Mercy Leroux

The above portrait was commissioned by Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Moira. Yes, that Rawdon. It stands out for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it appears to depict an older trans woman who does not entirely pass, yet is still portrayed as a woman.

The person portrayed is known as the Chevalière d’Éon (chevalier meaning knight). Her name was Charlotte d’Éon de Beaumont, and her connection to Rawdon is unclear.

Of course, we must issue our usual yet necessary disclaimer: applying modern labels of sexuality and gender to people in the past is complicated. We cannot know how the Chevalière d’Éon would’ve identified had she lived in our times with all its options available. However, given that she lived as a woman when forced to make a choice, we’re opting to use female pronouns–though it is also entirely possible, as you’ll see, that she would have preferred a label that acknowledged more gender fluidity and neutral pronouns.

Assigned male at birth, d’Eon was born in France to a noble but not particularly wealthy family. She enlisted in the military and served as a Captain in the French Dragoons. She then became a spy for the French, claiming that she infiltrated the Russian court via dressing as a woman, where she lived as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress for years (though historians are skeptical about how true this version of the tale is).

After returning to France, d’Eon was then sent to London, where she continued to spy for the French. That is, until the Count of Guerchy became the French ambassador to England. Guerchy demoted d’Eon and allegedly attempted to poison her. d’Eon spiritually raised two middle fingers and retaliated by publishing much of the intelligence she’d gathered as Lettres, memoires et negociations, at which point you’d think she’d have burned all her bridges with France. Nope, because d’Eon was too smart for that.

See, she had the most incendiary secret intelligence she’d been working on still hidden, and the French knew she had it. Hence, their hands were tied: retaliate, and she’d leak that and get them in a whole new world of trouble because, well, that Top Secret Information included direct letters from the king and intelligence about how the French could potentially invade England.

Geurchy could retaliate, though, and did. He sued her for libel, a charge that essentially barred her from returning to France under threat of arrest. Except for, y’know, the Top Secret Intelligence card, which d’Eon bided her time to play. In the meantime, she still collected a pension from France, as the country wasn’t about to give her a reason to leak her Top Secret Intelligence.

As her fame grew in London thanks in great part to her book, d’Eon’s androgynous way of dressing drew attention. Rumors began to spread that she was actually a woman and not the man they thought. d’Eon began dressing fully as a woman, but declined to comment on her gender when pressed, even when it came out that the London Stock Exchange (yes, really) was running a bet on whether she was a man or a woman.

What d’Eon wanted was to return to France, and she dangled that Top Secret Intelligence in front of the French like a carrot, negotiating an agreement that she could return to France without arrest and continue to receive her pension for military service if she handed over the Top Secret Intelligence she’d gathered. The French capitulated.

However, upon her return, she was told she had to dress like a man, something d’Eon did not want to do. Madame Campan, a member of the French Court, wrote:

This eccentric being had long solicited permission to return to France; but it was necessary to find a way of sparing the family he had offended the insult they would see in his return; he was therefore made to resume the costume of that sex to which in France everything is pardoned. The desire to see his native land once more determined him to submit to the condition, but he revenged himself by combining the long train of his gown and the three deep ruffles on his sleeves with the attitude and conversation of a grenadier, which made him very disagreeable company.

(Aside: gotta say referring to men as “that sex to which in France everything is pardoned” in a sexist world is hilarious.)

Dressing as a man didn’t last long, because d’Eon went before the French king and insisted that actually she was assigned female at birth but was raised as a man for inheritance reasons. The king agreed to allow her to live as a woman and even gave her money to commission a new wardrobe of dresses, since she’d had to leave hers behind in London.

Meanwhile, in London, the ongoing stock exchange wager couldn’t be left hanging; yet with no way to ever resolve the issue should she (as presumably she would) stay in France, the only option was for a judge to declare her gender. Considering the French decision, he declared d’Eon a woman.

Around this time the American Revolution was raging, and d’Eon actually offered to go to America with the French troops to fight alongside the Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the French declined her offer. As the political situation in France teetered on the verge of its own revolution, d’Eon fled back to London, where she took up fencing (in her dresses) for money. Her pensions stopped after the Revolution, and as a result d’Eon died in poverty.

After her death, a postmortem confirmed that she was assigned male at birth. Yet legally, she was a woman, and she lived as one in her later years (and lived a nonconforming life for years before that). So, yes, even though the terms for nonbinary genders and transgender individuals were not in use yet, people who don’t fit into their sex assigned at birth have always existed. And in d’Eon’s case, lived a fascinating life worth far more renown and study than she currently gets.

Anyways, I’m going to guess that whatever her and Rawdon’s connection was when the portrait was commissioned in 1792 (after her return to Britain), they bonded over their snarky senses of humor and their delight in trolling their enemies.

Next week, we’ll return to Rawdon and discuss the Saga of His Daughter vs Queen Victoria.