by Emily Hahn
The child at birth was certainly considered to be a boy, and this, remember, for a human being is the most important moment for decisions as to sex. Never again will the question matter so much to so many people. Never again will the little creature’s private organs be subjected to such publicity. Midwife’s inspection, mother’s first question, father’s natural anxiety as to whether his offspring is to be an aid or a millstone—rare indeed would be the baby about whose gender any mistake could prevail. Moreover, in the Burgundian town of Tonnerre where he was born, on October 5, 1728, there seems to have been no gossip about d’Eon’s early years. He was not isolated like a freak; he had a wet nurse, and she, like the midwife, never contradicted the report that he was a boy. He was baptized and registered at church as a boy, with the following staggering list of names: Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée Déon de Beaumont. The family name was not spelled “d’Eon” until much later, when King Louis XV began to write it like that, thinking the latter version looked more swanky. Young Déon was called “Charles Geneviève” for short. The feminine “Geneviève” may look significant to English eyes, but many men in France have feminine names somewhere among their labels. They are called “Anne” or “Marie” because these are saints’ names: little Charles Geneviève happened to be named after an aunt.
Charles Geneviève had one sister; his only other sibling, a brother born before him, had died soon after birth. The family was not a famous one, but they were noble and well enough off, and the child was given a good sound gentlemanly education. Though rather undersized, he was sturdy, good at games and exercises, and an excellent fencer. He was apt at his studies, and took a doctorate in law before his twentieth birthday. This did not necessarily prove prodigious cleverness, but it was better than average and must have called forth admiring comment in his family’s friends: most of his circle were not bookish. However, he came by his talents naturally, they decided, for his father wrote and published an occasional pamphlet.
It must not be supposed that books were Charles Geneviève’s only pleasure. That is one of the interesting things about him. Had he been a delicate young man who hugged the hearth and shrank from rough pursuits we might better understand those later developments which astonished Tonnerre, but he was not. Déon liked his bottle and his boon companions. He was a normally dissipated young gentleman of his century, fond of a glass and a game of cards. When he was called to the bar of Parliament and went to Paris, he might have been any one of a number of such young men.
The only generally popular pastime which he never went in for, as his friends were to recall in later years, was chasing women. But France did not in those days enjoy, or suffer, the music-hall reputation she now bears for super-sexiness; young Frenchmen, like young Germans and Englishmen and gentlemen in general, led vigorous lives conditioned by the complicated continental wars of the time. Drinking, not wenching, was the social obsession, until gambling took its place. Déon loved to drink, but he also wanted to get on in the world. This desire for advancement was probably considered the influence which kept him steady. It would not be the first time ambition has crowded love from a man’s mind. No doubt his early companions explained away his chastity, in so much as they worried about it at all, in some such fashion.
Charles Geneviève’s father died in 1749, soon after finding a good post for his son as secretary to the Intendant de la Généralité de Paris. This job provided the young man with a groundwork of knowledge of government finance which he turned to account several years later when he wrote a book on national finance under Louis XV and the regency. A natural-born scribbler, he soon followed up the publication of this little volume, producing a few pamphlets on related subjects. As a result, he made friends with the journalist group of Paris. Then, all in the natural course of events, because of his appointment to the intendant, he held for a time a post as one of the royal censors of literature. What with all this writing and publishing, Charles Geneviève bade fair to settle down into middle age as an intellectual rather than a man of action. But politics soon changed all that.
France and England came to blows and started the Seven Years’ War in 1754, when Déon was about twenty-six. We are apt nowadays to think of geography as a formidable obstacle to eighteenth-century statesmanship because communications were slow and difficult, but in a sense they were not so difficult as they are today. One is struck, reading the record of international negotiations, with the family atmosphere of the whole thing. European war as it was fought in those days seems almost cozy. Love may have been betrayed and murder done, to quote Rupert Brooke in another connection, but at least everything that happened to those monarchs seems to have happened within a tight little perimeter. And their methods seem much less violent; almost gentle. Their weapons cannot compare in killing potentiality with a simple modern peacetime motor bus. In two hundred years the thundering roar of their biggest cannon has died away into silence. So has the grief that followed. They killed, but the tragedies thus perpetrated do not live save between the lines of government archives. From which we may deduce that for all the coziness of royal relations, emphasis then as now was not on the individual.
