The Life of John de Verdion
Baron John de Verdion was dying. He lay in his rooms at 38 Upper Charles Street in Hatton Garden, surrounded by what would remain following his death. After more than sixty years of life, it wasn’t much.
De Verdion’s greatest possession was his wardrobe, a small collection of smart, fine, but rather outdated clothes. The best among them was the court dress he wore to attend at St James’s Palace. There was even a sword to go with it, somewhere, but he was past finding it now. The worst were his workaday clothes made from stiff but hardwearing buckram. He still wore a cocked hat and bagwig every day, which in 1802 marked him out as increasingly unfashionable, but like most older gentlemen he stuck with what he knew. Yet there was also a new outfit among his clothes, ordered by de Verdion even as he took to his deathbed, on a notion that he was going somewhere they might be needed.
The other half of his belongings was his stock in trade as an itinerant bookseller. Piles of odd and obscure volumes, hundreds or more, stood in musty silence about the room. Most of the books were in his native German, others in French and Italian; his speciality was foreign languages. Among them was an Italian translation of Rasselas, written in haste by Samuel Johnson to pay for his mother’s funeral. Now, or at least soon, this copy would be auctioned to pay for de Verdion’s final rite.
De Verdion’s illness had crept up on him, growing slowly his discomfort which he bore the best he could. The pain had hampered his ability to work and he slid into debt. He knew the end was coming. He made his will in June, a month earlier, naming as his sole beneficiary Mr Denner, the proprietor of the coffee house at Furnivall’s Inn. De Verdion had been a regular at the coffee house for much of his thirty years in London, and de Verdion owed Denner £40. The clothes and books would have to cover that as well as the funeral.
A tumble down the stairs finally put de Verdion out of action, and the progress of dropsy forced him to call for the services of a doctor. Thankfully a physician, a fellow German, lodged in the same building at Upper Charles Street; a number of gentlemen subscribed to pay for what little care was possible in such an extreme state.
But as the Baron finally and belatedly divulged the cancer that had long been growing in his breast, he also divulged the fact that he had been born female.
Such stories as were published in the years after the death of John de Verdion make difficult the task of reconstructing his life. He was a curiosity, a freak, a ridiculous figure whose story could be wilfully embellished. He was anthologized with blind beggars, the doctor who displayed the mummy of his dead wife, the superobese Daniel Lambert, and the Indian who cut off his own head. His story would be reprinted even twenty years after his death, seemingly with new details or a new anecdote. Yet even the earliest reports are pit–traps of hearsay and fabrication.
In the weeks after his death newspapers carried a short but sensationalized account of his origin, elements of which would never wholly disappear. They were inevitably based on “papers” found in his rooms after his death. It was claimed that de Verdion was the natural child of Frederick the Great, or his younger brother Prince Henry. Though both were wed neither had any known children by their wives or any mistress. Indeed, Henry was almost openly homosexual. The connection between either of them and de Verdion was spun from no more than their common German origin and maybe a hint toward their trespass on the norms of sex and gender.
The German connection cropped up again with a supposed association between de Verdion and Madame Schwellenberg. Juliana von Schwellenberg was the woman of the bedchamber for Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III. She was well known to be dramatic and haughty, sometimes dominating the queen and her private circle. But she was also a laughing–stock, the butt of satire, ridiculous in her own right. The idea that Schwellenberg would have had anything to do with a woman dressed as a man would seem fitting. Some accounts of de Verdion have her suggesting that he dress as a man in order to better earn a living: thus de Verdion is her ‘creation’, another manifestation of her foibles and an easy laugh.
A third feature of the sensationalized accounts is one which may — as we shall see — have a core of truth, despite being presented as just another dramatic moment. It was suggested that de Verdion was originally heir to property to the value of £8,000 (or even £10,000). Through some tragedy of bad luck, the collapse of some foreign bank or unscrupulousness of a banker, he had lost it all. The resulting poverty, and the need to earn his own keep, forced him to become a man. Economic need was a familiar reason for women to move into men’s occupations, and the working widow keeping up her husband’s trade was commonplace. Despite the dramatic story it is at least somewhat sympathetic as a theme to explain why de Verdion was what he was.
