Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah
Speaker 1: Down and I'm to Blame a talk reporting and we
Speaker 1: left off last time talking about the Chevalier d a spy,
Speaker 1: a diplomat, a soldier, and perhaps most famously, a man
Speaker 1: who lived as a woman for the last three decades
Speaker 1: of his life. And Dale has been in the news
Speaker 1: quite a bit since last summer, when London's National Portrait
Speaker 1: Gallery acquired a portrait long believed to be that of
Speaker 1: a middle aged woman. Closer inspection, though, revealed that the
Speaker 1: sitter was the famous, decorated and highly acclaimed Chevalier, wearing
Speaker 1: his trademark black dress of later years and even the
Speaker 1: prestigious medal of Saint Louis that he earned. It's the
Speaker 1: first portrait in the gallery extensive collection, or the first
Speaker 1: oil portrait rather in the gallery's collection to show a
Speaker 1: man dressed in women's clothing. So pretty headline making stuff.
Speaker 1: But we ended the last podcast before the Chevalier's transition.
Speaker 1: He was still a diplomat in the service of Louis
Speaker 1: the fifteenth of France and one who had served in Russia,
Speaker 1: a soldier who had fought valiantly in the Seven Years War.
Speaker 1: So this is the portrait we've had of him so far.
Speaker 1: In seventeen sixty two and sixty three, Dale had reached
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of his career. He'd helped negotiate the war's end.
Speaker 1: He'd been decorated with the Order of St. Louis, making
Speaker 1: him a chevalier, and he'd been sent as minister to
Speaker 1: Great Britain. He had also gotten another big promotion, but
Speaker 1: one few people knew about. For decades, Louis the fifteenth
Speaker 1: had maintained a secret secondary diplomacy called Le Secrete du Roi,
Speaker 1: or the King's Secret. It was a chaotic system, since
Speaker 1: louis owned foreign minister didn't know of its existence, and
Speaker 1: because the secret often pursued foreign policy object directly at
Speaker 1: odds with the official ones, which makes the story a
Speaker 1: little confusing at times. We'll imagine how it must have
Speaker 1: felt if you if you worked in a foreign policy
Speaker 1: for Louis at the time. But so after the disastrous
Speaker 1: Seven Years War, though where France lost a lot of
Speaker 1: influence and a lot of land to Great Britain, it's
Speaker 1: official foreign policy was, of course one of peace, the
Speaker 1: secret though had a different motive, and that was one
Speaker 1: of revenge, and so as a longtime agent of the
Speaker 1: King's secret, the newly minted Chevalier Dion had a really
Speaker 1: important role in this covert operation. He was supposed to
Speaker 1: lead agents that were scouting out the British coastline, looking
Speaker 1: for places to land and strategizing about some sort of
Speaker 1: armed invasion of Great Britain, So really serious secret agent
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you know, playing the minister being a
Speaker 1: negotiator piece on the one hand and publicly but also
Speaker 1: planning an invasion at the same time. Unfortunately for Dan
Speaker 1: alle Though, his rise coincided exactly with Madame de Pompadour's fall.
Speaker 1: The longtime mistress of Louis the fifteenth, who we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, was falling out of favor and had broken
Speaker 1: into the King's papers uncovering evidence of the secret, and
Speaker 1: her people desperately wanted to uncover what was behind it,
Speaker 1: and their first target was Great Britain and Dan What
Speaker 1: was the chevalier really doing there? So before we get
Speaker 1: into that, though, we have to discuss kind of the
Speaker 1: backstory of the chevalier's honors, because well, he was given
Speaker 1: the status of Minister to Great Britain, which was a
Speaker 1: great promotion for him. Essentially, it wasn't really a promotion
Speaker 1: that was for keeps. It was just until the new ambassador,
Speaker 1: a man named the Comte de Guerci, got there. And
Speaker 1: de Guerci was one of Pompadour's contingent, one of her guys,
Speaker 1: and so he was of course inherently pretty nosy about
Speaker 1: what was going on with the King's sea her it,
Speaker 1: and Dalen didn't have a very great personal opinion of
Speaker 1: the new minister either. He thought that he'd been cowardly
Speaker 1: in battle. Nevertheless, though, Dale was faced with losing his
Speaker 1: job to this guy, having to step aside and make
Speaker 1: way for him, and they really started bickering before Dick
Speaker 1: where she even arrived. When the new minister got to London,
Speaker 1: things just got worse to Dale refused to hand over
Speaker 1: his diplomatic papers, he ignored all the orders to return
