Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Queer Georgians

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

How did the Georgians discuss sexuality? And how, and why, did they regulate it? In this episode, Kate talks to Dr Anthony Delaney about his new book 'Queer Georgians: A hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers and homemakers'.Listen to find out the truth about the Chevalier D'Eon: soldier, spy ... and transgender trailblazer?Anthony hosts our sister podcast, After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, with Dr Maddy Pelling.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Bertwix the sheets. And we do like to get a bit spicy around here. So in the interest of safety and public decency, I do have to tell you.

This is an adult podcast. spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way covering away, a adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. We call that the fair do's warning, because if you keep listening and you get upset, well, fair do's, we did try to let you know. Right, on with the show.

No, betwixters. You're joining me in the year 17, 18. at Carlton House, and we are watching a fencing match. Quite a big crowd has gathered, actually. The two contestants are Monsieur de Saint-George and Mademoiselle la Chevalier de Ion. Huh. There's nothing too surprising in a fencing match happening at this point, except that the chevalier is a woman, or are they? Is that a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman? Is it a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman? Nobody is very sure. And mystery about the chevalieres. Valet's gender has been circulating for a very, very long time.

But just who was this person? Why are they dressed as a woman, dressed as a man, dressed as a woman, dressed as a man, dressed as a woman, dressed as a man? What brought them to this place? What is the truth about their identity? And what is their legacy today? Well, I am about ready to find out if you are. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my wife. by just turning it up and pushing the body. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I feel for them. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello, and welcome back to Patrix the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. The Georgians may not use the words that we do today to talk about gender and sexuality,

but that certainly doesn't mean that gender queer people didn't exist at the time, because they most definitely did. And today I am joined by the magnificent Dr. Anthony Delaney, co-host of our sister podcast After Dark, to talk about his new book, Queer Georgians. Oh yes, that's right. We are going to explore what it meant to be queer in Georgian Britain. How did they talk about their sexuality?

How did they talk about what we would call queerness today? And what kind of lives did queer people live? So of course we're going to be talking about the Chevalier de Eon, and a French soldier turned diplomat and spy and somebody who is somebody who is still known today for their gender fluidity. But as always, there is more to this story than meets the eye. Should we do it? Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets.

It's only Anthony Delaney. How are you doing? I'm good, Dr. Kate Lister. How are you? Oh, I'm probably doing a bit better than you. As the time of recording it is one week and minus one day to your book lodge, how are you feeling? Overwhelmed, a little bit sick to my stomach. No, actually quite sick to my stomach. I've had a tummy bug for the last couple of days, so that's being glamorous.

But yeah, no, it's good. Look, it's just going to happen now, isn't it? And it's one of those things. It's weird because it feels like really close. And at the same time, there's still a big old stretch of time to go. But it's exciting and it's good. And it's good to get all of these things out into the world. So I'm not, you know, holding them to myself.

So, no, it's good. It's good. Yeah, it's, that's slightly vulnerable moment of like the sort of feeling of like, I could still back out. Not really, but you sort of have this odd thought that somehow you could. And we were saying this during the week just separately to something else. Like, I am actually really antisocial. I don't like to go places. And I have to go a lot of places to promote this book. And like, please come. Don't not come just because I'm saying that. Like, it'll make it easier if you are there if you're listening to this. It'll be worse, the irony of it, but it'll be much worse if nobody's there

to see him. So much worse. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you have to be very social. and you have to do the thing that a lot of people are very good at. You have to push yourself forward. I know, but like, I just, it's awkward, right? But that is the world of books now. And that is a nonfiction as well. Like, it's a tough all game, right? And it's only getting tougher. So it's like, we just have to have no shame and go, listen, I think I did this thing. And I'd like you to read the thing. So maybe you should read the thing. And it's, and hence me infiltrating your podcast, as if I don't have one of my own. Well, we're really pleased to have you. Before we even start talking about the book, I'm going to give it the full title. I have it here. Queer Jordans. Jordans.

The fuck. Who's queer Jordan? I play a character called Jordan on Harry Wilde. So it's me. I'm queer Jordan. You're queer Jordan. Oh, help. What on earth was that?

It's rather late in the day. Queer Georgians. Kate, honestly, mad twat. Right, but the thing I want to talk to you about, first of all, before we even get into this, the dedication, Anthony Delaney, for Paul O'Grady, raise a trailblazer history maker friend. I'm sorry. When did you know Paula Grady?

So I met Paul in 2011. I was fresh out of drama school. I had, I was doing this very small little play with himself and Celia Imrey and one of my friends Hermione Gulliford and just the most camp cast that you have ever come across in your entire life and Paul was there. I didn't even know. I did not, we didn't announce him as part of the cast and I turned up to rehearsal on day one and and I was late. Cardinal Sin, tubes in London, don't ever rely on them. And I turned off and I was like, why am I hearing Paula Grady on the other side of this table? That's not possible. But there he was. And it was just, and he was like an unofficial page boy at my wedding. And he hung out. And I gave him history books. The last history book I gave him before he died was a history of Newgate prison. So he was reading that at some point. And I saw him. I was very, very lucky. I saw him the Thursday before he died. And he was in great form. He'd just come off stage. after playing Mrs. Hanigan and Annie, and he was up to Hideau. And listen, I was editing this at the time.

I was editing Queer Georgians, you know, coming to the end of the first draft or whatever, and when I got the news that Paul had passed and I went, I happened to know a little slice of queer history, like in real life. And there was nobody else then after that thought came into my head that I was like, right, it's his book. And yeah, so I hope somewhere he'd be absolutely laughing his socks off

at having a queer history book dedicated to him. But yeah, it's a great thing. thing. Genuinely quite starstruck, like, through you. He was such a hero. I've watched everything Lily Savage ever did and just, I mean, wow, what an absolute icon of a human being. Totally.

And that's the word, isn't it? It's icon. And I remember I was going to my first meeting at Penguin and I was coming out the tube at Vauxhall and, you know, the dedication was all set and everything. And it was my first meeting after I'd written the book, you know, just to talk about what we're going to do in publicity. coming up the tube out of Vauxhall and there was a life-size cut out of Lily Savage

just before I walked out of the tube into the penguin offices and I went to myself, right, she's there, she's overseeing it. And listen, it's just an absolute gift of a person to know. And I think really importantly, actually, and this has only occurred to me in the last few weeks and months as I'm talking about this a little bit more, really important for queer people to know the generation before them

and to be having that conversation about what that has looked like for them and what it looks like for us and what it looks like for the generation coming up behind us, I think it's important to keep that kind of conversation going to know where we are in the world and how it's changing all the time. So, yeah, an absolute gift of a person. For everybody, even those who didn't know him personally, but watched him on TV or whatever, like just a dream.

I'm going to have to pick this up with you over a pint somewhere because I can't do an entire podcast episode on how did you know Paul Krutty. Although I bet you feel like your number one podcast episode out. People are going to write in now, but no, no, no, no, that's what we wanted. But let's talk about queer Jordans and then we'll talk about queer Georgians because this is a fabulous book, Anthony. Now what made you want to write about queer Georgians?

And you can't just say because they're cool. Do you know what? And some of them are quite cool actually. But no, and I'm the least cool person. Some of them are assholes by the... Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. I think I was really keen to kind of to show that. I think what it was was I was really interested in some of the same questions that the Georgians were asking about gender in sexuality, I became really aware of that we're asking today. The only difference, well, not the only difference, but like, one of the main differences is the Georgians weren't as mad about getting answers to those questions as we are.

They were far more concerned with, like, just exploring what the stupid questions were and all their messiness and all their whatever. Now, that's not to say, I don't want to over egg the pudding there and say, like, oh, they were really tolerant and we've got more conservatives. They were literally killing men for having sex with other men. So, you know, like, that's the reality of what's going on here. But it's not until we kind of come into the 19th century that we start to get this idea of classifications and identity classifiers. And it's there that you start to people really start to demand answers.

Who are you? What are you? What makes you a man? What makes you a woman? And we're still grappling with those questions today in some really kind of uncouth and unseemly ways. I don't know why we feel the need to tear these people apart to get answers to very simple binary questions. The Georgians weren't so concerned with that in the same way. we are, although they had some fairly despicable approaches to some of these ideas of gender and

sexuality themselves. How do you define the Georgian period? Because this is a slippery one for histories, but for the purpose of this book, how do you define that? I kept it pretty tight in terms of like, I went from 17, well, the book starts in 1726 and goes to 1836. So for me, the Georgian period runs from 1714 when George I first comes to the throne and then ends in 1837 when Victoria comes to the throne. I include William IV in that time span. Why, sure, listen, I don't know anything about the man, to be perfectly honest, other than he was on the throne. I don't think many people do. But that's where I draw my time period. So yeah, so we're going mostly in the 1700s and then into the first little glimpse of the 1800s as well. Okay, so I'm going to do my best whiny

voice now and I'm going to say, I'm going to say, well, you're going to bounce, gay, they're not gay, they're not gay, we didn't say gay, that's modern. Yeah. You know what? It is very good. Very good. The thing for me with this is, right? You can't call people queer in the 18th century because they would never have identified themselves as queer. First of all, that's true. Second of all, they also didn't call themselves Georgians. But Kate, as you will well know, no fecker. Literally nobody has ever called me up on that. No. As historians, we constantly use anachronistic terms. The way we understand family today is not how Georgians understood the word family. Then, But I've also heard people talk about heterosexuality in the 18th century. Nobody questions that because we think we have this default line of understanding what heterosexuality is. We don't need to question that, but you can't say queer. And here's the thing.

You can, and you just have to get on with it. Like, we can't tongue tie these questions. Also, some people, they don't like the word queer, especially some older members of the LGBTQIA plus community. I totally respect that. And I think that's a different thing. And they will call themselves gay or whatever that they might call them. themselves. It's not the same question. That's a self-identifying mark. But queer, as you well know, has been in use in academic circles for a very, very long, since the, you know, 60s, 70s predominantly

and even before that. But it's now, you know, obviously made its way into everyday use. And we cannot hold queer histories to a different barrier of proof than we do, all the other histories. So historians constantly use anachronisms. This is anachronistic, sure, but it's a tool we have to communicate the past effectively to a large audience. And that's, that's just what it is. I don't think it needs much more discussion beyond that, you know? As a sex historian, could you imagine if I was only allowed to use historically accurate terminology to everyone would think I'd absolutely lost my mind entirely? And potentially we're being a bit offensive. Yes, exactly. They would think that I had gone mad and was being insanely offensive for no reason. So we do change the way we talk about

these things. But just as, you know, underneath all that whining, how did the Georgians, understand what we might now call a queer sexuality. I'll come at it from the side of gender first. I think that'll give us a way in to look at the sexuality side. They had this idea of the third sex, and they knew that there was men, they knew that there was women, and they knew that there was something else in between.

They weren't quite sure how that would come together or what that actually meant, but they knew that it wasn't binary. People were identified within those categories, the people in Queer Georgians, John Lord Harvey, he was identified as being a member of the third sex. And Lady Mary Wortley-Montague commented at the time that there was men, women, and Harvey's. And so there is this idea definitely that this is not a binary thing. That is just taken for granted in the 18th century. So then in terms of sexuality, it's approached in a similar way that it's not

one or the other. It can be a long spectrum of experience. But again, I don't want it to sound like that spectrum was tolerated necessarily because for men who had sex with men particularly, that could and did cost them their lives. But certainly there was an idea that, you know, you'll see in queer Georgians that some men who go to trial for sodomy and having sex with other men, they bring into their defense, but I was married or I had a child. It is a way for them to try and convince people that, well, this couldn't have happened because I also have sex over here. But it's also part of that conversation that we have today about the erasure of by identities. I mean, the 18th century is filled with that. So it's not as binary. It's not as

rigid. It's not as classified. The identity markers, they don't understand, they wouldn't have understood in the same way as we do today. So it feels like it is a more, without trying to overemphasize the tolerance. Once again, I know I keep saying that, but it is important, I think. it seems like a more fluid time in terms of gender and sexuality in some ways. The fact that they understood there was gender variance and a kind of a movement between what we might now say as a binary is not the same thing as saying that it was tolerated. Those are two different conversations to be had. In fact, the fact that they didn't tolerate it shows you quite definitively that they

were certainly aware of these cultures and these preferences. Yeah. And I mean, one of the things to bear in mind, and you will see this throughout the book, is that women tend to be far more aligned with the possibilities of gender and sexuality variation than men are. And I think one of the reasons for that is what so much boils down to is power. So if you think about it, you have women were allowed to live together, even if they weren't same sex attractive. It was actually very encouraged. The whole time we were shagging one another and they didn't know.

Well, exactly. But it gave this possibility, right? That women who were having sex with women were able to do that behind closed doors. And it feeds into the misogyny that's associated with women at this time in terms of women are associated with the domestic space. So it's not unusual if you see women at home. Men weren't allowed to do that because a men weren't associated with the domestic space in the same way, although the figure of the cock queen, which is an 18th century other type of man who has sex with men as opposed to the Mollie, or alongside the Molly, I suppose, definitely existed. But here's the thing, here's the real crux of this, I think anyway. We have examples in the book of say John Lord Harvey and Stephen Fox, who goes on to be Lord Holland. These are two really important, influential, rich politicians, men, MPs, courtiers. Those two households coming together.

Can you imagine what that was, that is a big block of power? So you can't allow that to happen. Like, the other men in power have to make sure that that is stopped and that that is shamed. And this is pre the 1753 Marriage Act when, you know, the different ways in which people come together is not as formulated as it is post-1753 Marriage Act. So, you know, you can marry somebody just by declaring your devotion to them in front of any witness. It doesn't have to be a member of the clergy before that. And Mollies and men who have sex with the men are employing this language and these devices.

You cannot let elite men do that in this time because that power block is going to be too influential. It'll literally change the map of the country if that happens, or it has the potential to at least. So that's my theory on why men are legislated against at this time and their lives are forfeited. but women are not. That's one of the many ways in which that women kind of go under the radar at this time. I think as well that that, I think you're absolutely right with that, but I think also it's about penises. I think it's about this, and you can trace this.

Isn't most things about penises when it comes down to us? If that money, power, penises, it's all the same. Yeah, yeah. I think whenever you look back through history, you get a recognition of same-sex behaviour throughout all of history because it's always been there. But weirdly what you get, even in cultures where, like, we think that they were really tolerant, is you get this stigma around, it's always focused on the men,

and it's a stigma around the one who's being penetrated, the one doing the penetrating, fine. So it's the one who has to be the girl. So I think a lot of this is actually, it's fear of power what he said, but also it's a misogyny, because that's the threat that the gay man poses to the heterosexual man, that the gay woman doesn't pose to him. Yeah, and I mean, it's why it proves so volatile and so full of, hatred as well because if it was purely just power, you would see it being fought in a different way. But actually, it's sneered at. It's quite snidey. It's quite insidious the way the attacks are fanned out against men who have sex with other men. And that feeds into then women who, and you'll know far more about this than I will, but like women whose reputation is somehow sullied through the sex actor, through their association with sex or whatever it is. Through the

So it's like there's a lot of different things happening here that set this particular time period up to be fairly volatile time if you're looking at same sex attraction for either men or women. Yeah. What's a cock queen? Tell us what that is. So a cock queen was, well, this is how I kind of started things with the PhD. I was reading, I was reading, I was reading, and I was like, the mollies, the mollies, the mollies. And people think they know what mollies are, by the way, but they don't necessarily, you know, I think people have this idea of, yeah, they have this idea of, you know, they're like really fancy elite man and he's got very white powdered face and he's got like a beauty spot. That's what people think of Molly is. But that's just a general elite man in the 18th century. That's a macaroni.

and those are different things. Macaronies are having sex with women. That is one of the defining features of a macaroni. Whereas the Molly is usually working class, so he's not going to have that finery, and he won't have that beauty spot, and yes, he's explicitly having sex with other men, whereas the macaroni is not.

Now, the Coch Queen, on the other hand, is another man who's explicitly having sex with other men in the 18th century. That's what they say. That's contemporaries saying that. But the Cock Queen is found in more domestic spaces and can be of different social classes. So it's not just a working class figure.

So the molly tends to be in taverns, tends to be in alleyways, tends to be in cruising grounds. The cock queen is keeping home, often with another man, fairly good at the old baking and the cooking and all that kind of thing. Very effeminate.

Oh, I know some of them. I'm one of them. Well, apart from the fact that I can't cook, I'm shit at keeping house. But I just, you know, I like to be in my house. It's a terrible lie. Don't listen to it at all. but it's a more domesticated association than the molly is the molly doesn't occupy a domestic space the cock queen does

so it comes from cot meaning house and queen meaning woman so it's it's also doing that thing that you said about bringing misogyny into it going you've become a woman god what a terrible thing to do yeah could you think of anything worse no and i just i just found that so it was during my phd that i stumbled across this reference to the cock queen and i was like what on earth is that i couldn't find it anywhere else in any of the reference books. It just wasn't. There was no explanation available. And so I went back to the primary source material. And there's a shitload for want of a better word of material on the cock queen. Like a whole PhD's worth, basically. And that's what I research for those three years. So he is a fascinating, fascinating figure. And to me,

in the PhD, this is kind of one of the conclusions. Queer men, same sex attracted men, I think, have given us the formulation of how we understand home today. And they did that. in the 18th century. It was a set of cock queens who did that in the 18th century. They set how we understand home today. And actually, if you think about it, in some ways, it's not all that surprising. But, you know, same-sex attracted men, queer men are often tastemakers when it comes to domestic space even now. So it's like, you know, it was certainly there in the 18th century as well. So that's what the cock queen is. Wow. I love a cock queen. I love a cat queen. I do you know, I was talking to my mom about this just the other day. I was like, I just, I'm so sorry,

heterosexual men. I don't think you're going to be upset by this statement. But I just don't want to be with them. But I could see myself being in a lavender marriage with a nice gay man. Well, in the 18th century, there was guidebooks for people who were getting married, women who were getting married. And they were like, don't marry a cock queen. So they would have, they would have gone against your instinct there. Do not marry a cock queen because what he's going to do to you is he's going to pickle you is what they referred to it as. Basically, preserve you in a way that a wife shouldn't be preserved, i.e., you're not going to be having sex. You're not going to be having children and he's going to be in charge of the house. So he's going to pickle you in that domestic

sphere. So there were warnings to women. But I just think like some women were probably like, I'm going to grab myself a cock queen because could I be bothered? I know. Give me a good pickling, quite frankly. But that's fascinating. So it permeated into culture that much because a lot of the time when we're looking at history, because of the nature of the sources that are left to us, we're often looking at rich people's history because they're the ones that could read and they're the ones who made it into the court records. And it's just skews the bias that way. But if there are sort of manuals out there, again, I suppose this is stuff that people would

have been reading. But that suggests that this awareness was all layers of society. Everybody knew what was going on. This wasn't like rich macaroni's, although they weren't doing it at that. No, no, this wasn't rich macaroni. This was, it could have been, cock queens could have been, like I said, John Lord Harvey as a cock queen. But they were also, the first ever cock queen I encountered.

who was identified as a cock queen in the 18th century was from a little Welsh mining town and he ran a house for his. The way they put it was this one man had a house with his wife and his family and then he had another house and this cock queen ran that house for him. Wow. And so yeah, it was like there was almost two separate families that this other guy had. The Welsh cock queen that I encountered first, it was a working class cock queen and, you know, was making bag puddings. You'll find an awful lot of ballads. talking about cock queens, which again is very working class because they were not meant to be written down necessarily. They're meant to be heard in the taverns and in the, you know,

in public spaces like that drinking culture. And so the cock queen, unlike the Molly, transcends those social classes, but is very much still present in working class culture. I'll be back with Anthony and the Chevalier after this break. Now, one of the, there's lots of very, very interesting figures in this book, stuffed full of them. But the one that we're here to talk about today is probably, well, you do a lot of revising and a lot of reassessing. But I think probably one of the most dramatic reassessment you do is on the Chevalier de Dion. I knew I was going to fuck that up. How do I say it? No, you did. You said it. I said the Chevalier deion. I said the Chevalier deion. But as I said to Kate

before I did this, I also failed my first year French exam. So who knows? Somebody will write in. I'm sure you've got listeners in France. So yeah, the Chevalier, it's, do you know what? This is one of those things that kind of upset me a little bit when I was doing because I thought. You didn't want to do it, did you? No, I thought I was going in writing like a triumphant trans history and I was like, oh, you know, this is going to be this. And those are in the book actually. It probably my, my favourite chapter is the final one and that's Mary Jones. And I see that as a triumphant what we would now term trans history. But this one is what I thought I was, you know, people may have heard of the Chevalier Dion. It's the kind of, you know, if you Google her, she's the BBC proto-trans

fencing 18th century celebrity. And that is how she sold. of the Chevalier. Yeah, there's a very famous portrait of the Chevalier at the National Portrait Gallery where you and I will be in a couple of days' time chatting about this thing again. But there's also another really famous picture of the Chevalier who was fencing in front of the Prince of Wales,

the future George IV, against the Chevalier Saint-George, and she's dressed in her female attire. And it's, you know, it's supposed to be this spectacle of, oh my gosh, a woman or somebody who is not gender-bound fencing in a dresserge. dress was the scandal of the time. It's just not what I found. And, you know, once we find what we find in the prime resource material in the archive, we have to go with that or else we're not doing our jobs as historians. But actually, then I was like, you know what, this is so messy and so

brilliantly queer. It's no less important. And actually, I think it's more important that we acknowledge he viewed himself. And by the way, I will be switching pronouns because he referred to himself with female pronouns 55% of the time and male pronouns 45% of the time. So I just follow his lead. I just do whatever she did

and that's what I do. So that's the thing for the way I work it. So I switched between the two as she did. So yeah, it was a different history than I thought I was going to encounter.

