1700s: Why did the Chevalier who liked to dress as a woman visit Derby

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In October 1771, a royal visit took place in Derby when the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt and the Chevalier d’Eon visited. But as Maxwell Craven reveals, there was more to this pair than at first meets the eye.

The town annals of Derby have the following laconic entry for a day in October 1771.

“The Prince of Hesse Darmstadt and the Chevalier d’Eon visited Derby. ”

So what? I hear you cry. A couple of foreign toffs passing through, no doubt.

Well, it was a genuine royal visit, for the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt was, although actually bearing the title of Landgraf of the Holy Roman Empire, Louis IX (1768-1790) whose son, Louis X was elevated to the rank of Grand Duke of Hesse and The Rhine after the defeat of Napoleon.

The Chevalier d'Eon

We do not know where he stayed – when King Christian of Denmark came in 1768, accommodation was found at the George – nor why he was in Derby at all. There are some good clues, however.

First up, Louis was completely bonkers. He suffered from the delusion that he was St Peter. He thought that Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who visited him on several occasions, was St Mary Magdalen. He was also a keen strict observance Freemason, a form of continental mystic rite that was completely alien to most British Freemasonry, but one which included much of the arcane said to hark back to the age of the Templars.

As Louis was a friend of Georgiana, it might be thought that they were perhaps en route to Chatsworth, but in fact they left the next day for Liverpool, of all places, and not the “Palace of the Peak” at all. Nor were they here to buy Derby china, for there is no record of any having been supplied to the Prince. Louis had bought some ormolu items from Matthew Boulton, though, and was later to commission some pottery from Josiah Wedgwood.

The man who seems to have been in charge of selling such items on the continent for these two was Peter Perez Burdett, a wandering fixer, a personable rogue who was ever short of funds but also a strict observance Freemason as well as an important cartographer, mezzotinter and astronomer. He lived in Full Street, Derby, from 1764 to 1768 after having stayed with his astronomical and freemasonic patron Lord Ferrers at Staunton Harold for three years.

His friendship with Joseph Wright was a lasting one, too, despite him owing the artist 100 guineas for over a decade. In 1768 he suddenly went off to Liverpool, followed by his creditors.

In my opinion, it was quite likely, given the haste of Burdett’s flight, that his Royal visitors had no idea until they got to Derby that their friend had moved precipitately on. Significantly, in December 1775, he was taken on as state cartographer by Louis IX’s brother-in-law, Karl Fried- erich, Markgraf of Baden, where he remained, affluent at last, until dying in 1793.

So, who was the other chap in the party, the Chevalier d’Eon?

Well, here is a most extraordinary character, entirely appropriate as a travelling companion for his master, Louis. Charles G. L. A. A. T. d’Eon de Beaumont was born in 1728, a member of a minor noble family from Burgundy. He was a Captain of Dragoons at the Court of Louis XV of France, when talent-spotted as a potential spy by the Duc de Broglie and recruited by the French Secret Service (Secret du Roi).

Among many other assignments, he made a visit to the Court of St Petersburg in Russia, dressed as a woman. And he was so convincing that he shared a bed with one of the Empress Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting for a year, without, apparently, a word of complaint! He later returned twice as his own brother without anyone suspecting.

In the end, he was obliged to go into exile in England following a scandal arising from his attempts at blackmail with stolen papers following the negotiations surrounding the Treaty of Paris in 1763, by which time he was a strict observance initiate.

He was also still inclined to disguise himself as a woman, and in 1777 swore to the French government that the troubles between them stemmed from the fact that he always had been a woman. This was in order to strike a deal over the papers he had stolen in 1763 so he could return to France.

In the long run the French establishment attempted to humiliate him. He was confined to Marie Antoinette’s private quarters and it was only his astonishing facility as a swordsman that convinced people not to cross him/her. Eventually he returned to London, where in a court case, Lord Chief Justice the Earl of Mansfield found him to be a woman. It also spared him certain death in the French revolutionary Terror.

In fact, after his death in 1810, an autopsy proved that despite having very convincing breasts – although they hadn’t convinced de Beaumarchais when the French court sent him over to test him out in 1777 – d’Eon was “in all respects” a man.

His presence in Derby was without doubt as a minder to poor deranged Louis IX, in his role as freelance diplomat, but together their visit probably had more to do with their shared enthusiasm, with the absent Burdett, for esoteric Freemasonry.

If only we knew what happened next!

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