Speaker 1: to France. He really dug in his heel. His public stance, though,
Speaker 1: was still one of loyalty to the King, but he
Speaker 1: still threatened to reveal something big, essentially trying to blackmail
Speaker 1: Louis into supporting him in his dispute with Diguerci, and
Speaker 1: so in March seventeen sixty four, Dyonn did something really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: He actually published his diplomatic correspondence, not going so far
Speaker 1: as to reveal the King's secret and his covert mission
Speaker 1: in Great Britain, something that could have called us the
Speaker 1: countries to go back to war. But it's still caused
Speaker 1: a huge stir Londoner's love seeing this French loose cannon though,
Speaker 1: And according to Jonathan Conlin in History Today, folks at
Speaker 1: first I started lending their copies out like libraries by
Speaker 1: the hour. Yeah, so it was the read of the day.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, he didn't want to reveal
Speaker 1: the whole story. He didn't want to disclose the King's
Speaker 1: secret because it was an insurance policy for him. It
Speaker 1: was a way to protect his life and to hopefully
Speaker 1: secure a better deal for himself with Louise Thance. He
Speaker 1: knew that was the last thing Louis wanted people to
Speaker 1: know about. But just to give a description of the
Speaker 1: kind of reaction people had to this book, Conlin includes
Speaker 1: horse Wall Poles seventeen sixty four take on the publication
Speaker 1: and and um, here's what he wrote, he said, we
Speaker 1: are full of a wonderful book just published here by
Speaker 1: the Chevalier Dion, and he spells it like Dion Sanders.
Speaker 1: You are to understand that besides a alls and curious circumstances,
Speaker 1: Dion's book is full of wit and parts, and what
Speaker 1: makes it more provoking. Our ministers know not what to
Speaker 1: do nor how to procure any satisfaction. To Guerre, She
Speaker 1: so yeah. Understandably to Guerre, she was not happy about
Speaker 1: this turn of events. He thought he was getting the
Speaker 1: sweet job in London. Maybe he'd start to figure out
Speaker 1: what the deal was with the secret while he was there. Instead,
Speaker 1: he is in the middle of this embarrassing public dispute
Speaker 1: with Dale, but Louis couldn't really help him out. He
Speaker 1: wasn't in exactly in any position to support him either.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to do anything that would make Dale
Speaker 1: angry enough to spill the beans on his secret, specifically
Speaker 1: the proposed invasion of Great Britain. So, again, true to
Speaker 1: his decades of secrecy and double bluffs, Louis at this
Speaker 1: point pursues two radically different policies. At one point, he
Speaker 1: ordered the police officers to Great Britain to seize Dale,
Speaker 1: but also sent secret word to the Chevalier to escape
Speaker 1: beforehand and secure his papers, so he helped him out
Speaker 1: at the same time, but he'd attempted to buy out
Speaker 1: Dale as well, offering him money for the documents detailing
Speaker 1: the secret and why the Chevalier was really in London.
Speaker 1: George the Third also wasn't really in a position to
Speaker 1: simply extradite Danel back to Louis either. The British people
Speaker 1: really liked him. They liked dan Alle, he was media
Speaker 1: savvy and he'd become a bit of a society spectacle already,
Speaker 1: and so they supported him over the angry Daguerre she
Speaker 1: who dan All accused of trying to murder him. He
Speaker 1: really did know what he was doing with the media too.
Speaker 1: He he got the people on his side. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: George the Third was already facing he for going too
Speaker 1: easy on France after the Seven Years War. He really
Speaker 1: didn't want to look he didn't want to extradite this
Speaker 1: popular man back to France and looked like he was
Speaker 1: just in cahoots with with Louis the fifteen. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been in a popular position to take. So nobody
Speaker 1: could really do anything. Danelle is just they're sitting on
Speaker 1: the secret. He knows he's safe enough with it. The
Speaker 1: two kings can't do anything about it. And that game
Speaker 1: just continued for years and years until Louis the fifteenth
Speaker 1: step in May of seventeen seventy four. At that point,
Speaker 1: his successor, Louis the sixteenth, was looking for ways to
Speaker 1: tie this up. I mean, clearly, it's a huge liability,
Speaker 1: it's a huge embarrassment. He's going to try to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to bring this story to an end
Speaker 1: and get the chevalier back in France where they want him.
