18th Century France's Most Outrageous Spy

The Chevalier d’Éon was one of France’s most daring spies... until they began making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Armed with explosive state secrets and at the centre of a very public scandal over their identity, d’Éon went from trusted agent to international sensation. Join Anthony and Maddy as they explore this story of espionage, blackmail and disguise. This episode was edited by Anna Brant. The producer was Stuart Beckwith and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. UK listeners: voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Anthony Delaney?

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• 0:48Anthony Delaney?

  London 1770. The Chevalier Deyon was a French diplomat, a celebrated fencer, and a secret agent who held explosive state secrets. Someone who knew exactly where France's darkest plans were buried, and threatened to expose them. But was the Chevalier Deyon a man or a woman? And whose business was it, anyway? Crowds placed their bets, coffee houses filled with rumours and newspapers cooked up a scandal. In an age of war, deception, and rigid ideas of identity, no one embodied the dangerous power of a disguise quite like the Chevalier Deyon.

• 1:33Anthony Delaney?

  Welcome to After Dark.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie.

• 1:43Anthony Delaney?

  And I'm Anthony.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Now, as with every spy story, success often depends on disappearing into another identity entirely. They become someone else, they adopt new names, new loyalties, and even new faces. Few lives capture that idea more completely than that of the Chevalier Deyon. Soldier, diplomat, spy, and one of the 18th century's greatest enigmas. It's a story that Anthony covers in his book Queer Georgians. Anthony, I feel like I'm interviewing you now.

• 2:15Anthony Delaney?

  You are?

• 2:16Speaker 00

  When did you first come across this extraordinary life? Because I think for 18th centuryists, it's someone who is quite well-known in our field. But beyond that, maybe has sort of enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, but it's still quite new to the public, I think.

• 2:32Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I mean, I actually can't wait to get your take on this in the end, because it's, the Chevalier Deyon is somebody who is very much in the periphery of, you know, if you Google them, they'll be there. If you, if you, you know, it's something that people may be slightly aware of. You see a picture going, oh, this is some kind of gender-bending, swashbuckling kind of fencer-type thing. And so...

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Yes, because the famous image of them in, I think in a dress, but fencing with a sword, fencing a man.

• 3:06Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Chevalier Saint George.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  That's the sort of the image that people might have in their minds.

• 3:12Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, and so it really, like, it was there, I knew there was some kind of gender non-conformity. And then I was like, well, I'm gonna have to look at this for the book. It wasn't part of my PhD, but then for the book, I had to look at it. And actually, it's, one of the reasons why I can't wait to get your take on this now, at the end, is because I've, I've fallen out of love with it a little bit since the book came out. Because, not the book, this particular history, because it frustrates me. Because in its unknowability, and we'll, we'll talk about some of that, what you see particularly online is that people fill in the blanks to serve a very modern narrative.

• 3:53Anthony Delaney?

  And that, that is one of the problems that we find with, with social media histories, I think. Where it's like, that's just not factually grounded. Now, bear in mind, there is going to be things here that we can't ground in fact, because we don't know. So this is why I find this history a bit frustrating.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:11Anthony Delaney?

  At the same time.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Okay, so there's, there's nuance to be injected into this narrative. Talk to me then about how you in the book, deal with the language that you use around the Chevalier's gender. Because I think, you know, often they are referred to specifically online as they/them, and you're very much claimed as a trans history. How are you, how are you approaching that in your work?

• 4:37Anthony Delaney?

  I do the only thing I think that's historically responsible to do. I realised how egotistical that sounded. The Chevalier uses she/her pronouns 55% of the time, and he/him pronouns 45% of the time. That's a rough estimate, but I did do the count for the PhD.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  And does that change throughout this person's life?

• 4:58Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so it's not that the Chevalier lives half a life using male pronouns and then half as a female?

• 5:05Anthony Delaney?

  Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant there. Yes, it does change, but it is kind of half and half. There's, there's elements at times in the latter half of the life where it gets a bit fluffier, where it's not quite as clear. In the first half of the life, it's exclusively he/him pronouns. So I just follow his lead. When I'm talking about the first half of the life, I use he/him. When I'm talking about the second half of the life, I use she/her. Our responsibility is to the past, the past doesn't owe us anything. So that's why I use the corresponding pronouns that he used or that she used, depending on the time in the life. I just, I, yeah, it feels like too much of an imposition, otherwise.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Well, I like that approach, and I think it gives a sense of a life lived, actually, and change within that in terms of self-presentation, but also wider societal reading of that particular person, and how they kind of slotted into society. This is a story of espionage as well. The Chevalier was a spy. Give me a bit of context. Obviously, the Chevalier is French. What's happening in Britain, France at this time politically? What's the landscape in which spying is taking place?

• 6:10Anthony Delaney?

  So we have, and this, this is really key for the whole of this history, I think, in its understanding. We have Britain and France who are really going at it in terms of wanting to stake claims to overseas territories, colonial territories, in, in the Americas, in the Caribbean, across Europe to certain extents. We have, at the start of the story, we have Louis XV, who is king in France. And Louis sets up, and this is, I think this is the pivotal part of this history, and I want to hear you disagree or not disagree with this as we go through. Because people do disagree with me on this. Louis XV sets up an organisation called the Secret du Roy, which is the King's Secret. It is a spy network.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Great name.

• 6:51Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I know. And they are reporting, this, this cadre of men are reporting directly to Louis XV, or a very, very close group of people around, men again, around Louis, right? But that means that his ministers, his governmental ministers, who are carrying out the official statecraft of France on his behalf, do not know what these spies are doing. They are not involved in this. So it's very, very secret and very directly to the king. So that is the network that you have. And contemporaries at the time were saying, the right hand is working against the left. This doesn't work.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Yes, you have two systems at play at the time, and two, I suppose, systems of information being circulated. Also, it's interesting you say that spies are almost exclusively, or if not exclusively, men.

• 7:38Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Because, you know, we're going to be talking about spies a lot in this month. And I think we're going to find out that, you know, women often make very good spies for various reasons, not least of which is they are largely in history invisible to men.

• 7:50Anthony Delaney?

  And there are French female spies at this time, no doubt. But within this cabal, it's, it's almost, I'm struggling to think of an example, but then again, we don't know who all the members were. There's also that.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting spy, I think he was just referred to as X, possibly, in the royal papers relating to George III. And nobody has been able to work out who that person is. And I just love that we still have these mysteries. And, you know, we have like handwritten notes from this person and information. And, you know, we can kind of trace the work they were doing, but we don't know who they were. So that's, that is just so tantalising.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Let's meet our character then, the Chevalier. Give me a bit of background information.

