The business which called him to London was, indeed, a complicated
one. For several years one of his creditors, to whose care he had
confided his library and papers on leaving England, a man named Lautem,
claimed from his debtor, who turned a deaf ear, the payment of a sum
of £400. Obtaining nothing from d’Eon himself he had applied to the
Comte de Vergennes, and had not omitted to enforce his request by a
gentle threat: “D’Eon’s effects,” he said, “are a security and not a
deposit; I could therefore have them sold, but I do not wish to sell
state papers. Born at Brussels, a subject of his Imperial Majesty, an
ally of the King of France, I have no desire to amuse Englishmen at
the expense of a Frenchman who has been my tenant; but Mademoiselle
d’Eon no longer deserves any consideration on my part.” The Minister
for Foreign Affairs replied through the chief clerk, Durival, that “the
arrangements which the King had deigned to authorise, in Mademoiselle
d’Eon’s favour, for facilitating her return to France, and the fact that
she had then surrendered her political correspondence, did not allow of
the supposition that she had left any of value” in the keeping of the
Sieur Lautem. It would seem, however, that the Comte de Vergennes was
not quite sure, for though he did not send the £400 demanded he at least
offered 200 louis. But Lautem did not accept these terms, and proceeded
to advertise the sale by auction, in London, of all the papers belonging
to the Chevalier. The effect of this announcement was immediate. D’Eon
at once received permission to visit England in person for the purpose
of winding up his affairs, and a sum of 6000 livres was given to him,
for the payment of his creditors. He returned to London on November 18,
1785, and took up his old quarters in the house of the Sieur Lautem,
displaying so little ill-feeling that it is difficult to believe that
debtor and creditor had not come to an understanding on the matter.
Besides his landlord, Lautem, d’Eon paid his most exacting creditors.
Having recovered his books and documents, he was able to resume his
literary labours, for to the end of his days he was an inveterate scribe.
The events in which he had been mixed up increased in importance, in his
accommodating imagination, as they became more remote, and formed the
basis of statements constantly laid aside and then resumed, in a fresh,
more grandiloquent and more elaborate form. He again issued pamphlets
broadcast in English society, and entertained the public through the
columns of the papers, which found in him at the same time a fertile and
ingenious correspondent and an attraction to please readers eager for
something out of the common. So anxious was he to bestir himself that he
even consented to employ the adventurer Morande once again, though he had
formerly treated him with scant courtesy. The latter, however, did not
seem to bear him any malice. “I loved you sincerely,” he wrote, “and you
seemed to be attached to me; an ill wind has passed over us, tossing us
hither and thither for a space; but after ten years of calm we should be
quite ourselves again.”
[Illustration: THE CHEVALIER D’EON
_From a Cast taken after Death_]
Morande was indeed quite himself again, for intrigue was his natural
element, and he had lost nothing but dignity in his successive gyrations.
It was he who acted as middleman between d’Eon and the London publishers,
business men, and, occasionally, moneylenders. Not that the Chevalière
d’Eon was bereft of acquaintances; she had many in good society, and even
among people of high rank. Upon arriving in London d’Eon was received
by M. Barthélemy, chargé d’affaires during the absence of the French
ambassador, the Marquis de la Luzerne, to whom the Comte de Vergennes had
especially recommended him. It would seem that honest Barthélemy never
for a moment entertained a doubt upon the subject of d’Eon’s personality.
Throughout his residence in London, he was particularly gallant and
attentive to his illustrious countrywoman, continually sending his coach
to fetch her to dine at the embassy, waiting upon her when she accepted
the invitation of some member of the English nobility, and calling on her
several times a week “to pay his court to her.” Between the years 1785-89
he wrote no fewer than a hundred and seventy-eight notes and letters to
her, which were all found among the papers left by the Chevalier. The
invitations are all couched in amiable and respectful terms, such as the
following, addressed to “Mademoiselle la Chevalière d’Eon”:—
The Duc de Piennes and the Chevalier de Caraman, who have just
returned from Newmarket, are coming to dine with me to-morrow.
I cannot tell you, Mademoiselle, how anxious I am to hear that
you are free and that you will be kind enough to join us. No
entertainment is complete without you. We shall be a small
party, for there is no time to invite others of our mutual
acquaintance.