Speaker 1: So to negotiate Daniell's return, Louise Foreign Minister engaged a playwright,
Speaker 1: Pierre Cameron de Beaumarche, who wrote The Barber of Seville
Speaker 1: and The Marriage of Figaro, two plays that were eventually
Speaker 1: adapted into the famous operas. Beau Marchet got the job done,
Speaker 1: and on November four, seventy Danielle sign papers called the Transaction,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to return to France, but only as
Speaker 1: a woman. Oh boy, First of all, I just have
Speaker 1: to say the Transactions such an appropriate name to conclude
Speaker 1: the secrets anyway, though, Yes, in order to secure the
Speaker 1: benefits of the transaction like a pension. They all had
Speaker 1: to be a woman. Unconventional, very unconventional. Just we should
Speaker 1: say that, just in case people think this was a
Speaker 1: normal tactic of of the Louis era. No, it was
Speaker 1: not a traditional sort of arrangement you had come to
Speaker 1: even though it might have served the purpose of marginalizing
Speaker 1: day all, you know, as as a female in an
Speaker 1: age when there wouldn't have been many opportunities for for
Speaker 1: a noble woman. There were way more traditional ways of
Speaker 1: doing this, like banishing a nobleman to his estate. You
Speaker 1: didn't normally say a start wearing ladies clothing and that'll
Speaker 1: be your punishment. Even stranger though, the transaction doesn't say, oh,
Speaker 1: just start wearing women's clothing, like for the first time,
Speaker 1: like you never did it before. It required that danon
Speaker 1: quote readopt women's clothing, suggesting that he had been a
Speaker 1: woman all along, but that he had been a woman,
Speaker 1: had at one point in his distant past disguised himself
Speaker 1: as a man, and was now required to go back
Speaker 1: to being a woman. If you can follow all that.
Speaker 1: And another surprising thing about this is, I guess the
Speaker 1: people really weren't too surprised by it. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: hard for people to believe that he might have been
Speaker 1: a woman exactly. According to Thomas Stewart's article for the
Speaker 1: National Portrait Gallery, it was accepted that women sometimes disguised
Speaker 1: themselves and lived as men in order to serve in
Speaker 1: a military capacity, or even simply to follow their sweethearts
Speaker 1: into battle. But everyone knew that Dan was a man, right,
Speaker 1: that's what you might think. I mean, certainly it seemed
Speaker 1: as though everybody involved in the transaction knew he was
Speaker 1: a man. But that's not really the case for the
Speaker 1: general public. And this is where the story and the
Speaker 1: motivations involved get pretty murky. But it's possible that the
Speaker 1: whole readopt women's clothing thing was just a way to
Speaker 1: marginalize in shame Dale. And if that were the case,
Speaker 1: it would work pretty well for both the French government,
Speaker 1: which of course could explain away Dale's radical conduct as
Speaker 1: that of a hysterical woman, you know, not as a
Speaker 1: rogue spy um. And it would work all right for
Speaker 1: Dale too, who at least would get to skip out
Speaker 1: on something worse like imprisonment in the best deal. And plus,
Speaker 1: if he had been a woman all along his career
Speaker 1: would would be over, so another plus for the for
Speaker 1: the French government side of things, But it was not
Speaker 1: necessarily against his own wishes, right It could have been
Speaker 1: Dale's own idea, something that appealed to him. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit in the last episode about how, depending
Speaker 1: on what source you read, Dale either showed no early
Speaker 1: interest in dressing in women's clothing or he'd been doing
Speaker 1: it for years. According to Art Daily, he may have
Speaker 1: even been buying corsets in London for years. What is certain, though,
Speaker 1: is that since about seventeen seventy there had been rumors
Speaker 1: about his gender, ones that he actually encouraged after abandoning
Speaker 1: his initial policy of challenging any doubters to a duel.
Speaker 1: Leading up to the transaction, people even took bets on
Speaker 1: whether Dale was a man or a woman. Pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: But from the transaction onward, Dale certainly embraced life fully
Speaker 1: as a woman. He took on the name Charlotte, added
Speaker 1: ease to that string of middle names. I guess I'll
Speaker 1: go through that one more time. His his new name
Speaker 1: Charlotte jen Viev Louise Auguste Andre Timothy Dale de Beaumont
Speaker 1: pretty easy changes for most of them. Still a mouthful,
Speaker 1: still a mouthful. Um. But he or she at this
Speaker 1: point left London for Paris in August seventeen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: I mean of that, of course, was what this transaction
Speaker 1: was for in the first place, amnesty. And by November
Speaker 1: Dye was presented at court to Louis the sixteenth and
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette. And this really might be my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the story, just because it's so unexpected. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you never read anything like this. It's just
Speaker 1: it stands alone. Dale underwent a four hour twilet that
Speaker 1: was done by Rose Bartown herself, who's the famous designer.
