The True Story of the Chevalier d'Eon: Part 1

Recently, London's National Portrait Gallery acquired a portrait of the Chevalier d'Eon, the first oil painting in its collection to feature a man in women's clothing. Learn how Louis XV's underground foreign policy led d'Eon to acquire a female identity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Downey and bring the truck Reporting. And one
of the funniest things about this podcast is when listeners
seem to suddenly all be on the same wavelength. I mean,

(00:22):
sometimes they know what we're about to research, which is
super weird, or what we're about to record, what we're
looking on. You get a request for a topic the
very same day you are researching and recording. It really strange.
But late this spring I received a suggestion, a listener suggestion,

(00:43):
one that was really fascinating, one that was very unusual founding.
It was from a listener named Jenny and the subject
line of the suggestion was the patron Saint of Transvestites. Okay,
so that's enough to catch your attention right there. But
the email went on to outline the life of the
Chevalier Dion, who was a French soldier, spy, and diplomat.

(01:07):
About a month after that, and this is what I'm
talking about when I'm saying listeners being in the same wavelength,
we got another vote for the seemingly obscure Chevalier, this
time from listener Marianne, and then another just a few
days after that from Todd. Maybe they're all friends, and
you know they were all friends that well, now people
know the secret and they do this um. But it

(01:30):
seemed that a portrait of this Chevalier had recently emerged,
the sitter had long been misidentified as a woman, and
it was causing a bit of a stir in the
art world, Or at least that's what one of them
later told me when she was explaining how so many
people were thinking of the same person at the same time. Right. So,
not long after they had written, the Chevalier story started

(01:53):
making international news when London's National Portrait Gallery announced that
it had acquired this portrait, the very first oil painting
in their collection of a man in women's clothing. But
like most art we discussed on the show, the portrait
has its own mysterious backstory, which we're going to discuss
in a second episode. But first we need to talk

(02:15):
about the Chevalier's own fascinating life, which involves several things,
including a nosey Madon de Pompadour, who, of course we've
had a podcast on before. Black Mail is another thing
that this involves and also something called the King's Secret
and also the most outrageous immunity deal you've ever heard of,

(02:35):
so plenty to come, truly outrageous. But our story starts
in seventeen Antonair, Burgundy, and our subjects name, where are
you going to do the full thing one time? Because
this guy, thank goodness, so many names. He was born
Charles gen Via Louis Auguste Andre Timote Dion de Beaumont.

(02:56):
So fortunately for us, he later becomes to the Chevalier
and will mostly be calling him Dale. But his family
was noble, but they were also very poor, kind of
like a lot of the subjects we talk about. It
seems noble but poor. So he knew that he was
going to have to work for a living, find some
kind of patronage, preferably in government service, and he Fortunately

(03:18):
for him, he was a very good student, very bright,
got a great education, moved to Paris for schooling. Once
he was done, he stayed put, stayed in Paris and
started publishing books on royal finance and modern politics, before
finally getting that first government position, also in finance, and
then eventually becoming a royal censor. So of course I

(03:41):
mean that's a pretty self explanatory job. But he would
have to look through books, look through publications, uh, figure
out if anything was inappropriate before they were printed. Um,
I have to wonder he later became a very enthusiastic
book collector. I have to wonder if some of that
dates to being a real sensor. But then finally, after

(04:02):
that job, he entered diplomatic service and he was from
Mayor shipped off to Russia to work under a Scotsman
named Chevalier Douglas. So, depending on the source, this is
where some of that dressing in women's clothes stuff starts
to come up. According to the National Portrait Gallery, he
was known to attend cross dressing balls abroad, and according

(04:24):
to an Art Daily article, Dale even disguised himself as
a woman in an official capacity, serving Empress Elizabeth of
Russia as a maid of honor. But according to Jonathan Conlin,
in History Today, while he was considered somewhat androgynous, there
was no indication of day on dressing in women's clothing
at this time, So a murky part of his history,

(04:46):
one of many. So regardless, Dane and Douglas were in
Russia on very special business in addition to their public
diplomatic function, they were a small but important piece of
something called secrete law or the King's secret. So, just
to give you a little background on this, Louis the
fifteenth of France, who of course is one of our

(05:07):
favorite Bourbon subjects. We've covered him before. He of course
had a public for foreign policy of his own, which
was executed by his foreign minister, but beginning in the
seventeen forties, he also had the secondary secret foreign policy,
the aim of which was to place his cousin, the
Prince de Conti, on the Polish throne. So privately, Louise

(05:29):
agents for the Secret work to achieve this, while publicly
Louis claimed this wasn't his goal at all. As a
party to the secret, one of Douglas's tasks in Russia
was to help gain the support of Empress Elizabeth for
Conte's candidacy, something don as Douglas the Secretary, would have
also been involved in. So I know, this seems like

