the chevalier d'eon and his worlds: gender, espionage and politics in the eighteenth century

THE CHEVALIER D’EON AND HIS WORLDS

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Th e Chevalier D’Eon and his Worlds

Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century

Edited bySimon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin,

Russell Goulbourne and Valerie Mainz

Continuum UK, Th e Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NXContinuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright © Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne and Valerie Mainz 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers.

First published 2010

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-82642-278-1

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New ZealandPrinted and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall, Great Britain

www.continuumbooks.com

Contents

Illustrations viiPreface ixAcknowledgements xiii Introduction 1

Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne, Valerie Mainz

Career and Politics 1762–1785 1 Th e Chevalier d’Eon, Media Manipulation and the Making of an

Eighteenth-Century Celebrity 13Simon Burrows

2 On the Art of Diplomacy and the Art of Describing Diplomacy: Th e Chevalier d’Eon and British Political Life at the End of the Seven Years’ War 25Edmond Dziembowski

3 ‘Faire le Wilkes’: the Chevalier d’Eon and the Wilkites, 1762–1775 45Jonathan Conlin

4 Beaumarchais and d’Eon: What an Aff air 57Donald C. Spinelli

5 D’Eon and Tonnerre, 1779–1784 73Elisabeth Chaussin

Gender and Representation 6 A ‘monster of metamorphosis’: Reassessing the Chevalier/Chevalière

d’Eon’s Change of Gender 81Stephen Brogan

7 Dressing d’Eon 97Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell

8 Th e Chevalier d’Eon and his Several Identities 113Valerie Mainz

9 La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d’Eon (1779): Biography and the Art of Manipulation 133Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre

10 Identity, Gender, Genre and Truth in Th e Maiden of Tonnerre: Th e Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and Chevalière d’Eon 147Marilyn Morris

Heroes and Heroines 11 Th e Myth of the Amazons in the Eighteenth Century and the

Legend of the Chevalier d’Eon 161Alexandre Stroev

12 Transvestite Traditions and Narrative Discontinuities: d’Eon and the abbé de Choisy 177Joseph Harris

13 Th e Chevalier d’Eon, Rousseau and New Ideas of Gender, Sex and the Self in the Late Eighteenth Century 187Anna Clark

14 Louvet’s Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas: Sexual, Political and Textual Imbroglios 201Simon Davies

15 An Eighteenth-Century French Commonwealthman? Exploring the Context of the Chevalier d’Eon’s Translation of Marchamont Nedham’s Th e Excellencie of a Free State 215Rachel Hammersley

A Note on the d’Eon Archive in the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library 229Chris Sheppard

Aft erwordD’Eon: Christian, Woman and Autobiographer 233Gary Kates

Index 241

Illustrations

6.1 Victor-Marie Picot aft er Charles Jean Robineau, Th e 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, © Th e 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 taff eta lined with white linen, lace, ribbons, c. 1779, Tonnerre Museum, inv. 1991, fi che 449, gift of Madame Coeurderoy.

7.3 Francis Haward aft er Angelica Kauff mann 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, Th e 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, © Th e Trustees of the British Museum British Museum.

8.2 Anon, Th e 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 Th e Nuptuals of Miss Epicæne d’Eon, etching, 19.5 cm × 25.5 cm, 1771, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.

8.6 Anon, Hail! Th ou Production most uncommon/Woman half-man and man half-Woman, etching, frontispiece to An Epistle from Mademoiselle d’Eon to the Right Honorable Lord Mansfi eld – 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 & Th e Dragon and Madlle d’Eon riposting, etching, 26 cm × 34 cm, 1789, University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection.

9.1 Aft er 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.

PrefaceGriselda Pollock

‘Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont (5 October 1728–21 May 1810), usually known as the Chevalier d’Eon, was a French diplomat, spy, soldier and Freemason who lived the fi rst half of his life as a man and the second half as a woman.’ Th us, does the entry in Wikipedia succinctly present the subject/topic of this important new collection of scholarly papers that aim to bring historical depth and analytical rigour to a racy story. A famous Dragoon and fencer of considerable skill, a member of the secret service of Louis XV charged with sensitive diplomatic missions to Russia and Great Britain, the Chevalier d’Eon’s gender became the topic of a wager in fashionable London in the early 1770s. Although the issue was never tested and proven, the Chevalier chose to/was obliged to dress as a woman and lived and wrote as a woman throughout the rest of her life, even off ering to form a battalion of women to fi ght in the post-Revolutionary wars. How can we make sense of this archive, this story, this episode? Is it a matter for historians, political theorists, art historians, costume historians, or biographers of his spiritual quest and right to decide a gender?1 Or can such a complex case only be grasped through the many lenses of each of these specializations?

Th is collection of papers on the fascinating, challenging and perplexing fi gure of the Chevalier d’Eon is, therefore, an exemplary transdisciplinary project. Transdisciplinary is not identical with interdisciplinary. Th ere is no intention to mix and match diff erent approaches in the hope of creating a third way. Instead, the aim is to present something more akin to seeing a scene through a kaleidoscope. A single object of study – an eight-eenth-century French, transgendering, international diplomat and spy, a master-fencer, and author of both spiritual refl ections and political autobiographies – is examined from as many diff erent angles and perspectives as the complexity of his/her life, work, representations by self and by others, political affi liations and contexts, friendships and intellectual competitions, intersections with pre-Revolutionary international relations and political theory demands. Th e Chevalier d’Eon presents the assembled array of historians, literary specialists, costume historians, art historians, local and regional his-torians, political theorists, and biographers with challenges to each of their disciplinary modes of analysis because the ‘case’ defi es any one scholar or discipline. What can we know about this extraordinary historical fi gure unless we bring together the techniques and methods of every one of these disciplines into whose fi eld of expertise this historical archive intervenes? Th us, the transdisciplinary is the experience of expanded knowledge and multi-focal understanding gained by the reader, who is off ered here a range of detailed, disciplinary analyses of the varied aspects of a historical person and his/her intriguing, politically charged and visually fascinating moment.

Th is superb collection was initiated by the convergence of an historian, an art

P R E FA C Ex

historian and a French studies scholar, all with specializations in the history and culture of eighteenth-century Britain and France. Th is 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. Th us, 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 diff erent 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. Th e images need to be read as themselves specifi c 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 fi gure played in international relations and the shift ing terms of British and French political discourse. Th us, 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 aff airs 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.

Th is 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 fi gure whose interest and signifi cance 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 fi elds of action and self-realization.

P R E FA C E xi

Th is project was initially sponsored by the transdisciplinary initiative of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Th eory 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.

Acknowledgements

Th e editors would like to thank all those whose assistance, advice, fi nancial 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 fi rst presented as papers.

In particular, we would like to thank Griselda Pollock and the AHRC Research Centre for Cultural Analysis, Th eory 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 fi nancial 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. Th e 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 diffi cult to think of a more appropriate contribution. Aft er 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. Th ese 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 satisfi ed 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.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T Sxiv

Finally, we would like to note our gratitude to Margaret Coutts, University Librarian at Leeds, Professor Simon Dixon and Dr Mark Curran.

Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne and Valerie Mainz

May 2009.

IntroductionSimon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne, Valerie Mainz

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, fi lmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D’Eon’s signifi cance as a historical fi gure 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 fl étrit jusques dans la dernière posterité.

[‘He outrages France right up to centuries to come.’ . . . Th e 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. Th e Annals of England will cite those places for . . . the picture of France under the reign of Louis XV. Th is is how the smallest of mortals oft en dishonours a great State, and blackens it for the whole of posterity.]1

Th is prediction proved erroneous, for the event that has most fi xed 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, oft en 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 signifi cance. Th e essays in this collection contribute to d’Eon’s rehabilitation as a fi gure worthy of scholarly attention and display a variety of disciplinary approaches. Th ey off er signifi cant 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.

Th e problem of reaching a realistic assessment has been compounded by the mystery and myth that surround d’Eon as a historical fi gure. Much of it was encouraged by the Chevalier himself, in a series of heavily fi ctionalized autobiographical accounts.2 Th ese

S I M O N B U R R O W S E T A L .2

self-justifi catory narratives attempted to explain how d’Eon was born a woman but had lived the fi rst 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 fi rst 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 Th is 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 fi ghting 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 redefi ned 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 diff erent 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 fi rst 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 Th ese 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

I N T R O D U C T I O N 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 off ering 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 aff airs 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 Th is 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 signifi cance. 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. Th rough the media of pictures, prints and paintings, constructions of d’Eon can appear to be deeply embedded within past times whilst also continuing to off er up signifi cant 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 refl ections on these issues.

Th e 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. Th ese are followed by a note by Chris Sheppard on the provenance of d’Eon’s papers and a conclusion by Gary Kates, which refl ects 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. Th e Beaumonts were big fi sh 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


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 fi rst, rather dry publications, his Essai historique sur les diff érentes situations de la France par rapport aux fi nances sous le règne de Louis XIV (1753) and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire générale des fi nances (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. Th is 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 fi nd a stage for Conti’s talents at a safe distance from France.16 Working closely with his confi dant, 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 indiff erence 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 fi re, 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 signifi cant than he would later claim, yet he once again distinguished himself by his remarkable diligence, slaving away at despatches for up to fi ft een hours a day. He was accorded the great, extraordinary honour of carrying the ratifi ed treaty to Paris at King George III’s behest in February 1763. On his return to London, Nivernais decorated


him with the cross of the royal and military order of Saint-Louis, which raised d’Eon to the rank of ‘Chevalier’. Th is 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 aft er 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 defi ed orders to hand over his papers to the new ambassador and ignored letters of recall. Th ereaft er the aff air 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 battlefi eld, in circumstances which led the former to question the latter’s courage as an offi cer. 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. Th e 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 fl ush 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 shift ed 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 fi nancial claims. Th ey 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. Th e book nonetheless enjoyed a succès de scandale on both sides of the Channel. Th e 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 aft erwards. With characteristic doggedness, death did not discourage d’Eon from publishing a fi nal 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 off ers 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 fi tfully paid and repeatedly suspended. Th e 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 Th is series began appearing in 1770, and eventually extended to 13 volumes, covering fi nance, history and political theory. Staunton Harold also off ered a convenient bolt-hole when rumours began


circulating that he was a woman. Th e fi rst documented rumours date to October and December 1770. In London the Macaroni fad with its over-accessorized fops and eff eminate manners was just beginning, and so the question of d’Eon’s gender quickly became the focus of fi erce betting, which oft en took the form of life-insurance policies. By late March 1771 d’Eon was frequenting the coff ee houses where stock-jobbers met, challenging anyone who bet on his sex to a duel. Such antics had the opposite eff ect 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 fi ction 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. Th e ‘Transaction’, a document d’Eon signed on 4 November 1775, laid down the conditions for his return to France.21

Th e 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 fi ction 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.