Speaker 1: She she did Marie Antoinette's clothes, but where hours still
Speaker 1: was not enough to impress the snobby ladies of Versailles.
Speaker 1: The Viscomte Stafar wrote quote, she had nothing of our
Speaker 1: sex but the petticoats and the curls, which suited her horribly,
Speaker 1: pretty mean thing to say. But still, I'm totally embracing
Speaker 1: the fact that Don is a woman. So after just
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks at her side, though, it must
Speaker 1: have seen that dressing in women's clothes was not going
Speaker 1: to be enough of a marginalization for this rogue spy,
Speaker 1: and Dale was sent back to uh to the Burgundy
Speaker 1: estate to live in exile until seventy five, when finally
Speaker 1: she got what she had been agitating for for quite
Speaker 1: some time, which was to get back to London, where
Speaker 1: she was still a really popular figure. Once back in London,
Speaker 1: Dan took to performing fencing displays and addressing cap and
Speaker 1: the British continued to really like her. Mary wall stone
Speaker 1: Craft held her up as an example of femininity for
Speaker 1: British women to emulate, and in seventeen ninety two she
Speaker 1: offered the French National Assembly. She offered basically to lead
Speaker 1: an Amazon army, and they the British just loved the
Speaker 1: idea of an Amazon army. The Revolution spelled hard times
Speaker 1: for Day, although she lost her pension from the transaction,
Speaker 1: she had to sell off a book's jewelry and even
Speaker 1: the Order of St. Louis when she was imprisoned for debt.
Speaker 1: She finally died at age eighty two in eighteen ten,
Speaker 1: poor and living with a widow named Mary Cole, who
Speaker 1: supposedly had the surprise of her life when she helped
Speaker 1: lay out the body of her old friend and found
Speaker 1: that she was actually a man. Death was really the
Speaker 1: only thing that settled that old question. Chevalier was physically
Speaker 1: a male. But there are still more mystery surrounding this story,
Speaker 1: and one of the main mysteries around Stale's decision to
Speaker 1: continue living as a woman in that last fifteen some
Speaker 1: odd years after the Revolution, after Louis the sixteenth execution.
Speaker 1: Clearly she wasn't in France anymore. She was not getting
Speaker 1: that pension from the transaction, which was after all and
Speaker 1: agree made with a now defunct government. So it seemed
Speaker 1: as though Charlotte could have just returned to being Charles
Speaker 1: the Chevalier, and it probably The answer to this probably
Speaker 1: depends on Dan's original motivation to accept the terms of
Speaker 1: the transaction in the first place. So Dale may have
Speaker 1: wanted to dress and live as a woman and was
Speaker 1: in this utterly unique position for an eighteenth century man
Speaker 1: to do that openly. The National Portrait Gallery for instant
Speaker 1: their assessment is pretty compelling. They wrote, quote, no transbust
Speaker 1: site or transsexual until the late twentieth century has enjoyed
Speaker 1: such public recognition and acceptance. So if this was Dion's motivation,
Speaker 1: then why stop just because Louis is gone. If if
Speaker 1: this was the life that she had wanted to lead,
Speaker 1: or another possibility here, if the gender reassignment had not
Speaker 1: been a willing choice at the time, maybe it seemed
Speaker 1: a smart one to maintain by the seventeen intees, especially
Speaker 1: without that pension. Danon, after all, had already reworked her
Speaker 1: life story as though she had been a woman all along.
Speaker 1: She profited from being unique, fencing in skirts and so on.