(05:49):
a lot of backstory on seventeen forties politics, especially for
a tale that ultimately takes place in the seventeen seventies,
But it's important because of the secret. Clearly, even though
Louise's plan to place his cousin Conti on the Polish
throne didn't ultimately work out. He didn't just go ahead

(06:10):
and scrap that entire network, the entire secret network that
had been established to make it happen. He must have thought,
all right, well, maybe I can accomplish some other things
with my secret dual foreign policy. And it's really easy
to imagine how louise foreign policy became pretty muddled and
confused pretty quickly, because, for one thing, his actual ministers,

(06:33):
like his foreign minister, did not know about the secret
The agenda of secret agents was usually opposite that of
public policy, like it was for the placing the cousin
on the throne attempt. And then finally, and this was
kind of the real kicker, many of the agents of
Lysocrette also had legitimate jobs in the Foreign Service, like

(06:58):
Dale for example. So I mean you have double agents
who are both working you know, they're working for Louis
either way you cut it, but working to achieve different aims. So,
as one very simplified example of the type of disconnect
we're talking about here, Louis had agents in Lisocrete pursue
anti Austrian alliances with Sweden, Prussia, Turkey and Poland, but

(07:22):
then abandoned that plan to ally himself with Austria officially,
so just completely opposite of of, you know, completely opposing
ideas here. That alliance, which we talked about a bit
in the Madame da Pompadour episode, ended up driving Louis
into the disastrous Seven Years War against Great Britain and Prussia. This,
by the way, was a shining moment for day On,

(07:43):
not some for some super covert spying or business related
to Lisacrete. He was a soldier and one who had
fought really bravely at the Battle of Villinghausen and several
other engagements, and that's something to kind of keep in
mind as Lee as we talk about Dale, especially in
the next episode. But it was after the Seven Years
War was over that the Secret had arguably the biggest

(08:07):
task in its twenty year existence, and that was to
get revenge on Great Britain. And of course, at this
point publicly France was in disgrace. It had lost many
of its colonial possessions, it lost a lot of money,
prestige in Central Europe. So clearly the official line was
one of reconciliation, with Great Britain. We cannot afford to

(08:30):
go back to war. We need to rebuild the country's navy.
We need to refill its coffers. Certainly not get revenge
and renew war. At least that's what Louise foreign minister,
the Comte Prelan, thought that France was trying to accomplish. Dale, however,

(08:51):
knew there was a whole other game going on, and
by seventeen sixty two and the war was sort of
winding down to a close, his star was really rising,
both inside his his role with the secret and outside
in his official role as a diplomat. That's true. Prolonged
appointed him secretary to the ambassador to London to help

(09:13):
negotiate peace and to negotiate the war's end. While he
didn't play a large part in the talks, Dale did
carry the treaty back to Versailles, which was a high
honor from George the Third or Great Britain. The next
year he became chevalier, while he was inducted into the
Order of St. Louis, which was one of France's highest honors,
and shortly after that he was made a Minister to

(09:35):
Great Britain and then Finally, as a party to Les
Secret he was given a super hush hush task, and
that was to plan for an armed invasion of Great Britain,
specifically to oversee the secret agents who were scouting out
the British coastline for landing spots. So on one hand
he's making peace on on the public side of things,

(09:58):
and on the other hand he's planning an armed invasion.
Seems like it would be difficult to say the least
what spies do anyway, and that's sort of what he
is in this case. So it seemed though that the
Chevalier's public and private careers and diplomacy were proceeding quite well.
I mean, either way, it sounds like he's going to

(10:20):
be one of the main guys on the in the
diplomatic stage between France and Great Britain, and then Madame
da Pompadour has to come into the picture and mess
up things for him entirely like she does like she
does sometimes if you remember from the show that we
did on Madame da Pompadour lou the Fifteenth Mistress. Of course,

(10:42):
this post war period was a really bad time for
her because by the seventeen fifties she had gotten pretty
heavily involved in France's politics, enough that Voltaire even jokingly
referred to her as France's Prime Minister, and so her faction,
and with her own influence too, she'd strongly encouraged Louis

(11:04):
to ally himself with Austria, and that, of course was
an alliance that eventually led to war, and that war
led to disgrace for France. You know, all of the
all of the money and possessions we've already talked about.
So the public really hated Madame da Pompadour at this
point and published cruel pamphlets about her, cartoons blaming her

(11:26):
for the war. And so even though she sort of
stepped back from some of her political responsibilities at this point,
I mean she really would have had to. She also
didn't leave court. She didn't just retire from public life.
And on June tenth, seventeen sixty three, Madame da Pompadour
stole the King's keys to his own private papers, poked

(11:48):
around in his personal files that were hidden in his
private rooms, maybe hoping to find something that could restore
her influence. She did find something pretty important, and that
was of course evidence of the secret as we already know,
Pompadour had plenty of her own friends, even a contingent