Th e transformation thus served Vergennes and d’Eon. Th e 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 fi nally 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 aft er 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, off ering 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. Th is 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.


Th e 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 confi ned 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, shuffl ing reams of newspaper clippings and in many cases amending original letters and documents to fi t her fi ctional story, a salvation-seeking pilgrim’s progress from ‘bad boy’ to ‘good girl’. D’Eon died peacefully on 21 May 1810. Th e mystery of his male anatomy was now discovered and rigorously documented.

***

Th e fi rst 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 eff ected 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 diffi cult they found it to understand the new style of politics pioneered by Pitt the Elder, which fascinated and terrifi ed them by turns.

D’Eon himself was to exploit British political methods shortly aft erwards 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. Th e 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 fi ction of his femininity among and in cooperation with a community who shared the secret of his gender. Th e 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.


An underlying theme of the section on gender and representation is the veracity or otherwise of the historical evidence that has accrued to the fi gure of d’Eon. Both visual and verbal materials indicate that notoriety was, to an extent, fostered by d’Eon, although a self-fashioned cult of celebrity might, as now, backfi re. In the eyes of contemporar-ies, Stephen Brogan observes, d’Eon appeared to be a masculine woman. Drawing on gender theorists such as Judith Butler and English portraits and caricatures of the 1790s, Brogan examines how the Chevalier d’Eon changed his costume but failed ‘to feminise himself emotionally or behaviourally’. Indeed, the change of costume may actually have reinforced his masculinity.

As the central defi ning fact of the Chevalier d’Eon’s transformation was his costume, this section continues with a piece on ‘Dressing d’Eon’ by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell. Th rough an examination of eighteenth-century fashion history she throws important light on the contents of the Chevalier d’Eon’s wardrobe. Her revelations that d’Eon was purchasing female undergarments and accessories in the early 1770s, strongly suggest that he was experimenting in secret with cross-dressing at an earlier point than previ-ously thought. She proposes that in accepting a female identity, d’Eon was able to avoid the stigma associated with transvestism.

Valerie Mainz discusses caricatures and visual images of the Chevalier d’Eon produced in England during the 1770s. Besides the obvious interest in cross-gendered clothing, these satires follow on from the inventions of Hogarth and present the French man sometimes as an eff eminate aristocrat, sometimes as a treacherous and duplicitous diplomat, sometimes as a Freemason hoaxer. Much more directly than grand manner history painting, caricatures belonged to a more subversive culture of celebrity that was liable to backfi re on those who entered the public domain.

D’Eon may well have found biography a more conducive medium through which to assert his female identity than dress or visual appearance, as Anne-Marie Mercier-Faivre shows in a detailed study of d’Eon’s ghost-written La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Mademoiselle Charles, Geneviève, Louise, Auguste, Andrée, Th imotée Eon ou d’Eon de Beaumont, fi rst published in 1779 and nominally attributed to la Fortelle. She sees it as borrowing features from two divergent genres – traditional hagiography and the newly emergent genre of vies privées. La Vie militaire therefore presents its author as ‘une pionnier dans l’intrication du biographique et du politique’ [a pioneer in the commingling of biography with politics]. Marilyn Morris continues the theme of hybrid genres while considering another work unquestionably by d’Eon, his autobiographical La Pucelle de Tonnerre: Les Vicissitudes du Chevalier et du Chevalière d’Eon, which remained unpublished for almost 200 years aft er his death.22 Morris argues that this work interpolates the genres of protestant spiritual autobiography and mémoires scandaleuses and prefi gures a third – the transsexual narrative. In contrast to Kates, she believes that this work undoubtedly belongs in the ‘transsexual canon’, and that transsexuality should be considered a valid concept even when applied to a period in which clinical gender reassignment was medically impossible. Approaching d’Eon’s gender transformation in terms of premodern gender dysphoria rather than current clinical defi nitions of transsexuality, she also considers the cases of other eighteenth-century gender outlaws such as Lord John Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Charlotte Charke.

Th e fi nal section, entitled ‘Heroes and Heroines’ considers mythical, historical, philosophical and literary fi gures with which d’Eon chose to associate himself, or has been associated. Alexandre Stroev examines how the Enlightenment used the myth of the Amazons to pour derision on eff eminate men and women, to formulate feminist demands and advance new social principles. D’Eon regularly compared himself to an


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. Th ere 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. Th e philosopher’s autobiographical writings provided role-models for d’Eon’s self-fashioning, fi rstly as anti-courtier and man of nature, then as master of his own passions and fi nally as a ‘unique self ’. Yet d’Eon’s fashioning of his female self challenged the misogyny oft en 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 fi ctional 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 fi ctional accounts. Finally, Rachel Hammersley throws light on the production of d’Eon’s translation of a seventeenth-century English political tract, Th e 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. Th ey included men who would inspire Revolutions across the Atlantic world, notably Th omas 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 identifi es Freemasonry as the thread linking Lord Brotherton and his librarian with the Chevalier. Th e complex readings that d’Eon’s palimpsestuous nature demands might be considered a source of frustration to those foolhardy enough to tackle him. Th e aft erword by d’Eon’s biographer Gary Kates suggests otherwise, describing the exhilaration he experienced when fi rst uncovering the richness of the Leeds archive. Here he pauses to reminisce, but also to refl ect on the dramatic resurgence of scholarly and public interest in this fi gure. 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


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 aft er long exposure, Gallic statesmen and diplomats struggled to grasp the realities of the new British politics, which was taking on a more popular complexion. Th e similarities between Britain and France were oft en suffi cient to make them miss or misunderstand key diff erences. 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 fl icking on a light switch, extinguish-ing past gender identities. Th e fi ndings 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 defi es 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 stratifi cation 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 fi ctions that underpinned it. Th ey were in short complicit in his self-fashioning. His transforma-tion therefore was less of a confi dence 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 fi nancial 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 fi nally been published; Roland A. Champagne, Nina Ekstein and Gary Kates, trans. and eds., Th e Maiden of Tonnerre: the Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and Chevalière d’Eon, (Baltimore: Th e Johns Hopkins University Press 2001).

3 Th is tale has been refuted convincingly by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Th e 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


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 purifi ed 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 Th e 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., Th e Maiden of Tonnerre. 11 See Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds Library [Brotherton Collection], box 1, fi le 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, ‘Th e 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 fi rst outlined this case briefl y in the fi nal essay in, Th e 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, Th e 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. Th e Prince de Conti’s Conspiracy against Louis XV, 1755–1757 (Baltimore: Th e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

17 Th e 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., (Th e Hague, 1764).

19 Conlin, ‘Wilkes, Th e 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 Aff aires 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 fi nally published in 2001 as Champagne, Ekstein and Kates, trans. and eds., Th e Maiden of

Tonnerre.

1

Th e Chevalier d’Eon, Media Manipulation and the Making of an Eighteenth-Century Celebrity

Simon Burrows

Th e Chevalier d’Eon fi rst 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. Th us the Guerchy aff air 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 Th ese 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-fi rst-century manifestations of celebrity diff er from those that fi rst 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 diff erent 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 fi gures 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. Th is 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 (oft en scandalous) exposure to the public gaze. Moreover, women’s celebrity was associated with scandal almost by defi nition,

S I M O N B U R R O W S14

since the term ‘public woman’ implied prostitution.Not surprisingly, therefore, both before and aft er his gender transformation d’Eon

made assiduous attempts to suggest that his celebrity rested on genuine claims to fame as both a writer and statesman, earned before his dispute with Guerchy catapulted him into the public consciousness. In fact, such claims were rather shaky. Historians have considered his learned works on fi nances and public administration competent, but they should not be considered among the fi rst rank. Moreover, d’Eon’s diplomatic and political career achievement prior to 1763 amounted to relatively little. Certainly, he had assisted the Chevalier Alexander Douglas and the Duc de Nivernais in important negotiations, and carried the resulting treaties to France, but there is little evidence that he infl uenced events. Th is point did not escape contemporary commentators: in a review of d’Eon’s Lettres, mémoires et négociations, the Monthly Review opined that d’Eon appeared to have been ‘employed in aff airs of no great moment’, and dismissed his role in treaty negotiations as that of a ‘post-boy’.5 Th us historians have perhaps been guilty of taking d’Eon’s claims about his glittering career at face value and, as Stephen Brogan has argued, overlooking the fact that his hopes of becoming ambassador to London ahead of Guerchy in 1763 were unrealistic.6

Superfi cially d’Eon’s quarrel with Guerchy began as a mundane dispute about money. As Minister Plenipotentiary, d’Eon was charged, as was customary, with acquiring and preparing a residence for the new ambassador, but even before Guerchy arrived in London in mid-October 1763, he was accusing d’Eon of spending too much of his (that is, Guerchy’s) money in the process.7 Nevertheless, there were subtexts. D’Eon was bitterly disappointed and resentful at having been passed over. He considered Guerchy an aristocratic nonentity who had been promoted due to his rank and friendship with the foreign minister, Praslin. It is possible, too, that there were deeper resentments, for d’Eon later claimed that at the battle of Hoxter on 19 August 1761 Guerchy refused orders to assist d’Eon’s unit in evacuating munitions while under enemy fi re.8

Th ere was also a factional component to the dispute, stemming from the eclipse of d’Eon’s patrons, the Broglies, and the dismantling of their secret espionage network, the Secret du Roi.9 Praslin and Guerchy belonged to the ascendant faction headed by Louis XV’s de facto chief minister, the Duc de Choiseul, who was also Praslin’s cousin, and the royal mistress, Madame de Pompadour, all of whom d’Eon later accused of com-plicity in a conspiracy to poison or kidnap him. D’Eon claimed that this pro-Austrian faction would stop at nothing to marginalize advocates of a traditional anti-Habsburg policy, and blamed them for the sudden deaths of two of his allies at court, Lebel and Tercier, as well as the Comte de Broglie’s dismissal.10 D’Eon’s resistance to orders to return to France and subsequent attempts to discredit Guerchy, and hence Praslin, Choiseul and Pompadour, were thus part of a factional struggle to control foreign and dynastic policy. Nevertheless, d’Eon apparently acted in an individual capacity: Broglie, though he attempted to defend him, was furious with his protégé and feared he would be blamed for d’Eon’s behaviour.11

Two factors made the dispute between d’Eon and Guerchy diffi cult to contain. First, it was conducted very publicly in print, and later spilled over into the English law courts. Second, d’Eon was in a strong position to blackmail the monarchy. Due to his roles as diplomat and spy for the Secret du Roi, d’Eon possessed damaging documents, including a secret order from Louis XV to spy out invasion routes in southern England, which he threatened to publish unless compensated for his alleged expenditure in royal service.12 To make clear that he was serious he published a taster volume, carefully shorn of really damaging material, his Lettres, mémoires et négociations particulières du

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 AT I O N 15

Chevalier d’Eon. Th is 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 fi nanced by d’Eon, and it is therefore possible that he was also the author.14 If so, the pamphlet represents d’Eon’s fi rst experiments with taking on a female persona.

