November 26, 2012 • 27 mins
Upset with the prospect of a demotion, the Chevalier d'Eon published his diplomatic correspondence. Worried that d'Eon might reveal the King's Secret, Louis XV desperately negotiated d'Eon's return -- with one catch: the Chevalier had to become a woman.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah
Down and I'm to Blame a talk reporting and we
left off last time talking about the Chevalier d a spy,
(00:21):
a diplomat, a soldier, and perhaps most famously, a man
who lived as a woman for the last three decades
of his life. And Dale has been in the news
quite a bit since last summer, when London's National Portrait
Gallery acquired a portrait long believed to be that of
a middle aged woman. Closer inspection, though, revealed that the
(00:43):
sitter was the famous, decorated and highly acclaimed Chevalier, wearing
his trademark black dress of later years and even the
prestigious medal of Saint Louis that he earned. It's the
first portrait in the gallery extensive collection, or the first
oil portrait rather in the gallery's collection to show a
(01:05):
man dressed in women's clothing. So pretty headline making stuff.
But we ended the last podcast before the Chevalier's transition.
He was still a diplomat in the service of Louis
the fifteenth of France and one who had served in Russia,
a soldier who had fought valiantly in the Seven Years War.
So this is the portrait we've had of him so far.
In seventeen sixty two and sixty three, Dale had reached
(01:28):
the pinnacle of his career. He'd helped negotiate the war's end.
He'd been decorated with the Order of St. Louis, making
him a chevalier, and he'd been sent as minister to
Great Britain. He had also gotten another big promotion, but
one few people knew about. For decades, Louis the fifteenth
had maintained a secret secondary diplomacy called Le Secrete du Roi,
(01:50):
or the King's Secret. It was a chaotic system, since
louis owned foreign minister didn't know of its existence, and
because the secret often pursued foreign policy object directly at
odds with the official ones, which makes the story a
little confusing at times. We'll imagine how it must have
felt if you if you worked in a foreign policy
(02:10):
for Louis at the time. But so after the disastrous
Seven Years War, though where France lost a lot of
influence and a lot of land to Great Britain, it's
official foreign policy was, of course one of peace, the
secret though had a different motive, and that was one
of revenge, and so as a longtime agent of the
(02:31):
King's secret, the newly minted Chevalier Dion had a really
important role in this covert operation. He was supposed to
lead agents that were scouting out the British coastline, looking
for places to land and strategizing about some sort of
armed invasion of Great Britain, So really serious secret agent
(02:51):
kind of stuff, you know, playing the minister being a
negotiator piece on the one hand and publicly but also
planning an invasion at the same time. Unfortunately for Dan
alle Though, his rise coincided exactly with Madame de Pompadour's fall.
The longtime mistress of Louis the fifteenth, who we've talked
about before, was falling out of favor and had broken
(03:13):
into the King's papers uncovering evidence of the secret, and
her people desperately wanted to uncover what was behind it,
and their first target was Great Britain and Dan What
was the chevalier really doing there? So before we get
into that, though, we have to discuss kind of the
backstory of the chevalier's honors, because well, he was given
(03:35):
the status of Minister to Great Britain, which was a
great promotion for him. Essentially, it wasn't really a promotion
that was for keeps. It was just until the new ambassador,
a man named the Comte de Guerci, got there. And
de Guerci was one of Pompadour's contingent, one of her guys,
and so he was of course inherently pretty nosy about
(03:58):
what was going on with the King's sea her it,
and Dalen didn't have a very great personal opinion of
the new minister either. He thought that he'd been cowardly
in battle. Nevertheless, though, Dale was faced with losing his
job to this guy, having to step aside and make
way for him, and they really started bickering before Dick
(04:19):
where she even arrived. When the new minister got to London,
things just got worse to Dale refused to hand over
his diplomatic papers, he ignored all the orders to return
to France. He really dug in his heel. His public stance, though,
was still one of loyalty to the King, but he
still threatened to reveal something big, essentially trying to blackmail
(04:41):
Louis into supporting him in his dispute with Diguerci, and
so in March seventeen sixty four, Dyonn did something really extraordinary.
He actually published his diplomatic correspondence, not going so far
as to reveal the King's secret and his covert mission
in Great Britain, something that could have called us the
countries to go back to war. But it's still caused
(05:03):
a huge stir Londoner's love seeing this French loose cannon though,
And according to Jonathan Conlin in History Today, folks at
first I started lending their copies out like libraries by
the hour. Yeah, so it was the read of the day.
And of course, you know, he didn't want to reveal
the whole story. He didn't want to disclose the King's
secret because it was an insurance policy for him. It
(05:25):
was a way to protect his life and to hopefully
secure a better deal for himself with Louise Thance. He
knew that was the last thing Louis wanted people to
know about. But just to give a description of the
kind of reaction people had to this book, Conlin includes
horse Wall Poles seventeen sixty four take on the publication
(05:46):
and and um, here's what he wrote, he said, we
are full of a wonderful book just published here by
the Chevalier Dion, and he spells it like Dion Sanders.