Moreover, the Bishop of Langres had recommended d’Eon very warmly to
his brother, the Marquis de la Luzerne, the French ambassador, who, by
a strange coincidence, happened to have met the Chevalier when in the
army with Marshal de Broglie. The following letter, addressed to the
Chevalière on her return to London, refers to their old intercourse in
the days of their youth:—
The Bishop of Langres has been absent a long time in the
country, Mademoiselle, and only delivered your letter to
me when I was on the point of starting for England. I was
much gratified to see that you thought of me, and that you
remembered our youth. Be assured that I have followed your
career since then with much interest, and that I have always
deeply regretted that our different occupations have kept us
apart. I shall be delighted to see you again in London, and to
express to you by word of mouth my feelings of old and tender
attachment.
Either at the house of his friend, Barthélemy, or at the ambassador’s,
with whom he always kept up the pleasant intercourse so strangely renewed
after an interval of several years, d’Eon met all the distinguished
Frenchmen living in London or passing through it. Among them were the
Duc de Chaulnes and the Marquis du Hallay, the Prince de la Trémoille
and the Marquis d’Hautefort, Prince Rezzonico, nephew of Pope Clement
XIII., M. de Calonne, and the former Abbé du Bellay, vicar-general of the
diocese of Tréguier. He thus kept in touch with the best French society.
Never neglecting an opportunity for putting pen to paper, he kept up,
besides, a most voluminous correspondence. Several of his friends also
informed him regularly of what was passing in France. Thus Drouet, his
old colleague in the secret service, confided to the Comtesse Potocka a
letter in which, after expressing his ardent desire to see him back again
in France, tells of the great scandal of the day, the trial of Cardinal
de Rohan—“l’affaire du collier”:
This important case has never been so much discussed as at the
present moment. M. Cagliostro is making many partisans by a
memorandum he has published. As many people regard him as a
swindler, a charlatan, an empiric, and judge him by his conduct
at Warsaw where he was staying in 1777, I went yesterday to see
Count Rzewusky, who that same year was all-powerful in Poland.
He told me that when Cagliostro arrived he did not conceal the
fact that he had some knowledge of physics and medicine, and
even of alchemy. A certain Prince Poninsky, experimenting in
the latter, became very intimate with him, and having seen his
wife he fell in love with her. Shortly afterwards he offered
her some diamonds, which she refused. Thereupon he appealed to
her husband, and succeeded, by dint of entreaties, in inducing
him to allow his wife to accept the diamonds. Having failed
to obtain what he desired from Madame de Cagliostro, and not
wishing to be a dupe, Poninsky denounced Cagliostro as a
swindler, and obtained permission to take back his diamonds
which would have been returned to him had he asked for them.
A few days before the arrival of Cagliostro at Warsaw the
sister of Count Rzewusky, fearing lest she should lose her
sight on account of an eye-complaint which completely baffled
the doctors, consulted Cagliostro, who cured her entirely in
the course of a few days. This lady, who is very rich, offered
him two thousand ducats, which he refused. She renewed her
offer through her brother, who met with no better success;
and neither the one nor the other has been able to persuade
Cagliostro to accept the smallest token of gratitude.
The worthy Drouet concluded with Count Rzewusky, who declared that he was
ready to sign a statement of all these facts with his own blood, that
Cagliostro might well have been the victim of some plot; a hypothesis
calculated to please d’Eon, who had become more and more inclined to see
snares and pitfalls everywhere.
A little later the same Drouet sent news of his family: his
brother-in-law, O’Gorman, had obtained the Cross of Saint Louis; his
eldest nephew was doing very well. “Before long,” Drouet adds, “he will
be promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; and in three years’ time
he will make a good marriage, which will render him independent. His two
younger brothers went abroad last October for a two years’ cruise; at
the end of the expedition they will both receive their commissions as
lieutenants in the navy.” And Drouet exhorts “sa chère amie” to love her
nephews as they thoroughly deserve it. He also begs her to be patient in
the settlement of her affairs.
This liquidation was indeed a long business. No sooner had d’Eon arrived
in London than he entered an action against the heirs of Lord Ferrers.
He accused the late earl of not having employed for the payment of his
debts, as stipulated by special mandate, the money remitted to him in
exchange for the papers of the secret correspondence, in execution of the
covenant signed, on October 5, 1775, by the Sieur Caron de Beaumarchais
and the Demoiselle d’Eon. He won his suit as far as the main point was
concerned, but the judgment could not be carried into effect on account
of the impediments of every description raised by the heirs. Consequently
d’Eon wrote, on April 1, 1787, to his friend M. de la Flotte, chief
clerk at the Foreign Office, complaining that “this restitution of money
which was to have made her happy and serene was becoming the worry of
her life.” He expressed himself extremely sorry to be still living in
England; but added that, as long as he could not return to France with
honour, he would not return at all.