Th e Lettre de Mlle le Bac off ers a fi rst 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. Th ese began with kissing games among the coach passengers, in which Le Bac participated willingly, but culminated in attempted rape at a coaching inn. Th e 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. Th e 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 fl imsy moral or physical defences of the feisty Le Bac.

Th is 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 fi rst 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 diff erent 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 fi nd their own audience, newspapers appeared regularly and served an audience which already enjoyed a rela-tionship of confi dence 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. Th us, reports in the British press were oft en 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. Th ey wished to draw parallels between John Wilkes’ situation and that of d’Eon, suggesting that both


became renegades by struggling for justice from their respective governments.18 Th ey even suggested that the government intended to exchange d’Eon for Wilkes, who had fl ed 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 off ered to buy his papers.21

To mobilize opinion in his favour, d’Eon and his Wilkite allies launched a concerted press off ensive, 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. Th is 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. Th ereaft er, and throughout the summer of 1764, newspaper reports repeatedly insisted that French agents were in London to kidnap d’Eon.

Two days aft er the Gazetteer announcement, d’Eon and his allies published a one-off broadsheet newspaper entitled Th e 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 Th ames 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’. Th ese 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 fi elds en route to London to save the cost of eating at an inn; and off ering crowds celebrating a royal birth only four pots and a pint of porter, rather than the customary fountain of wine, thereby risking public disorder. Th is 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 amplifi cation. 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 confi rmed the truth of this. Th e story also alluded to the Fratteaux aff air, suggesting that the present government would not suff er such an attempt ‘with impunity’. However, for present purposes, the most important aspect of the story is that it identifi es d’Eon as a source.

Th ereaft er journalists, rumour-mongers and d’Eon’s allies picked up and spun the story. Th e Gazetteer of 28 June predicted that ‘French bravoes’ come to kidnap d’Eon would surely fail. Th ey would arouse public indignation and bystanders would be sure to come to d’Eon’s assistance. Th e 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


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. Th e 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. Th e 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. Th e 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 ‘“Th at is the lady with whom he was walking and her coach is waiting for him”’ and their lookout added ‘“Th at 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 ruffi ans 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 fi nd, will never cease. Th e 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 ruffi ans 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


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, suff er a stranger who fl ies to us for shelter, to be a sacrifi ce 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. Th e 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 suff er 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?

Th ese 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. Th us d’Eon, the French diplomat and spy, had become an unlikely celebrity and hero of the British opposition. Th e 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 oft en encouraged other French renegades in the struggle against ministerial despotism. Th ose he aided even included the blackmailer and pamphleteer Charles Th éveneau 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 fi rst 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 off ered 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 fi nally, d’Eon himself admits that other diners fell sick aft er 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 terrifi ed Chazell that he had abandoned his newly wed bride and fl ed to Naples. Th is assertion was disingenuous. Chazell’s departure off ers no proof that he was a poisoner, since he had fl ed several


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 offi cers attempted to arrest him at Guerchy’s house, which doubled as the French embassy. Th is action nearly resulted in a signifi cant international incident, for Guerchy tore up the warrant, throttled one of the offi cers, imprisoned them briefl y, and protested to the British government against the violation of diplomatic immunity. Th e French wanted the offi cers 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. Th us, with considerable diffi culty, they succeeded in placating the French without bringing the men before a court.38 Although this extraordinary tale appears to confi rm 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 aft er Chazell’s poison failed.39 Th e fi rst 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 Th e 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 Th us, 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 Th is provocative insult to the French king and his representative embarrassed British ministers, who pressurized the Attorney-General without success to suppress the case. Th e jury’s decision that there was a prima facie case for the ambassador to answer vindicated d’Eon and eff ectively 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 Th e 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


to the British that d’Eon should be abducted, but was rebuff ed.50 Th ereaft er, in April 1764, Louis XV authorized a three-pronged approach. Th e British would be pressured to extradite or deport d’Eon. If that failed, Guerchy could bring a libel prosecution. As a fi nal resort, Praslin was to proceed with kidnap plans.51 Th e 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. Th is contrasts with the surviving evidence for abortive attempts against Th éveneau 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 redefi ne 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. Th ese 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 eff ected between 1770 and 1777 would require both the fabrication of evidence about his past and present identity, and the manipulation of public perceptions.

Th e 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. Th us 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 off ered to the most celebrated writers and public fi gures. 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. Th is 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 refl ection. 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. Th us, 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


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 aff ord him a security that masculine fame never could.

Notes

1 See for example the various essays in Joshua Reynolds. Th e 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, fi le 58, between pp. 15 and 16. 6 Stephen Brogan, ‘Contemporary British perceptions of the Chevalier/Chevalière d’Eon aff air’, unpub-

lished B.A. diss., Birkbeck College, University of London, 2004, p. 8. 7 Archives du Ministère des Aff aires 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, fi le 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, fi le 9, pp. 216–17; box 4, fi le 24, p. 13; box 11, fi le 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. Th e 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,

Th e 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 ‘Th e cosmopolitan press’.

17 D’Eon’s main collection of press cuttings for this period is found in Brotherton Collection, box 8, fi le 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 aff airs 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, fi le 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 On Fratteaux, see also Comte d’H****, Th e Unfortunate Offi cer, or the History of M. Bertin, Marquis de Fratteaux (London: Woodfall, 1755). Th is 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, fi le 58 ff . 11 and 12, and in the Brotherton Collection’s unique extra-illustrated edition of Vizetelly, True Story, vol. VI. Th e Public Ledger, 26 June 1764, republished Th e Extraordinary Intelligencer verbatim.

24 Th e 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, fi le 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. Th is time Simons was found guilty, but a retrial was ordered aft er it emerged that there had been a misunderstanding between judge and jury. Th is was the fi rst retrial aft er 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 Th e 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 Th éveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger and Master-Spy (forthcoming, London: Continuum, 2010).

34 Th e analysis of these plots here expands on material in Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution, pp. 92–3.

35 Th e allegation fi rst 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 identifi ed in MAE, CPA supplément 16 ff . 113–14, ‘Note de M. d’Eon’, and Brotherton Collection, box 1, fi le 2, pp. 87–95, ‘Extrait de la lettre de . . . d’Eon à . . . d’Autichamp’ at p. 91; fi le 19 f. 43, unpublished memoir draft s (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, fi le 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 fl ed 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).


45 Indeed, Morande claims d’Eon and Vergy fabricated Vergy’s affi davits: 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, confi rms 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

abduction, see plots, to murder or kidnap d’EonAbrégé de la vie de Louis Mandrin 133absolutism 233Académie française 25, 165accessories 98, 99, 103, 106account book 97, 106, 107, 109Achilles 173actors 120Adélaïde, sister of Faublas, fi ctional character

203–4Adhémar, Jean-Balthazar, Comte d’ 28adultery scandals 15, 118–19adultresses 118–19aft er-life of d’Eon 129agricultural revolution 73Aiguillon, Armand du Plessis, Duc d’ 51, 55 n.43Alfi eri, Vittorio 119Algarotti, Francesco 157Almaviva, Comte d’, fi ctional character 60, 68, 202,

211Almon, John 224, 228 n.69Alther, Lisa 155Amazon(s) 8–9, 83, 85, 165, 166, 149, 152–3,

165–9, 173and d’Eon 124, 189, 194–5

Amazones modernes 167Amazones révoltées 167 Amelot de Chaillou, Antoine-Jean 104America 172American colonies 5, 34, 54 n.18, 116, 218American Declaration of Independence 78American Psychiatric Association 150 American Revolution 78American revolutionaries 63, 68, 209Americans 116Amerongen, Gerrit van 198Amour valley 75Amours du Chevalier de Faublas 9, 201–12androgeny 84, 94 n.30

Angelo, Domenico 117Angelo, Henri 87–8, 98–9, 107, 117, 109Angelucci, Guillaume 57–8, 68, 69 n.2Anglomania 213 n.61Anna Ivanova, Empress of Russia 168Année littéraire 25, 48anti-Catholicism 124anti-clericalism 222anti-religious publishing 222anti-semitism 22 n.28Antoine, Michel 26Apologie des dames 169Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber 156 appointment, of d’Eon as Minister Plenipotentiary

5, 27, 81, 82, 190appointment, of d’Eon as royal censor 4Arabi Pasha, see Orabi, AhmedArchives nationales 234archives, of d’Eon’s papers x, 2, 229–32, 234–8Argental, Comte d’ 15, 19, 22 n.41Ariosto 165Aristophanes 174 n.15Aristotle 117Arnaud, François-Th omas-Marie de Baculard d’

163Arsacides 145 n.36art exhibitions 119Arts and Humanities Research Council xiArtus, Th omas 91Ashley, James 17, 22 n.28assassination, see plots, to murder or kidnap d’EonAssault or Fencing Match ... between ... d’Eon and

Saint George 87astrology 209asylum 93Athena 88Attorney-General 19Aublet de Maubuy 168authors 49

I N D E X242

autobiography 147–60of d’Eon (unpublished) 9, 97, 100, 104, 110,

147–58, 171–2, 177–86, 234–8inspiration for 161–73d’Eon’s fabrication of 1–2, 7, 134, 141, 158, 166 see also Maiden of Tonnerre

Aventures de Zéloïde et d’Amanzarifdine 167Aventurier français 167aventuriers des lumières 3Avis important à la branche espagnole, see

Dissertation extraite d’un plus grand ouvrage, ou Avis important à la branche espagnole