You are to understand that besides a alls and curious circumstances,
Dion's book is full of wit and parts, and what
makes it more provoking. Our ministers know not what to
(06:08):
do nor how to procure any satisfaction. To Guerre, She
so yeah. Understandably to Guerre, she was not happy about
this turn of events. He thought he was getting the
sweet job in London. Maybe he'd start to figure out
what the deal was with the secret while he was there. Instead,
he is in the middle of this embarrassing public dispute
(06:31):
with Dale, but Louis couldn't really help him out. He
wasn't in exactly in any position to support him either.
He didn't want to do anything that would make Dale
angry enough to spill the beans on his secret, specifically
the proposed invasion of Great Britain. So, again, true to
his decades of secrecy and double bluffs, Louis at this
(06:53):
point pursues two radically different policies. At one point, he
ordered the police officers to Great Britain to seize Dale,
but also sent secret word to the Chevalier to escape
beforehand and secure his papers, so he helped him out
at the same time, but he'd attempted to buy out
Dale as well, offering him money for the documents detailing
(07:13):
the secret and why the Chevalier was really in London.
George the Third also wasn't really in a position to
simply extradite Danel back to Louis either. The British people
really liked him. They liked dan Alle, he was media
savvy and he'd become a bit of a society spectacle already,
and so they supported him over the angry Daguerre she
(07:34):
who dan All accused of trying to murder him. He
really did know what he was doing with the media too.
He he got the people on his side. Um. But yeah,
George the Third was already facing he for going too
easy on France after the Seven Years War. He really
didn't want to look he didn't want to extradite this
popular man back to France and looked like he was
(07:56):
just in cahoots with with Louis the fifteen. That wouldn't
have been in a popular position to take. So nobody
could really do anything. Danelle is just they're sitting on
the secret. He knows he's safe enough with it. The
two kings can't do anything about it. And that game
just continued for years and years until Louis the fifteenth
(08:19):
step in May of seventeen seventy four. At that point,
his successor, Louis the sixteenth, was looking for ways to
tie this up. I mean, clearly, it's a huge liability,
it's a huge embarrassment. He's going to try to figure
out a way to bring this story to an end
and get the chevalier back in France where they want him.
(08:41):
So to negotiate Daniell's return, Louise Foreign Minister engaged a playwright,
Pierre Cameron de Beaumarche, who wrote The Barber of Seville
and The Marriage of Figaro, two plays that were eventually
adapted into the famous operas. Beau Marchet got the job done,
and on November four, seventy Danielle sign papers called the Transaction,
(09:02):
which allowed him to return to France, but only as
a woman. Oh boy, First of all, I just have
to say the Transactions such an appropriate name to conclude
the secrets anyway, though, Yes, in order to secure the
benefits of the transaction like a pension. They all had
(09:24):
to be a woman. Unconventional, very unconventional. Just we should
say that, just in case people think this was a
normal tactic of of the Louis era. No, it was
not a traditional sort of arrangement you had come to
even though it might have served the purpose of marginalizing
(09:45):
day all, you know, as as a female in an
age when there wouldn't have been many opportunities for for
a noble woman. There were way more traditional ways of
doing this, like banishing a nobleman to his estate. You
didn't normally say a start wearing ladies clothing and that'll
be your punishment. Even stranger though, the transaction doesn't say, oh,
(10:08):
just start wearing women's clothing, like for the first time,
like you never did it before. It required that danon
quote readopt women's clothing, suggesting that he had been a
woman all along, but that he had been a woman,
had at one point in his distant past disguised himself
as a man, and was now required to go back
(10:29):
to being a woman. If you can follow all that.
And another surprising thing about this is, I guess the
people really weren't too surprised by it. It wasn't that
hard for people to believe that he might have been
a woman exactly. According to Thomas Stewart's article for the
National Portrait Gallery, it was accepted that women sometimes disguised
(10:50):
themselves and lived as men in order to serve in
a military capacity, or even simply to follow their sweethearts
into battle. But everyone knew that Dan was a man, right,
that's what you might think. I mean, certainly it seemed
as though everybody involved in the transaction knew he was
a man. But that's not really the case for the
general public. And this is where the story and the
(11:12):
motivations involved get pretty murky. But it's possible that the
whole readopt women's clothing thing was just a way to
marginalize in shame Dale. And if that were the case,
it would work pretty well for both the French government,
which of course could explain away Dale's radical conduct as
that of a hysterical woman, you know, not as a
(11:34):
rogue spy um. And it would work all right for
Dale too, who at least would get to skip out
on something worse like imprisonment in the best deal. And plus,
if he had been a woman all along his career
would would be over, so another plus for the for
the French government side of things, But it was not
necessarily against his own wishes, right It could have been
(12:00):
Dale's own idea, something that appealed to him. We talked
a little bit in the last episode about how, depending
on what source you read, Dale either showed no early
interest in dressing in women's clothing or he'd been doing
it for years. According to Art Daily, he may have
even been buying corsets in London for years. What is certain, though,
is that since about seventeen seventy there had been rumors
(12:21):
about his gender, ones that he actually encouraged after abandoning
his initial policy of challenging any doubters to a duel.
Leading up to the transaction, people even took bets on
whether Dale was a man or a woman. Pretty crazy stuff.
But from the transaction onward, Dale certainly embraced life fully
as a woman. He took on the name Charlotte, added
(12:43):
ease to that string of middle names. I guess I'll
go through that one more time. His his new name
Charlotte jen Viev Louise Auguste Andre Timothy Dale de Beaumont
pretty easy changes for most of them. Still a mouthful,
still a mouthful. Um. But he or she at this
point left London for Paris in August seventeen seventy seven.