Though these threads of mysterious birth, lost fortune, and odd acquaintances, weave a pretty cloth it is one with plenty of holes.
The best account of de Verdion’s life, published in Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum (1804) may not be wholly free of fantasy, but it at least gains something from having been published a year or two after his death, believably long enough for serious research to have taken place. Much of the information is new and original, showing that it does not rely on the sensationalist tales published immediately after de Verdion’s death. It provides a story which is interesting while remaining fairly credible, and includes some facts which can be checked for veracity. The following adheres mostly to the account found in Kirby’s, but other sources are added — or disputed — where relevant.
John de Verdion was the child of Johann Friedrich Grael (sometimes Grahl) an architect whose work for the Prussian court mostly involved adding Baroque towers to existing churches, namely the Holy Spirit in Potsdam, and St Sophia’s and St Peter’s in Berlin. He wed Loysa Sophia Kiesewetter in Berlin in 1734, but the tower of St Peter’s collapsed soon afterward. He was expelled and worked for a time in Schwedt where Margrave Frederick William, who belonged to a junior line of the Prussian kings, was busy working to aggrandize his territory with a lavish building programme. Grael’s father Jacob had been the head gardener under the Margrave’s uncle Philip, and grew up with a close link to that court.
In 1736 Grael was snatched by Frederick, the Margrave of Bayreuth, who was likewise seeking to showcase his art and culture with new buildings. Some work was done on the Magrave’s castle and hunting lodge, but Grael’s career was cut short when he fell ill with dropsy and died in late summer of 1740. The exact date of de Verdion’s birth is unknown, but he must have been at least a little older than the sixty years (or sometimes fifty–eight) given at his death, as he cannot have been born later than spring 1741. His place of birth, in turn, must depend on the year given his father’s shifting allegiance, with both Berlin and Leipzig being suggested in differing accounts, but Schwedt and Bayreuth must also be considered. At birth John de Verdion was baptized Theodora.
After his father’s death de Verdion was raised by an aunt in Berlin. She provided him with a good and full education, at least what was thought reasonable for females at the time, including mathematics, French, Italian, and English. His aunt died in 1758, leaving him with an inheritance of 1,000 Reichsthaler. Despite still appearing as a woman, de Verdion went into business as an exchange broker. Taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) it is said that he managed to double his capital and make himself financially independent.
Yet after the end of the war he retired to Bayreuth where his father had been employed decades earlier. But he emerged in Berlin five years later having now completely transformed himself. He dressed and presented as a man, having adopted the name of John de Verdion for the first time (or, we might suppose, Johann), and by which he would be known for the rest of his life. The surname was from his maternal grandmother, Johanna Loysa Verdion, but there is no evidence that the title ‘Baron’ was ever anything more than a pretension.
In 1769, a year or so after his transformation, de Verdion entered the circle of the educational reformer Johann Bernhard Basedow. Basedow, a professor of philosophy, had been influenced by Rousseau’s ideas on education, as expounded through his book Emile, to launch his own project. A year earlier Basedow published his Idea to Philanthropists for Schools, seeking to establish a movement for reform. Basedow took de Verdion to be his secretary, and despite circulating rumours refused to question his origin. Yet the necessary closeness of their work together gave rise to scandalous gossip and eventually Basedow was forced to let de Verdion go.
De Verdion seems to have borne a grudge against Basedow for his removal and took his case to the coffee houses of Berlim, pursuing his side of the argument to those who would listen. It was during this time that the rumours about him escalated into violence. De Verdion came to the attention of a group of men who worked in one of the city’s counting houses. They believed the stories that he was born female and set about to prove it. They invited de Verdion to an inn on some pretext and plied him with drink. Once he had become too drunk to defend himself, they assaulted and stripped him to reveal his body. They found the confirmation they were seeking.