B***, Marquis de, fi ctional character 202, 208–211 passim

B***, Marquise de, fi ctional character 202, 204, 206–8, 210

Baccelli, Giovanna 107Barbier de Séville 68, 211Barbin, Herculine 182Baron, Richard 216–17, 221Barrault des Mottes 79Barrell, John 120Barrington, General 214 n.69 Barrington, Lady 214 n.69Barry, wine seller 74Bartholo, fi ctional character 211Bastille 18Bateman, Mrs 6, 87battalion of women, d’Eon’s off ers to form ix, 6,

152–3, 173Beattie, James 117Beaumarchais 6, 52, 57–68, 145 n.24, 163, 172, 177,

195, 202, 203, 211accused of keeping d’Eons money 67, 141accused of libertinage by d’Eon 61aids Americans 63and Morande 60–1and wagers on d’Eon’s sex 64claims d’Eon in love with him 64–5convinced d’Eon is woman 57, 67correspondence with d’Eon 57, 69 n.1, 142lends d’Eon money 66Louis XVI’s opinions of 63, 65negotiations with d’Eon 6, 46–7, 62–3, 95 n.63off ers to negotiate with d’Eon 58–60, 61–2possible involvement in producing libelles

69 n.2quarrel with d’Eon 64–8, 134–5, 141–2, 143relations with d’Eon 7, 60–68 retrieves d’Eon’s papers 62–3self-justifi cations 67–8suggestions will marry d’Eon 64–5

suppresses scandalous pamphlet 57–8trip to Vienna 58Vergennes’ testimony concerning 71 n.51

see also Barbier de Séville; Figaro; Mariage de Figaro

Beaumont, Christophe de 148, 234, 236Beaumont, Elie de 162 Beaumont, Lia de 2, 210 Beaumont Society 93 n.10beauty spots 127Beauvais, Madame 107Becket 224, 228 n.69Beckford, William 29 Bedford, 4th Duke of, see Russell, JohnBedlam 220Belépine, M. 75 Belle Isle, Maréchal de 137Bellona 166, 168Bernis, Comte de 137Bertier de Sauvigny, Louis-Jean 4Bertier, shoemaker 106Bertin, Rose 77, 97, 99–106, 109, 110, 150, 152,

154, 161, 172, 180, 187Betjeman, Sir John 229Bible 158–9 n.15, 234Bible-dipping 149, 158–9 n.15Bibliothèque municipale de Tonnerre 105, 145

n.36, 234Bill of Rights 228 n.64biographers, of d’Eon 81–2, 233Blackett, Sir Walter Calverley 223blackmail 156

laws 46of French government by d’Eon 14–15, 45,

58–9, 138Blaisdell 16bluestockings 230–1bodily transformation of d’Eon 152Bodleian Library 231Bolingbroke, Viscount 47, 193, 217Bombelles, Marquis de 104, 110Bon, Baron de 161Bonaparte, Napoleon 231Bontemps 28book trade 211Bornstein, Kate, 153–4Boscawen, Edward, Admiral 32, 33, 34, 36Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 233Boswell, James 84 bottle imp or bottle conjuror 22 n.29, 122, 131 n.51Boucher, clerk at French embassy 28Bouchers, father and son 74 Boudier, Dom 185

I N D E X 243

Bouquin, Nicolas 78Bourignon, Antoinette 238Bradamante, female knight 165Bradel, Jean-Baptiste 127Brant, Clare 156Breteuil, Louis-Auguste Le Tonnelier, Baron de 137Bretherton, J. 132 n.60Brevot, Mme de 75Brewer Street 124 Brewster, Th omas 216Bristol, Lord 55 n.48Britain ix, 4, 7, 25 and passim

attitudes towards France 9–10d’Eon’s fi rst impressions 28–9informants of d’Eon in 28invasion proposed by d’Eon 35national debt 48national character 125national identity 93, 132 n.60 opposition courts d’Eon 16Parliament 26–41 passim, 53, 211politics 10, 16–18, 25–41 passim

Britannicus (pseudonym) 17, 18British, d’Eon’s views of 49British images of French 115British patriot party 17–18, 220, 233British politics and politicians, d’Eon’s opinions on

25–41 passim, 42 n.42 British Library 234British Museum 88British Swiss (pseudonym) 18Broadley, Meyrick Broadley 230–1, 232Brogan, Stephen 8, 14, 126Broglie, Charles-François, Comte de, 4, 5, 14, 26–7,

43 n.58, 45, 50, 51, 55 n.43, 55 n.47, 141, 192, 225 n.3

Broglie, Victor-François, Maréchal-Duc de 14, 81–2, 141

Brooke, John 32Brotherton Collection 147, 229–32, 234–8Brotherton Library x, 2, 9, 97, 147, 220, 229–32Brotherton, Sir Edward Allen, later Lord

Brotherton of Wakefi eld 229–32Brown, John 49Brown, Mr, a.k.a Charlotte Charke 156Brown, Mrs, friend of Charlotte Charke 156Brussels Gazette 17 Bunbury, Henry 132 n.60Bunbury, Lady Sarah 118

see also Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrifi cing to the Graces

Bunyan, John 149Burkhardt, Carl Jacob 233

Burlington Magazine 230Burrows, Simon 3, 7, 52, 69 n.2Bute, John Stuart, Earl of 28, 30, 33, 35–6, 47–8, 51,

54 n.16, 55 n.50, 114–17Butler, Judith 8, 10, 85–6, 92, 95 n.43, 151Byfl eet, 51

Cabanis, Pierre 162Cabinet du philosophe 169Cadran bleu 213 n.26Cailleau, André-Charles 133Calvinism 148Campagnes du sieur Caron de Beaumarchais en

Angleterre 61Campan, Henriette 104, 162Canning, Elizabeth 17, 22 n.30caricature(s) 8, 9, 130

of d’Eon 8, 55 n.50, 108, 113–29Carlton House 87–8, 128Carnival 98Casanova, Giacomo 188Casque à la Minerve ou la Dragone 102castration, symbolic 161–2castratos 99Catherine II, Empress of Russia 9, 168, 169Caucasus 167Cavendish, Elizabeth, 195Cavendish, ‘Jack’, see Cavendish, Elizabethcelebrity 13, 20, 100, 238

culture of 113, 119, 129, 130 n.4status of d’Eon 152

Centre for Cultural Analysis, Th eory and History xi, 3

Chains of Slavery 222–4Challes, Robert 169Chamfort, Nicolas 162 Chanlatte, Dom, abbot of Pontigny 78Charke, Charlotte 8, 155–7Charke, Mr 156Charles I, King of Great Britain 31, 215, 224Charles II, King of Great Britain 215Charles, G. 54 n.13, 55 n.48Charles Townley with a group of connoisseurs 119Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, Queen of

England, 2, 107Châtelet, Marquis de, French ambassador 52, 56

n.58Chatham, Earl of, see Pitt, William, the ElderChaumont, Madame de 106Chaussin, Elisabeth 7 Chazell, Stephen 18–19, 22 n.37Chérubin, fi ctional character 202, 203, 211Cherubini 202

I N D E X244

Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont: A Treatise 81Chevalier d’-n producing his Evidence against

certain persons, 55 n.50, 113, 122 Chevrier, François-Antoine 133–4childhood, of d’Eon 135, 140, 181chivalry 125Choiseul, Etienne François, Duc de 4, 47, 49, 51, 55

n.54, 226 n.25and conspiracies against d’Eon 5, 14, 19and d’Eon’s Loisirs 217, 224, 226 n.29and French patriot movement 217, 224foreign policy 27, 51parallels with Pitt the Elder 47

Choiseul, Vicomte de 22 n.37Choiseul-Praslin faction 5Choisy, François-Timoléon, Abbé de, 2, 9, 161,

177–86, 203, 210comparison with d’Eon 177–86

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly 8, 94 n.29, 95 n.34Christ, Jesus 136, 149, 237Christian devotional literature 153Christian feminism 2, 148Christian fundamentalism 148–9Christianity 188, 193

and d’Eon 147, 148, 149, 234–8Christians 168chronique scandaleuse 211Cibber, Colley 156Cicero 218, 221cider tax 29civic humanism 120Clarence House 87, 93 n.1, 95 n.51Clark, Anna 3, 9, 90, 117, 131 n.51, 233Cloots, Anacharsis 173clothes, clothing 8, 65, 66, 84–5, 88, 89, 94 n.29, 95

n.34, 97–110, 115, 120, 125, 127, 139, 140, 152, 157, 161–2, 182, 185, 193, 194, 197, 142, 183, 184, 234–5

female, d’Eon’s adoption of 6, 7, 86, 150, 161, 187

d’Eon fi rst wears as disguise 192 d’Eon ordered to wear ix, 63, 64, 91, 99d’Eon’s purchases of 98d’Eon’s trousseau of 64, 65

see also fashionCock-Lane ghost 17, 22 n.31Coeff ure à la D’Éon 106coff ee houses 95 n.58Cohen, Michèle 84Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 193Cole, Marie 6, 109Collège de Quatre Nations 4Collège Mazarin 4, 135

Colley, Linda 13, 93Colnaghi, P. & D. and Co. 88Colonie 167, 169Comédie italienne 210Commonwealth tradition 9Commonwealthmen 215–25 passimCompany of Bricklayers 223Confederation of Bar 209conference, about d’Eon x, 3, 82, 90confessional narratives 155Confessions, of J.-J. Rouseau 155, 188, 189, 196,

198, 238Confessions, of St Augustine 148, 237Conlin, Jonathan 7, 233Constant, Benjamin 201Constantinople 168consumer revolution 13, 49Conti, Prince de 4, 76, 136, 160 n.64, 166–7, 171Continental Congress 78conversion narratives 148–9, 153, 155, 158Coquelle, Pierre, 26Cordeliers Club 224–5Correspondance littéraire 145 n.36, 162 Correspondance secrète 100corsets 98, 99, 106, 110, 150, 185Corsica 41Cosway, Richard 119, 131 n.41, 132 n.73Cotes, Humphry 51Council of Reims 134Courier de l’Europe 70 n.42, 211court cases

against d’Eon for libel of Guerchy 17, 19, 20, 51

against Guerchy for conspiracy to murder 19concerning d’Eon’s sex 6, 91, 117, 125, 194of d’Eon against Le Sénéchal family 134, 145

n.36Covent Garden 61Cox, Cynthia 81–2Coypel, Charles-Antoine 124Crébillon fi ls 211Cromwell, Jason 150–1, 154Cromwell, Oliver 31, 37Cromwellian Protectorate 216Cross of Saint-Louis 5, 6, 7, 10, 63, 64, 88, 89–90,

