.
Chevalier d'Eon: Unfortunately, this, and other efforts that contribute to my success as a diplomat and spy, add up to a lot of expenses, which the French government is not happy with. I write increasingly testy letters. They're even less happy with testy letters.
In 1763:
French foreign minister Praslin: You're fired! Come back to France, but not to court.
Chevalier d'Eon: You mean my political career is at an end? Well, I'm not coming back to France, and you can't make me.
Louis XV: Oh, yes I can! I have written to the British, and they will extradite you for me.
British: Uh, actually, we can't do that.
Louis: ???
British: He hasn't broken any laws. This is a free country. We won't treat him as an ambassador anymore, but he's a private citizen not doing anyone any harm, so we can't arrest him or deport him or anything.
Chevalier d'Eon: Neener neener neener!
French ministers: This is treason!
Broglie: Eh, I don't know, I pulled similar stunts when I was a diplomat and y'all gave me orders I didn't want to follow. I will write a letter explaining that he's being obnoxious, yes, but forgivably so.
Louis: Are you seriously defending this guy and his pissy letters to his monarch?
Broglie: Psst, Louis, remember, he's got all the papers about the secret invasion of England we're planning. Do you want to provoke him into selling those papers to the English and starting a war?
Louis: I don't think they'll go to war even if they find out.
Broglie: International incident? Reputational damage for us?
Louis: Yeah, I see your point.
Broglie: May I propose that we leave him in England and pay him to continue spying for us?
Louis: I suppose I can live with that.
French foreign ministry: He still owes us money from all those expenses he wasn't supposed to run up, though!
Chevalier d'Eon: No, you owe *me* money for all the expenses I advanced out of my own pocket for *your* foreign policy!
Everybody: *writes anonymous pamphlets trashing each other*
Meanwhile, in 1764:
Pompadour: *dies*
Broglie: Now that my most powerful enemy is dead, can I come back to court? Maybe run the King's Secret?
Louis: Sure!
Chevalier d'Eon: Oh, wow! My most dedicated patron is now super influential! Surely this means good things for my career.
Broglie: *crickets*
Chevalier d'Eon: …I feel like I'm being scapegoated for the latest failures in French policy. Those anonymous pamphlets trashing my name are making me nervous. If no one promises me that I'm in good standing, then I'm sorry but I'm going to have to start selling secret papers to the British.
Chevalier d'Eon: Just to prove I'm not bluffing, I've published 200 pages of the least sensitive but still secret diplomatic correspondence already.
Kates:
The book naturally sent shock waves through the French government and transformed the nature of the affair. For weeks, diplomats on both sides of the Channel could talk of little else…It is impossible to overstate the sensational reception this book received. Within five days of its publication even King George III could talk of little else. "When Mr. Grenville went to the King," the British Prime Minister wrote about himself, "he found him very uneasy, and expressing great eagerness upon the publication of M. d'Eon's book." Indeed, Guerchy's prediction that it would become the topic everywhere in London was proven to be entirely too restrictive; it became the topic of conversation anywhere in Europe where politics was discussed…
The publication of the Lettres transformed d'Eon from someone known primarily among the intelligentsia and in diplomatic circles to a household name- at least in aristocratic households. Infamous or otherwise, few statesmen were as well known as d'Eon after the spring of 1764. Within a few months of its publication, d'Eon's book wasn't simply debated by powerful men at court, or even by the bourgeoisie in their cafés and newspapers, it was even discussed at home between mothers and daughters, as this fascinating excerpt from a letter from a sixteen-year-old aristocratic girl to a teenage friend testifies. (Because so many of us in the twentieth century would doubt that teenage girls during the eighteenth century would be interested in politics and intellectual life, the reader will forgive me for including such a lengthy citation. [Mildred: the reader will forgive me as well, because I thought this passage was cool.])
