After the death of the Chevalier d’Eon in London in extreme poverty in
the year 1810, a mass of his unpublished papers and letters, which he
had carefully preserved all his life, fell into the hands of one of his
creditors, and lay neglected for nearly a hundred years in an English
bookseller’s shop. There it was that the authors of this book were
fortunate enough to discover them by chance at a sale.
These private documents, in addition to the state papers in the archives
of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the municipal records of his
native town of Tonnerre, enable his biographers to follow the career of
the Chevalier with particularity, and to set at rest what was for so long
a vexed question, the mystery of his sex. It was a deliberate step, the
assumption of femininity, by which to regain a waning popularity. After a
brilliant military and diplomatic career, as well as repeated employment
in the secret service of Louis XV., his ill-judged conduct in London
covered him with disgrace at Versailles. Some fresh action was demanded
to reinstate himself in public notice, and as rumour persistently named
him a woman he felt the time had come to play the part. As the result of
long negotiation he was permitted to return to France. There he became
the heroine of the hour, and the ingenuity of his personification induced
belief in the Chevalière not only in Louis XVI. and his ministers, but
also—a more difficult matter—in the friends of his youth.
These unpublished papers are of further value, for they include
correspondence with many notable people of d’Eon’s day, and serve to
reflect not only his own personality but those prominent in a society
which differed in its striking contrasts from that of any other
historical period.