97, 101, 104, 106, 108, 115, 119, 120, 125, 127, 142, 161

cross-dressing 84, 98, 99, 161, 177–86, 189, 194, 212

by d’Eon 8, 97, 99, 135, 140female to male 178–9, 181, 189in literature 202–12in theatre 201

I N D E X 245

narratives 9, 177–86see also Charke, Charlotte; Choisy, abbé de;

Faublas, transvestites, transvestismCumberland, Henry, Duke of 118 Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of 29

Damer, Anne 195Dance, George 88, 108Daniell, William 88Dashwood, Sir Francis 117David, King of Israel 136Davies, Simon 9Death and Life Contrasted, or an Essay on Man 92death, of d’Eon 89, 109 Decker, Michel de 105Déclaration de la femme et de la citoyenne 173decoding, of satires 124 Découverte ou la Femme Franc-Maçon 120–2,

125–6Dekker, Rudolf 178Delaval, Th omas 223De l’éducation physique et morale des femmes 172Delille, Jacques, Abbé 162De Republica 218Desaives, Jean-Paul 74Deschamps, Charles Antoine 79Desfontaines, Pierre François Guyot 167Desjardins, Jeannette 77despotism 7, 18, 37, 46, 49, 94 n.10, 170, 171, 173,

216, 219, 223, 224Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célèbres

169Diderot, Denis 189, 193, 211Dighton, Robert 92, 131 n.46diplomatic correspondence 7, 26–41, 47, 48, 235

published by d’Eon 5, 116Discourse on Inequality 189, 191Dissertation extraite d’un plus grand ouvrage, ou

Avis important à la branche espagnole 58, 69 n.2

divine grace 148divorce(s) 118, 119Dixwell, James 15Dolbois, Sieur 106Don Quixote (character) 122, 124–5, 132 n.57Don Quixote (novel) 124–5Donald, Diana 125Dorat, Claude-Joseph 134–5, 168, 169–70Dorset, 3rd Duke of, see Sackville, Frederick JohnDouglas, Chevalier de, see Mackenzie, AlexanderDownie, Miss 107drag kings 86drag queens 86

dragoon uniform 4, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 117, 127, 152, 159 n.31

dragoons 161–2d’Eon’s identifi cation with 4, 48, 64, 83, 84–5,

101, 102, 104, 109, 115, 125, 127–8, 141, 152, 159 n.31-n.32, 161–3, 169, 172, 180, 182, 187, 189, 196, 234–5, 236. see also dragoon uniform.

dress, see clothesdressmakers 106, 107

complicity with d’Eon 109–10du Barry, Comtesse 60, 142, 193du Bouciquault, Louis Le Maingre 167, 168du Deff and, Mme 100duels, duelling 129, 190, 213 n.35Duff y, Michael 115Dufour, Mme 94 n.29Dugazon, Jean-Henri 162Duke of B-d’s Reception at Exeter 116du Portail, fi ctional character 204–5, 209Durand de Distroff , François Michel 26–7, 33Durival, Jean 68Duval, Jean 70 n.45Dziembowski, Edmond 7, 47, 53, 54 n.20, 54 n.22,

217

early writings, of d’Eon 48–9 education, of d’Eon 4, 135–6eff eminacy 84, 94 n. 30, 94 n.31, 95 n.32 125, 126,

127, 129, 130of d’Eon 99, 117, 194

Egremont, Lord 34, 35, 38, 44 n.72, 44 n.74Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman 220Elizabeth I, Empress of Russia 2, 97, 136–7, 141,

158 n.3, 160 n.64, 166, 168, 171Ellis, Havelock 2, 93 n.10Emile 187, 189, 197English Civil War 31, 223English language skills, of d’Eon 28, 46English Masculinities 84English Revolution, see English Civil War Enigma of the Age 81 Enlevement de Mlle d’éon 122–3Enlightenment 8, 171, 189, 193, 233Eon de Beaumont, Françoise d’ (d’Eon’s mother)

75, 78, 101, 107, 139, 140, 150, 181, 190, 191, 237

Eon de Beaumont, Louis d’ (d’Eon’s father) 73, 75, 140, 147, 181

Eon de l’Etoile 134Eon, Mme. d’ (d’Eon’s grandmother) d’ 181eonism 2Epinay, Mme d’ 173

I N D E X246

Epistle to Lord Mansfi eld 195Epître de Madame*** à Mademoiselle la Chevalière

D’Eon 169–70Esperances d’un vrai Patriote 48–9Espinasse, Mlle de l’ 173Espion anglois 107espionage 83, 137

see also Secret du RoiEsprit des journaux 173 Esprit des lois 49Essai historique sur les diff érentes situations de la

France 4, 48Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition 117 Essay on Woman 193estates, of d’Eon 73–4Excellencie of a Free State 9, 215–21 passim, 224, 225Exeter 116exile, of d’Eon in Tonnerre 6extradition attempts, against d’Eon 5, 20extra-illustrated books 230–1Extraordinary Intelligencer 16, 17–18, 49

Falkland Islands crisis 41, 52fame 13, 20 Far East 168farming 73–5Fars, Vicomtesse de 104fashion 107, 127

see also clothes, clothingFastes militaires 145 n.36Faublas, Chevalier de, fi ctional character 202–12Feint Alcibiade 177female deportment 103, 106, 157, 187female identity, d’Eon’s construction of 149–50female saints 149female sexuality 127feminine identity, of d’Eon 166femininity 85, 157, 183, 184, 189, 196

and d’Eon 156, 181feminism 167–8, 187

Christian, see Christian feminismof d’Eon 172, 192

feminist scholars 187feminists 159 n.46Femmes militaires 167femmes savants 157fencing bouts 6, 78, 87–8, 109, 128–9, 152, 161,

187, 210Fénélon, François 47, 167Ferrers, Lady 209Ferrers, Washington Shirley, 5th Earl 5, 209feudalism 188Fielding, Henry 49, 156, 202

Fielding, John 52, 193, 194Figaro 59, 68, 170, 202, 211

see also Barbier de Seville; Mariage de FigaroFille Garçon 210Filles de Sainte Marie 236fi nancial problems, of d’Eon 6–7, 86–7 fi nanciers 49Fitzherbert, Maria 88Fitzroy, Augustus Henry, Lord Graft on 116Florian, Jean Claris de 162 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de 168forgeries 97, 171Foucault, Michel 84, 210Foulon, merchant 168Fox, Charles James 28Fox, Henry 116Fox-North coalition 28François (servant of d’Eon) 77, 78François I, King of France 141Franklin, Benjamin 74Fratteaux, Marquis de 16, 17, 94 n.15freedom, see libertyfreemasonry x, 8, 9, 77, 78, 120, 122, 162, 174 n.4,

231–2 French embassy 50French émigrés 109French national character 125French navy 27, 31, 32, 37, 39French protestants 34, 39French renegades 18French Revolution 6, 18, 87, 109, 110, 173, 233French revolutionaries 225French revolutionary wars ix, 6, 152Fréron 25, 54 n.22Freud, Sigmund 2Fromageot, Paul 106Fuzelier, Louis 167

Gachet, bourgeois of Tonnerre 74Gady, valet 76–7‘Gageure sur le sexe du Chevalier D’Eon’ 170Gaillardet, Frédéric, 2, 11 n.6, 209–10, 213 n.48Gainsborough 119Galatians 237galenic theory 151Galerie des femmes fortes 169Galerie des Modes 102Galien, Mme 169gamblers

challenged to duel by d’Eon 6payments to d’Eon 66

see also wagers on d’Eon’s sexGanymede 123, 132 n.53

I N D E X 247

Garnier, Charles-Jean 69 n.10Garnot, Sieur 106Garrick, David 189, 195gastronomy, and d’Eon 117gay activists 159 n.46Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 16, 90–1, 193,

227 n.44gender

as cultural construction 85–6attitude of d’Eon towards 147, 182, 234–5, 238eighteenth-century conceptions 187–9, 195hierarchy 179, 181, 188identities 128, 147–60issues posed by d’Eon’s case ix-x, 1–2, 81–93performance of 81, 85–6, 151, 154, 179, 185 roles 233stereotypes 177subversion 177 theory 85transformation, of d’Eon 10, 147–58, 163

concept challenged 82–93motives for 1–2, 6, 20–21, 82, 92, 192,

234–8Gender Outlaw 153–4Gender Trouble 85genealogical claims, of d’Eon 134–5, 141general warrants 46Genet, Mme 103genitalia 151, 188George II, King of Great Britain 48George III, King of Great Britain 2, 6, 28–41

passim, 42 n.42, 43 n.54, 44 n.72, 47, 48, 52, 63, 67, 114, 118, 129, 194, 210

George IV, Prince of Wales, Prince Regent then King of Great Britain 2, 43 n.63, 87–8, 99, 109, 113, 128–9

Getty Museum 231Girardin de Tréfontaine, Captain 78Girondins 201Glover, Colonel 17Gluck, Christophe von 163Glynn, Serjeant John 223God 138, 148,149, 153, 154, 158, 168, 182, 183, 184,

188, 196, 197, 236Goddard, innkeeper 22 n.28Goëzmann-LaBlache aff air 58, 68Goliath 136Gordon, Lord William 118Gordon, Th omas 222Goujon, Sieur 106Grace Abounding 149Graft on, Lord, see Fitzroy, Augustus Henry, Lord

Graft on 116

grand manner portrait paintings 119, 125Grand Orient de France 78grangerization 230–1graphic method 128Gravesend 16, 17Great Britain, see BritainGreat Chain of Being 188Great Historical Epistle 147–8, 152–4, 155, 156, 157,

180, 235–8Greece, classical 221Greek heroes 119Green Park 119Grenville, George 29, 30–2 35, 36, 37, 39, 54 n.9Greuze, Jean-Baptiste 162Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Baron 107grocery lists 234Grosvenor, Lady 118Grub Street 3Gudin de La Brenellerie, Paul-Philippe 69 n.5, n.10Guerchy, Claude-Louis-François Regnier, Comte

de 6, 26, 27, 33, 39, 40, 55 n.47, 58–9, 82, 133and Vergy 15, 22 n.43claims d’Eon mad 44 n.80 cowardice in battle (alleged) 5d’Eon’s allegations against 15, 16, 18, 50, 123,