Soon afterward de Verdion fled to London.
Our knowledge of de Verdion’s life in England is more secure ground than his early life in Germany. Those who wrote about him after his death will have known about him in life, or had access to friends and eyewitnesses on which to base their accounts. This is no guarantee that everything written is true, but at least there will be more which is nearer to the truth than fantasy.
It was also said that de Verdion, after his arrival in England, never once presented himself in public as anything but a man. Kirby’s, our most trusted account, claims that he did his housework dressed in female clothes, or more specifically “a woman’s cap and bedgown”. It is hard to believe they would know a detail so private, and there is a vague sense of correcting gender norms by suggesting that he did so. Maybe a woman dressed as a man doing women’s housework was just too baffling.
Only two people are mentioned as having known about de Verdion’s origin. One is Madame Schwellenberg, dismissed above as being wholly unlikely. The other, more curiously, is Thomas Day.
Day was a wealthy young man who committed himself during his life to a number of fairly unfashionable causes, such as the abolition of slavery, independence for the American colonies, and educational reform. He too had read Rousseau’s Emile and been inspired. He undertook the grievous experiment of adopting two orphan girls and attempting to raise at least one of them to become his wife. His sincerity was unquestionable but his methods decidedly were. Success did not follow.
The involvement of both de Verdion and Thomas Day with educational reform makes their connection worth considering. Whether Thomas Day had some communication of Basedow, or de Verdion involved himself with similar circles once in London, they could have been introduced. Day supposedly promised to keep de Verdion in his old age, but he died prematurely in 1789 after being thrown from a horse. Horsewhispering was another of Day’s unfashionable pursuits, and even more unsuccessful than his foray into education.
Even so, on his arrival in England de Verdion offered himself as a teacher of languages, as well as his services as a translator. A surviving advertisement from the 1790s shows him offering to teach French, German, and English, as Hare’s in Greville Street where he was living at the time. The title ‘Dr’, due to his supposed mastery of languages rather than medical skill, was sometimes attached to his name. Though tales of him being a quack doctor also spread.
Why de Verdion had to work — and indeed Day’s offer of support — is hard to understand considering his wealth in Germany. It may be that the story of a lost fortune finds its foundation in some event which robbed him of his savings. Yet no account mentions both de Verdion’s business as an exchange broker and his lost fortune, so any link is conjecture.
Various lists de Verdion’s language students can almost certainly be dismissed. He is supposed to have taught the Duke of Portland, the Prussian ambassador, “several distinguished noblemen”, and even Edward Gibbon. Yet Gibbon’s German translator, who taught German to a number of different Englishmen as well as translating books, was the confusingly named Jacques Georges Deyverdun. One account, maybe seeking truthiness, adds that de Verdion taught Gibbon in 1791–2. Gibbon spend the whole of those years in Lausanne.
De Verdion was better known for his other profession of being an itinerant bookseller. He was a regular at book auctions and a well–known face at bookshops where he would sell or exchange his purchases. He also traded in coins and medals. In images and descriptions he is shown with folios under his arm and, “large pockets sticking out with books”. Indeed, along with his books, his beloved tricorne and bagwig, the image also show him with a cane and an umbrella, “carried in all weathers”.
Most references to de Verdion’s appearance note his oddness. One describes him as “extremely grotesque”, and another as “whimsically grotesque”. A third considers that he was a, “singular figure generally…the jest of the company”. A cruel anecdote told twenty years after his death has him as, “this hybrid…the breeched female”, and that he had to, “encounter the stare, the gape, nay the stand–still jeer of passers by”. Time may have heightened the writer’s recollection, yet in 1793, even before de Verdion died, his appearance was so noted around the streets of London that a caricature of him, with the barest of anonymization, was published.