(13:05):
I mean of that, of course, was what this transaction
was for in the first place, amnesty. And by November
Dye was presented at court to Louis the sixteenth and
Marie Antoinette. And this really might be my favorite part
of the story, just because it's so unexpected. I mean,
there's nothing you never read anything like this. It's just
(13:27):
it stands alone. Dale underwent a four hour twilet that
was done by Rose Bartown herself, who's the famous designer.
She she did Marie Antoinette's clothes, but where hours still
was not enough to impress the snobby ladies of Versailles.
(13:47):
The Viscomte Stafar wrote quote, she had nothing of our
sex but the petticoats and the curls, which suited her horribly,
pretty mean thing to say. But still, I'm totally embracing
the fact that Don is a woman. So after just
a couple of weeks at her side, though, it must
(14:09):
have seen that dressing in women's clothes was not going
to be enough of a marginalization for this rogue spy,
and Dale was sent back to uh to the Burgundy
estate to live in exile until seventy five, when finally
she got what she had been agitating for for quite
(14:30):
some time, which was to get back to London, where
she was still a really popular figure. Once back in London,
Dan took to performing fencing displays and addressing cap and
the British continued to really like her. Mary wall stone
Craft held her up as an example of femininity for
British women to emulate, and in seventeen ninety two she
(14:51):
offered the French National Assembly. She offered basically to lead
an Amazon army, and they the British just loved the
idea of an Amazon army. The Revolution spelled hard times
for Day, although she lost her pension from the transaction,
she had to sell off a book's jewelry and even
the Order of St. Louis when she was imprisoned for debt.
(15:13):
She finally died at age eighty two in eighteen ten,
poor and living with a widow named Mary Cole, who
supposedly had the surprise of her life when she helped
lay out the body of her old friend and found
that she was actually a man. Death was really the
only thing that settled that old question. Chevalier was physically
(15:34):
a male. But there are still more mystery surrounding this story,
and one of the main mysteries around Stale's decision to
continue living as a woman in that last fifteen some
odd years after the Revolution, after Louis the sixteenth execution.
Clearly she wasn't in France anymore. She was not getting
(15:56):
that pension from the transaction, which was after all and
agree made with a now defunct government. So it seemed
as though Charlotte could have just returned to being Charles
the Chevalier, and it probably The answer to this probably
depends on Dan's original motivation to accept the terms of
(16:17):
the transaction in the first place. So Dale may have
wanted to dress and live as a woman and was
in this utterly unique position for an eighteenth century man
to do that openly. The National Portrait Gallery for instant
their assessment is pretty compelling. They wrote, quote, no transbust
site or transsexual until the late twentieth century has enjoyed
(16:38):
such public recognition and acceptance. So if this was Dion's motivation,
then why stop just because Louis is gone. If if
this was the life that she had wanted to lead,
or another possibility here, if the gender reassignment had not
been a willing choice at the time, maybe it seemed
a smart one to maintain by the seventeen intees, especially
(17:01):
without that pension. Danon, after all, had already reworked her
life story as though she had been a woman all along.
She profited from being unique, fencing in skirts and so on.
She even sold memoirs in eighteen o five, though she
never delivered. Maybe it would have been too hard to
go once you've rewritten your life story and right, maybe
(17:22):
it just and made a living that way. Yeah, it
might have just been It might have not seemed feasible
to make a living in another way, because of course,
if she did return to being a man, she'd sort
of be a man in disgrace, I mean, especially with
with France still. But the painting acquired by the National
Portrait Gallery, which we described a little bit at the
beginning of the first episode, it actually gives a pretty
(17:45):
good idea of the level of the Chevalier's fame in
her early days back in London. It's a seventeen ninety
two copy by Thomas Stewart of one done in seventeen
by Genre Molsnier had even been shown at the Royal
Academy UM in the painting, it's really easy to find
a picture of it online. But Jale is wearing her
(18:07):
signature black dress. She's wearing a large hat with a
revolutionary bow, you know, tricolor bow on it, her order
of Salt Louis metal. And the copy would have been
made in England around the same time that the Chevalion
was offering to lead a troop of Amazon, so really
at that height of her fame, and according to Art Daily,
(18:30):
it somehow got lost around n and then somehow along
the way was mislabeled and misattributed until when the London
art dealer Philip Mould found it out in New York
sale and it was listed as we As we mentioned
in the last episode, Misless misidentified as a woman's portrait
(18:55):
done by Gilbert Stewart, who, of course is a very
famous artist. He's known for his unfinished painting of George
Washington the Skater. Pretty much the portrait that comes to
mind if you think of anybody like Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams all done by Gilbert Stewart, so it was just
believed to be this middle aged lady Gilbert Stewart had painted,
and I guess that's what everybody thought for for some
(19:17):
time at least. But Mold knew that something was off here.
According to the Guardian, he said here, quote, even in
its dirty state, it was quite clear that this woman
had stubble, and it really, I mean, it is quite
clear that the picture is of a man. I mean,
I maybe it's just because I know, now, what did
(19:37):
you think of Lena. I think it's also clear, not
just because of the stubble. I mean, I guess female
facial hair too, but it does look like a man.