217truth of 18–20

d’Eon’s press campaign against 13, 15–20 passim, 49–50

diplomatic incompetence (alleged) 34factional links 5, 14, 217indictment for attempted murder of d’Eon

19, 46quarrel with d’Eon 5, 7, 13, 14–20, 46, 82–3,

190, 217Guerlichon femelle 52Guyon, Claude Marie 167

Halifax, Lord 44 n.74, 55 n.47Hammersley, Rachel 9Hanger, Major George 128–9, 132 n.71Hardman, John 60 harems 168Harewood, Earl of 231–2Harlot’s Progress 127Harlowe, Clarissa 172Harrington, James 216, 217Harrington, Lady 118, 127Harris, Joseph 9Harveley, Micaut d’ 105Haymarket Th eatre 122 Heartwell, pseudonoym 193hemp 73

I N D E X248

Henri IV, King of France 141Henry Angelo’s Fencing Academy 87Henwood, Miss 107heresy 134Hermaphrodites 91 hermaphrodites 91, 98, 182Héroïne mousquetaire 169Hervey, George Grenville Augustus 55 n.48Hervey, Lord John 8heterosexuality 194Histoire de Jeanne d’Arc 169Historical Manuscripts Commission 231historical signifi cance, of d’Eon 1–2History of England 220, 221, 224Hitchcock, Tim 84Hobbes, Th omas 219Hodgkin, Dorothy 231Hodgkin, Howard 231Hodgkin, John Eliot 230, 231Hodgkin, Th omas 231Hodgkin’s disease 231Hodgson’s auctioneers 230Hogarth, William 8, 114, 122, 125, 127Holbach, Paul-Henri-Dietrich, Baron d’ 222, 227

n.54, n.56Holdernesse, Lord 50Hollis, Th omas 9, 217, 221, 226 n.29, 227 n.52Holy Land 168Homberg, Octave 172homophobia 159 n.46.homosexual desire 123, 132 n.53

see also sodomy; sodomites.Hondt, Pierre de 228 n.69honour 37–8, 50, 90, 129, 137, 138, 141, 195

and d’Eon 137, 138, 141Hooper, S. 140Hôpital, Marquis de l’ 141, 192Horace 117hormone injections 150Horneck, Captain Charles 194Houdetot, Mme d’ 213 n.28Houdon, Jean-Antoine 162Howell, James 216Hoxter, battle of 14huguenots 216, 225Hume, David 50, 55 n.40, 190humour, theories of 117humours 151Hunter, J. Paul 154Hyde Park 17

Illustres françaises 169images, see visual images

impostors 166imprisonment, of d’Eon

at Dijon 92for debt 7

Independent Whig 222Ireland 35, 38 Isle des Amazones 167

Jacobites 48, 54 n.18Jacques le fataliste 211Jansenism 148, 235, 238Jarrett, Derek 47Jeff erson, Th omas 99Jews 124jingoism 127Joan of Arc 141, 149, 162, 169, 170, 173, 178, 193,

194, 195Joan, Pope, see Pope JoanJohnson, Dr Samuel 230Joloye 74Jones, Captain 194Jousselin, Fernand 172Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse 196, 204

Kates, Gary 63, 91, 99, 110 n.3, 133, 143, 158, 171, 190, 195, 221, 229

and d’Eon’s feminism 2, 9interpretation of d’Eon’s gender change 2–3, 7,

20, 81, 84, 85, 147, 192challeged 92, 110, 148

themes raised by study of d’Eon 3, 82 Kauff mann Angelica 108Kercado, Comte de 134kilts 98King’s Bench, Court of 19, 51Klink, Andreas 198

Lacepède 162 La Chèvre, de 67, 71 n.47la Chevre, seller of fans 106Laclos, Chloderos de 202, 211 La Cressonnière, Charlotte-Catherine Cosson de 172La Croix, Jean-François de 169Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrifi cing to the Graces 118 Lady’s Magazine 109Lafayette, Mme de 181, 211Lafi tau, Joseph François 167La Fortelle 8, 77, 105, 127, 133–4, 141, 144, 145

n.36, 172, 175 n.42, 235 see also Vie militaire, politique et privée de

Melle d’EonLalande 162Lambert, Marquise de 177, 181

I N D E X 249

Lambert, publisher 134La Mettrie, Julien Off ray de 189, 193La Motte, Comte de, 20Land Tax 33Laqueur, Th omas 151, 188, 193Larcher, Albert 113La Rozière, Marquis de 26–7la Rupel, de 78La Scala operahouse 202La Sentinelle 201 Latour, Germaine 78law suits, see court caseslazaroni regiment 22 n.37Le Bac, Mademoiselle, (d’Eon’s alter ego?) 15Lebel 14Le Comte, Mme 104Leeds archive (of d’Eon’s papers) 234–8, 229–32Leeds University Library, see Brotherton LibraryLeeds University, see University of LeedsLegrand, Marc-Antoine 167Le Moyne, Pierre 169Lenglet Dufresnoy 169Lennox, Charles, see Richmond, Charles Lennox,

3rd Duke ofLeroy, Alphonse 168Lesage, Alain René 167lesbianism 126, 195–6Le Secq 74 Le Sénéchal family 77, 134, 145 n.36Lesuire, Robert Martin 167Letters to Serena 222Lettre de Mlle Le Bac de Saint-Amant 15Lettres, mémoires et négociations 1, 5, 14–15, 26, 46,

63, 133, 134, 169, 238Liaisons dangereuses 202, 208, 211, 213 n.30libel 46, 52

d’Eon’s conviction for 17, 19, 20, 51Libertas 17libertines 194liberty 7, 18, 28, 50, 53, 83, 114, 125, 171, 193, 216,

218–24 passimBritish 18, 20d’Eon as a symbol of 18of expression 83, 114

library, d’Eon’s 2, 6, 109, 168, 172, 187, 192Licensing Act 83Life and Death Contrasted, or an Essay on Woman 92 Lignolle, Comte de 202, 208–9Lignolle, Comtesse Eléonore de, fi ctional character

202, 208, 210Ligonier, Lady 118–19Ligonier, Lord 29, 119Linguet, Simon-Nicolas-Henri 166, 170, 173

Lintilhac, Eugène 69 n.1Lister, Anne 198literary genre 153literary pursuits, of d’Eon 25–6Lives of Saints 138Lloyd’s Evening Post 17Locke, John 217Lodge of Immortality 120Lodge of the Nine Sisters 162Lodoïska, fi ctional character and real wife of

Louvet de Coudray 201, 202, 209Loisirs du Chevalier d’Eon 5, 11 n.15, 63, 215,

217–20, 223, 224, 225 n.3, 226 n.19, 226 n.29Lomonossov, Mikhail 168London Evening Post 226 n.29London Magazine 86, 90, 125London mob 9–10, 46, 50 Long Parliament 215Lorraine, Prince de 77Louis XIV 119, 233Louis XV ix, 25, 51, 107, 133, 158 n.3, 210, 233

and Beaumarchais 58, 60, 61and Comte de Broglie 4, 5, 26, 81–2and Conti 4and d’Eon’s pension 5, 137and du Barry 60and Pompadour 5and Secret du Roi 4–5, 14, 26, 81–3 passimand Wilkes 46death 5foreign policy 26–7, 41, 82reports d’Eon is a woman 84secret orders to d’Eon 4, 14, 27, 45, 82, 83

Louis XVI 6, 74, 89, 100, 150and Beaumarchais 58–67 passimand Choiseul 217execution 201foreign policy 41impotence (alleged) 208–9orders d’Eon to dress as woman 62–3, 91, 99,

150, 234–5pamphlets concerning 57, 58presentation of d’Eon to 6, 102

Louise de France, Madame 236Louvet de Coudray, Jean-Baptiste 201–12 passim

inspired by d’Eon 203Lovzinski, fi ctional character 209Luchet, Marquis de 167, 168Ludlow, Edmund 216

macaronis 6, 7, 95 n.57, 119, 194Macaulay, Catherine 195, 204, 220–1, 224, 227

n.44, 227 n.52

I N D E X250

Machiavelli, Niccolo 219Mackenzie, Alexander 4, 14, 141, 166, 171, 175 n.33Mademoiselle de Beaumont, or the Chevalier d’Eon

90–1, 126, 132 n.73madness, alleged, of d’Eon 39, 44 n.80Magdalene institution 220Magna Carta 50Maiden of Tonnerre: Th e Vicissitudes of the

Chevalier and Chevalière d’Eon 8, 147–158Maillet de Régnière, Françoise Charlotte 78Maillet de Régnière, lieutenant 78Maillot, Antoinette 103, 106, 109Maillot, Génévieve 77, 103, 106, 109Maillot, wigmaker, cousin to Geneviève and

Antoinette 106 Mainz, Valerie 8Mairobert, see Pidansat de Mairobert, Mathieu-

Françoismake-up 85Making of the Modern Self 188Malesherbes, Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon

de 4Mallet, Mrs 107Mandar, Th éophile 224manhood, see masculinityManon Lescaut 169Mansfi eld, William Murray, Earl of 91, 117, 125,

126, 194–5Marat, Jean-Paul 9, 222–4, 228 n.58, 228 n.69Mariage de Figaro 59–60, 170, 177, 202, 203, 211 Marie-Antoinette 58, 77, 97, 99, 102, 105, 106, 109,

150, 152, 161, 211, 217Marivaux 64, 167, 169, 201Marphise 165Marriage à la Mode 127masculinity 120, 156, 181–3, 184, 190, 196, 236

d’Eon and 8, 21, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90–3 passim, 98, 125, 136, 141, 154, 162, 172, 192, 195

masquerade balls 97, 98, 193Maupeou 74, 217, 224Maurepas, Comte de 60Maurepas, Comtesse de 103, 107Mayor, Godefroy 231Maza, Sarah 133medical fraternity 122Medmenham Abbey 117Meister, Henri 162Mémoire pour la chevalière d’Eon 77Mémoires du Chevalier d’Eon (Gaillardet) 201, 209Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire générale des

fi nances 4, 25Mémoires secrets 100–1, 105

Mémoires secrets d’une femme publique 51–2, 142Mendelssohn manuscripts 230Mercier-Faivre, Anne-Marie 8Mercurius Politicus 215–16Merteuil, Marquise de, fi ctional character 202, 208Mesmerism 209, 210mezzotint process 120Michaux, Madame 106military service, of d’Eon 4

see also dragoonsMilton, John 216, 217Minden, battle of 21 n.8Minerva 63, 87, 91, 102, 127, 142, 168, 173Mirepoix, ambassador to Britain 34misogyny 117, 120, 127, 129, 157, 167missions of d’Eon

to London 4, 5, 26–41, 82, 83to Russia 4, 136–7, 141, 166–7, 171, 175 n.33

Mohammed the Prophet 168Molas, Marquis de 134Molesmes 78Molière 201mollies 194Moncrif, François-Augustin Paradis de 167Monet, General 84Monica, mother of Saint Augustine 237monkey, satirical image 115, 190Monsieur d’Eon is a Woman 2–3, 82, 229

see also Kates, GaryMontagu, Lady Mary Wortley 157Montesquieu 28, 49, 226 n.39Monthly Review 14Montmorency-Bouteville, Duchesse de 103, 107,