• 8:36Anthony Delaney?

  Born in Tonner, the family home is still there. It was a very small, very bizarre little museum for a while.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 8:44Anthony Delaney?

  You could see some of his clothing and later her clothing and some swords.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  What has survived?

• 8:49Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 8:51Anthony Delaney?

  I know, it's remarkable, yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  That's really incredible.

• 8:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, it's closed down now, so you couldn't, if you're in Tonner, don't bother.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  What's happened to the clothing?

• 8:57Anthony Delaney?

  I think it's probably still there, it's just, it's just a private home, just owned by the family still, or, I mean, it's probably not direct relations.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Where is Tonner, though?

• 9:04Anthony Delaney?

  So, this is in Burgundy, and we're talking about 1728 when he's born. He's born into noble status, it's not that the echelon, upper echelons of society, he studies law, the family are merchants, they're making, there's money, but it's not, you know, utter, utter privilege.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:21Anthony Delaney?

  But, I mean, certainly better than an awful lot of the peasant class are dealing with. He goes to the Collège des Quatre Nations in Paris, and while he's there, he excels in intellectual pursuits, rhetorical pursuits, he starts to stand out, he's getting the notes, people are noticing that he's really good at like making those arguments, but also really good at fencing, and his really good physical prowess is also within his remit. So, he, he's standing out as a kind of a beacon of manliness, actually, in many ways.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Certainly in terms of early 18th century France, in particular.

• 9:59Anthony Delaney?

  Which is interesting, considering what's about to come further down the line. But we know that that then by 1756, so somebody do the maths on that, I guess he's almost 30, is he, is that how that works?

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:11Anthony Delaney?

  And that's when he's recruited to the Secret de Roy.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Okay, so he is, he stands out enough that he is brought in, and that's how this, this secret network works in terms of recruitment, that people are just sort of tapped on the shoulder. I suppose a bit like how MI5 and Six still do it, do they? I know you can sit in exam nowadays, it's an entrance exam.

• 10:29Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, he definitely didn't have to do that, but it was very tappy on shoulder-y, though.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 10:34Anthony Delaney?

  It was like, it was somebody who knew somebody, and it was like, oh, I'm actually adjacent to the secret, like, they also had people who had links to, so there was the Secret de Roy, and then they had people who had links to the Secret de Roy.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:46Anthony Delaney?

  So they weren't all necessarily in the inner circle, but he gets in there in 1756.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Okay, so he's born, you know, to respectability but not enormous wealth.

• 10:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  He goes to Paris, he's making a name for himself, he is educated, he has this physical prowess, he's standing out because of these attributes, he's an interesting and eye-catching person.

• 11:04Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  And then he's recruited to the Secret Service, I mean, that's, that in itself is quite a journey for anyone.

• 11:11Anthony Delaney?

  It is, it's, I don't think he could have planned that, you know what I mean? It just, his ability made him stand out, yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Interesting, so, 1756, he enters the Secret Service.

• 11:22Anthony Delaney?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  As, as it, yeah.

• 11:24Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Sounds a bit American, but sure. Talk to me about the kind of things he was then recruited to do.

• 11:31Anthony Delaney?

  Well, lots of different things, but the, the main first thing, I suppose, that people maybe have heard about when, when they talk about the Chevalier, is almost immediately he goes to Russia. So, Britain and France at this time are on the verge of what becomes known as the Seven Years' War, and this is what I was talking about earlier, about battling for territory, basically. And one of the things that France wants to do is shore up relationships with Russia and with the Empress Elizabeth particularly, to directly put a, a contact between the Empress Elizabeth and Louis XV. So this is the guy who started the Secret de, Secret de Roy. Now, he, he goes in, under kind of, as part of a diplomatic cohort, so the, the ministers

• 12:16Anthony Delaney?

  just think he's going over as a diplomat, but Louis XV and the Secret have given him the task to be the direct link between the Empress Elizabeth and Louis XV.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Can I ask, as a historian, what the evidence is for this? I'm not for a second doubting that this is true.

• 12:34Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  But in terms of archivally, so we presumably know, we can see that he went as a diplomat, how do we know that he was part of, of the secret network?

• 12:42Anthony Delaney?

  That thing. Well, for me personally, there is correspondence that shows, from the Secret, that shows that there is a link to what he's doing is directly related to Elizabeth, as opposed to the diplomatic corps that he's supposed to be there.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Okay, so he's discussing a slightly separate mission?

• 13:04Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, but one of the things that I find most compelling is the confusion that his presence there causes ministers, and the same in Britain later, where they're like, what, why is this guy, we don't even necessarily know. So the confusion that he causes draws attention to him, but there, there's definitely, he is definitely there as part of the, as part of Louis XV's intent, rather than the diplomatic intent.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  One might argue that having the ability to draw attention to yourself is not a great attribute for a spy. Now, I do know the recruitment for the Secret Services in Britain, you have to be very nondescript looking, you can't be too tall, you can't be too handsome, too pretty, you have to be completely not memorable.

• 13:49Anthony Delaney?

  Well, that's you and me out.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Well, obviously, darling, but you're saying the Chevalier draws attention constantly.

• 13:56Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, that's interesting, actually, I never thought about it like that, but like, he definitely has the ability to, whether he can switch it on, switch it off, I actually don't think he can, like, from what I know of him, he can't switch it off. You, you say that, and at the same time, you know who came into my head there? Roald Dahl, because he was in it, he was a spy, and he was very attention-grabbing, people, he turned heads every time he walked into a room, because he was tall, he was handsome, he was, so I guess there are certain, totally, that, that is the rule, but I guess there are exceptions who are charismatic enough, who go, oh, well, yeah, all eyes go to him, and, and then maybe that person can infiltrate with the, the upper echelons of society, because they're charismatic, they're, they're somebody you want to know.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Yes, it maybe is an attribute in this particular context that is useful. Okay, so he, he goes to Russia with this mission from the French king to improve relations, and, you know, he's reporting directly back to Louis. Talk to me then about going to London, you mentioned that he goes to London as well, and that he also stands out there. So, when is he doing that? What is his mission there? And, you know, we've spent a lot of time, I think, on this podcast and in our own lives, in early to mid 18th century London specifically, so I feel like it's a place that we know reasonably well, but how does the Chevalier fit into that world?