"After lunch I took my design lesson, finished Locke and started Spinoza. After the lesson , I finished my writing assignment, and we took a walk on the rampart where we go practically every day. Yesterday, after Mass, unhappy at not having seen you, I practiced writing in Spanish and Italian, and then came lunch. I stayed in my mother's apartment until five o'clock. When everyone started to play, I retired. I worked on a play about the power of education and read [Montesquieu's] Spirit of the Laws until six o'clock. ... This morning I took my Italian and Spanish lessons and read twenty-three pages of Plato. We ate lunch, and now I am taking the most comforting recreation in writing to you. At this moment my mother is reading the memoirs of M. d'Eon. What insanity! Or even more, what treasonous impudence! This work is forbidden and can't be found in Paris; one is obliged to order it from England. He promises five volumes, of which the first has appeared. There he limits himself to mocking the conduct of M. de Guerchy, but they say that in the other volumes he clearly divulges state secrets."
John Wilkes, British radical: I too am having problems with my government due to publications in which I criticize the King and leading ministers. Let us become best friends, and maybe you can help out me and my colleagues in the British opposition with your secret papers.
Louis XV: On the one hand, traitor!
Louis XV: On the other hand, I've been interested in this radical Wilkes guy for a while now, as I'd love to start a rebellion in England. D'Eon, why don't you stay BFFs with him and play double agent for us? I notice you didn't actually publish anything incriminating against us, just critical.
Chevalier d'Eon: Can do!
Louis XV: None of which is going to stop me from continuing to extradite you, though. I'm very confused about how a MONARCH can't do something as simple as this. I'm a monarch, I know how these things work. You can't fool me about it not being possible, George III!
Kates:
Over supper one evening in Paris, Broglie talked for hours with David Hume, then secretary to the British ambassador to France, about why the British government could not simply deport d'Eon. In France, Broglie argued, nothing could stop the will of the King in a matter of this kind. The famous philosopher reminded Broglie that in England the King was not sovereign, the laws were, and while everyone who lived in the kingdom was subject to those laws, no one could be held against his will unless there was evidence that some law had been violated. Broglie went home that night amazed that a monarchy could develop strong political institutions based on such strange notions.
Mildred: Yeah, this is why I was always convinced BPC *was* risking his neck with that invasion. This isn't the Continent, where the royal bro code takes precedence. I'm also reminded of how Philip the Frog in the 1720s could never be convinced that G1 wasn't just playing with him when he said he couldn't give back Gibraltar to Spain. "I'm a monarch! I know monarchs can do this sort of thing!" "I'm not an absolute monarch, you idiot. Parliament makes the rules."
Louis XV: So failing extradition by the wilfully defiant British king, I'm going to try to have you kidnapped.
Guerchy: I, the French ambassador in England who replaced you, am furious at you trashing me, d'Eon, and I am going to try to have you assassinated!
British government: We will indict you for attempted murder, Guerchy!
Kates:
For the French, everything about the indictment was insulting that the official representative of the French king could be tried for attempted murder seemed a clear violation of diplomatic immunity. Besides, in France, where indictments were controlled by the crown, the prosecution of a diplomat could happen only if the monarch intended it as an act of war. David Hume again patiently explained to a skeptical Broglie that the English political system was different from the French. Laws in England were immutable. If a law was violated, Hume boasted, the government had the obligation to prosecute the criminal, no matter his status. In contrast to France, whose Old Regime was based on the notion of privilege–literally, private law–in England, no one, at least in theory, was above the law.
George III: Okay, but this is still awkward, I get that. Louis's taking it as a personal insult, whether we mean it that way or no. Let's maybe dial down the publicity on this trial a little?
Louis: *Meanwhile*, I want my spy and his papers back!
Broglie: I agree the papers are necessary, but I really think we should keep d'Eon in England and make use of his contacts and skills for our nefarious purposes.
1765-1766:
Louis: FINE. He can have a pension. But you can't come back to France, d'Eon, you hear?
Chevalier d'Eon: I hear you. And I'm not too happy about permanent exile. The whole point of getting prestigious appointments abroad is to parlay them into even more prestigious ministerial appointments at home. I like England's system of government, and I think ours sucks, and the more I see of the sausage-making the more I realize how *much* it sucks, but I don't want to be stuck here forever. I wish I could come home again, but without being arrested.
1770:
Rumors break out about the Chevalier d'Eon being secretly a woman. They spread across Europe like wildfire. People start *placing bets*, and bankers are acting as bookies.
Chevalier d'Eon: This is an outrage! Who told you I was a woman? How dare you bet on my sex? I hereby challenge you to a duel!