149, 184, 234–5, 236, 237, 238Moore, Lisa 156Morande, see Th éveneau de Morande, CharlesMore, Hannah 194, 195Moreau le jeune, Jean-Michel 162 Morel, Jean-Marie 76Morning Chronicle 193Morning Post 63, 65, 66Morris, Marilyn 8mouches 127Mouffl e d’Angerville, Barthélemy 133Moullet de Monbar, Abbé 165Mount Olympus 123murder, see plots, to murder or kidnap d’EonMusée de Tonnerre 107, 109, 112 n.87Musgrave, Dr Samuel, 51, 55 n.48, 55 n.50, 114–16Muslims 168Musson, painter 142Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light by ye

Gormagons 122, 125

I N D E X 251

mythsof Amazons 167–73 passim inspirations for d’Eon’s autobiography 178surrounding d’Eon 1–3, 143, 147, 158 n.3, 161

see also Amazons; Beaumont, Lia de; Gaillardet, Frédéric; Russia myth

Namier, Sir Lewis 29Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke 156native Americans 116Nedham, Marchamont 215–17, 218, 220, 221, 224,

225New Testament 158–9 n.15

theology 237–8New World 167Newcastle, Duke of 28, 30, 32, 123Newcastle-upon-Tyne 228 n.63

election (1774) 223newspapers 7, 9, 15, 50, 57, 83, 90, 193, 211,

215–16, 220–1, 234, 235 British 122comment, on d’Eon’s gender 83–4 manipulated by d’Eon 13–20 passim, 50–1, 83see also under titles of individual newspapers

Ninias 169Nivernais, Louis-Jules Mancini-Mazarini, Duc de

14, 15, 26, 28, 29, 37, 42 n. 32, 58–9, 60, 94 n.22, 137

career 25decorates d’Eon 4–5despatches 25, 30embassy to London 4, 25, 30, 32, 82negotiates Peace of Paris 4, 25, 30, 32, 82opinions of Pitt 32

North Briton 30, 46, 48North, Frederick, Lord 28, 32, 52Notre-Dame-du-Pont 73, 76Nouveau Gulliver 167Nouvelle colonie ou la Ligue des femmes 167Nouvelle Héloïse, see Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïsenovels 154–5, 156, 172, 203, 211Nussbaum, Felicity 149, 153, 155, 157

O’Gorman, Madame (d’Eon’s sister) 73–4, 75O’Gorman, Th omas, Chevalier d’ 67, 73, 74–5,

77–8, 194, 210obituaries, of d’Eon 235obscene libel 212Observateur anglais 211old age, of d’Eon 6–7, 92, 109, 152Old Bailey 19Olympe de Gouges, Marie 173one-sex model 151

Onfroi, publisher 134Orabi, Ahmed 230Order of Saint-Louis 115

see also Cross of Saint-LouisOrléans, Duc d’ 88Orneval, Jacques-Philippe d’ 167Ossory, Lady 84outlawing

of d’Eon 20of Wilkes 193

Oxford Magazine 113–14, 116Ozanam, Didier 26

Palais Royal 202Pallas 139–142 passim, 165, 166, 169, 170pamphlets

British republican 216revolutionary 133use by d’Eon, 190

Panaetius 218Panza, Sancho 125Parlement of Paris 4, 135, 141, 169parlementaires 53Parlements 49, 211, 217, 224Pascal, Blaise 238Pascal, Roy 158patriot party

in France 217in Britain, see British Patriot Party

patriotism, of d’Eon 7, 25, 30, 33, 40, 47–53 passim, 219, 224, 233

patronage 4Peace of Paris 4, 8, 27, 32, 34, 41, 82Peace of Utrecht 38pension, of d’Eon 5, 6, 62, 75, 83, 87, 91, 95 n.63,

99, 109, 110, 137perceptions

of d’Eon among his contemporaries 3, 81–2, 84–5, 89–93, 104

of the modern self 3Percy 195performance of gender, see gender, performance ofPeters, Marie 53Petit, Pierre 167Petite réponse au Grand Voltaire 169Peyraud de Beaussol 145 n.36phallic objects 161–2phallic power 117Phileultheros (pseudonym) 17Phillips, Constantia 155Phipps, Constantine John 223physical appearance, of d’Eon 8, 81, 85, 99, 113,

117, 129, 141, 162–3

I N D E X252

physionomy 208, 210 Picot, V. M. 87, 95 n.51Pidansat de Mairobert, Mathieu-François 211Pile (or Pille), Barthélemy known as La Grenade

75, 77Pilkington, Laetitia 155Pinsseau, Pierre 73, 134Pitt, William, the Elder 29, 30, 43 n.50, n.63, 48,

49, 54 n.9and George III, 35, 43and Nivernais 32comparison to Choiseul 47d’Eon’s opinion of 31, 32, 34, 37–41, 42–3 n.49,

45, 48foreign policy 35, 36–41, 45, 48political style 7, 47, 54 n.20return to power 35–7, 45, 48

plots, to murder or kidnap d’Eon 2, 7, 13–14, 16–20, 46, 52, 83, 122–3

Poland 4, 209, 218police of Paris 15political skills, of d’Eon 48political writings, of d’Eon 235Polybius 218Pommereau, Marquis de 57, 58–9, 69 n.10Pompadour, Madame de 5, 14, 82, 171, 210, 217Pontigny 78Pope Joan 149, 162, 170, 193pornography 193Porter, Roy 83, 93 n.2post-mortem examination of d’Eon 81, 89, 109, 147Poullain de Saint-Foix 211Praslin, Gabriel de Choiseul-Chevigny, Duc de 15,

22 n.41, 25, 26, 41 n.2and d’Eon’s Lettres, mémoires et négociations 5and Guerchy 5, 14, 18–19attitude to Pitt 32correspondence from d’Eon 27–8, 33, 34, 36,

37, 39, 40foreign policy 27plots to kidnap d’Eon 19plots to murder d’Eon (allegedly) 18–19

Préchac, Jean de 169précieuses 167predestination 148presentation, of d’Eon at court 102, 103, 104press, see newspapersPrévost, Antoine François, Abbé 169Price, Chase 119Price, Munro 60priests 49Prince of Wales, see George IVPrince Regent, see George IV

Princeton University Library 231print culture 114print shops 120, 131 n.46private sphere 133promotion, of d’Eon, to Chevalier 5, 89Prosser, Jay 150–5 passimprostitutes, prostitution 14, 127, 194Protestant Reformation 188Pruneveaux, M. 60, 69 n.10

see also PommereauPruneveaux, Mme 60pseudonyms, use of 17psychologists views of d’Eon 2Public Advertiser 16, 17, 18, 51, 83, 220–1public opinion 50, 133, 156, 158, 194–5 public sphere 13, 20, 113–14, 119, 133Publicus (pseudonym) 17publisher’s advances 109Pucelle de Tonnerre, see Maiden of TonnerrePuritan autobiography 147–8, 153Puritan conversion narratives, see conversion

narrativesPuritans 148–9

Quakerism 231, 232Queer identities 159 n.46Queer studies xQuérard, Joseph-Marie 145 n.36querelle des femmes 2, 167Quinault 163, 177

Rabelais 135Radix de Sainte-Foy, Claude-Pierre Maximilien 45,

46, 49, 211Ranke, Leopold von 233Rariora 231recall, of d’Eon 14, 82, 116Recherches sur les habillements des femmes et des

enfants 168Recruiting Serjeant or Brittannias Happy Prospect

116Reine de Benni 167, 168religion, and gender change 234–8

see also Christianityreligious conversion of d’Eon 152, 153, 165, 172,

179, 235, 236see also Christianity

Remarques véritables et très remarquables, sur les Audiences de Th alie 166

republican virtue 53, 120republicanism 215, 216–17, 219–20, 222, 224–5,

225 n.3reputation of d’Eon, as a writer 118

I N D E X 253

return of d’Eon to France (1777) 67, 110 n.3to London as woman 6

Reynolds, Sir Joshua 13, 119Riballier 173Riccoboni, Marie-Jean 211Richardson, bookseller 224Richardson, Jonathan 131 n.44Richardson, Samuel 157Richmond, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of 52, 56 n.58Ridley, Matthew 223Ridley, Sir Matthew White 223Rigoley, Charles François 78Robbins, Caroline 220Robespierre, Maximilien 201, 202Robineau, Charles Jean 87, 93 n.1, 128Rochford, William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein,

4th Earl 47, 52, 55–6 n.57, 56 n.58, 66Rogister, John 11 n.6role models, for d’Eon 10Roman Catholicism 148

see also ChristianityRoman Empire 34–5Roman Republic 220Rome 221Rosambert, Comte de, fi ctional character 203, 204,

206, 208, 211Rosenthal, Michael 119rouge 95 n.41Roulière, Jeanne, known as Jeannette 77, 78Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 9, 204, 209, 213 n.28

and d’Eon 9, 48, 155, 160 n.49, 187–91, 196–8, 233–4, 238

Rowlandson, Th omas 87Royal Academy 119Royal Collection 87Royal Navy 27, 32Rubens, Peter Paul 125rumours, about d’Eon’s sex 2, 6, 7, 83, 98, 117, 192

194Rump Parliament 216Russell, John, 4th Duke of Bedford, 38–9, 44 n.74,

52, 55–6 n.57, 116see also Duke of B-d’s Reception at Exeter

Russia ix, 2, 4, 9, 97, 141, 158 n.3, 167–9 passim, 171, 175 n.33, 192

Russia myth 10 n.3, 158 n.3, 166–7, 171Rustaing de Saint-Jorry, Louis 167, 168Rutgers University 230Ruvat, Mrs 107