The cleaning revealed even more masculine features as I noticed,
plus the Thomas Stewart's signature covered with the Gilbert Stewart's name,
(19:58):
and today the Chevalier is getting a second wave of
respect and admiration. Lucy Pelts, the National Portrait Galleries curator
of eighteenth century portraits, said Dane was quote fascinating and inspirational.
You do really find the assessment and a lot of
the more recent news articles about the Chevalier and about
this portrait and the importance of the portrait in the
(20:19):
Galleries collection. But I also find it fascinating that just
as Mary Wolston Craft had held up the Chevalier Dale
as an inspiration and as a model for courageous womanhood,
the Chevalier is today being held up as an inspirational
LGBT figure. Um things that that seem kind of at
(20:40):
odds with each other, but it's still the same person,
you know who who's managing to inspire different groups for
different reasons. And just a note here, before we we
wrapped this one up. Language was quite tricky for the
show because it's it's difficult to call Dale a transsexual
or a transvestite, because the circumstances behind his sudden adoption
(21:03):
of a woman's identity are still unclear. You know, whether
it was forced upon him or whether it was something
that he negotiated for. And the same is true with
gender too. We decided to clearly go with the gender
accepted by the public at the time, so a male
for the first half and a female figured. If we
tried to revise it, revise his life story and he's
(21:25):
a female from the beginning, you all would know what
we were talking about. Um. Plus, even if the vis
contests was going with she. I mean, we needed to
write exactly. And one little side note here, another additional
side note. While he's praised for things like courage and intellecting,
All was sometimes criticized for being unladylike, for example, hitching
(21:46):
up his skirt to go upstairs, a critique that you
wouldn't necessarily expect to be leveled in a man who
was dressing as a woman. I mean, these are criticisms
in his in his own day and art Daily describes
the unique position of the chevalier in his time with
this quote, which I thought summed it up pretty well.
Eighteenth century society found it much more acceptable to calibrate
(22:10):
him as a masculine woman rather than a cross dressing man.
That kind of explains the portrait a little bit, described
as a masculine middle aged woman. Um but I don't know,
I just found this whole story really fascinating, clearly because
of the secret and Madame da Pompadour and all of
the spying. Um but just it's so unique. There really
(22:33):
is not anything else like this. I mean, I know
we talked about in our Amazon episode. We talked about
a woman who disguised herself as a soldier um. But
the chevalier stands alone, he really does. It's an interesting
story and interesting that Madame da Pompadour keeps popping up.
I know, maybe she's our new arcticle and Doyle I
(22:57):
don't know. I don't know about that, but she's definitely
an intriguing to try to give him a run for
his money. So so, since we talked a good deal
about a painting today, we thought that maybe we'd have
a little listener mill about paintings, and this one comes
(23:19):
from Maria. She wrote to say, Hi, I just listened
to your show on the lot Lourie House and one
of you mentioned being particularly freaked out by the story
of the painting whose eyes follow you across the room.
I don't know that might have been magically, No, I
think it was. She goes on to say, I'm sorry
to say that you were going to spend most of
your life freaked out. If this is indeed the case,
(23:44):
since all portrait paintings, or indeed photographs where the subject
is looking straight ahead, are guilty of this behavior, it
is an inherent quality of the two D image. Go ahead,
find any portrait and keep your eyes fixed on it
while walking across the room. You will never lose eye contact.
I tested out with Picasso over there. Yes, as we
(24:04):
have mentioned before, we sit next to photos in the studio.
Dablina has Tesla on her side. I have an elderly
Picasso wearing his underwear, which some other fellow podcast host
in the past has covered up at one point with
a post it note. But I guess yeah, I could
(24:24):
try to see if Picasso's eyes follow me, although it's
it's not gonna matter because he's always to my right anyway,
looking right at me. Right, that's true. I think my
issue is more of the haunted painting than the eyes. Well,
I want to stand by my statement that I think
the whispering of the portraits creepier, and if anyone wants
to send an email and explain that to me, I
(24:46):
would appreciate it because I would like to the acoustics
say that comes from portraits. Yes, all right, we'll be expected.
I don't think that's something they all do. Mine don't. Anyway,
Tess Love not whisper ing to Glena. Well he is,
but that's because we have a connected between you and Tesla, right,
all right, So yes, if you want to let us
(25:07):
know about how any of our fears regarding portraiture or
whispers are true or unfounded, you can email us at
History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter
a mist in history, and we're in Facebook. And if
you would like to learn a little bit more about
a clothing item referred to on this podcast, you can
(25:29):
look up an article we have on how corsets work. Yeah,
and one last thing on the Chevalier, when I read
that he supposedly bought corsets while living in London, you know,
I had to email Holly, who is the one of
the co hosts of Pop Stuff and guested on this
show a little while and our resident corset experts. Yeah,
I mean we were talking about underwear, so any of
(25:50):
y'all who listened to that podcast know it already, but
I just had to check with her to make sure
this was not a time when men were regularly wearing corsets,
because that would sort of cancel out that the salacious
detail of that fact, right, And what did you have
to say? She had kind of a non answer. Admittedly,
she said that it was not a time when a
(26:11):
lot of men were corset, but it wouldn't have been
totally strange to have something for your dress clothes. Maybe, um,
so I'm assuming that these were clearly not male corsets though,
or it wouldn't have been reported. I decid to throw
it in there, though a little noting people liked the
(26:32):
underwear episode. People liked hearing about corsets. So now you
know Chevalier corsets. Can go read more about course, it's
in general at how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com name to do
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah
Down and I'm to Blame a talk reporting and we
left off last time talking about the Chevalier d a spy,
(00:21):
a diplomat, a soldier, and perhaps most famously, a man
who lived as a woman for the last three decades
of his life. And Dale has been in the news
quite a bit since last summer, when London's National Portrait
Gallery acquired a portrait long believed to be that of
a middle aged woman. Closer inspection, though, revealed that the
(00:43):
sitter was the famous, decorated and highly acclaimed Chevalier, wearing
his trademark black dress of later years and even the
prestigious medal of Saint Louis that he earned. It's the
first portrait in the gallery extensive collection, or the first
oil portrait rather in the gallery's collection to show a
(01:05):
man dressed in women's clothing. So pretty headline making stuff.
