Douglas set forth, disguised as an intellectual British tourist, in
the summer of 1755, and it is Captain Buchan Telfer's view that d'Eon
joined him, also as a political agent, in female apparel, on the road,
and that, while Douglas failed and left Russia by October 1755, d'Eon
remained at St. Petersburg, attired as a girl, Douglas's niece, and
acting as the _lectrice_ of the Empress, whom he converted to the
French alliance! This is the traditional theory, but is almost
certainly erroneous. Sometimes, in his vast MSS., d'Eon declares that
he went to Russia disguised in 1755. But he represents himself as then
aged twenty, whereas he was really twenty-seven, and this he does in
1773, before he made up his mind to pose for life as a woman. He had a
running claim against the French government for the expenses of his
first journey to Russia. This voyage, in 1776, he dates in 1755, but
in 1763, in an official letter, he dates his journey to Russia, of
which the expenses were not repaid, in 1756. That is the true
chronology. Nobody denies that he did visit Russia in 1756 attired as
a male diplomatist, but few now believe that in 1755 he accompanied
Douglas as that gentleman's pleasing young niece.
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