Banker: Sorry about that, but you have to remember that in England, it's legal to place bets on anyone except the King, the Queen, and their children.
Chevalier d'Eon: A DUEL, SIR. Duels for everybody placing bets on the state of my genitalia!
Everyone: No one is going to fight you. Calm down.
Chevalier d'Eon: "Calm down." My honor is at stake here! And next thing I know, I'm going to be kidnapped so people can determine my sex. I am a victim of slander.
Kates: Ahem. While as a historian I cannot document the origin of rumors, by definition, all evidence points to you as the one who started them.
Chevalier d'Eon: That's nonsense! The only person I confided my true sex to was the Princess Dashkova, one-time BFF of future Catherine the Great, when I lived in Russia. She must have told someone!
Kates: Much like the correspondence of the King's Secret from that time contains no reference to you being hired to work as a woman and a man, Dashkova's memoirs make no reference to this. All evidence from your own correspondence points to you making this story up in the 1770s.
Chevalier d'Eon: Why would I do something as silly as that??
Kates: Because you wanted to go back to France, but you didn't want to be arrested and thrown in the Bastille when you got there. You figured this would both drum up some sympathy for you and give you a reason to leave England, as well as give you so much notoriety that Louis couldn't just throw you in a deep dark dungeon and expect the public to forget about you. Look, you were a double agent. You were one of the best damn double agents France ever had. Starting rumors without letting on that they came from you was part of your day job! You had both motive and opportunity, is what I'm saying.
Kates: Plus, don't forget the signed testimonies about the state of your penis upon your death.
Ghost of Fritz: *waves*
Kates: PLUS, even late in life, when you were dressing in women's clothes and presenting as a woman, random observers kept commenting on how masculine your body was. People would not have spontaneously looked at you, living as a man in England, and gone, "Oh, hey, must be a woman!" You made this up.
Chevalier d'Eon: *grumbles at future historians and their detective work*
Chevalier d'Eon: Anyway, it worked. In 1776, Louis XVI finally acknowledged I was a woman, and in 1777, after 15 years in England, I finally got to return to France safely.
Louis XVI: Well, Madame Chevaliere, now that you are a woman, you will obviously wear women's clothes and retire from the military and diplomacy.
Chevalier d'Eon: What?! I wanted to come back to France safely, not give up everything that made life worth living! I will be a woman wearing men's clothes and a man's life.
Louis: I will arrest you if you do that!
Chevalier d'Eon's fellow dragoons: We protest! Not because we want women in the army, but because wearing the uniform of a captain of dragoons is an honor! You're supposed to wear it every time you go out in public for the rest of your life. If the King can violate one of his own laws, he's a tyrant who can do anything. None of us will be safe!
Louis: I have the arrest warrant right here in my hand…your call, Chevalier.
Marie Antoinette: Don't worry, you can borrow my dressmaker, the famous Rose Bertin! We'll teach you how to be a lady again.
Chevalier d'Eon: *banging head against wall*
Chevalier d'Eon: FINE. I guess it's better than the Bastille, but not by much. The stays hurt my
shoulders, stomach, and groin. “I find women's clothes too complicated for dressing and undressing promptly. Full of inconvenience, unseasonable for winter, impractical for all occasions except those uniquely suited for embodying vanity, luxury, and vice." Also, narrow high heels are the worst; I'm going to keep wearing low rounded heels.
Mildred: More proof that men had stopped wearing high heels by mid-century. The Chevalier d'Eon was born in 1728.
Chevalier d'Eon: Also, I'm afraid that if I put on women's clothes, everyone's going to treat me like a woman, and if there's one thing I value in life, it's liberty.
Kates: I will talk a lot about Joan of Arc in this book. I will dedicate an entire chapter to Joan of Arc. But bizarrely, I will not mention the drama around her wearing men's clothes at all. There will be one passing reference to the Chevalier d'Eon pointing out that Joan refused to wear women's clothes, but I am apparently completely ignorant of the role it played in her trial and condemnation, leading Mildred to google me to see if I'm a serious historian at all.
Mildred: History professor at Pomona College. Not to be a snob, but meh. Research profile also meh; I wouldn't be surprised if he never picked up a medieval history book in his life. It was just weird to see ~75 mentions of Joan's name in the book and nary a discussion of the cross-dressing battle.