But we ended the last podcast before the Chevalier's transition.
He was still a diplomat in the service of Louis
the fifteenth of France and one who had served in Russia,
a soldier who had fought valiantly in the Seven Years War.
So this is the portrait we've had of him so far.
In seventeen sixty two and sixty three, Dale had reached
(01:28):
the pinnacle of his career. He'd helped negotiate the war's end.
He'd been decorated with the Order of St. Louis, making
him a chevalier, and he'd been sent as minister to
Great Britain. He had also gotten another big promotion, but
one few people knew about. For decades, Louis the fifteenth
had maintained a secret secondary diplomacy called Le Secrete du Roi,
(01:50):
or the King's Secret. It was a chaotic system, since
louis owned foreign minister didn't know of its existence, and
because the secret often pursued foreign policy object directly at
odds with the official ones, which makes the story a
little confusing at times. We'll imagine how it must have
felt if you if you worked in a foreign policy
(02:10):
for Louis at the time. But so after the disastrous
Seven Years War, though where France lost a lot of
influence and a lot of land to Great Britain, it's
official foreign policy was, of course one of peace, the
secret though had a different motive, and that was one
of revenge, and so as a longtime agent of the
(02:31):
King's secret, the newly minted Chevalier Dion had a really
important role in this covert operation. He was supposed to
lead agents that were scouting out the British coastline, looking
for places to land and strategizing about some sort of
armed invasion of Great Britain, So really serious secret agent
(02:51):
kind of stuff, you know, playing the minister being a
negotiator piece on the one hand and publicly but also
planning an invasion at the same time. Unfortunately for Dan
alle Though, his rise coincided exactly with Madame de Pompadour's fall.
The longtime mistress of Louis the fifteenth, who we've talked
about before, was falling out of favor and had broken
(03:13):
into the King's papers uncovering evidence of the secret, and
her people desperately wanted to uncover what was behind it,
and their first target was Great Britain and Dan What
was the chevalier really doing there? So before we get
into that, though, we have to discuss kind of the
backstory of the chevalier's honors, because well, he was given
(03:35):
the status of Minister to Great Britain, which was a
great promotion for him. Essentially, it wasn't really a promotion
that was for keeps. It was just until the new ambassador,
a man named the Comte de Guerci, got there. And
de Guerci was one of Pompadour's contingent, one of her guys,
and so he was of course inherently pretty nosy about
(03:58):
what was going on with the King's sea her it,
and Dalen didn't have a very great personal opinion of
the new minister either. He thought that he'd been cowardly
in battle. Nevertheless, though, Dale was faced with losing his
job to this guy, having to step aside and make
way for him, and they really started bickering before Dick
(04:19):
where she even arrived. When the new minister got to London,
things just got worse to Dale refused to hand over
his diplomatic papers, he ignored all the orders to return
to France. He really dug in his heel. His public stance, though,
was still one of loyalty to the King, but he
still threatened to reveal something big, essentially trying to blackmail
(04:41):
Louis into supporting him in his dispute with Diguerci, and
so in March seventeen sixty four, Dyonn did something really extraordinary.
He actually published his diplomatic correspondence, not going so far
as to reveal the King's secret and his covert mission
in Great Britain, something that could have called us the
countries to go back to war. But it's still caused
(05:03):
a huge stir Londoner's love seeing this French loose cannon though,
And according to Jonathan Conlin in History Today, folks at
first I started lending their copies out like libraries by
the hour. Yeah, so it was the read of the day.
And of course, you know, he didn't want to reveal
the whole story. He didn't want to disclose the King's
secret because it was an insurance policy for him. It
(05:25):
was a way to protect his life and to hopefully
secure a better deal for himself with Louise Thance. He
knew that was the last thing Louis wanted people to
know about. But just to give a description of the
kind of reaction people had to this book, Conlin includes
horse Wall Poles seventeen sixty four take on the publication
(05:46):
and and um, here's what he wrote, he said, we
are full of a wonderful book just published here by
the Chevalier Dion, and he spells it like Dion Sanders.
You are to understand that besides a alls and curious circumstances,
Dion's book is full of wit and parts, and what
makes it more provoking. Our ministers know not what to
(06:08):
do nor how to procure any satisfaction. To Guerre, She
so yeah. Understandably to Guerre, she was not happy about
this turn of events. He thought he was getting the
sweet job in London. Maybe he'd start to figure out
what the deal was with the secret while he was there. Instead,
he is in the middle of this embarrassing public dispute
(06:31):
with Dale, but Louis couldn't really help him out. He
wasn't in exactly in any position to support him either.
