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de_eekhoornFrançois-Timoléon, abbé de Choisy (1644-1724) was the youngest child of a fairly high French government official and an ambitious and somewhat mercenary socialite mother. De Choisy was born in the first years of the reign of the then-child Louis XIV. Louis’ younger brother Philippe was encouraged to wear female dress as a child to make him less of a dynastic rival; and de Choisy’s mother raised her youngest child, biologically male, in female dress as well, as a playmate for Philippe.
For the rest of her life, François-Timoléon de Choisy preferred female dress and roles whenever it could be gotten away with, and at multiple moments more or less ran away in order to fully live as a woman: the current book (published posthumously) recounts some episodes of her life in which she was successful in doing so.
In our contemporary terms, it seems the most plausible to identify de Choisy as a trans woman, and accordingly I will be using female pronouns throughout - if only because, based on this book, I am 100% sure the abbé de Choisy would get a kick out of still being called a pretty woman three centuries later. In terms contemporary to the period in which she lived, de Choisy occupied an ambiguously gendered space: socially powerful enough to, for a while, live as a woman with her identity a completely open secret, not socially powerful enough to get away with this long-term; offered the career opportunities and in many ways the status of a man of the time, and often as a good courtesan adjusting gender presentation to whatever would be most advantageous.
While de Choisy did take holy orders and led church services at a number of occasions, the abbey of which she was nominally the abbot really only served as a source of income, the clergical equivalent of the many sinecure government positions offered to the nobility at the time. At one point, de Choisy served as ambassador on a journey to Siam, modern Thailand, and she also wrote a report of that journey, which I can assure you I intend to track down. She also wrote many volumes of church and other history, which my 1960s introduction notes to be written with style but imprecise in content; and a memoir of Louis XIV and the politics of the court surrounding him, which is apparently quite highly accurate and appreciated by historians.
The book contains two complete stories and fragments of a third, following more or less the same pattern. All purport to be factual accounts of certain periods in de Choisy’s life; they also share a narrative structure similar to the conventions of the erotic literature of the time.
In the first story de Choisy’s identity is an open secret; in the second she is ‘undercover’ under an assumed identity, the preservation of which involves a certain degree of danger. There are many loving and detailed descriptions of dresses and jewels, which tested the limits of both my French and my knowledge of fashion history; there is, with similar attention to detail, every compliment on her appearance the abbé ever received. As for the portrait they give of their main character: de Choisy has both likable and dislikable sides, and I think that these memoirs only really show a subset of both.
Through the material circumstances of the abbé’s life, the book gives a side view onto the glittery world of the high nobility under Louis XIV: a world in which a set of jewels could be worth as much as a county’s year of taxes, in which noble status is supposed to be ordained by God yet titles and government positions can be had for pay, and in which those who had the money and some who didn’t gambled for astronomical sums. De Choisy herself states that gambling was the other beguiling passion of her life, and lost a fortune at it, although gambling and living as a woman seem to have been more in alternation than concurrently. This is not the book to read for criticism of the immense wealth divide between the aristocracy and the common people, or indeed for that type of moral analysis at all. But, on the other hand, the abbé’s cheerful amorality and acceptance of the society in which she lives is far from the worst guide to show us the sights of an unfamiliar society, and contributes to the refreshing brightness of the narrative.
These memoirs fall within the genre of on-purpose erotic literature; the tell-all memoir was not an uncommon form for this, see for example Casanova. They describe de Choisy’s seductions, mostly of quite young girls, some of whom are from the acting world and some who come from regional nobility and have if the story is to be believed quite ridiculously complaisant guardians. Despite academic consensus that these memoirs largely correspond to things Choisy really did, these stories were intended to both amuse and titillate, which affects the lens through which they can be read – how factually accurate are they really?
The predatory attitude to young unmarried girls shown by de Choisy in the text I know to be one that also occurs in other (erotic) texts of the period; I do not know the period well enough if it was also common in reality. The abbé doesn’t seem to see problems with any of it, but it is clear that not all the young girls the abbé takes as lovers (sometimes dressing them in male attire) are entirely happy about this, or have the power to refuse. This makes parts of the book not quite as lighthearted a read as the rest of it, if one takes the text as a factual representation of events.
It might be interesting to consider here that for the original audience and de Choisy’s contemporaries, losing large amounts of money while gambling, seducing young women with questionable degree of refusal, and ‘crossdressing’, might be seen as worthy of similar degrees of reproof; the introduction-writers with a 19th-century mindset might actually think dressing as a woman is the worst offense, and in any case regard the latter two as much of a piece. The way we would want to draw the line between those is not entirely one that would be familiar to contemporaries.
But, throughout the text, de Choisy’s joy is communicative – the joy of living her life according to her own wishes, the enjoyment of the practical intrigante/spy-style details necessary to pull that off, and also the joy of telling a story to the reader. This greatly warms me towards de Choisy as a person, despite her occasionally highly doubtful morality. It’s also just a short, lighthearted read that will teach you a lot of words about late-17th-century fancy dresses.
I haven’t been able to find out if this has ever been translated. That’s not going to be me though: my French isn’t quite up to literary translation, I do not know anywhere near enough about seventeenth-century clothing terms, and also I don’t want to spend quite that long in de Choisy’s head. However, the edition in which I first read the current memoirs also included the story of the marquise-marquis de Banneville, a sort of trans fairytale with a happy ending, which is pretty much entirely cute. If anyone would want that one for anything, I’d be willing to try my hand at translating it.