Records are deceiving. The disputes between eighteenth-century European sovereigns sound, when we read of them, like ill-natured family squabbles rather than the battles of giant armies which they were, which left sorrowful heaps of dead bodies on the battlefield. Bodies rot and disappear; widows remarry; soldiers are forgotten. Only the querulous letters of diplomats remain. History has few traces of the families bereaved and despoiled by Louis XV’s ambitions, but at least we do inherit a mass of gossip.
Louis XV was a strange man. His nature actually reveled in deceit. He played people off against each other with such zest that he told lies even where it would have been better policy, both in the short and the long view, to tell the truth. He had what it is only understatement to call a devouring passion for intrigue. It was he who perfected the institution of “intelligence” as we know it today, where espionage, diplomacy, and planning merge. A few of Louis’s trusted courtiers spent all their time collecting bits and pieces of information about important persons of other nations. This material was regularly turned in to the King—very discreetly, for he never let his Foreign Office know what his secret service was doing, nor even that it existed—and he would pore over these reports, studying with relish the news his scavengers brought him about private habits, preferences, and intentions of people who for one reason or another interested him. Italian, Prussian, Swedish, Russian, British—all were included in Louis’s dossier.
Gossip had it that Louis locked all these documents away, but that his mistress La Pompadour inevitably found access to them and spilled the secrets to her favorites. It may not always have been Pompadour who told. After all, Louis had to take more than a few people into his confidence, and the possibilities of leakage were great. But, whoever did it, the setup became so complicated and talk so wild that after a few years knowledge of Louis’s knowledge began to find its way back to those whose behavior gave rise to the original reports. His own ministers played for power as cunningly as he did, and there were hidden currents and struggles without number.
On one occasion the King’s secret weapon backfired in public. In 1744 his ambassador to Russia, Chatardie, had the most humiliating experience one can imagine: the Czarina Elizabeth kicked him out of the country. It seemed hardly playing the game, but her intelligence officers had spied on him. Those Russians! They had cleverly and dishonorably intercepted his private, unofficial letters to Louis, which as luck would have it happened to be packed full of unflattering descriptions of Her Imperial Majesty’s morals. Elizabeth was furious.
Now in 1755, eleven years later, Louis’s intelligence agents began to make efforts to repair the breach. These overtures were made secretly, since that was always Louis’s way, but even using the most tactful methods did not get French messengers very far toward Petersburg. Two of them were captured and im
prisoned as spies as soon as they entered Russian domain. Nevertheless, Louis continued to try. He had several good reasons to be interested in Russia’s internal affairs, not that Louis ever needed a reason to be nosy. He was acutely curious about Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the English ambassador to Petersburg, for he had information that Elizabeth was negotiating to lend Russian troops to England.
All of this is important if we want to understand Déon’s career. His friend, the Chevalier Douglas, who got into Russia at last, was a strange character, through whom Déon’s dainty, plump feet were ultimately to be set on the road to eminence. Mackenzie, not Douglas, was his real name. He was an ex-Jesuit, an exile, who served for some years as tutor in the house of the Intendant de la Généralité de Paris, the employer, we recall, of Déon.
Renegade Scot, renegade priest as Douglas was, he took well to the life of a spy. It must have been a great relief to get out of the schoolroom. He did better than his predecessors and evaded the watchdogs at the Russian border. Safely arrived in St. Petersburg, he achieved meetings with Elizabeth. She was so encouraging to his overtures that he hastened back to Versailles to report that the King might safely send a proper mission to Petersburg, someone empowered to sign a treaty with the Czarina on behalf of France.
