Part 19

On reaching Coblentz, where I am going, call upon my friend, M. de Preaurot, to whom the princes have confided the duty of receiving all new arrivals. Before long no honest folks will stay in France except those who cannot do otherwise, whether on account of their infirmities or their want of means. Many are helped by those who are in a position to do so. I think we have reached the time when you can outshine the Maid of Orléans herself: what a distinction for our good town of Tonnerre, whence I have heard that knowing your sound principles they rely upon your not abandoning the cause of honour.

And lower down, in another hand, we learn:

The old-fashioned baroness can add nothing to the style of the brave knight who writes this letter, except the wish to see her heroine arrive soon. She begs her to direct her reply to M. Mazorel, post-office, Tournay, who will take charge of it.

D’Eon wrote in the margin of this letter that he did not answer it. But it was in vain that he avoided compromising himself with royalists and aristocrats; the loyalism of his republican sentiments did not obtain for him from the Convention the recovery of the pension which royalty had conferred upon him, and which had not been paid to him since 1790.

In order to procure the bare necessaries of life he was obliged to resort to the sword which he was no longer permitted to use in the service of his country, and was reduced to taking part in public fencing competitions. In default of glory on the field of battle, he attained, at all events, real fame in the schools. He had as adversaries the best fencers in England, the Chevalier St. George himself, and beat them all on more than one occasion. D’Eon was far from being a novice in the art, having distinguished himself therein as far back as the year 1750, when he was a young advocate, and was writing learned historical treatises and essays on political economy, in order to attract notice. His adventurous life and his military career had led him to develop the science of fencing, and consequently his already advanced age did not prevent his justifying a reputation which his adopted sex rendered piquant and unusual. Although d’Eon generally wore his old uniform of the dragoons when fencing in public, yet at several matches he appeared in a semi-feminine costume. In this odd accoutrement he took part, in September 1793, in a tournament at which the Prince of Wales presided in person; he gained a brilliant victory over an English officer. Some prints, which are now much sought after, perpetuated the memory of this curious match. So profitable did he find these exhibitions of his rare skill that he resolved to undertake a series of tours in the provinces. The English papers report his victories at Dover, Canterbury and Oxford. In the course of one of these journeys there occurred, at Southampton, on August 26, 1796, the unlucky accident which brought a sudden end to the fencing-matches in which the Chevalière d’Eon still distinguished herself at the age of sixty-nine. Her adversary’s foil broke off, wounding her severely. D’Eon published in the papers the certificate of the physicians who attended him, together with an address in which, after thanking the public for the interest they had taken in him, he declared with bitterness that henceforth he would be reduced “to cut his bread with his sword.”

His wound kept him confined to his bed for four months. As soon as he could be moved, he was taken back to London, where he had still to go through a long convalescence. An old English lady, Mrs. Mary Cole, a friend of his, received him into her house, and tended him to the end of his life with the most touching devotion. D’Eon’s sensational career was now at an end, and his life terminated in the quietest way possible. He himself remarks, with a touch of melancholy: “My life is spent in eating, drinking, and sleeping; praying, writing, and working with Mrs. Cole, repairing linen, gowns, and headdresses.”

Still, in spite of age and sickness, d’Eon never quite resigned himself to his sad lot, and remained to the end as indomitable in his energy as he was tenacious in his hope of better days to come, renewing his appeals for permission to return to France and preparing for his departure. He succeeded in interesting in his cause the Citoyen Otto, the Commissioner of the Republic in London, through whom he sent, on June 18, 1800, to Talleyrand, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, a lengthy petition in which he recapitulated his services and enumerated his misfortunes.

I have fought the good fight; I am seventy-three years of age; I have a sabre-cut on my head, a broken leg and two bayonet-thrusts. In 1756 I contributed largely to the reunion of France and Russia. In 1762 and 1763 I laboured night and day to establish peace between France and England. I was in direct and secret correspondence with Louis XV. from 1756 to the year of his death. My head belongs to the war department, my heart to France, and my gratitude to Citizen Charles Max Talleyrand, the worthy minister for foreign affairs, who will do me justice, and will not leave me to die of despair and starvation.

Despair was not a salient feature in d’Eon’s character, for at the moment he sent this doleful letter he was engaged in preparing an edition of Horace, and an Englishman offered him, with a view to this work, a collection of all the old editions of the Latin poet from 1476 to 1789. His poverty was such, however, that he was reduced to pawning his Cross of Saint Louis and his jewels; but at the same time he obtained from Citizen Otto a passport to Paris and Tonnerre. His friends in France did not fail to encourage him in his projects, and promised him their support.

Barthélemy, formerly chargé d’affaires in London during the Revolution and now a senator highly esteemed by Bonaparte, offered to present to the all-powerful First Consul the Chevalière, famous of yore, who had assisted him more than once to do the honours of the French embassy. This is what his friend Falconnet wrote to him, on September 13, 1802:

But you, my illustrious friend, what will you do? I still advise you to set out. The longer you wait the harder you will find it. Remember the man in Horace:

Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.

Make a bundle of your valuables, and take them with you. Arrange for the other things to follow you as you require them. Mrs. Cole will see that they are sent, and you will receive everything. Senator Barthélemy will only be too happy to present you to the First Consul, and I have no doubt but that you will obtain, if not the whole, at least part of your pension. When you are here everything will go well. At a distance nothing goes as it should. Come, and to begin with take furnished lodgings; even this circumstance may not be indifferent to your success. The world will be more ready to pity the lot of a heroine whom no party can reproach, when she is seen, at her age, deprived of all resources.

But whether old age and sickness prevented his departure, or whether he was discouraged by so many vain efforts and expected nothing from the change, d’Eon remained in London. He went through a time of great need, although several of his old friends, and even some members of the English aristocracy, continued to take an interest in him and to help him until the end of his days. The Marchioness of Townshend, the Duke of Queensberry, and Mrs. Crawford regularly provided him with money. His infirmities compelled him to keep his bed during the last two years of his life, and throughout that sad time he was tended affectionately by Mrs. Cole, the friend whose house he shared. Several months before his death he sent for a French physician, Dr. Élisée—formerly attached to the “Pères de la Charité” at Grenoble. When, on May 21, 1810, d’Eon breathed his last, the doctor was not less surprised than Mrs. Cole on discovering the real sex of this extraordinary individual, who, notwithstanding old age, want and sickness, had taken a pride in playing his part to the bitter end. A certificate of the post-mortem examination made it possible to record officially the answer to this singular problem, which for forty years had excited so much curiosity and given rise to so many disputes. But, published at a time when public attention was being claimed by so many great contemporary events, this document, which definitely settled a point of dispute in the annals of the eighteenth century, was scarcely noticed. It is only in our time that patient scholars have unearthed it from the depths of English archives. Mystery no longer enshrouds the enigma that baffled even the perspicacity of a Voltaire or of a Beaumarchais.

Freed from the disguise which she had assumed, and to which tradition still faithfully adheres, the legendary Chevalière d’Eon resumes his true aspect in the form of the daring and brilliant adventurer, ruined by his inordinate pride, whose life will remain for all time as one of the strangest challenges that history has ever offered to fiction.

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH