page_title: Chevalier d'Éon
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Chevalier d'Éon / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Mademoiselle de Beaumont or The Chevalier D'Eon Abstract: "D'Eon (W.L.) dressed half as a woman, half as a man. On his right side he wears a lady's full dress, his hair in the fashionable inverted pyramid decorated by a feather..." (Source: George) Physical description: 1 print&#160;: engraving. Notes: Forms part of: British Cartoon Prints Collection (Library of Congress).; Lond. Mag. Sepr. 1777. From the London Magazine, xlvi. 443.; Caption continues: Female minister plenipo. Capt. of Dragoons &amp;c. &amp;c.; This record contains unverified data from George.; Title from item.
context_page_description: Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, usually known as the Chevalier d'Éon, was a French diplomat, spy, Freemason and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War. D'Éon had androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic and a spy. D'Éon appeared publicly as a man and pursued masculine occupations for 49 years, although during that time d'Éon successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman. For 33 years, from 1777, d'Éon lived as a woman. Doctors who examined d'Éon's body after death discovered "male organs in every respect perfectly formed", but also feminine characteristics.
context_section_description: D'Éon was born at the Hôtel d'Uzès in Tonnerre, Burgundy, into a poor noble family.  D'Éon's father, Louis d'Éon de Beaumont, was an attorney and director of the king's dominions, later mayor of Tonnerre and sub-delegate of the intendant of the généralité of Paris. D'Éon's mother, Françoise de Charanton, was the daughter of a Commissioner General to the armies of the wars of Spain and Italy. Most of what is known about d'Éon's early life comes from a partly ghost-written autobiography, The Interests of the Chevalier d'Éon de Beaumont and Bram Stoker's essay on the Chevalier in his 1910 book Famous Impostors.
  D'Éon excelled in school, moving from Tonnerre to Paris in 1743, graduating in civil law and canon law from the Collège Mazarin in 1749 at age 21. D'Éon began literary work as a contributor to Fréron's Année littéraire, and attracted notice as a political writer by two works on financial and administrative questions, which were published in d'Éon's twenty-fifth year. D'Éon became secretary to Bertier de Sauvigny, intendant of Paris, served as a secretary to the administrator of the fiscal department, and was appointed a royal censor for history and literature by Malesherbes in 1758.
caption: Caricature of d'Éon dressed half in women's clothes, half in men's clothes
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