So who is the Chevalier Dionne? Well, Charles Dion de Beaumont was born in France in Tonner in 1728 and he is born into, I suppose, modest privilege. His family are a law family. They have a nice country seat. He goes on to study law himself. And he's actually quite brilliant, like very smart when it comes to arguments. He can be quite, you know, underhand, but in a good way. And it's not long. He's about 28 years old

in 1756 when he comes to the attention of Louis the 15th now, the King of France. And the way he comes to the attention of Louis the 15th, is through his secret service. And the King's Secret Service is known as the Secret Du Roy. And so that means the secret of the king or the king's secret. And this is Louis's spy channel. And it's a difficult thing for people, even at the time to reconcile because Louis might, say you're in the cabinet, right? You're in the French cabinet. You're part of the legitimate government. Louis one day might say to you, now, Kate, I want you to do X, Y, and Z. But then if it come to me as a member of the secrets and say, now I told Kate this, but actually, I need you to do ABC instead. She's not going to know that's happening, but you're the only. So the secret were really,

really powerful and they were kind of doing the whole channel of power thing, but behind the scenes. So often it was said that Louis was issuing orders to his right hand and then contradicting them with his left hand, basically. So he was setting up this kind of power dynamic. One of Charles's first major appointments is as the secretary to the French ambassador in Russia, so it's a diplomatic role. He goes over there in the 1750s. What they're trying to do at this time is to negotiate for a peace to the seven years war. And this is a global conflict that's bringing in kind of all the superpowers of the time, mainly France and Britain. And they're really trying to find out like who is doing what in terms of their foreign territories. So this is going on beside his

role in Russia as well. Who owns what foreign territories? Because you know, they're all trying to take over bloody everything and they're trying to ruin everybody's lives as if nobody ever lived in all these countries. So France and Britner are scurrying around for these pieces of land. Diplomacy fails. So in 1760, Charles, because he's not the Chevalier yet, Charles goes to war and he becomes a captain of the dragoons. And just as he was an amazing diplomat, he was an amazing captain of the dragoons. And he really was like really, the men loved him. The leaders were really delighted with what he was doing. He was a smart, smart cook. And once that kind of peters out because, you know, war is expensive.

Everybody wants peace. 1761, then they send him to London as part of a peace envoy, led by the French do, led by the Duke de Nivernais. So he's taken from Russia, taken to London as part of this peace envoy, and we want a peace process. And it comes, there is a peace agreed. It's called the Treaty of Paris. And, you know, it's good for Charles because he gets to deliver the terms of this to the king in person. So, you know, it's a big deal for him. He's really starting to cement his place.

But the French don't come out the best in this peace deal. They have lost a lot of their land in North America to the British, and they have given up a lot of their trading routes in India. So this is how we see Charles on the stage first. You know, he's all over the place. He's doing a lot of important stuff. But after the king feels a little bit slighted by this peace deal, he says, right, Charles, you're going back to England.

You're going to continue there as the secretary, and you are going to be my spy. I want you to keep gathering intelligence. And my plan as the French king is that I am going to invade Britain. Oh, no. Yeah. And I'm going to show them that they should have given us better terms. And Charles says, yeah, absolutely fine. I've got this.

And off he goes. And then he takes up his official position as secretary to a man named Niverney. And he's the real ambassador. But all the while, he's kind of gathering this information behind. the scenes. Okay. So he's a very good spy at this point, at least. He's a good fencer. He's a good diplomat. He's a good person to have around. Was he living as a woman, identifying as a woman, any hints at this point that you have found? I'm going to say no. There is a rumor that later starts that says yes, but I found no primary source material contemporary to this time to show that he was.

Later on, it said that he was, in Russia, that he had appeared as a woman. But for me, from material at the time, I haven't found anything. And I would caveat the material that does come out later, because it says he appeared at court a couple of times as a woman. But 18th century masquerades, men would often appear as women. And it didn't mean it was part of their gender nonconformity. It was just an expression. Now, I'm not even saying we don't even know that it was at a masquerade or if it even happened.

My instinct is, it probably never happened. and if it did, it was probably in the context of some kind of masquerade, some kind of celebration. But there is no contemporaneous evidence at this point in his story that he wants to or has attempted to live as a woman. So where does this come from them? Because if you Google Chevalier-D-on, you will get endless articles about how this is one of the earliest recorded trans people that we have in history, that this is somebody who was gender fluid, that this was somebody who identified as a woman. Lots of people will only use the female pronouns. Where did this come from? Well, it all goes to shit, Kate.

And I think that's where it comes from. We have this situation where Charlotte spying. He then has the ministers back in France going, what's this fellow sending home? We don't understand some of the stuff. Why is he talking about military positions and why is he giving us this intel? We didn't ask for this intel,

but of course the king had asked for it. And so this tension starts to come, together and Niverna goes back to France. There's no ambassador in England. And so Deon starts to take over some of those roles. But then he's replaced by DeGersey as the official new ambassador. Well, Dion's not happy. His nose is put out a joint and he starts leaking some of the letters because he really wanted that role and he wants them to know that he's unhappy. So he leaks some of his letters. But not a great spy now. Now not a great spy. And he leaks the letters from the French government to the British government.