• 15:14Anthony Delaney?

  Well, the first thing to say, I suppose, is that the mission that he has in Russia is relatively successful.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:21Anthony Delaney?

  So that's why he seems to be then a good candidate for this.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  That's why he gets all the commissions.

• 15:25Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Now, I will say, we're skipping forward a little bit here, because I said, when he goes to Russia, they're on the brink of the Seven Years' War, then the Seven Years' War happens.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:34Anthony Delaney?

  And he goes to Britain post, and he's fighting in that.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  Okay, so there's a whole war in between.

• 15:38Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then he goes to Britain afterwards, and he goes as part of the diplomatic corps again, ostensibly, to help create that peace treaty that's going to come about, and to settle things over after a difficult time.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  And at this point, are those other diplomats like, oh, yeah, sure, the Chevalier's here? Or are they still like, why is this guy included?

• 15:58Anthony Delaney?

  No, at this time, it's making sense, because he's, he's proved himself really worthwhile in the war, he's also already had a diplomatic posting, and this time, and this is actually important, he is the secretary to the French ambassador to begin with. So he's in a kind of a, a junior, not junior, but he's in a, not, he's not the main guy, put it that way.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's not main character in it.

• 16:18Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, so he's going as part of the delegation, but he has also been given another secret task. So his spy craft comes in here, and this is, France are not happy at having essentially lost the Seven Years' War.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  He wouldn't be.

• 16:32Anthony Delaney?

  No, and they now are planning, well, Louis and the, the Secret are now planning an invasion of Britain, and...

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Cool, cool, cool.

• 16:41Anthony Delaney?

  Cool, cool, cool. And the Chevalier is to gather coastal information from the people at court about where best would, would be to land and to attack and to infiltrate the kingdom from, on France's behalf.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Where does he pick, do you know?

• 16:55Anthony Delaney?

  No, well, we never get that far, spoiler. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's at the, it's, it's a fact-finding mission at that point, when he's, when he's there, but he's also fulfilling that, that secretary role as well.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Imagine the absolute panic that Reform voters would have, the Chevalier d'Anne of all people.

• 17:11Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Planning an invasion across the channel.

• 17:13Anthony Delaney?

  It was like, oh, God, it was this guy, yeah, no, no, no, they, they, you know...

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Nobody tell Nigel.

• 17:19Anthony Delaney?

  Nobody tell Nigel, oh, God, that's a t-shirt. And, yeah, no, he's, but he's doing his job, but he's doing the other job behind him, that's reporting directly back to Louis XV.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  So the Chevalier is doing his two missions, he's working as the secretary to the ambassador, he is gathering this information secretly, sending it back to the king. What happens now? We have a sort of change in personnel, don't we?

• 17:40Anthony Delaney?

  I think, again, remember I said, it all hinges on the Secret, and I think this is the point at which the whole story shifts and forever changes how we under, I think, this is my interpretation. So the ambassador's recalled, nothing overly dramatic, just has to go back, and the Chevalier kind of steps up in that space, and is creating essentially an ambassadorial role for himself while the new ambassador is being assigned, but he hopes to be the new ambassador.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:09Anthony Delaney?

  So he's hoping to get that, because, you know, it's a big, big gig in this time.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  It's a big gig now, to be fair.

• 18:14Anthony Delaney?

  It's a big gig now, absolutely. And we're talking 1763, by the way, but they do assign a new guy, the Comte de Gersy, and Gersy is not, let me say this like very clearly, Gersy is not de Gersy, is not part of the Secret de Roy, but he has links to it.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:33Anthony Delaney?

  So there are, there is certainly a flow of information here.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Will he know that the Chevalier is in the Secret?

• 18:41Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm. Good question that I can't fully answer. My instinct on it, though, if I had to give you an opinion would be if he doesn't know now, he's about to know.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:51Anthony Delaney?

  That's what I would say. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think the evidence is there. Look, but tell me as we go through this, because you'll, you'll start to see the picture come together a little bit more. Tell me what you think. Anyway, Dion's not happy about this. He was like, I am supposed to be the ambassador.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, he put himself forward essentially.

• 19:06Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. Yeah. So he's not happy about this. And relationships between the Chevalier and France start to deteriorate significantly. And he starts essentially bribing them, saying, if you don't make me the ambassador, and de Gersy's already doing the job.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:23Anthony Delaney?

  But if you don't give me this role, then I am going to start telling the British that you're planning to invade.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  I don't think that's a bribe, baby. I think that's a threat.

• 19:32Anthony Delaney?

  I, do you know what? This is so interesting. I was giving a talk about this and Shane was in the audience and he said exactly that. He was like, you need to understand what a bribe means and what a threat means. I was like, oh yeah, that's true.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Good lord.

• 19:43Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes, you're absolutely right. He, he's threatening. He's, he's saying, I'm going to release, because he has the, the documentation. He has the letters back and forth.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  I think that is a remarkable move for someone who has built a career at the absolute centre of power, albeit secretly. And, you know, has risked himself again and again for his country because he hasn't got a job that he wanted, you know, and an important job.

• 20:10Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  He's now threatening to betray his country and the king. I mean, that's treason, surely, even to threaten that.

• 20:17Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, it is. Yeah, yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Is he still in Britain at this point?

• 20:20Anthony Delaney?

  Still in Britain.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  I mean, what, what on earth is going to happen to him now? I mean, surely, surely there's a bounty on his head at this point if he's threatening to become a traitor.

• 20:27Anthony Delaney?

  Not yet. Not yet. Now, okay, let me caveat some of this. He's very skillful with this. This is where his spycraft comes into it. So his direct line to Louis the 15th is going, I'm on your side. Me and you are still, me and you are still bros. We're, we're, we're going to be tight to the ministers who are not fully aware of what the hell is going on here. He's going, you better pay up. And he's looking for the equivalent of millions as well in, because he's, he's racked up so much debt. So he's.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  So he wants money from them. He doesn't just want to be the ambassador.

• 20:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Now, I will say, this is where I think it's undeniable that Dion has an ego, that he, he sees himself in, in a position of power. You know what I mean? He, he can see that for himself. And when they're not playing ball, the following year, 1764, again, quite cleverly, he has damning evidence that he could publish about the French government and, and the king, but he doesn't. He, he publishes the secondary stuff. That's still not great, but could, it's a warning shot, I interpret it as. And he goes, I have so much more of this. You know I do. Here's some out into the press in England. And then England falls in love with him. They are like, this is what we want from our people

• 21:41Anthony Delaney?

  here. The, yes, you are on our side. And he gets a little addicted to that, I think, and, and starts giving a little bit more here and there as well.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  So he does kind of reveal what France was planning.

