Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. VII, Eonism and other supplementary studies / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
[1928], ©1928
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. VII, Eonism and other supplementary studies / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/564 (page 6)
    During the life-time of the Chevalier d’Eon (1795) a woman was born who became to some extent his feminine counterpart and had a long and distinguished professional career in masculine garments as James Barry, Senior Inspector- General of the English Army Medical Department. She was said to be the grand-daughter of a Scottish laird and entered the army, attired as a man, at the age of 18, to become a hospital assistant, passing through all grades, in male costume, to the rank she finally attained, and serving in various parts of the world. The Inspector-General was said to be quarrel¬ some in temper, once fighting a duel, and often guilty of breaches of discipline, but the offence was always condoned at headquarters. Barry was described as “the most skilful of physicians and the most wayward of men,” in appearance a beardless lad of unmistakably Scotch type, with reddish hair and high cheek bones; there was a certain effeminacy of manner which he was always striving to overcome; his conversation was greatly superior to that usually heard at a mess-table in those days. Barry died in 1865. There is no indication of any sexual tendency in her history, whether heterosexual or homo¬ sexual, and we may believe that, as is fairly common in this psychic anomaly, the sexual impulse was not strong, and, therefore, easy to divert and sublimate in this transformation. Rather earlier than Barry, a much more famous and romantic woman of the same type appeared in English aristo¬ cratic circles, Lady Hester Stanhope.* 1 On the death of her father, the third Earl Stanhope, who was highly eccentric, but a remarkable and able man and a notable inventor, she was Lacroix), and the same work, under the title of Memoires de lAbbe de Choisy Habille en Femme, was published in Paris in 1920 with a some¬ what longer introduction. 1 The Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope, by her niece the Duchess of Cleveland, 1897 and 1924. This is regarded as the authori¬ tative biography, though the Duchess never saw her aunt. There are many other lives, both in English and French, some of them superficial and inaccurate, merely serving up the old material afresh. Among the best, perhaps, may be reckoned Frank Hamel, Lady Hester Lucy Stan¬ hope, 1913; Julia Roundell, Lady Hester Stanhope, 1909. There is a brilliant little sketch of her in half a dozen pages of Lytton Strachey’s Books and Characters, 1922.