And he doesn't give the big ones. He just like, he makes them look foolish. He doesn't say there's an invasion planned. And he also keeps everything back that implicates the king. But he makes some of the ministers look like fools. France is not happy with this. They stop his payment. So he starts to lose all money.

But England is loving him. They're going, oh my God, look at this. He's a hero. Yeah, yeah. They're just so, so happy with him. And they're like, we're going to keep you. We're going to celebrate you. He moves out of court because now he's not got an official position.

He lives at 38 Brewer Street in Soho, the queerest address of all. But he starts falling into debt really, really quickly. And he continues to make the French look absurd in so many different ways, one of which he says, I want the equivalent in today's money of £8 million for the rest of my letters, or else I'm going to keep leaking these things that are going to undermine your authority. He says that to the French king. He says that to the French king. Oh, that's a risky game.

It is. And de Gersie, the diplomat takes him to trial for this. He says, no, I'm going to sue you for liable. Dion is found guilty. And there's even a rumor that DeGercy hires a hitman to kill Deon at this time. And I know this is all coming back to your question. Where do these rumors start from? And this is when we start to see that it's really important that the secret du Roy,

don't forget about them, they're the spies, that they start to be called back into being a little bit. And Louis the 15th says, hold on, this is making us look like idiots. He recalls DeGercy, who's the ambassador. And he says, right, Charles, Dion, come back into the fold. We'll pay you again. You need to be our spy again. Everything's going to be fine. And Charles says, well, I will, but now I want 23 million, the equivalent of 23 million pounds.

Why would they want him to be a spy? He's a shit spy. He's a shit spy. But I think they think they can control him if he's within their, And he's in so much death that he's desperate for money. And they just want to stop publishing stuff. They just want him to stop. Because they also know what's in there.

What they know is that he has letters saying, we're going to invade Britain. That cannot, I mean, you know, the wars back on if that happens. So it's about this point in 1769 that rumours start to circulate that the Chevalier Dion was born a woman. Not that he wants to live as a woman, but that he was born a woman. And that in order to hold on to his family's land,

he presented as male throughout his life but had been born female and they had duped the system basically. So this is when the first archival evidence is in 1769. And that's also when you get the rumors about him appearing as a woman in Russia as well, by the way. So it's, you know, it all happens around this time. And yeah, I think it is my theory, based on the archival evidence, it's my theory that that's not a coincidence,

that those rumors are purposely planted. at this time. That makes sense to me that, because that's a smear campaign basically, and it's one of the oldest tricks in the book, is that you discredit somebody, so therefore whatever they say is going to be questionable from that point onward. But didn't the Chevalier start to inhabit some of that themselves, or did none of that ever happen? Because you said in their memoirs, they referred to themselves 55% of the time with female pronouns. Why are they doing that if it was all a big smear campaign? So the chevalier at this point, still in England. At this point in the story, he has never appeared in female clothing. Never.

Never. We are now up to, let's say, 1771, it's starting to spread like wildfire, still presenting as a man. He's still refusing this as slander. This does not happen. He's saying this did not happen. We know that by 1772, there are bets laid on the stock exchange for up to about eight and a half million pounds in today's money, detailing the Chevalier's true sex. So people are placing bets about what the true sex of the Chevalier is. This will be relevant later. The first person to start that betting system is a French man, by the way. And I think that is crucial. But here's what the Chevalier has to say himself at this time, right? He admits that he's mortified by these rumors. And he says, and these are his words, and they've been overlooked, I think. So let's

delve back into them. He says that he's mortified. to be as nature still made me. And by that he means a virgin. He hasn't had sex. And they, he says this to de Brogley, who's part of the Secret du Roy. So he's saying this to the spy master, basically. And he says that because of that, my friends, and I think that's key, my friends have given the idea that because of his being a virgin, they have imagining in their innocence that I was

of the female sex. because, you know, that virtuous virgin thing is far more womanly in the 18th century than it is, than it is seen to be a man. So they're saying, well, if you're a virgin. And I think this is important too. He says he has no temptation whatsoever to sexual indulgence with either sex. And if that's the case, if we were to identify that as what we would now term ace or asexual, this predates what we thought the earliest archival reference to asexuality is. by over a century. So that is who I think the Chevalier is, is a, what we would now term asexual person who is basically blackmailed because of his queerness, but not in the way

that we thought. So do you think that the narrative that the Chevalier identified and lived as a woman, it was just basically a smear campaign? Yes, but it gets more complicated, sorry, because eventually he is, there's a trial in London to determine his sex. I know that sounds gross because it is. Why would you need a trial for that? I mean, really? Well, they excused it because so many people had placed bets, they wanted their money settled.

It's still crap. It's still crap. So it wasn't necessarily, his gender and sex wasn't on trial, the money was on trial, but as a result, they had to solve the gender and sex thing. And so what you get is you get Monsieur Jacques, Monsieur Lagou, and Monsieur de Marant, and they are coming into London.

