Transvestia should the Chevalier, who certainly was far from rich, have his portrait painted in such guise by an artist of renown who could certainly command a high price for his work?" To which I can only reply, on behalf of us all, "We can't afford our Polaroid Cameras and endless color prints, either but we MUST have them, and this extravagance of D'Eon's is so characteristic of the TV world that it bridges the centuries like a handclasp." Another link that will appeal to many of us is the notation of personality change on page 79 and again on page 122; the emergence of "Mile. D'Eon" as a public figure brought a surge of ambition and of arrogance! The observation that at times one "aspect" appeared to dominate, while at other times another took over, is as applicable to the modern Eonist though there is still controversy over the nature and depth of the shift. Other factors in his life that will ring a bell with some, though not all, of us include what Mrs. Nixon calls "incessant writing, the safety-valve of an over-active mind," and the Chevalier's eagerness to fight for his rights, even when a strategic retreat or a compromise would have been much to his advantage. On these points, I could write a book myself pile one from my incoming mail!

- or com-

The story of the Chevalier's loss of his male status has never, to my knowledge, been so well told. For reasons that will never be clearly known, but which seem to have been based both on his perverse sense of humor and on his fury at intolerable delays in settling his expense accounts, he twice declared himself to be a true woman to envoys from the French court at his residence in London, Furthermore, he "proved" it, per- haps by showing a womanly chest. He could scarcely have forseen that the result would be his being forbidden to appear in France except as a woman, since this was (he insisted) MOST distasteful to him! Mrs. Nixon shows real insight in saying, "It was the freedom to assume the appearance corresponding with his intense, if transitory, feelings that was of supreme importance.' And yet, to add the final touch of inconsistency, when the French Revolution and his retirement to England set him free from the "intolerable" restriction, he never again wore male clothing!