Chevalier d'Eon: Meanwhile, I have a fantastic track record in both the military and diplomatic services; that means I can continue to serve, right?
Louis: No. You are a woman. Please to be behaving like a woman.
Chevalier d'Eon: I knew it! I knew dressing like a woman would limit me to a woman's life. At the very least, I'm going to continue acting like a man in terms of body language, chivalry towards ladies, etc.
Chevalier d'Eon: And in the meantime, I haven't given up on the military idea. The American Revolution has started, I'm a huge fan of liberty, and more than anything I want to go to America and fight for the cause! I will begin a letter-writing campaign in which I bother everyone with any power or influence at all, to try to get myself a post with the French troops in America!
Louis XVI: OMG WTF. I hereby order you to leave Versailles and return to your hometown in Burgundy and stop making a nuisance of yourself.
Chevalier d'Eon: *is still in Versailles, complaining about boredom*
Louis XVI: Fine, arrest her.
Chevalier d'Eon: This is just like the time Joan of Arc was arrested for wearing a military uniform, an episode on which Kates will not elaborate at all!
Chevalier d'Eon: Like any good French noble, I think life in the provinces sucks. If I can't have Paris, I want London! Please can I go to London, pretty please?
French ministers: No, you idiot, we're at war with England. That American Revolution thing? Ever heard of it? In France you stay, at least until the war's over.
1783:
Chevalier d'Eon: Okay, now that the war's over, can I go to England? I have a lot of creditors there, and I need to straighten out my finances.
French ministers: No.
Mildred: Evidence that French nobility weren't allowed to travel abroad without permission either? It's not just you, Lehndorff!
1785:
Chevalier d'Eon: This is becoming critical! My creditors are about to sell the books and papers I left behind! Do you want my books and papers in the hands of the general public?
French ministers: FINE. I guess that would be the worst possible outcome here. Go.
Chevalier d'Eon: Sweet! I may have supported the Yankee tax dodgers against England, but the English political system is at least better than the stupid French one.
1789:
French revolution: *breaks out*
Chevalier d'Eon: Score! Now France will become more like England. I will write a letter to the National Assembly offering to help fight against Austria!
National Assembly: *laughter and applause when the letter is read aloud*
Some people: Yeah, let her come! She can be our new Joan of Arc!
1793:
French government: Okay, yeah, get her a fake passport so she can leave England and come here.
Chevalier d'Eon: Shit, I have no money! Even selling off all my books won't cover all my debts. I am forced to enter fencing tournaments for money, and become known as the world's best swordswoman. Even the Prince of Wales will watch me.
Chevalier d'Eon: Alas, the 1790s were not a good time for me: plagued by money problems, hitting my 70s, and getting injured and forced to discontinue fencing.
Kates: It's probably for the best you never made it to France. The Terror started shortly after you would have come, and you were nobility after all. "Someone with d'Eon's flair for the dramatic would have had difficulty maintaining a low profile."
Mildred: *choke*
Mildred: Understatement of the year!
1810:
Chevalier d'Eon: *dies, aged 81*
So this was an interesting book. Despite the fact that the whole Joan of Arc treatment made me question everything about his credentials, the book is jam-packed with more information about the 18th century and the Chevalier's life than I could report here.
In particular, if you want to read the book, there's a ton on how 18th century society and intellectuals understood gender roles, and how that differed from the 19th century. There's also a lot on the Chevalier's intellectual and spiritual life, the books she read and what she wrote, her experience as a born-again Christian, and how both of those things led her to believe women were morally superior to men in a way that must have contributed to her desire to live life as one.
There's also a lot more on how famous figures interacted with her, what she thought of them, and what they thought of her, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, John Wilkes, and this entire ~dramatic~ episode with Beaumarchais. It's worth a read even if it's not the most rigorous history ever.
cahn, you might like this one.Oh, and final note from our 19th century Duc de Broglie, he is predictably not a fan of the Chevalier d'Eon and gets eyerolly at the whole "I'm a woman!" thing, and thinks of it as shenanigans that just made it harder for the Comte de Broglie to focus on important things, like the First Partition of Poland. (Note that the rumors about the Chevalier being a woman started in 1770, and the First Partition was playing out in 1771-1774, so these two events overlapped.)