• 21:51Anthony Delaney?

  He doesn't reveal the invasion attempt. So what he, what he reveals is the, the fracturing within the upper echelons of French government. He reveals the fracturing between the secret and the, the ministers. He reveals that it's divided in terms of, the divisions is what he reveals first. The divisions in, in, in, in the upper, upper part of French society. So that's what he reveals first.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Okay. It's sort of remarkable to me just how far he has climbed and what a sort of high opinion he has of himself. And fair enough, I suppose, but, you know, to have come from a respectable but not hugely important family in Burgundy, to then make his way to Paris, then make his way to, you know, to be in the king's inner circle. And to be putting himself forward for the ambassadorship, to feel that he is owed that, to get into huge amounts of debt, you know, presumably living this lifestyle and, and sort of, you know, he's, he's got big main character energy, hasn't he?

• 22:45Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, oh, totally.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  He's fully, you know, egotistical, kind of off the graph, really. But then to, I mean, I'm sort of struggling to pin him down. And then that's, that's the thing with the Chevalier, right? That, that, that they are just so kind of fluid in all these different ways. But in terms of him in this moment, that he, as I say, he's risked so much for, of himself, for his country. And to then do this and to, to be giving, to feed this information to the British because it means he is being adored, he is getting attention from the British that, you know, I, I find that so interesting. So, but just, just to clarify, I suppose, when you talk about the British liking him and giving him attention,

• 23:30Speaker 00

  do you mean in the media? Is he becoming a celebrity in this moment?

• 23:33Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. He's becoming a celebrity. So most of these letters are, this is, they're not just going into the hands of the government in Britain, they're getting into newspapers in print. So they're, everyone's finding it with this.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  And presumably he is doing that. He's sending it to, or to people who then pass it on. Okay.

• 23:49Anthony Delaney?

  He's getting it. I would agree, yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Okay. So presumably France are not happy with this.

• 23:52Anthony Delaney?

  They're not delighted. No.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  What's their next move?

• 23:55Anthony Delaney?

  So they, they, they kind of, they, they tell him to stop, obviously, and, and they tell him that he's not going to get that job and that's kind of it. De Gersy, meanwhile, has it out for him. He, these are two rivals now.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Right. To be fair, if you just come into the role as ambassador and there's someone who hates you automatically because you've taken the job you wanted, and then is undermining you while you do that job.

• 24:19Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  You would be annoyed.

• 24:21Anthony Delaney?

  Of course. I mean, it's understandable. And so what, and this is my theory on this, but we know this for a fact. It's around now, in this kind of two-year period, that we see rumours start to circulate about the gender of the Chevalier Dion.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 24:40Anthony Delaney?

  And it is my theory, people disagree with me, but it is my theory, those rumours are orchestrated by the French government more generally, the, the secret possibly specifically, in order to discredit the credibility. You don't need to say discredit and credibility at the same time, but okay. To discredit the Chevalier, the, the Chevalier Dion and what he's saying. And what is an interesting way to do that if you're in the 18th century? Say he is a woman.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 25:09Anthony Delaney?

  So this is when we start to see, in the 1760s, we start to see those rumours. Now, those rumours are backdated. So what we hear.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Well, that was my next question, really. How, you know, is there evidence that the Chevalier is dressing as a woman, assuming that identity at any point before this? Is this part of this person's life?

• 25:31Anthony Delaney?

  So there is a rumour that comes out now that he dressed as a woman in Russia. Remember when he was there?

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 25:39Anthony Delaney?

  First. But it only emerges now, not at the time. And there are some documents that try to link it to contemporary evidence, but historians are not convinced that that's a real early document. But let's say it was. Let's say that that's from the time in, in Russia. We know the 18th century can be a time of cross-dressing and masquerade balls.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:02Anthony Delaney?

  There are, cross-dressing has a place.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:06Anthony Delaney?

  For men and women.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  There is a way to do it as a man and a man in a position of authority that does not undermine you and that can be sort of separated from the rest of your life in a public way.

• 26:18Anthony Delaney?

  And it's not necessarily a reflection of your individual gender or sexuality. It is.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  It's a form of play.

• 26:25Anthony Delaney?

  It's a form of play. And it's happening all the time. Like, any form of masquerade, you're getting cross-dressing there. And it doesn't mean that person is saying sex attractive. It doesn't mean that person is gender non-conforming. I remain unconvinced that that even ever happened in Russia. I, I'm not convinced by that supposed evidence. But the rumour tries to, the rumour mill tries to take it back that far.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Okay. So we have these rumours swirling around and these, I mean, accusations essentially. What is the reaction of the Chevalier when this news breaks? How, how is the Chevalier react? How, how do they deal with this?

• 27:05Anthony Delaney?

  I'll tell you right after this break.

• 27:09Anthony Delaney?

  Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way. Same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 28:27Speaker 03

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• 28:30Speaker 02

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  So we've got these rumours swirling around, we've got these accusations. How's the Chevalier going to respond to them?

• 28:56Anthony Delaney?

  With bewilderment, utter bewilderment.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  I was not expecting you to say that.

• 29:01Anthony Delaney?

  Were you not? Yeah, yeah. He's like, what? No, I wasn't, I wasn't. So the story goes, this is the story. The story goes that the Chevalier was born female in Tuner and that the family needed an heir. So because they needed a male heir at birth, they just said, now she's a man, she's a boy. And therefore he was raised as a boy and lived his life as a man. But the Chevalier is going, that did not happen. What are you talking about? This is insane. I have no idea why you would say this. That's actually not true, I'm lying about my own. This was one of the pivotal pieces of information for me, actually, is there is a letter that he sends back to one of the members of the Secret de Roy.

• 29:46Anthony Delaney?