This was good news for Louis. Douglas himself, he declared, should have the honor of bearing formal credentials as the French envoy back to the Russian capital. He was to correspond openly with the Foreign Office during negotiations, and secretly with the intelligence service, in the person of its head, Tercier, who was also, incidentally, chief clerk at the Foreign Office. For his secretary on the mission the new ambassador selected Déon de Beaumont.
Thus our hero found himself translated from humdrum work in the civil service to an adventurous, exciting job. In Paris they thought of Russia as a barbarous, romantic country, and no doubt they were right. Déon must have been thrilled by the prospect. The only drawback was that nobody gave him any money for his expenses. It was often that way when people embarked on these semi-official secret-service missions; everything was so very hush-hush that the agent’s salary too remained mysterious and invisible. The Chevalier Douglas had already departed, leaving cryptic directions: Déon was to follow and join him. Nobody else knew anything about expense money. The few people he dared ask kept passing the buck. Déon finally borrowed the impressive sum of ten thousand livres—one wonders how—and set off.
It was easier now for Frenchmen to get to St. Petersburg, and at court the atmosphere was much better than it had been before. Hanbury Williams was out of favor. Douglas found it beautifully simple to formulate a Franco-Russian treaty. In fact, Elizabeth was easier to manage than his own King, for during the negotiations Louis turned awkward. In the emergencies which resulted it was Déon who came forward and smoothed matters over, with tact and charm persuading the Czarina to give in to the French demands. He must have had great talent for this work, for he came out of it still friendly even with Douglas.
In truth he made a good impression wherever he went. The Russians liked Déon. He was a good mixer, a ready spender, and he had a strong head for drink, thanks no doubt to the Burgundy wine on which he had been brought up. He was a remarkably good fencer and horseman. There was only one thing lacking, in the opinion of the courtiers, to make him a perfect specimen of nobleman: he was no womanizer. Gallantry was a favorite indoor sport at St. Petersburg, but Déon was notoriously backward at it. This, it was evident, was no fault of the court ladies. Several did their best to encourage him, and they redoubled their efforts when he proved unresponsive. Had he played his cards cleverly he could have made a wealthy marriage. His well-wishers hoped he would do so, for he had lost his father’s money and had no private means, but oddly enough he showed no mercenary tendencies of this sort, though he was frankly ambitious in other ways. His manners toward the ladies were beyond reproach. He waited on them, paid them pretty compliments, hung about them, but made no amorous advances.
This indifference amused the court and caused comment. His boon companions teased him roughly. “You’re not a man at all,” they declared. “It’s our considered opinion that you’re a girl in disguise.”
Gleefully they embroidered on the idea. The more one thought of it the more reasonable it appeared. Why, Déon even looked like a girl. Look at his plump chest and his delicate hands and feet! He was small; his waist was slender, even supple. Then there was his soft skin and effeminate voice.… “You could pass for a girl anywhere,” said the Russian counts and barons.
Déon laughed good-naturedly at this badinage, but his laughter was not hearty and he turned the topic elsewhere whenever he saw a chance. He was always the same when people twitted him about his appearance and his austere disregard for sex. The subject seemed to displease him, as naturally it might; what he-man would enjoy such teasing?
Thus after dinner the gentlemen of St. Petersburg drank their wine and amused themselves with masculine jests, while the ladies in the drawing room strummed the harpsichord and idly twittered.
A visit to Paris indicated with what swiftness Déon was making his way. He had been honored by the Czarina on his departure; now Louis greeted him with kind words of praise, and valuable gifts. The King also began to refer to him in writing as “d’Eon,” a distinction difficult to describe in English save by saying that it implied he belonged to a high caste.