De Verdion’s character was scarcely less noticeable. He frequented the coffee house at Furnivall’s Inn and ate there almost every day. It is said that he was a great eater, consuming food both in quantity and quality. One anecdote saw him eat a prodigious amount of eggs — eighteen — and bacon likewise in a single sitting. He also drank in equal measure: two bottles of wine at one meal, and was often incapably drunk. Wine bottles were not so big as they are today, but the fact that he “worshipped Bacchus” was universally repeated.
His expenses were said to be an improbable three guineas a week, a rather extravagant amount for a single person. A skilled craftsman in London would earn maybe a third of that. There is a feeling that in the descriptions of de Verdion’s excessive lifestyle hides the desire to further ridicule or debase him as a person. Maybe he really lived as they said, but maybe they were simply aiming for another laugh or another condemnation.
There are multiple hints that rumours over de Verdion’s origin were widespread in London during his life, going far beyond jeers in the street. After a night’s drinking some people who accompanied him home attempted to undress him, but failed to uncover him to their satisfaction — an echo of his assault in Berlin. In another instance a gang of youths accosted him while walking home and tried to make out that he had stolen something from one of them. The intent was that the fright would destroy his presence and he would thus let something slip.
One time at Furnivall’s Inn coffee house some men complained adamantly that de Verdion was a woman and asked for him to be removed. De Verdion simply swore and refused to leave, and the proprietor Mr Denner sided with him. Denner was almost unstinting in his support of de Verdion, allowing him as a customer despite the rumours, letting him run up considerable debt on account, and even offering to open a subscription when illness began to impoverish him. One said of Denner that his, “humanity to her [sic] for years is much to be praised”.
Yet de Verdion’s gender cannot have been so highly questionable as to bring his associates into utter disrepute. He attended court at St James’s Palace multiple times in his finest suit with sword at his side. Nicolaus von Heideloff, a German artist who issued yearly portraits of court fashion in England, included de Verdion as “The Itinerant Language Master” in 1797. Though sadly in his everyday clothes rather than court dress it is the best portrait of him that we have. For all the world he is no more than another portly middle–aged man.
De Verdion managed to live and survive in London for thirty years, earning his own income, keeping his own society, and without ever being deprived of his liberty to do so. He died on 15 July 1802.
I have referred throughout to John de Verdion as a man, using male pronouns, and generally acceptied that how he presented himself to the world is how he should be known to history. Delving into the mind of somebody long dead to discover whether they were or were not transsexual is an impossible task and always unfruitful. It is unlikely that de Verdion would have thought about gender in the way we do today, and could not have identified as a trans man even if we want to make that identity for him. But he lived and died as a man, and whatever reason he chose to do so we should accept.
A modern academic article on the history of gender and sexuality mentions de Verdion as a footnote and assigns him to the class of, “intellectual woman who passed as a man”, and it may be so. Options for women at the time were limited and certainly others, even if not de Verdion, welcomed the possibility of receiving the opportunities of a man simply by presenting as one. Not every woman in history who passed herself off as a man was trans.
Yet de Verdion somehow feels different. His activity in Berlin as an exchange broker was while presenting as a woman, which never seems to have stopped him from being successful. Although he did take up an intellectual position within Basedow’s circle which would have been otherwise unavailable to him, the reverses that he suffered must have demonstrated that if he had intended to pass himself off as a man simply for social gain it would not pay off. That he would rather change his country of residence than his presentation — and would upkeep it til the end of his life — bespeaks a certain desire to be a man regardless of what it will gain him.
But this strays into his inner life, which can never know, and cannot be anything other than conjecture.
Let us end with a verse, published after his death, which approaches de Verdion’s situation with a surprising generosity and kindness inviting understanding rather than ridicule. It also struggles, like us, with was he was and why. It suggests that as a female wishing to enter into the domain of men, his appearance was through honest modesty, not wishing to risk his feminine virtue in male company. That may hardly be the kind of answer we would give today, but the sentiment of the concluding lines certainly is:
Nor man nor woman by attire is known,
THE PROOF OF ALL WILL BE THE HEART ALONE!