  And he says, this is a bit later on, but I'll bring it in here for, just for context. He says, I know where these rumours are coming from. It's because he is, this is a translation quote, as nature intended me, i.e. he's still a virgin. He's never had sex with either male or female, and he's not drawn to have sex with either male or female. So this, to me, potentially, and you know, I studied gender and sexuality, that's what I do, I think it's one of the earliest examples we have of what we would now understand as asexuality. And he says they use that kind of area that he occupies, that's not binary, to feed this

• 30:29Anthony Delaney?

  idea that, well, he must be a woman then, because men have that sex drive, you know what I mean? So this must be a female thing, Ben.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  And I suppose the way that he's living is so on show, as a diplomat in both Russia and then Britain, and he's being watched all the time. And you know, you mentioned him racking up debts, and obviously, life is very performative in that role. And if he is not seen to be pursuing women or sleeping with them, or how, you know, sort of displaying a healthy, straight, male sexual appetite, that maybe, yeah, I mean, people would maybe potentially ask questions or notice that, I suppose. That is so, okay, that's so interesting. But it's one thing to suggest that someone is dressing as a woman, but then to say that

• 31:17Speaker 00

  the Chevalier was born female and then is transformed by their own family into-

• 31:23Anthony Delaney?

  That's what they're saying, yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Into a boy. I mean, that's extraordinary. And how, in this moment, does someone like the Chevalier refute those claims?

• 31:34Anthony Delaney?

  Well, there's a trial.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  There's a trial?

• 31:37Anthony Delaney?

  There's a trial, in London. Now, the trial-

• 31:40Speaker 00

  But what is the accusation for it to go to trial?

• 31:42Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, the trial is not about the gender-

• 31:45Speaker 00

  But of course it is.

• 31:46Anthony Delaney?

  Or the sex. But of course, absolutely, of course it is. The trial is about, the London Stock Exchange starts to take bets on the biological sex of the Chevalier d'An. Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Do you know what, that's actually just given me chills. I mean, that is, that's so disgusting and horrifying and-

• 32:04Anthony Delaney?

  There's gonna be a lot of disgusting things that happen from now on.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  And, wow. And it's sort of, it speaks to the public nature of these debates in this moment. And also, just how, in what low regard women were held, that the worst accusation you could make against a man, to undermine his authority and strip him of that, is to say, well-

• 32:33Anthony Delaney?

  That's what I think.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  He's a woman.

• 32:35Anthony Delaney?

  Other people don't agree with me on that, but that is what I think. That's my reading of it, too.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  I mean, that's, from what, how you're presenting this to me, this is what I'm-

• 32:40Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, granted. Everyone bear in mind, have your critical thinking caps on, this is coming through me and I have a perspective on this, but-

• 32:47Speaker 00

  But that, that does read true for me. At least, that is an aspect of this, right? And that, okay, I mean, that is, tell me more, because I'm shocked already.

• 32:59Anthony Delaney?

  So there is a trial, but the trial is to settle these bets, because they go on for years. This is not just happening over the course of a couple of weeks.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Well, this is the sort of thing that, once it's attached to an individual, it's not going away, unfortunately. And the Chevalier, I mean, why the Chevalier has to answer any of these rumours is completely ridiculous. But of course, in this context, in this role, occupying the space that he does in the world, he has to.

• 33:22Anthony Delaney?

  Well, he tries not to, and he does a decent job. He keeps just denying it. He's like, no, this isn't true. And the trial takes place without him being there.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:31Anthony Delaney?

  So the trial is all about settling the bets, right? So that's what, that's what we're here to determine, who gets the money that they've placed on this bet. But the only way they can do that-

• 33:40Speaker 00

  Oh, because of course they can't find out the truth, so-

• 33:43Anthony Delaney?

  Well, they're about to.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 33:45Anthony Delaney?

  And what they do is, they have a trial, they call witnesses to determine the biological sex of the Chevalier d'An. And the witnesses that they call are, almost exclusively, definitely the vast majority, French. And many of them, again, this is a real, this is a distinction that historians do debate with me on, they are not necessarily members of the Secret de Roy, but you can draw links back to the Secret de Roy. But to be honest, I think it's compelling anyway that they're French. The fact that they're even French is compelling, but-

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Because he's held in such disdain by the French in this moment.

• 34:24Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. And then there's the testimony. So we have a doctor, a French doctor, who comes in to say, I am, I am that person's physician, I have examined her because she is biologically female. That's one of them. Another guy comes in, says, I've had sex with her, and she definitely has female anatomy. She is a biological woman. And there are now pamphlets going all over London with the Chevalier with a bare bum and loads of old women around him, examining his biological sex. And the Chevalier's kind of looking over his shoulder, he's got his cap on, his military cap on, but he's bare, like a Venus almost, you know what I mean?

• 35:06Anthony Delaney?

  It's very, that kind of a bodily look. And the outcome is the trial rules that the Chevalier d'An was born biologically female, and anyone who bet on that side is to get their money. I don't think they all do in the end, but that's the, that's the outcome.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  As a historian, when you came to this history, and you are met with those witness testimonies, what do you do with that? You know, is there, presumably some historians have read that and taken that as truth? So how, how do you deal with that information compared to how the Chevalier self-describes in this moment? It's, I mean, there are so many kind of complications and untruths and there's so much gossip, and there's so many kind of declarations that are happening all over the place that are completely contradictory. How do you know that the witnesses are lying?

• 36:01Anthony Delaney?

  Well, you don't in that moment, right? And it actually seems very compelling. It's, we do know, I do have a piece of evidence at the end of this episode that tells you they are lying, but at that moment, you don't know, and neither do the people in England or France. They are being told by medical professionals in some cases, that this is a biological woman, so they are believing it. But now, the Chevalier is disgraced in London. They still like him, but he feels like he's a laughingstock, and so a conversation starts to occur. A lot is going on behind the scenes between him and France, and they're settling financial things, and he has to send back some of the letters because they don't want him to have them.

• 36:44Anthony Delaney?

  But now we enter into a conversation where he's like, I need to leave, this is embarrassing, can I come back to France?

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Are they gonna let him? I mean-

• 36:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yes. So now we're on to the reign of Louis XVI, yes.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so there's a change in, I mean-

• 36:59Anthony Delaney?

  The Secret de Roy is gone now, officially. He is disbanded, the Secret de Roy is like-

• 37:03Speaker 00

  So Louis XVI doesn't inherit this or continue it?

• 37:06Anthony Delaney?

  He inherits it, but he gets rid of it pretty quickly. He's just like, this isn't useful, it's too contradictory, it's all over the shop. And he goes-

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Well, I suppose as well, he's seen what's happened with the Chevalier, as one of his agents, and he's like, this isn't worth it.