He didn't want to do anything that would make Dale
angry enough to spill the beans on his secret, specifically
the proposed invasion of Great Britain. So, again, true to
his decades of secrecy and double bluffs, Louis at this
(06:53):
point pursues two radically different policies. At one point, he
ordered the police officers to Great Britain to seize Dale,
but also sent secret word to the Chevalier to escape
beforehand and secure his papers, so he helped him out
at the same time, but he'd attempted to buy out
Dale as well, offering him money for the documents detailing
(07:13):
the secret and why the Chevalier was really in London.
George the Third also wasn't really in a position to
simply extradite Danel back to Louis either. The British people
really liked him. They liked dan Alle, he was media
savvy and he'd become a bit of a society spectacle already,
and so they supported him over the angry Daguerre she
(07:34):
who dan All accused of trying to murder him. He
really did know what he was doing with the media too.
He he got the people on his side. Um. But yeah,
George the Third was already facing he for going too
easy on France after the Seven Years War. He really
didn't want to look he didn't want to extradite this
popular man back to France and looked like he was
(07:56):
just in cahoots with with Louis the fifteen. That wouldn't
have been in a popular position to take. So nobody
could really do anything. Danelle is just they're sitting on
the secret. He knows he's safe enough with it. The
two kings can't do anything about it. And that game
just continued for years and years until Louis the fifteenth
(08:19):
step in May of seventeen seventy four. At that point,
his successor, Louis the sixteenth, was looking for ways to
tie this up. I mean, clearly, it's a huge liability,
it's a huge embarrassment. He's going to try to figure
out a way to bring this story to an end
and get the chevalier back in France where they want him.
(08:41):
So to negotiate Daniell's return, Louise Foreign Minister engaged a playwright,
Pierre Cameron de Beaumarche, who wrote The Barber of Seville
and The Marriage of Figaro, two plays that were eventually
adapted into the famous operas. Beau Marchet got the job done,
and on November four, seventy Danielle sign papers called the Transaction,
(09:02):
which allowed him to return to France, but only as
a woman. Oh boy, First of all, I just have
to say the Transactions such an appropriate name to conclude
the secrets anyway, though, Yes, in order to secure the
benefits of the transaction like a pension. They all had
(09:24):
to be a woman. Unconventional, very unconventional. Just we should
say that, just in case people think this was a
normal tactic of of the Louis era. No, it was
not a traditional sort of arrangement you had come to
even though it might have served the purpose of marginalizing
(09:45):
day all, you know, as as a female in an
age when there wouldn't have been many opportunities for for
a noble woman. There were way more traditional ways of
doing this, like banishing a nobleman to his estate. You
didn't normally say a start wearing ladies clothing and that'll
be your punishment. Even stranger though, the transaction doesn't say, oh,
(10:08):
just start wearing women's clothing, like for the first time,
like you never did it before. It required that danon
quote readopt women's clothing, suggesting that he had been a
woman all along, but that he had been a woman,
had at one point in his distant past disguised himself
as a man, and was now required to go back
(10:29):
to being a woman. If you can follow all that.
And another surprising thing about this is, I guess the
people really weren't too surprised by it. It wasn't that
hard for people to believe that he might have been
a woman exactly. According to Thomas Stewart's article for the
National Portrait Gallery, it was accepted that women sometimes disguised
(10:50):
themselves and lived as men in order to serve in
a military capacity, or even simply to follow their sweethearts
into battle. But everyone knew that Dan was a man, right,
that's what you might think. I mean, certainly it seemed
as though everybody involved in the transaction knew he was
a man. But that's not really the case for the
general public. And this is where the story and the
(11:12):
motivations involved get pretty murky. But it's possible that the
whole readopt women's clothing thing was just a way to
marginalize in shame Dale. And if that were the case,
it would work pretty well for both the French government,
which of course could explain away Dale's radical conduct as
that of a hysterical woman, you know, not as a
(11:34):
rogue spy um. And it would work all right for
Dale too, who at least would get to skip out
on something worse like imprisonment in the best deal. And plus,
if he had been a woman all along his career
would would be over, so another plus for the for
the French government side of things, But it was not
necessarily against his own wishes, right It could have been
(12:00):
Dale's own idea, something that appealed to him. We talked
a little bit in the last episode about how, depending
on what source you read, Dale either showed no early
interest in dressing in women's clothing or he'd been doing
it for years. According to Art Daily, he may have
even been buying corsets in London for years. What is certain, though,
is that since about seventeen seventy there had been rumors
(12:21):
about his gender, ones that he actually encouraged after abandoning
his initial policy of challenging any doubters to a duel.
Leading up to the transaction, people even took bets on
whether Dale was a man or a woman. Pretty crazy stuff.
But from the transaction onward, Dale certainly embraced life fully
as a woman. He took on the name Charlotte, added
(12:43):
ease to that string of middle names. I guess I'll
go through that one more time. His his new name
Charlotte jen Viev Louise Auguste Andre Timothy Dale de Beaumont
pretty easy changes for most of them. Still a mouthful,
still a mouthful. Um. But he or she at this
point left London for Paris in August seventeen seventy seven.
