Bloody Foreigners!!

 Some pictures of Porthleven from my sketchbook, and something else....



For my birthday in July, I was given a book with the challenging and ironic title of "Bloody Foreigners", the story of immigration into this island since prehistoric times. I have to share with you the following extract from the 18thC, in the context of how liberal England was at that time.



The licence to be dandyish attracted one of the century's oddest

immigrants: Charles Genevieve Louis Auguste Andre Timothee

D'Eon de Beaumont. The unusual mixture of masculine and

feminine names was neither an accident nor a sentimental whim:

the child, born in Burgundy in 1728, was of uncertain sex. In a

bizarre compromise he was baptised as a boy, dressed as a girl and

dedicated to the Virgin Mary as both.

From the age of seven he/she

was educated as a boy, eventually graduating as a doctor of law. A

use was then found for the ambiguity of her/his appearance; she

was sent to St Petersburg on a secret mission to the Empress

Elizabeth disguised as a woman. When he returned to France, it

was as a captain of dragoons. He came to London in 1762, where he

lived lavishly and in public as a man. Challenged by the Count de

Guerchy to prove that he was not a woman in man's clothing, he

refused to satisfy the curiosity of the authorities.



The public, too,

was anxious to know the truth, and there was heavy gambling on

the subject. In 1774 the case was resolved against him, and he was

ordered to wear women's clothing. A subsequent case was brought

by an incensed (and out-of-pocket) gambler. Again the jury decided

that Beaumont was a woman. She cut quite a dash, no doubt, in her

ringlets and perfume, though she had not forsworn macho

adventures: in 1787 she fought a duel, with swords, in her women's

costume. This earned her some useful celebrity, and for a while

afterwards she gave fencing lessons. In 1796 she was wounded and

retired, but she survived until 1810. She had spent the last thirty-six

years of her life as a woman, so it was something of a shock when

it was discovered, on her death, that she had been a man all along.

The examining doctor admitted that her throat was 'by no means

masculine' and that her breast was 'remarkably full', but there was

no mistaking the more obvious evidence: 'The male organ', he said,

was 'in every respect perfectly formed'.

He was buried in St

Pancras. He had been painted twice: once in a dress, once in

military uniform. In 1868 his gravestone was lost during the

construction of the railway line out of north London.

Happy days!!!!  The Leg.