• 37:18Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. And he goes, yeah, yeah, of course you can come back, but you have to re-adopt your female personhood before we'll let you back to court.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  I beg your pardon.

• 37:27Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm, so that's the condition. And the Chevalier kind of goes, yeah, I mean, you're not gonna make me do that, but I do need to, like, right, you're not gonna actually make me do that. And they're just like, no, no, we will, but come back, yeah, that's fine.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Is that a way of controlling and humiliating the Chevalier then?

• 37:43Anthony Delaney?

  I think so. Other people disagree with me, but I think, what else, like-

• 37:47Speaker 00

  But why would he, why would the Chevalier ever agree to that?

• 37:51Anthony Delaney?

  He doesn't.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  If, okay.

• 37:53Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, he doesn't. He goes back in his male attire, he goes to Tuner, and then he's, then he goes to court, then he goes to Versailles, and he's told, in his male attire, and he's like, get out, you're not a man, you can't be here. If you dress in female clothing, then you can come into court. And, like, we know this, he tells us this, the Chevalier tells this himself at this point. And in order to kind of gain access, he thinks that, okay, I feel like I'd just do it, and do it once, maybe, well, I'm inferring there. But he says, okay, I'll do it. And what we get is Madame Bertin, who's the dressmaker for Marie Antoinette, is assigned

• 38:34Anthony Delaney?

  to him, and this is the Chevalier's own literary flourish, I doubt this is really said, but this is what he has to say, that it's instructed to him, the bad boy must become a good girl.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 38:49Anthony Delaney?

  Right? I think that says volumes. I think if you were to read into that, what, the gender politics of that sentence alone, that tells you that, everything you need to know about this history. And so, yeah, he therefore adopts female attire, and he is received publicly as a woman. Now, I'll switch pronouns now, because this is where the switch, this is where she starts to switch pronouns, but she is, she is received publicly.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  So the Chevalier now- Steps into this identity as a way to access court potentially?

• 39:27Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, but not even full time. I mean, one thing, one thing to say is she's also placed under house arrest because she doesn't keep the female attire all the time. So this isn't a one day on this, the next day on that. There is still resistance going on to this, but she's placed under house arrest. And then in order to kind of come out of that, she will re-adopt female attire. And so this is not a comfortable, you know, when we talk about trans identities, and there are what we would now understand as trans identities in my book, brilliant Mary Jones at the end, who I adore, and it's probably my favourite person in the book.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  We did an episode on her.

• 40:02Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  Fantastic.

• 40:04Anthony Delaney?

  But like, we, we talk about those histories as coming into oneself.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  And it feels recognizably modern to us. That's part of the sort of the conversations that we as a society are having now, I suppose.

• 40:15Anthony Delaney?

  Not that it even owes us that, but it does, it does.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  I absolutely do feel from what you're saying that this, this history has such an 18th century specific context to it.

• 40:26Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  That maybe has been stripped back a little bit in terms of our kind of public discourse. Okay, so the bad boy must become a good girl. I mean, that is, that repulses me.

• 40:41Anthony Delaney?

  Can I, can I ask you to get your art history cap on? And this also feeds into hoax. So this feeds into your, your gig.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  I'm very familiar with this image.

• 40:49Anthony Delaney?

  So we have an image here of the Chevalier. Now, this is an English image, not a French image, but give us a, give us a rundown, Paddy Melling.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is an image of the Chevalier in female attire. And yeah, it's an image that I came across when I was writing my book, for reasons that will become clear. In the centre of this image is what looks very much like a female person. The Chevalier in other portraits and satire is often portrayed as extremely male, sometimes with stubble or beard, even when wearing female clothing. This is not that. This looks like a woman, you know, as we would kind of expect in this moment. And the dress is, you know, very ornate.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  There's sort of your beautiful bows on the arms and incredible detailing. And importantly, there's also a Masonic symbol on the apron, which is intriguing.

• 41:48Anthony Delaney?

  He was amazing, yeah, yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Yes. And this figure has very ornate hairstyle with some kind of, I don't know, what is that on the head? A sort of cap of some sort, again, very ornate. And it's, you know, has sort of big diamond drop earrings and things. This is very, the accoutrements of femininity in this moment. But they're also holding in one hand what looks to be a stick or a staff, and in the other, a sword, presumably a fencing sword. I'm guessing that's a reference to the fencing.

• 42:18Anthony Delaney?

  That is, yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Intriguingly, there are so many clues in this image. So to, to one side of this female figure is the coat of a man discarded and hung on what looks like the back of a chair. And on the right, there's a table with books and some, some parchment that's written on. Above the head of this woman is a tricorn hat and a sword. Again, this sense of, you know, the coat's been discarded, the male attire has been hung up on the wall. And this is where my interest in this image comes in, because on the background are two images in sort of frames, you know, paintings, I suppose. One is of Mary Toft, famously

• 43:01Speaker 00

  the woman who gave birth to rabbits, a hoax from the early 18th century, in which a lower class woman, Mary Toft, claimed that she was giving birth to rabbits. And, you know, they really were coming out of her body. The logistics of that are complicated, the politics of that complicated. It's a dark story, actually. And on the other side is the, the bottle conjurer, which was a hoax, again, from the first half of the 18th century, which, for anyone who hasn't read my book, do your homework. It's a, an event in London in which there was advertised that a man was going to fit himself into a wine bottle

• 43:43Speaker 00

  and sing the national anthem, and tell people's fortunes from inside the bottle. People bought tickets, everyone turned up at the theatre. The conjurer never turns up, people get pissed off, riot, burn the theatre almost to the ground. So there's a, there's a, there's so much going on here, there's so much duality. And it's leaning into this idea of sort of ambiguity, of being aware that there is a trick that you are seeing, that maybe you're not fully understanding. And the Chevalier in this context, in, you know, so it's an English image, it's, it's putting the Chevalier into a dialogue with these other tricksters,

• 44:23Speaker 00

  this sense of, of lies circulating, of nefarious activity. But also something of the performance, of sort of playfulness. It's, I mean, it's a very complex image.

• 44:38Anthony Delaney?

  It really is.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  There's a lot going on in it. And how do you read this?

