Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/464

 and the "Emilienne Lettres". In his correspondence he wrote that he "never felt so strong, so well, as when he could get rid of all his masculine vestments of a forced virility". Napoleon found him brilliantly clever. Goethe spoke—though without criticism—of the Duke's open effeminacies. To a quite similar type, Adolphe-Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg (1753-1794) who also constantly affected feminine gear and ways, reference was made earlier here.

In the first volume of the series "Vieilles Maisons, Vieux Papiers" by Georges Lenotre (the eminent chronicler of so many little-known personalities of the French Revolutionary period) occurs a careful study of the pretended "Mademoiselle Jenny Savalette de Langes," who was really of male physique, and who had an eventful and discreditable history at her back before "she" began an extraordinary imposition of feminism, upon a wide circle of distinguished and humble friends; until "her" death (in 1858) at Versailles. "She" received large pensions and was greatly esteemed, during a long career, as the "daughter" of a noted émigré, who had served the Artois family before the Revolution. One odd explanation of such proceedings makes "Mademoiselle Savalette de Langes," a certain "B—," who forced a lady of high title to aid in such a long concealment of sex. The affair is, however, not at all clear to-day, and is not likely to be so. A colouring of homosexualism seems part of it, in view of "Mademoiselle Jenny's" love-affairs with an official of the Assistance Publique; as also_with an officer named Lacipière. "B—" (if such the man was) sustained his rôle with absolute success. Not until his death was his sex disclosed; a revelation that was at first discredited everywhere he had lived.

An American example of such masquerade, a military