(13:05):
I mean of that, of course, was what this transaction
was for in the first place, amnesty. And by November
Dye was presented at court to Louis the sixteenth and
Marie Antoinette. And this really might be my favorite part
of the story, just because it's so unexpected. I mean,
there's nothing you never read anything like this. It's just
(13:27):
it stands alone. Dale underwent a four hour twilet that
was done by Rose Bartown herself, who's the famous designer.
She she did Marie Antoinette's clothes, but where hours still
was not enough to impress the snobby ladies of Versailles.
(13:47):
The Viscomte Stafar wrote quote, she had nothing of our
sex but the petticoats and the curls, which suited her horribly,
pretty mean thing to say. But still, I'm totally embracing
the fact that Don is a woman. So after just
a couple of weeks at her side, though, it must
(14:09):
have seen that dressing in women's clothes was not going
to be enough of a marginalization for this rogue spy,
and Dale was sent back to uh to the Burgundy
estate to live in exile until seventy five, when finally
she got what she had been agitating for for quite
(14:30):
some time, which was to get back to London, where
she was still a really popular figure. Once back in London,
Dan took to performing fencing displays and addressing cap and
the British continued to really like her. Mary wall stone
Craft held her up as an example of femininity for
British women to emulate, and in seventeen ninety two she
(14:51):
offered the French National Assembly. She offered basically to lead
an Amazon army, and they the British just loved the
idea of an Amazon army. The Revolution spelled hard times
for Day, although she lost her pension from the transaction,
she had to sell off a book's jewelry and even
the Order of St. Louis when she was imprisoned for debt.
(15:13):
She finally died at age eighty two in eighteen ten,
poor and living with a widow named Mary Cole, who
supposedly had the surprise of her life when she helped
lay out the body of her old friend and found
that she was actually a man. Death was really the
only thing that settled that old question. Chevalier was physically
(15:34):
a male. But there are still more mystery surrounding this story,
and one of the main mysteries around Stale's decision to
continue living as a woman in that last fifteen some
odd years after the Revolution, after Louis the sixteenth execution.
Clearly she wasn't in France anymore. She was not getting
(15:56):
that pension from the transaction, which was after all and
agree made with a now defunct government. So it seemed
as though Charlotte could have just returned to being Charles
the Chevalier, and it probably The answer to this probably
depends on Dan's original motivation to accept the terms of
(16:17):
the transaction in the first place. So Dale may have
wanted to dress and live as a woman and was
in this utterly unique position for an eighteenth century man
to do that openly. The National Portrait Gallery for instant
their assessment is pretty compelling. They wrote, quote, no transbust
site or transsexual until the late twentieth century has enjoyed
(16:38):
such public recognition and acceptance. So if this was Dion's motivation,
then why stop just because Louis is gone. If if
this was the life that she had wanted to lead,
or another possibility here, if the gender reassignment had not
been a willing choice at the time, maybe it seemed
a smart one to maintain by the seventeen intees, especially
(17:01):
without that pension. Danon, after all, had already reworked her
life story as though she had been a woman all along.
She profited from being unique, fencing in skirts and so on.
She even sold memoirs in eighteen o five, though she
never delivered. Maybe it would have been too hard to
go once you've rewritten your life story and right, maybe
(17:22):
it just and made a living that way. Yeah, it
might have just been It might have not seemed feasible
to make a living in another way, because of course,
if she did return to being a man, she'd sort
of be a man in disgrace, I mean, especially with
with France still. But the painting acquired by the National
Portrait Gallery, which we described a little bit at the
beginning of the first episode, it actually gives a pretty
(17:45):
good idea of the level of the Chevalier's fame in
her early days back in London. It's a seventeen ninety
two copy by Thomas Stewart of one done in seventeen
by Genre Molsnier had even been shown at the Royal
Academy UM in the painting, it's really easy to find
a picture of it online. But Jale is wearing her
(18:07):
signature black dress. She's wearing a large hat with a
revolutionary bow, you know, tricolor bow on it, her order
of Salt Louis metal. And the copy would have been
made in England around the same time that the Chevalion
was offering to lead a troop of Amazon, so really
at that height of her fame, and according to Art Daily,
(18:30):
it somehow got lost around n and then somehow along
the way was mislabeled and misattributed until when the London
art dealer Philip Mould found it out in New York
sale and it was listed as we As we mentioned
in the last episode, Misless misidentified as a woman's portrait
(18:55):
done by Gilbert Stewart, who, of course is a very
famous artist. He's known for his unfinished painting of George
Washington the Skater. Pretty much the portrait that comes to
mind if you think of anybody like Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams all done by Gilbert Stewart, so it was just
believed to be this middle aged lady Gilbert Stewart had painted,
and I guess that's what everybody thought for for some
(19:17):
time at least. But Mold knew that something was off here.
According to the Guardian, he said here, quote, even in
its dirty state, it was quite clear that this woman
had stubble, and it really, I mean, it is quite
clear that the picture is of a man. I mean,
I maybe it's just because I know, now, what did
(19:37):
you think of Lena. I think it's also clear, not
just because of the stubble. I mean, I guess female
facial hair too, but it does look like a man.
The cleaning revealed even more masculine features as I noticed,
plus the Thomas Stewart's signature covered with the Gilbert Stewart's name,
(19:58):
and today the Chevalier is getting a second wave of
respect and admiration. Lucy Pelts, the National Portrait Galleries curator
of eighteenth century portraits, said Dane was quote fascinating and inspirational.