• 44:44Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, the, the same as what you said. I suppose the only thing I would add is that it seems to, it seems to present that the Chevalier is at the heart of the deception in the way that Toft and the, the bottle singing is.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that's, that, just to say on that point, I think that's very interesting, because what I found when writing hoax was, you know, I look at three women hoaxes, and actually, it's the people around them who are the liars, and not those women themselves. But that is very much the dialogue that happens in the 18th century and the century afterwards, really, when these stories are told again and again. The other thing, just to say, interestingly, is thinking of the Mary Toft scenario, that's so much to do with womanhood, female anatomy, complete misunderstanding of, of women's health. But, you know, the body of that woman is completely at the centre of that story, the idea of sort of monstrous reproduction. And of course, in the Chevalier's story, so much is linked to this idea of, of he or, or she being monstrous, right?

• 45:41Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Of sort of, there's so much mockery and so much sort of darkness there. And that is very much at the heart of, of the hoaxes that I have looked at, where, you know, there's a sort of a lighthearted, satirical take on these. At their centre, there is something deeply troubling to the people who are viewing them from a distance, as well as those who are involved.

• 46:05Anthony Delaney?

  Well, when we come back after this short break, we are going to find that the Chevalier comes back to Britain and the history gets even more complex.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  She leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Okay, so the Chevalier has gone back to France initially, and she now has been allowed into court only when wearing female attire and living as a woman. In the moments when the Chevalier does not do that and takes up male attire again, they are punished, there's house arrest, there's a rejection from those spaces of power. Now the Chevalier is back in Britain. Why? What is going on? I mean, considering the humiliation

• 47:44Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  that the Chevalier faced last time they were there.

• 47:48Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I mean, now they're facing, now, now she's facing humiliation everywhere she goes. So it's, it's like, well, I might as well be free in England and humiliated as opposed to confined in France and humiliated. So she goes back. Still very patriotic, I'd just say, in the background. She still loves France and, and at, at a point in the future will, will offer to fight for France during the revolution, although will be laughed out of it. But what we find when we go back is that she is destitute financially, living in fairly bad conditions. This is somebody who's gone from court life now to, to really bad. And I've gone to where she lived in London. And even now, they're not great. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:33Speaker 00

  I think that's such a, a classic 18th century arc. You know, you think about like the cycles of Hogarth's progresses and this idea of, you know, you come to the big city, in the Chevalier's case, Paris, not London, and you make something of yourself. And then you make some errors along the way, or you make some enemies. And then things go tits up and you end up, you know, the lowest of the low. And that's such a sort of, a, a thing in a century of, you know, as, as cities are growing and fortunes are there to be made and to be lost, that so many people kind of have those strange journeys that are, you know, just the ups and downs of them are really extraordinary. So again, it's just such an 18th century story in every single way.

• 49:12Anthony Delaney?

  So is. And then she, she comes back. And this is where we come back to what we talked about at the very beginning. And it's a nice kind of way to start coming towards the end of this history because the image you have of her, most people will have of her, is in this black gown, fencing the Chevalier Saint George, who was a black musician. And so in his own right is, you know, a remarkable person in this moment in time. She fences for the Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales's Catholic wife, secret Catholic wife at the time. And that's the Prince of Wales in the background of that portrait. So there's lots of like society, celebrity.

• 49:53Anthony Delaney?

  But because she's destitute, she's having to eke out that living as a celebrity, as a fencing celebrity and goes on tour and goes all around the country, goes to Ireland and is appearing because of her notoriety. She's using her notoriety now. Can I ask you a question? Because this surprised me when I stumbled across it in the research of the book. What, on that tour, which I know you might not know the details of all the tour, but how do you imagine her presenting on that tour?

• 50:23Speaker 00

  I'm sort of fascinated that she does it at all. And again, this is something that I find with hoaxes that certainly in one of the stories that that woman goes on tour and leans into the notoriety, even though it has made her powerless and it was thrust upon her by other people. And I think this is, from what you've told me, the same in this story, really. So I imagine that the Chevalier is presenting as a woman and leaning into that identity. But it shocks me because has there ever been any kind of autonomy in that decision? And so why would the Chevalier want to do that in this moment?

• 51:05Anthony Delaney?

  Well, I think this was new in my book, I don't know. Somebody tell me if it's not. But I know for a fact she was not presenting as a woman at all of these matches. Because I found playbills advertising for, I think I have three. So it's not loads, but it's three. And in each of those three, it says, wearing her soldier's dragoon outfit. So she is in male attire. So she's playing all the games.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  This has gone Shakespearean now in terms of the crossdressing and then crossdressing. You know, I'm thinking of like.

• 51:38Anthony Delaney?

  So she's selling it as a going, I am biologically female.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  And I'm dressing as a man.

• 51:43Anthony Delaney?

  And I'm now dressing as a man.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Okay, so there's a sense that, oh, there's so like double reversals going on here. And, you know, that is part of the, I mean, obviously, these are matches, not necessarily on stage, but there's a kind of theatrical tradition there from at least Shakespeare's era, if not the mumbling plays of earlier centuries. This idea of men on stage, playing the female parts. And then within the context of a play and a story, those female characters dressing as men. And so you get that kind of, you know, there's so many layers of that. And kind of interesting when you think about, you know, the fact that the Chevalier is a spy and this sort of tradition of becoming a double spy and all of that. So there's so much, there's so much to try and hold in your mind in this.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  There's so much we don't know here.

• 52:33Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  But in terms of, I suppose we can look at the choices the Chevalier makes to return to Britain, to lean into this identity, to make some money out of it, to exhibit themselves in some kind of way, whether it is wearing female attire or male attire.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  In terms of the documented evidence we have from the Chevalier himself, herself,

• 53:01Speaker 00

  what pronouns are they using? And is it, if this identity of a woman has been thrust upon the Chevalier, is it right at all to use she/her pronouns?

• 53:14Anthony Delaney?

  So, and this is the place to end because this is, well, this is the place to penultimately go, I suppose. She is so, so she gets a fencing accident on tour. She can't fence anymore. And she sells her biography that she's going to write. And in that biography, she says, I am biologically a woman. I, she sells the story that the French government perpetrated in the 1760s. My father needed a male heir. And she says, the way that she was discovered was she fell off her horse on London Bridge or one of the bridges in London. And her sword pierced her in the groin and she was attended.

• 53:59Anthony Delaney?

  And then they saw, that did not happen. So what we see in this biography that never gets published in her own time, and she doesn't finish it, is invention. We know she lies all the time in it.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  She's a spy.

• 54:12Anthony Delaney?