While waiting for the money that was owing to him he endeavoured to earn
his living—for he must live—by some other means. In the intervals between
the receptions to which he was invited, and at which he mixed in the best
society, he occupied himself with every kind of business. Once he traced
a young man who had run away to London; another time he assisted by his
support and letters of introduction a countryman of his, the Sieur Petit,
who wished to start a business house in the city. Shortly afterwards
he devoted his attention to the sale of an estate, the marquisate of
Cailly, in Normandy, which the Duchesse de Montmorency-Boutteville wished
to part with, and for which d’Eon hoped to find a purchaser among his
English friends. His intercourse with the duchess was quite of a friendly
character, the latter writing to him, on March 30, 1788, that she kept a
room ready for him in her house at Petit-Montreuil when he should return
to France. A few months later d’Eon wrote to Barantin, the Keeper of
the Seals, offering for sale a number of valuable manuscripts collected
by himself during the course of his chequered life. The nucleus of the
collection consisted of a valuable series of the Maréchal de Vauban’s
papers, for which d’Eon asked so high a price that in 1791 he had not yet
found a purchaser. He had somewhat exaggerated notions as to the interest
and importance of the manuscripts.
But the correspondence of the versatile Chevalière was not connected
only with money matters, for d’Eon had too complex a nature not to rise
on occasion above material questions. Even during the time that he was
struggling against misfortune he daily exchanged most humorous letters
with all sorts of people. Some items of his correspondence were charming;
it may suffice to quote that of the Abbé Sabatier de Castres, attached to
the household of the Dauphin. It is not perhaps free from affectation,
but is a perfect example of the style used between themselves by the most
polite society of the time:
MADEMOISELLE,—M. de Lançon, who has been so good as to bring
me your charming letter himself, will be rewarded for it by
the pleasure of delivering my reply to you. He has just told me
that he is going to leave for London to-morrow, and I hasten
to take advantage of his journey to tell you how flattered
I feel, and how grateful I am to you, for the ten pages to
which you have treated me. I should complain less bitterly
of your absence if it procured for me from time to time such
epistles. Never has so sad a nation as the English been spoken
of more gaily, neither has a gay and light-hearted nation such
as ours been discussed more rationally and philosophically.
You alone, Mademoiselle, possess the gift of expressing
humorously profound and earnest thought. It is indeed a pity
that you have not practised the art of Thalia! You would have
been more successful than most of our present writers of
comedy, who only excite the hilarity of the ignorant and the
vicious, such as the author of the _Marriage of Figaro_, who
(speaking of marriage) has just married his mistress in order
to legitimatise a girl six or eight years old whom she had
borne him. Now that he is rich, people assert that his wife,
who, they say, is his fourth, will be happier with him than her
predecessors.
I am sorry, but not surprised, that the brother and heir of
Lord Ferrers is not like him as far as honesty is concerned;
_sorry_ because it makes you suffer; _not surprised_ because of
three of my brothers, whose fortunes I have made at the expense
of my own, not one would sacrifice so much as a sovereign to
oblige me, such is their ingratitude and love of money.
M. de Chalut, who enjoys good health and is in excellent
spirits, notwithstanding his eighty-two years, was greatly
touched by your kind offer, and would avail himself of it, if
he did not know that the pictures he could sell are not worth
half the money it would cost, in carriage and duty, to send
them to England. The last time I saw him, he asked me to thank
you again and pay his respects to you. No doubt you know that
he has married his adopted daughter to M. Deville, who was
formerly private secretary to the Comte de Vergennes and is now
farmer-general, and that by the marriage settlement he gives
him a hundred thousand crowns. M. de Lançon will tell you the
rest, in case you are not acquainted with this event. I envy
him, since he will see you in five or six days, and it follows
that I should set out for England too were I not detained here
by the necessity of supervising the illustrations and the
printing of the work with which I have been entrusted for the
Dauphin. I flatter myself that I shall not be forgotten in
your libations. On Monday M. de Lançon and M. Le Vasseur dine
with me, and it is to your health and that of the inestimable
traveller that we shall quaff the champagne which I keep for
great occasions. Sell your library at once, you have no need of
it; your own ideas are better than those found in books. Try to
get as much money as you can for it—money is necessary to those
who make so noble a use of it as you do—and then come back to
Paris where, no doubt, you will not find Princes of Wales to
court you, but many persons who, without being heir-apparents,
are none the less fully aware of your worth, and love you
better than the best princes could.
Excuse this scribble. My wish to avail myself of M. Lançon’s
departure has made me write in a hurry and with a bad pen,
but it is thoughtfully and with all my heart that I repeat
to you the assurance of the feelings of esteem, admiration,
attachment, and respect which I have dedicated to you for life,
and with which I am your most humble obedient servant,