They come to the court of the King's Bench at Guildhall in front of the judge, Lord Mansfield, and they lie. We know they are lying. They're saying, I've had sex with her. She's a woman. She told me she's a woman. One of them, Lagou is a doctor. And he says, oh, yeah, no, I've been treating her for female maladies for quite a long time. This is definitely a woman. Keep in mind, they're all French. So the Chevalier, he's ruined. He's so ruined in English society. He has no choice but to go, okay, I'll come back. And by the way, the king in France is calling him back the entire time because now Louis the 15th has died. Louis the 16th is on the throne and he abolishes the secret du Roy. He does not want a spy system happening. It's very weird to him. It feels really medieval. He wants something far more upfront and political. And so he is recalling the Chevalier. He's like, come back, come back, come back. And the Chevalier won't. But after this awful thing that happens to his reputation after the trial, he feels he has to go back. But the condition of Louis XVIth is that if he sets foot back in France, which he's telling him he has to,

He must reassume the dress of his birth, i.e. dress like a woman. So it is the king's order that the Chevalier dresses as a woman when he comes back into France. And the Chevalier leaving goes, oh, he won't make me do that. I'll still go to France. He's not going to make me do that once I get back. But he does make the Chevalier do that. I'll be back with Anthony and the Chevalier after this break. This have all been very easily resolved with the Chevalier just dropped to the pantaloons and went, behold, a penis. I know that today we have different discussions. But that in the 18th century would have been, oh, that's not a woman, definitely. Well, let me tell you, Kay. That was supposed to have happened. There were two official reports that came out that the French government undertook to say he had been, yep, to say that he had been looked at by members of the French court,

by medical professionals in the French court, and that they can absolutely determine that he had been born female. We know that this is not true. And you'll see how we know this at the end of the story, but it is categorically untrue. He was not born female. And so, you know, you're talking about the smear campaign. They are determined.

So this is why we have the image of the Chevalier in female dress, because yes, once he gets to France, he is made to adopt female dress. And he fights against him. He says, please don't make me do this. I don't want to dress in female dress. So he comes home, dresses in his male attire, gets arrested for two weeks for doing so. And then in order to come back into society, has to adopt female dress. That is where that starts.

So it's not until somewhere between 1777 and 1784 that the Chevalier first. And he's in his, you know, almost 50 by this stage. And that's when he first adopts female dress. Not because he wants to, because he's forced to by the French crown. Why did Louis the 16th to do that? Just a slow day at court? Or like, was he in the habits of making people put on fancy dress to come and see him? No, but I think it feeds into the same thing the entire time.

This is a dangerous and a volatile person. We need to discredit her. Because now she's appearing as female quite a lot. So we need to discredit her. And we need to make it seem that, A, either people need to believe that either A, she's a woman, outright was biologically a woman, so you shouldn't be listening to her anyway,

or B, at least cast doubt over what's going on. And they really successfully do that because we're still confused about it today. Yeah. Jobs are good, lads. Yeah. How does this, how does the story end then? Does the Chevalier is like forced to live as a woman in public for the rest of their lives?

Kind of. I mean, that's, the Chevali, she does come back to England in 1785 because she can't bear to be living as female at the court in France. And she thinks that when she comes back to England, she'll be able to reassume male attire. Now, there's always been the idea that from that point onwards, she lives as a woman. And that's supported by that portrait I referred to earlier of her fencing in female attire. and I had just assumed that that was a given. But when I looked into the advertisements that were advertising the fencing matches that she was doing all throughout the country, she appears in male clothing during those fencing matches. Now, not the first one in front of the Prince of Wales at the time, future George IV, we know she was in female attire then. But the rest of the time, as far as I can see, or at least a very high proportion of the time, I have documentary evidence in the book that says she was in a female attire.

appearing in male attire. But get this. There was a reason for that. And it was because it was people have believed so strongly that she was born female, that now they thought they were seeing a female dressing in male attire. So that was also sellable. She had no money. It's marketing. She was broke. And she had to feed into this marketing too. And so even in her memoirs, which by the way are mostly fiction, she says, yeah, I was. I was born a woman. And this is how I was discovered. I I fell off my horse on London Bridge one day and I got speared in the groin and I had to be attended to by a doctor and there was blood trickling down the street. Never happened. Never happened. No, that didn't happen. No, but she's trying to survive at this point in her life. She is trying to

survive. She's living on New Millman Street with a widow called Mrs. Mary Cole, a naval widow. And actually, I'd be really interested to know a little bit more about that relationship. That's one of the things I didn't get around to in that chapter was to really establish what's happening there. But Navy widow, that sometimes crops up as a euphemism for a sex worker sometimes. Yes. But here's, we're getting into territory where they're having to be pushed to the outer limits of society. So it would make sense that that could be happening. So I'm intrigued to know what that might be.

So she's basically eking out a living, but we know for a fact that also people back in England understand her as a woman now. I think it's fair to say that. That's the brand. That's the brand. And she refers to herself as a woman at this time. and that's what's happening. And she's fencing to make a living.

But she doesn't get away that easily because she gets injured. And she can't fence anymore. And she really kind of just, you know, goes into poverty at this point and she can't make a living for herself. And she just, you know, it's really, really a really sad end.

And we know that, to come back to my earlier point, that she wasn't born female because finally when she does die on this 21st of March 1810, there isn't long a way to do. autopsy. And I have seen the imagery that's produced from this autopsy, and I don't include it in the book because I just think it feeds into some pretty nefarious things that are even happening today in terms of this fixation on genitalia. But it is signed off by some of the most, you know,

forthright naval surgeons and medical men from the early 19th century London. And without a shadow of a doubt. I think the words they use is that she is a perfect male. But she tells us in, you know, she tells us in her own words that she became a girl against my wishes, she says. I became a girl against my wishes and that the gowns that were given to her by Marie Antoinette and the jewelry became her, again her words, golden chains of my new slavery. So I think to a certain extent, because queer people, you know, I am, as you well know, I'm one of those people, we so often are left short in our history and we're desperate for our history

that when we see something, we grasp onto it and we make it make sense to us without having done the primary source material research which we know as historians again. It's human nature. We want to be defiant and we want to be triumphant and we want to find ourselves in the past.