Sackville, Frederick John, 3rd Duke of Dorset 107Sade, Marquis de 193

Saint-Foi, see Poullain de Saint-FoixSaint-Georges, Chevalier de 6, 87–8, 128–9, 210,

213 n.60Saint-Petersburg 4, 166, 168, 171Sainte-Foy, see Radix de Sainte-Foy Sainte-Suzanne 74sales, of d’Eon’s possessions 6, 7, 109salvation by faith 148same sex relationships 159 n.46Sandwich, Lord 44 n.74Sapphick Epistle 196Sartine, Antoine-Gabriel de 57, 68satirical prints 113, 119Satyr Against the French, 115 Saucière de Tenance, Antoine-Nicolas de 74Sawbridge, John 221Sayre plot 52scandal, scandals 1, 5, 13–14, 29, 51, 118–24, 133,

141, 155–6, 177, 211scandalous biographies 142, 147–8, 155–6scandalous memorialists, 155–8 passimScavoir Vivre club 194Scipio 217–18 Scots 35Scots Magazine 85Scythia 169Scythians 168Secret du Roi 4, 5, 14, 26, 27 33, 37, 40–1, 45, 46,

82–3, 91, 94 n.14, 171, 233secret service (French), see Secret du RoiSeigel, Jerrold 197self, conceptions of 113, 187–98 passim

d’Eon’s 189–98Selwyn, George 97Sémiramis 168, 169servants 76–7Seven Years’ War 4, 16, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 45,

47, 82, 115, 116, 233sex reassignment surgery 148, 151, 159 n.46sexologists views of d’Eon 2sexual diff erence, notions of 120sexual exploits of d’Eon (fabricated) 2, 213 n.48Shelburne, Lord 29Sheppard, Christopher 9, 234Shirley, Washington, 5th Earl Ferrers 5, 62, 65shoes, 106Sidney, Algernon 216, 217signature, of d’Eon 66Silhouette, Étienne de 49, 54 n.29, n.30Simon Magus 17Simons, Henry 17, 22 n.28Sir Charles Grandison 157skin 151–2, 172

I N D E X254

Smith, Adam 47Smollett, Tobias, 54 n.17, 227 n.42sociability, d’Eon’s 77–8Society of Anti-Gallicans 50Society of Friends 232sodomy, sodomites 98, 194, 198Some Sober Inspections 216Sophie (character in Rousseau’s Emile) 187Sophie, Faublas’ wife, fi ctional character 202,

203–4, 209, 210Souffl ot, Dame 106Soumarokov, Aleksandr Petrovich 168Spacks, Patricia Meyer 157, 158Special Request by Mademoiselle d’Eon 147, 154,

237 Spinelli, Donald 7squibs, poetic 115spiritual autobiography 147–8, 153, 155spiritual conversion 147, 148spiritual diaries 188Spring Gardens 17, 19St Augustine 148, 153, 237, 238St George & Th e Dragon and Madlle d’Eon riposting

128–9St James Chronicle 17, 18St James’s Macaroni 132 n.60St Paul 148, 237St Ursula, 139, 161Standards of Care: the Hormonal and Surgical Sex

Reassignment of Gender Dysphoric Persons 150Staunton Harold 5Stone, Sandy 151Strange Career of the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont

81 Stroev, Alexandre 3, 8Sully, Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de 193summary biography of d’Eon ix, 4–8Suzanne, fi ancée of Figaro, fi ctional character 59,

211Sweden 51Swedish ‘Patriot’ party 51 Swinton, Charlotte 70 n.42Swinton, Samuel 66, 70 n.42Symington, J. A. 229–32syphilis 127.

Tasso, Torquato 165taste 120, 131 n.43, 131 n.44tax farmers 49Taylor, Charles 188, 189Telfer, J. B. 81, 94 n.30Temple 43 n.49, 46, 54 n.9,Tendre ami des mères nourrices 145 n.36

Tercier, Jean-Pierre 14, 27, 43 n.58, 171Terrier de Cléron, Claude-Joseph 133Th alestris, Queen of the Amazons 168, 173theatre 98, 99, 127, 156, 162–3, 201Th éâtre Français 145 n.36Th éveneau de Morande, Charles 68, 142, 195

allegations against d’Eon 23 n.45, 194, 195and Beaumarchais 58, 60, 61, 63–4, 69 n.2,

70 n.17and Choiseul 226 n.25attempted kidnap 20blackmails du Barry and Louis XV 51, 52, 58,

60challenged to duels by d’Eon and others 194encourages wagers on d’Eon’s sex 63–4pamphlets 18, 51uses d’Eon’s library 18was possibly Angelucci 69 n.2

see also Mémoires secrets d’une femme publique

Th ibault, Mme 74Th ompson, Lynda 156Th omson, Charles 78Th omson, Mr 78Tillyard, Stella 13Toft , Mary 17, 122, 131 n.51toilette 150, 152Toland, John 222Tolkien, J. R. R. 229Tom Jones 202Tombs, Isabelle 217Tombs, Robert 217Tone, Wolfe 202Tonnerre x, 2, 3, 7, 73–9, 92, 101, 107, 152, 172,

174 n.4d’Eon’s building projects in 75–6d’Eon’s infl uence in 79wines 73–5

Tonnerrois 73Tories 29, 48Tourvel, Présidente de, fi ctional character 202Town and Country Magazine 117Town Moor aff air 223Transaction, Th e 6, 63, 66transdisciplinarity ixtransgender(ed)

canon of writings 148identities 151persons 159 n.46spirituality, of d’Eon 237–8studies x, 10style 153–4

transgendering 81, 86, 92

I N D E X 255

translations, of English republican works 216–17transmen 151transsexual(s) 8, 86, 150–1, 152

defi nitions of 148female to female (FTF) 154female-to-male (FTM) 150, 151identities 150–1male to male (MTM) 151male-to-female (MTF) 150, 151, 156narratives 147–8, 150–4scholars 150writers 159 n.46

transsexualism, transsexuality 8, 147, 148, 150, 152, 253, 159 n.22

d’Eon and 2, 147–8, 153–4transvestite(s) 84, 98, 203

memoirs 177–86transvestitism 2, 8, 84, 93 n.10, 94 n.29, 98, 177–86Treaty of Paris 4, 27, 34, 114–15, 116Trenchard, John 222Tressan, Comte de 165Trial of M. D’Eon by a Jury of Matrons 117–18, 119Trinity 153True Story of the Chevalier d’Eon 81, 231Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques 233Turkey 168two-sex model 151tyranny, tyrants, see despotism

underpants 98unicorn, symbolism of 116United States 41University of Leeds Library, see Brotherton LibraryUniversity of Leeds x, 2, 3, 9, 82, 97, 147, 220,

229–32, 234University of Leiden 222Urquhart, bookseller 224

Valade, publisher 134Van de Pol, Lotte 178Van der Cruysse, Dirk 183 Van Dyck, Antonis 125Vane, Lady Frances 155, 200, 227 n.42Vanguin, Sieur 106Vanneck, Sir Joshua 28Vaucher, Paul 28Vaulavré, Jacquillat de, (cousin of d’Eon) 74, 78, 79Vaulichères 73–4Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens 87Venus 142Vergennes, Charles Gravier, Comte de 6. 41, 47,

52, 58–9, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71 n.51, 99, 142

Vergy, Pierre-Henri Treyssac de 15, 18–19, 22 n.41, 22 n.43

commits perjury for d’Eon 19, 23 n.45d’Eon’s defamation of 15

Vernet, Joseph 162 Versailles 19Vie de Marianne 169Vie militaire, politique et privée de Melle d’Eon 8, 77,

133–44, 145 n.36, 235Vie politique et militaire de M. le maréchal duc de

Bell’Isle 133Vie privée de Louis XV 133Vie privée et criminelle d’Antoine-François Desrues

133Vies des femmes illustres de la France 168vies privées, literary genre 8, 133–44 passimVignoles, Jean-Joseph de 77Vignoles, Mademoiselle 77Villinghausen, battle of 4Vilmorin-Andrieux, M. 76Virgin Mary 124, 139, 142, 145 n.24, 234–5virginity 140, 141, 151, 153, 154, 172, 189, 196Viry, Comte de 28, 38, 44 n.20visual images of d’Eon 3, 8, 86–92, 108–10, 113–29,

139–40, 161, 162, 166as fraudster 120–2reading of xmarket for 88–9

viticulture 73–5Vizetelly, Ernest 81, 231Voltaire 28, 93, 95 n.32, 162, 168, 169, 209, 212

n.14, 219, 221, 233–4Vorontsov, Count 166Voyage dans l’île des plaisirs 167

wagers, on d’Eon’s sex ix, 6, 63–4, 66, 90–1, 117, 120, 123, 126, 140, 149, 194, 195

Wahrman, Dror 3, 11 n.15, 113 188–9, 194Wales, Princess of 36 Walpole, Horace 84, 100Walpole, Sir Robert 39–40.Walpole, Th omas 28wardrobe, of d’Eon 97–110

bills 97list 105

Warens, Mme de 204Watkins, Owen C. 148–9 Westminster Gazette 193, 194, 195Whately 55 n.48Whigs 29, 195Whisperer 193Wikipedia ixWilkes aff air 3

I N D E X256

Wilkes, John 17, 19, 53, 54 n.9, 56 n.66, 63, 190, 227 n.52, 228 n.69

and Catherine Macaulay 221and Commonwealthmen 221–2and d’Holbach 222, 227 n.54and Marat 222–3, 228 n.58and North Briton 30, 48attacks on Bute 30, 48condemns sodomy 194d’Eon sees as potential French tool 35, 48d’Eon’s relationship with 114, 221, 233election in 1772 194emulated by d’Eon 193fl ees to France 16lampooned with d’Eon 115–16, 122–4, 124, 221outlawed 193parallels with d’Eon 15–16, 45–6, 53, 94 n.10,

193, 198

pornographic publications 193rumoured to be in French pay 51

Wilkites 7, 15–16, 35, 46, 47–8, 49, 50, 53, 114, 116, 117, 121–2, 222–4 passim, 228 n.64

Willermawlaz, Th érèse de 70 n.14Willis, Dr 210wine 73–5, 79 n.6, 95 n.35Wode 137Wollstonecraft , Mary 157women, political infl uence of 193women’s autobiographies 157women’s novels 157Woronzow, comte 137–8Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary 8Woulf, banker 74

Zeus 123