  She is a spy. She invents, she invents, she invents because it's financially lucrative. She is starving. She says in other letters to people, I eat when I can. I'm in bed most of the time to keep warm. She's old at this point now, remember? She's living with another woman called Mrs. Cole, by the way. And I often think Mrs. Cole has been overlooked as women, so often are. Because I do wonder sometimes if actually Mrs. Cole might be some kind of partner. But because they're supposedly two women living together, then that's overlooked as another, just two spinsters living together. Anyway, but they're living in Penury and Mrs. Cole is very loyal and very, Mrs. Cole's there throughout the final era. The Chevalier dies eventually.

• 54:56Anthony Delaney?

  And this is, so she's feeding into this invention of personhood. But then, and here's the real kicker, you talked about disgust earlier. The Chevalier dies and suddenly there's a huge press around this little tenement flat. And they all come in, the establishment come in, take the body and perform an autopsy and say, oh, he was biologically male all along. And there are images of the autopsy with the white sheet being held up over his genitalia. And the genitalia is depicted and spread all across London.

• 55:38Anthony Delaney?

  And it's signed by those who like, oh, we finally cracked the code, we blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we know, remember when I said that there are the testimony at the trial earlier in London, that's how we know it's factually incorrect. But you mentioned earlier, and I was holding on to this because it, you said, you know, it's so, how do historians interpret this? Well, at one point in the 50s, I think it was 1950s, somebody wrote to a sexologist and said, as they were known at the time, and said, is it possible for human beings, this was such a confusing history, is it possible for human beings to biologically transfer from one biological sex to another?

• 56:21Anthony Delaney?

  Because it's the only explanation that like, she must have been female and then he must have died male. Because we have the testimony from the medical professionals that she was female. And now we have the autopsy that he's male. And they just couldn't, and the sexologist wrote back going, literally, I have no example of that that's ever happened. And why are you so obsessed? I'm paraphrasing. But so, yeah, yeah, it's, for me, this is far more of a troublesome. And when I see, this is yesterday when we were talking about Jack Sheppard, I was like, oh, God, I can't get on board with this. And then afterwards, I said to you, I don't really even, I'm not that looking forward to doing the Chevalier because it's draining every time I see him presented

• 57:06Anthony Delaney?

  in certain ways in the public imagination. And I find it very frustrating. And so I'm starting to go off the history where I'm like, do you know what? I don't want to, I don't want to be involved there.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  It's a shame because I actually think this would be the most incredible film.

• 57:17Anthony Delaney?

  I know, Sherlock, I know, it's incredible. But it doesn't fit neatly into what anyone needs it to serve as. And that's why, this is my example of they owe us nothing, the people from the past.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Yes, and I think the Chevalier in particular has been used over the centuries and in their own moment in so many different ways that we probably owe the Chevalier something to look at this with the nuance that it deserves. I mean, I think the thing for me with this history is that it is distinctly 18th century, as we've said. You know, the 18th century is such a weird time. It's not the kind of bright world of enlightenment and, you know, science and rationality that the thought of itself as being in that moment and that we've kind of simplified it as being over the centuries since, that it's this kind of gnarly, strange, twisty, shape shifting,

• 58:17Speaker 00

  sometimes dark, sometimes gray area world in which the boundaries of everything, gender, sex, religion, death, life, race, power, everything is being drawn, but being negotiated and experimented with and shifted constantly. And I think the Chevalier exists within that and is sort of a product and a victim of it, that this kind of constant movement of boundaries kind of, I mean, defines their life, actually.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  I just feel really sad having heard that history.

• 58:58Anthony Delaney?

  This isn't for me, you know, one of those triumphant, what we would now understand as trans histories. I don't read it like that.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  You talk in the book and you've spoken around the book about this idea of queer joy and about, you know, looking back at the past and not just spending time in the darkness and the oppression and the violence, because that all happened and it has to be acknowledged. But there is also joy and your book is full of these moments of, you know, love.

• 59:22Anthony Delaney?

  This is bleak, but yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, your book does have these moments of real joy.

• 59:27Anthony Delaney?

  And I do think she's queer, by the way. You know, she's potentially what we would understand as asexual.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  I think that is fascinating.

• 59:33Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, she's definitely gendered unconforming, whether she wants to be or not. So there's the queerness there.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  And she obviously plays with that as well. There's, you know, it's not the case that this is a, you know, a straight man who wants to live as a man and has been forced simply to wear women's clothes as a way to humiliate them and hates it. That might be an element of it. But there's also an embracing to a certain extent, a using that as a tool to then navigate the world and their existence and to survive and all of that and to entertain and to make a living. So I think it's incredibly complicated.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Ultimately, I think it's a really difficult history. I think it's, I mean, even as, you know, 18th century us, I think it's incredibly hard to get to grips with it. I think it's so difficult. Thank you for doing this, though, because it's fascinating. And I think I very much came into this with the kind of popular history version of this story in my head. And, you know, some of the sort of iconic images of the Chevalier. And you've really complicated that for me. And.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  It's depressing and intriguing in equal measure. And I think actually, the thing we should, that I will maybe take away from this story is the Chevalier is a spy. And this idea that they held something of themselves back, always. There was a self-protection there. There's stuff bubbling under the surface that was not visible at the time because of the profession of being a spy and is not visible now. And you know, this idea of sort of disguise and deception is in this story. And I would like to put some of the autonomy back on the Chevalier themselves and say, maybe the truth was withheld then and is withheld now and it lies with them.

• 1:01:21Anthony Delaney?

  Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. That's me too.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:01:27Anthony Delaney?

  No, listen, it's, I found it a difficult one. Sometimes I don't want to revisit it very often because I'm just like, it draws, it draws the wrong kind of attention from every quarter, by the way. Not just, I see it used on, kind of flippantly on queer history things online and it frustrates me because you don't want to be the person that's going, well, actually, it's not quite that. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  And also you don't want to take away a trans history, but.

• 1:01:51Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I don't see this as, I'll give you another one, though, in Queer Georgians.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:55Anthony Delaney?

  Read at the back of the book because Mary Jones is an absolute star.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  And we have a whole episode on that.

• 1:01:59Anthony Delaney?

  And we have a whole episode of them.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  Well, if you.

• 1:02:01Anthony Delaney?

  Well.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  Well, where to go now? If you've enjoyed this episode, if you want to hear more queer stories, more stories in the 18th century, more stories about spies, stories that challenge our perceptions of reality then and now, you can get in touch with us at [email protected]. Thank you for watching on YouTube or listening, wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five star review or comment below.