You want a good story. And you want a hero, exactly. And you know what? She is a hero, just maybe not in the way that we thought she was because she is, as so many of these queer Georgians are, she's a survivor. She survives this somehow.

And it's degradation after degradation often, but she comes back and she, you know, she lives to be 80 something. I think she's 81 or some 82. Yeah. In those days, you know, it's good innings. And so she is a hero. And maybe for ace people or asexual people,

they will see a new hero in that. That's underrepresented. And it shows the ways in which gender and sexuality in the media, in the public eye, at this time, or gender specifically in sex, is manipulated, is kind of hounded after, and is, it becomes shamed. And I mean, you can't tell me that's not happening in our own time. You know, we see it all the time. And you know, here we are now, 2025 still talking about this and still trying to kind of, I say in the book, we're still trying to solve the bet, still trying to

find out what's going on here. And at the end, I just left, I think I finished the chapter as far as so many chapters now, I can't remember. But I think I finished the chapter with her words. because I tried to get back to them, although sometimes it's hard to find the truth in them because there is so much invention. But she says, I am what I am. I declare that the intention of the Lord creator in creating this multiplicity and this diversity of men and women on this earth has been to render them all equal in the eyes of God and his law. So I think we would do well. Remember I said at the beginning, we could do well to remember the ways in which they're questioning but not demanding answers in the same way. And it just comes down to what she says, I am what I am. We don't need to

satisfy our curiosity. She is what she is. And to me, she's remarkable. And she's still history making. And she's still a history, you know, someone we need to look back at. She's still queer in so many different ways. As we said, it was not necessarily the history that I thought I was going to encounter. So there you are now, Dr. Kate Lister. There's a little bit of the Chevalier. And that's just one story in the book, everybody. That's just one. amongst many. But before I let you go, and I'm going to see you again next week, but before I let you go, who's your favourite? That's a horrible question. I shouldn't ask that. Because I got a real sense of when I was reading it is you kept encountering people. You never said explicitly, but there was just this like, oh, they're a dickhead. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, there's a few dickheads. Do you have any that you're like, yes, you? And lister, enlister, dickhead. And lister, dickhead. My favourite though is, is a kind of a celebratory trans history.

It's final chapter takes place in New York in 1836, and it's the brilliant Mary Jones. We've just done an episode on her on After Dark, so you can tune in there to listen to all the different ins and outs of her life. But she's a black trans woman, black trans sex worker in 1836, and she is amazing. She does not take no for an answer. And to such an extent that people at the time, just to the same, just to. have to say, we don't know why she keeps coming back in dresses. We don't know why she keeps presenting as a woman. But whatever it is, even incarceration can't stop nature because nature is taking its course with her. She is who she is again. Now, they treat her terribly. Again,

don't get me wrong. But with Mary, one of the things, we leave her in that chapter is the very end of the book. So we leave her in the whole book, walking down one of her beats and she is dressed in fine. She, I don't know, she must have spent all her money on clothes because she had the best clothes at the time. She had the best wigs. She was just brilliant. And she, we leave her walking down the road after about 12 arrests in a very short space of time. The thing about her is, she gets back up every single time. And that sometimes is all it takes to make history. Persevere. And it's terrible to have to ask people to do that. And nobody, only Mary asked Mary to do that. But boy, did she do it. So she, sometimes I genuinely thought this. Sometimes I'm having a shit day and I'm

like, I can't be bothered with this today. I'll go, Mary Jones got back up every bloody time. And, you know, there's something in that. And she is my, my queero, my queer hero from, they're all, you know, to certain extent, they all have different heroic elements, I think. Because I wanted this book to be very joyful. And I think overall it is. But she's my one. Oh, Anthony, you've been marvellous. I knew you would be. And if people want to know more about you and your work or if they just want to listen to more of you. Where can they find you? Well, sure, look, go over to the After Dark feed and you'll find me on there with Maddie Pelling. And we present all the spooky-uky history bits coming up to this time of year. Oh yeah, you're in your element,

aren't you? I know. We're coming into it, aren't we? We're coming into our powers now. We've been depleted for the last few months. And so, yeah, you can find me there. Anthony did any history for my socials. And of course, queer Georgians, a hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers and homemakers. By the time this is out, we'll be out now. Amazing. Well, you come back again and talk to us about more naughtiness. No, this is it. This is the end of this crossover, so. No, of course I will.

Actually, we need to have you on. You've only done one after dark, haven't you? Yeah, I've done any after dark. Wait, have you done any after dark? No, we just got drunk in the pub. No one was recording that. Oh, lads, how have we let that slip? I know.

Everyone else has been on. Oh, we'll sort that one out. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll sort that out. Until next time, gorgeous. And you love, see you next to be. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Anthony for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along,

whatever it is, you get your podcasts. Coming up, we continue in our endless search for history's biggest fuckboy and we will be meeting the naughtiest pope. Not in the same episode, or perhaps it should be. But if you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagi and produced by Sophie G. the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again,

Betwixta Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.