You do really find the assessment and a lot of
the more recent news articles about the Chevalier and about
this portrait and the importance of the portrait in the
(20:19):
Galleries collection. But I also find it fascinating that just
as Mary Wolston Craft had held up the Chevalier Dale
as an inspiration and as a model for courageous womanhood,
the Chevalier is today being held up as an inspirational
LGBT figure. Um things that that seem kind of at
(20:40):
odds with each other, but it's still the same person,
you know who who's managing to inspire different groups for
different reasons. And just a note here, before we we
wrapped this one up. Language was quite tricky for the
show because it's it's difficult to call Dale a transsexual
or a transvestite, because the circumstances behind his sudden adoption
(21:03):
of a woman's identity are still unclear. You know, whether
it was forced upon him or whether it was something
that he negotiated for. And the same is true with
gender too. We decided to clearly go with the gender
accepted by the public at the time, so a male
for the first half and a female figured. If we
tried to revise it, revise his life story and he's
(21:25):
a female from the beginning, you all would know what
we were talking about. Um. Plus, even if the vis
contests was going with she. I mean, we needed to
write exactly. And one little side note here, another additional
side note. While he's praised for things like courage and intellecting,
All was sometimes criticized for being unladylike, for example, hitching
(21:46):
up his skirt to go upstairs, a critique that you
wouldn't necessarily expect to be leveled in a man who
was dressing as a woman. I mean, these are criticisms
in his in his own day and art Daily describes
the unique position of the chevalier in his time with
this quote, which I thought summed it up pretty well.
Eighteenth century society found it much more acceptable to calibrate
(22:10):
him as a masculine woman rather than a cross dressing man.
That kind of explains the portrait a little bit, described
as a masculine middle aged woman. Um but I don't know,
I just found this whole story really fascinating, clearly because
of the secret and Madame da Pompadour and all of
the spying. Um but just it's so unique. There really
(22:33):
is not anything else like this. I mean, I know
we talked about in our Amazon episode. We talked about
a woman who disguised herself as a soldier um. But
the chevalier stands alone, he really does. It's an interesting
story and interesting that Madame da Pompadour keeps popping up.
I know, maybe she's our new arcticle and Doyle I
(22:57):
don't know. I don't know about that, but she's definitely
an intriguing to try to give him a run for
his money. So so, since we talked a good deal
about a painting today, we thought that maybe we'd have
a little listener mill about paintings, and this one comes
(23:19):
from Maria. She wrote to say, Hi, I just listened
to your show on the lot Lourie House and one
of you mentioned being particularly freaked out by the story
of the painting whose eyes follow you across the room.
I don't know that might have been magically, No, I
think it was. She goes on to say, I'm sorry
to say that you were going to spend most of
your life freaked out. If this is indeed the case,
(23:44):
since all portrait paintings, or indeed photographs where the subject
is looking straight ahead, are guilty of this behavior, it
is an inherent quality of the two D image. Go ahead,
find any portrait and keep your eyes fixed on it
while walking across the room. You will never lose eye contact.
I tested out with Picasso over there. Yes, as we
(24:04):
have mentioned before, we sit next to photos in the studio.
Dablina has Tesla on her side. I have an elderly
Picasso wearing his underwear, which some other fellow podcast host
in the past has covered up at one point with
a post it note. But I guess yeah, I could
(24:24):
try to see if Picasso's eyes follow me, although it's
it's not gonna matter because he's always to my right anyway,
looking right at me. Right, that's true. I think my
issue is more of the haunted painting than the eyes. Well,
I want to stand by my statement that I think
the whispering of the portraits creepier, and if anyone wants
to send an email and explain that to me, I
(24:46):
would appreciate it because I would like to the acoustics
say that comes from portraits. Yes, all right, we'll be expected.
I don't think that's something they all do. Mine don't. Anyway,
Tess Love not whisper ing to Glena. Well he is,
but that's because we have a connected between you and Tesla, right,
all right, So yes, if you want to let us
(25:07):
know about how any of our fears regarding portraiture or
whispers are true or unfounded, you can email us at
History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter
a mist in history, and we're in Facebook. And if
you would like to learn a little bit more about
a clothing item referred to on this podcast, you can
(25:29):
look up an article we have on how corsets work. Yeah,
and one last thing on the Chevalier, when I read
that he supposedly bought corsets while living in London, you know,
I had to email Holly, who is the one of
the co hosts of Pop Stuff and guested on this
show a little while and our resident corset experts. Yeah,
I mean we were talking about underwear, so any of
(25:50):
y'all who listened to that podcast know it already, but
I just had to check with her to make sure
this was not a time when men were regularly wearing corsets,
because that would sort of cancel out that the salacious
detail of that fact, right, And what did you have
to say? She had kind of a non answer. Admittedly,
she said that it was not a time when a
(26:11):
lot of men were corset, but it wouldn't have been
totally strange to have something for your dress clothes. Maybe, um,
so I'm assuming that these were clearly not male corsets though,
or it wouldn't have been reported. I decid to throw
it in there, though a little noting people liked the
(26:32):
underwear episode. People liked hearing about corsets. So now you
know Chevalier corsets. Can go read more about course, it's
in general at how stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com name to do
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