For the rest of her life, François-Timoléon de Choisy preferred female dress and roles whenever it could be gotten away with, and at multiple moments more or less ran away in order to fully live as a woman: the current book (published posthumously) recounts some episodes of her life in which she was successful in doing so.
In our contemporary terms, it seems the most plausible to identify de Choisy as a trans woman, and accordingly I will be using female pronouns throughout - if only because, based on this book, I am 100% sure the abbé de Choisy would get a kick out of still being called a pretty woman three centuries later. In terms contemporary to the period in which she lived, de Choisy occupied an ambiguously gendered space: socially powerful enough to, for a while, live as a woman with her identity a completely open secret, not socially powerful enough to get away with this long-term; offered the career opportunities and in many ways the status of a man of the time, and often as a good courtesan adjusting gender presentation to whatever would be most advantageous.
While de Choisy did take holy orders and led church services at a number of occasions, the abbey of which she was nominally the abbot really only served as a source of income, the clergical equivalent of the many sinecure government positions offered to the nobility at the time. At one point, de Choisy served as ambassador on a journey to Siam, modern Thailand, and she also wrote a report of that journey, which I can assure you I intend to track down. She also wrote many volumes of church and other history, which my 1960s introduction notes to be written with style but imprecise in content; and a memoir of Louis XIV and the politics of the court surrounding him, which is apparently quite highly accurate and appreciated by historians.
The book contains two complete stories and fragments of a third, following more or less the same pattern. All purport to be factual accounts of certain periods in de Choisy’s life; they also share a narrative structure similar to the conventions of the erotic literature of the time.
In the first story de Choisy’s identity is an open secret; in the second she is ‘undercover’ under an assumed identity, the preservation of which involves a certain degree of danger. There are many loving and detailed descriptions of dresses and jewels, which tested the limits of both my French and my knowledge of fashion history; there is, with similar attention to detail, every compliment on her appearance the abbé ever received. As for the portrait they give of their main character: de Choisy has both likable and dislikable sides, and I think that these memoirs only really show a subset of both.
Through the material circumstances of the abbé’s life, the book gives a side view onto the glittery world of the high nobility under Louis XIV: a world in which a set of jewels could be worth as much as a county’s year of taxes, in which noble status is supposed to be ordained by God yet titles and government positions can be had for pay, and in which those who had the money and some who didn’t gambled for astronomical sums. De Choisy herself states that gambling was the other beguiling passion of her life, and lost a fortune at it, although gambling and living as a woman seem to have been more in alternation than concurrently. This is not the book to read for criticism of the immense wealth divide between the aristocracy and the common people, or indeed for that type of moral analysis at all. But, on the other hand, the abbé’s cheerful amorality and acceptance of the society in which she lives is far from the worst guide to show us the sights of an unfamiliar society, and contributes to the refreshing brightness of the narrative.
These memoirs fall within the genre of on-purpose erotic literature; the tell-all memoir was not an uncommon form for this, see for example Casanova. They describe de Choisy’s seductions, mostly of quite young girls, some of whom are from the acting world and some who come from regional nobility and have if the story is to be believed quite ridiculously complaisant guardians. Despite academic consensus that these memoirs largely correspond to things Choisy really did, these stories were intended to both amuse and titillate, which affects the lens through which they can be read – how factually accurate are they really?
The predatory attitude to young unmarried girls shown by de Choisy in the text I know to be one that also occurs in other (erotic) texts of the period; I do not know the period well enough if it was also common in reality. The abbé doesn’t seem to see problems with any of it, but it is clear that not all the young girls the abbé takes as lovers (sometimes dressing them in male attire) are entirely happy about this, or have the power to refuse. This makes parts of the book not quite as lighthearted a read as the rest of it, if one takes the text as a factual representation of events.
It might be interesting to consider here that for the original audience and de Choisy’s contemporaries, losing large amounts of money while gambling, seducing young women with questionable degree of refusal, and ‘crossdressing’, might be seen as worthy of similar degrees of reproof; the introduction-writers with a 19th-century mindset might actually think dressing as a woman is the worst offense, and in any case regard the latter two as much of a piece. The way we would want to draw the line between those is not entirely one that would be familiar to contemporaries.
But, throughout the text, de Choisy’s joy is communicative – the joy of living her life according to her own wishes, the enjoyment of the practical intrigante/spy-style details necessary to pull that off, and also the joy of telling a story to the reader. This greatly warms me towards de Choisy as a person, despite her occasionally highly doubtful morality. It’s also just a short, lighthearted read that will teach you a lot of words about late-17th-century fancy dresses.
I haven’t been able to find out if this has ever been translated. That’s not going to be me though: my French isn’t quite up to literary translation, I do not know anywhere near enough about seventeenth-century clothing terms, and also I don’t want to spend quite that long in de Choisy’s head. However, the edition in which I first read the current memoirs also included the story of the marquise-marquis de Banneville, a sort of trans fairytale with a happy ending, which is pretty much entirely cute. If anyone would want that one for anything, I’d be willing to try my hand at translating it.
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Date: 2025-12-30 03:22 pm (UTC)