Speaker 1: She even sold memoirs in eighteen o five, though she
Speaker 1: never delivered. Maybe it would have been too hard to
Speaker 1: go once you've rewritten your life story and right, maybe
Speaker 1: it just and made a living that way. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: might have just been It might have not seemed feasible
Speaker 1: to make a living in another way, because of course,
Speaker 1: if she did return to being a man, she'd sort
Speaker 1: of be a man in disgrace, I mean, especially with
Speaker 1: with France still. But the painting acquired by the National
Speaker 1: Portrait Gallery, which we described a little bit at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the first episode, it actually gives a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of the level of the Chevalier's fame in
Speaker 1: her early days back in London. It's a seventeen ninety
Speaker 1: two copy by Thomas Stewart of one done in seventeen
Speaker 1: by Genre Molsnier had even been shown at the Royal
Speaker 1: Academy UM in the painting, it's really easy to find
Speaker 1: a picture of it online. But Jale is wearing her
Speaker 1: signature black dress. She's wearing a large hat with a
Speaker 1: revolutionary bow, you know, tricolor bow on it, her order
Speaker 1: of Salt Louis metal. And the copy would have been
Speaker 1: made in England around the same time that the Chevalion
Speaker 1: was offering to lead a troop of Amazon, so really
Speaker 1: at that height of her fame, and according to Art Daily,
Speaker 1: it somehow got lost around n and then somehow along
Speaker 1: the way was mislabeled and misattributed until when the London
Speaker 1: art dealer Philip Mould found it out in New York
Speaker 1: sale and it was listed as we As we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the last episode, Misless misidentified as a woman's portrait
Speaker 1: done by Gilbert Stewart, who, of course is a very
Speaker 1: famous artist. He's known for his unfinished painting of George
Speaker 1: Washington the Skater. Pretty much the portrait that comes to
Speaker 1: mind if you think of anybody like Thomas Jefferson, John
Speaker 1: Adams all done by Gilbert Stewart, so it was just
Speaker 1: believed to be this middle aged lady Gilbert Stewart had painted,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's what everybody thought for for some
Speaker 1: time at least. But Mold knew that something was off here.
Speaker 1: According to the Guardian, he said here, quote, even in
Speaker 1: its dirty state, it was quite clear that this woman
Speaker 1: had stubble, and it really, I mean, it is quite
Speaker 1: clear that the picture is of a man. I mean,
Speaker 1: I maybe it's just because I know, now, what did
Speaker 1: you think of Lena. I think it's also clear, not
Speaker 1: just because of the stubble. I mean, I guess female
Speaker 1: facial hair too, but it does look like a man.
Speaker 1: The cleaning revealed even more masculine features as I noticed,
Speaker 1: plus the Thomas Stewart's signature covered with the Gilbert Stewart's name,
Speaker 1: and today the Chevalier is getting a second wave of
Speaker 1: respect and admiration. Lucy Pelts, the National Portrait Galleries curator
Speaker 1: of eighteenth century portraits, said Dane was quote fascinating and inspirational.
Speaker 1: You do really find the assessment and a lot of
Speaker 1: the more recent news articles about the Chevalier and about
Speaker 1: this portrait and the importance of the portrait in the
Speaker 1: Galleries collection. But I also find it fascinating that just
Speaker 1: as Mary Wolston Craft had held up the Chevalier Dale
Speaker 1: as an inspiration and as a model for courageous womanhood,
Speaker 1: the Chevalier is today being held up as an inspirational
Speaker 1: LGBT figure. Um things that that seem kind of at
Speaker 1: odds with each other, but it's still the same person,
Speaker 1: you know who who's managing to inspire different groups for
Speaker 1: different reasons. And just a note here, before we we
Speaker 1: wrapped this one up. Language was quite tricky for the
Speaker 1: show because it's it's difficult to call Dale a transsexual
Speaker 1: or a transvestite, because the circumstances behind his sudden adoption
Speaker 1: of a woman's identity are still unclear. You know, whether
Speaker 1: it was forced upon him or whether it was something
Speaker 1: that he negotiated for. And the same is true with
Speaker 1: gender too. We decided to clearly go with the gender
Speaker 1: accepted by the public at the time, so a male
Speaker 1: for the first half and a female figured. If we
Speaker 1: tried to revise it, revise his life story and he's
Speaker 1: a female from the beginning, you all would know what
Speaker 1: we were talking about. Um. Plus, even if the vis
Speaker 1: contests was going with she. I mean, we needed to
Speaker 1: write exactly. And one little side note here, another additional
Speaker 1: side note. While he's praised for things like courage and intellecting,
Speaker 1: All was sometimes criticized for being unladylike, for example, hitching
Speaker 1: up his skirt to go upstairs, a critique that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily expect to be leveled in a man who
Speaker 1: was dressing as a woman. I mean, these are criticisms
Speaker 1: in his in his own day and art Daily describes
Speaker 1: the unique position of the chevalier in his time with
Speaker 1: this quote, which I thought summed it up pretty well.