For all his success, he was not keen on going back to St. Petersburg, of which he was tired. But he could not refuse in light of the King’s insistence. Someone of his caliber was needed there, as Douglas had been recalled. The regular ambassador who took Douglas’s place, the Marquis de l’Hôpital, was not a member of the inner circle of intelligence agents. It was d’Eon’s task, and d’Eon’s only, to further the rapport between the Czarina and Louis, to arrange a private correspondence between them, and as a side line to sympathize with Elizabeth in her troubles.
What with the Czarina’s favor and that of his King, d’Eon enjoyed great power and responsibility for a man who was officially only secretary of the legation. Even when Breteuil, his titular head in secret service, arrived from France, d’Eon was given his own way to pursue their common aims. The two agents had a ticklish task to perform. The end of the weary war was in sight. England and Hanover had lost ground on the Continent, this being due in part to the recent excellent showing of Russia’s army, but English ships were meeting with such success that even Louis realized a general peace settlement was in order. His peculiarly twisted mind leaped straight ahead of the cessation of hostilities to the chances of double-crossing his allies as soon as the treaty should come up for consideration. He felt that he must at all events prevent his dear Russia from making too good a showing. With this laudable aim in mind, he directed Breteuil to retard Russian military operations in any way he possibly could.
It would be pleasant if we could find any evidence that d’Eon was shocked and disgusted by this example of Louis’s perfidy, but there is none. He had been one of the King’s ardent workers in the vineyard for a long time; many of his tasks had been of a sort hardly calculated to foster noble sentiments; presumably, like many other diplomats, he was past being shocked. He was, however, more than ever bored with Russia and the job. The war phase was drawing to an end and soon his special talents would not be needed there. He was not for a moment tempted when Elizabeth offered him a permanent position in her service. He knew she was sincerely fond of him, but he was homesick. Besides, life with the tempestuous Russians was notoriously chancy. As he wrote to a colleague at home in reference to the offer, his maxim was to keep his back turned on Siberia. In a letter to Tercier he said, “I will never leave the service of France for all the Emperors and Empresses in the world. I prefer to live from hand to mouth in France to being in the enjoyment of an income of 100,000 livres in fear and bondage.”
He was thirty-two, still young, with a very creditable career already on the record. Unlike others in his profession, he had as yet made no
bitter enemies. He was attractive, though of late, like many small men, he had shown an inclination to dumpiness. His fencing and horsemanship were as good as ever, and he was eager to take up what he considered his rightful profession of arms before the war should be quite finished. This keenness was all the more intense because Louis had recently promoted him to the rank of captain of dragoons.
One would have said he was a typical specimen of his time and class—a gentleman in the diplomatic service, well equipped by nature and training for his work, likable and intelligent; in short, just another bright young man. Only that one idiosyncrasy marked him out: he still showed no slightest tendency to marry and settle down.
D’Eon was happy when he was at last allowed to see active service in Germany. It is true that he did not serve in an ordinary capacity for very long, but that was not his fault. Besides, as a staff officer he was to encounter quite as much action as he would have, probably, as a regular captain.
From Versailles came orders: he was to be posted as A.D.C. to the Broglie brothers. The Comte de Broglie had met d’Eon in Poland when he was on his way to Russia. Broglie was himself in Louis’s inner circle and had remembered the clever young man; they would now be able to work together for the King. The count’s brother, the duke, who like his father was a marshal, was for his part pleased with d’Eon. While d’Eon, though at first dismayed to find he could not rid himself of intelligence work, was appeased to discover that he was genuinely in the Army anyway.
Soon after he joined the corps, in 1761, he found himself involved in controversy. The Marshal de Broglie and the Marshal de Soubise, presumably united in battle at Villinghausen against the Anglo-Hanoverian army under Prince Ferdinand, fell out. Soubise, jealous of Broglie’s better showing, failed to respond in time to the other marshal’s appeal for help, and as a result the whole battle was lost. D’Eon was of course furiously indignant at this betrayal of his chief, and his loyalty was later to cost him dear.