(12:09):
in the government, and since they were at this point
really afraid that she was falling out of the King's favor,
they started just frantically trying to figure out what was
behind with secrets. If they had to have been really curious,
I mean, what if you had spent your career in
in service to Louis and you were realizing he might
have this entire other foreign policy set up. Unfortunately, though,

(12:35):
for our Chevalier, their main focus, the main focus of
their investigation trying to get to the bottom of this
was what was this guy, the Chevalier Deon, really doing
in London. So this is the end of the first
part of this episode. Next time we're going to talk
about what happens as Pompadour's people move in and the

(12:58):
Chevalier Deon refuses to back down gracefully. What he does
next is really scandalous and brands him as a rogue
spy to Louis and his ministers who are in the know. So,
with the secret security at stake, a multi year showdown
between the monarch and spy somehow results in a really
strange turn of events, which we've kind of hinted at

(13:19):
a cap and gown for dayon and an entirely new
identity as a woman. Don't don't so that will be
next time. You'll have to wait, just like Madame ta Pompadour,
as people did, I guess, just like all France did,
having to wait to see what what happens unless you
just go read about it and spoiled the surprise. So

(13:45):
you have some listener mail for us, Sarah, I do,
and clearly I was immensely entertained by the emails we
got regarding turn up last time. We're getting some good
ideas we're getting. I might not get a pumpkin next year.
You might have nine fingers then next. That's being generous

(14:06):
after overestimating my knife skills. Well, actually, so far we
haven't heard any really scary turnip carving stories, but I
just thought I would share a few more because these
really are awesome. One guy we even inspired him to
carve turn ups this year. He said he's been listening
for a long time. This was listener Eric, and he
gave some tips on the turnip carving process. But since

(14:28):
you know, we've already gone through some of those suggestions.
I thought I would share the result because he had
pretty amazing sounding results. He said, for Halloween, I let
the turnip lanterns with those little electric tea lights and
placed them along the front walk. Sadly only a few
tricker treaters came to my neighborhood this year, but for
those that did, the turnip lanterns made it clear that

(14:50):
mine was the house to come to. One tricker treater gush, quote,
your mini pumpkins are amazing as I opened the door.
I don't know. I like that kind of response from
tricker treaterers. Um, so thank you Eric for for sharing this,
and I also liked He wrote a little note about
how initially he listened to the podcast based only on

(15:11):
the topics that sounded interesting to him, and this is
so flattering, But he said that soon enough he figured
out that he enjoyed all the episodes even if the
topic didn't immediately appeal to him, and listed McCarthyism as
a as an example of that something that had quote
creeped him out, but decided to give it a go
and found it to be something really interesting. I think

(15:34):
that's actually the case for us to really. I mean,
we try to choose ones that interest us somewhat at
least going into them. But um, sometimes you're not thinking
you're really gonna get into a topic, but then something
clicks and it just becomes pretty fascinating. So the other
note we got this one is not turnip related, but

(15:54):
it's pretty close. It's from listener Rebecca and she wrote
to say still and listening to your podcast from the
collection stores on the Natural History Museum in Dublin. And
I thought I would weigh in on the Halloween discussions
and she even did Halloween with the apostrophe in it.
Pretty classy, She wrote, I really did have to giggle

(16:15):
at the listener mail about carving turnups for Irish English Halloween.
I grew up in the nineteen eighties and nineties and
I don't remember pumpkins being easily got, but we didn't
offer turnups either. Where I grew up in Ireland, one
of the main crops was sugar beet and Carla Town
there was a big sugar factory that only closed down

(16:35):
few years ago, and every autumn the roads would be
littered with beats that had fallen from the tractor trailers
during the campaign, which she said that's the year or sorry,
that's the word that they used for the harvest and
delivery period. She said that her uncle grew sugar beat
is a good source of fodder for his animals. I
don't remember ever being allowed to carve one myself, but
every year someone in my class would be brave enough.

(16:57):
So that's going to be Blina clearly next year trying
to carve beats. I don't know. If you had an
accident with beats, nobody would know too, because there would
already be like red beet juice everywhere they know. I'd
make sure they knew. Um, So it's it's fun. We've
also heard from a few people who tried baking soul

(17:17):
cakes to um. Everybody's trying new Halloween traditions, apparently thanks
to thanks to some of these old timy ideas. Very fun. Well,
if you have any more ideas for us that you
would like us to perhaps try, or would like to
caution us against trying in case we're not very good
with sharp objects, you can write to us at History

(17:38):
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and
you can look up on Twitter at Miston History and
remember to to uh. Tune back in for our second
part of the Chevalier's Fascinating Story. If you want to
learn a little bit more about chevaliers in general, or nights,

(17:59):
as we might call. We do have an article called
home in the Work, and you can find that by
searching on our homepage at www. Dot how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. M