Speaker 1: Eighteenth century society found it much more acceptable to calibrate
Speaker 1: him as a masculine woman rather than a cross dressing man.
Speaker 1: That kind of explains the portrait a little bit, described
Speaker 1: as a masculine middle aged woman. Um but I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just found this whole story really fascinating, clearly because
Speaker 1: of the secret and Madame da Pompadour and all of
Speaker 1: the spying. Um but just it's so unique. There really
Speaker 1: is not anything else like this. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: we talked about in our Amazon episode. We talked about
Speaker 1: a woman who disguised herself as a soldier um. But
Speaker 1: the chevalier stands alone, he really does. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: story and interesting that Madame da Pompadour keeps popping up.
Speaker 1: I know, maybe she's our new arcticle and Doyle I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know about that, but she's definitely
Speaker 1: an intriguing to try to give him a run for
Speaker 1: his money. So so, since we talked a good deal
Speaker 1: about a painting today, we thought that maybe we'd have
Speaker 1: a little listener mill about paintings, and this one comes
Speaker 1: from Maria. She wrote to say, Hi, I just listened
Speaker 1: to your show on the lot Lourie House and one
Speaker 1: of you mentioned being particularly freaked out by the story
Speaker 1: of the painting whose eyes follow you across the room.
Speaker 1: I don't know that might have been magically, No, I
Speaker 1: think it was. She goes on to say, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to say that you were going to spend most of
Speaker 1: your life freaked out. If this is indeed the case,
Speaker 1: since all portrait paintings, or indeed photographs where the subject
Speaker 1: is looking straight ahead, are guilty of this behavior, it
Speaker 1: is an inherent quality of the two D image. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: find any portrait and keep your eyes fixed on it
Speaker 1: while walking across the room. You will never lose eye contact.
Speaker 1: I tested out with Picasso over there. Yes, as we
Speaker 1: have mentioned before, we sit next to photos in the studio.
Speaker 1: Dablina has Tesla on her side. I have an elderly
Speaker 1: Picasso wearing his underwear, which some other fellow podcast host
Speaker 1: in the past has covered up at one point with
Speaker 1: a post it note. But I guess yeah, I could
Speaker 1: try to see if Picasso's eyes follow me, although it's
Speaker 1: it's not gonna matter because he's always to my right anyway,
Speaker 1: looking right at me. Right, that's true. I think my
Speaker 1: issue is more of the haunted painting than the eyes. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to stand by my statement that I think
Speaker 1: the whispering of the portraits creepier, and if anyone wants
Speaker 1: to send an email and explain that to me, I
Speaker 1: would appreciate it because I would like to the acoustics
Speaker 1: say that comes from portraits. Yes, all right, we'll be expected.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's something they all do. Mine don't. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Tess Love not whisper ing to Glena. Well he is,
Speaker 1: but that's because we have a connected between you and Tesla, right,
Speaker 1: all right, So yes, if you want to let us
Speaker 1: know about how any of our fears regarding portraiture or
Speaker 1: whispers are true or unfounded, you can email us at
Speaker 1: History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter
Speaker 1: a mist in history, and we're in Facebook. And if
Speaker 1: you would like to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: a clothing item referred to on this podcast, you can
Speaker 1: look up an article we have on how corsets work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one last thing on the Chevalier, when I read
Speaker 1: that he supposedly bought corsets while living in London, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to email Holly, who is the one of
Speaker 1: the co hosts of Pop Stuff and guested on this
Speaker 1: show a little while and our resident corset experts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we were talking about underwear, so any of
Speaker 1: y'all who listened to that podcast know it already, but
Speaker 1: I just had to check with her to make sure
Speaker 1: this was not a time when men were regularly wearing corsets,
Speaker 1: because that would sort of cancel out that the salacious
Speaker 1: detail of that fact, right, And what did you have
Speaker 1: to say? She had kind of a non answer. Admittedly,
Speaker 1: she said that it was not a time when a
Speaker 1: lot of men were corset, but it wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: totally strange to have something for your dress clothes. Maybe, um,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming that these were clearly not male corsets though,
Speaker 1: or it wouldn't have been reported. I decid to throw
Speaker 1: it in there, though a little noting people liked the
Speaker 1: underwear episode. People liked hearing about corsets. So now you
Speaker 1: know Chevalier corsets. Can go read more about course, it's
Speaker 1: in general at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com name to do