The papers have lately been full of the adventures of Etta Lewis, who dressed herself in men’s clothes to get men’s wages; but I know of a case that beats hers “all to pieces.”
Some twenty-five years ago in New York there was an energetic bill-collector known to the many he collected bills from as “Tom.” Nobody seemed to know or care what his other names were. All they knew or cared for was that if a bill was once placed in his hands for collection it would be sooner or later collected. He seldom failed, and often succeeded where others had failed. He was never impertinent, never rendered himself liable to abuse or arrest as a nuisance, never lost his temper, and so seldom lost his bill, or his commission thereon. He had a pleasant but determined face, a French accent (spite of his English name) and a stubby beard which brought but little profit to the barbers, as he always shaved himself. He was never inside a barber shop in his life.
Among other work Tom collected bills for a paper called the Revolution, published as the “organ” of the Women’s Rights party and edited by Mrs. Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, with whom he became a decided favorite, alike for his personal honesty and industry and his habit of arguin’ with everybody about everythin’, which formed his principal relaxation in his spare time.
Tom’s manners were rather brusque, but he didn’t drink, smoke, swear or gamble, so even Susan B. Anthony thought he was a pretty good sort of creature–for a man.
Some years before Tom made his debut as a bill-collector there was a gentleman named Bryan, who started an art gallery in New York called after himself, The Brian Gallery.” Thomas Nast, afterwards the famous caricaturist, was originally a clerk in this gallery. Nast resignin’ his clerkship here to become an artist under Frank Leslie, a bright lad, Seth Eyland, who later on went through a lot of interestin’ experiences all over the world, took his place, and as clerk of the Bryan Gallery got well acquainted with Bryan himself, and with the queer sort of valet he had.
Bryan was a peculiar man. He had inherited a fortune from his father, who had been engaged in various large operations with John Jacob Astor, and, havin’ a level head, had spent his money very judiciously in havin’ a good time abroad, and in encouragin’ art at home.
Bryan loved pictures just as Bonner loves horses, for their own sake. He wanted to collect the biggest collection of paintin’s in America, just as Bonner goes in for the largest collection of horses.
But, while in an enthusiast in art, Bryan, possessing the business instincts of his father, never paid for a picture more than it was really worth in the art market, and often a good deal less. To use an expressive vulgarism, “nobody could play him for a sucker.” He would pay thousands, cash down, for a bargain; but he wouldn’t pay a dollar for what he didn’t like. As an art connoisseur and a picture buyer he soon became known all over Europe, and finally brought to New York one of the finest collections of artworks this city has ever seen up to date.
Hoping to create a taste for fine art, Mr. Bryan hired rooms in Broadway, near Clinton place, and publicly exhibited his superb collection at a mere nominal price of admission–just enough to pay the necessary expenses of exhibition, among ‘em clerk hire.
Peter Cooper, then just completin’ Cooper Institute buildin’, called on Bryan at the gallery often, and finally induced Bryan to move his collection into the Institute buildin’. For some time Cooper and Bryan were very intimate and all went well; but one rainy day old Peter Cooper came into the Bryan gallery rooms in the Institute with a big cotton umbrella he was in the habit of carryin’, and pokin’ everybody in the ribs with, in his moments of enthusiasm or forgetfulness.
Bryan got a nervous fit when he saw Uncle Peter enterin’ his picture gallery with this umbrella, and with reason. For, in a minute or so, to his unutterable horror, Bryan beheld the great philanthropist pointin’ out to somebody the merits of one of the pictures, illustratin’ his remarks by givin’ the picture he admired a dig with the point of his umbrella handle. Now, the picture selected did credit to Uncle Peter’s taste, for it was about the finest and most expensive picture in the gallery–a genuine Rembrandt–but imagine Bryan’s feelin’s at that umbrella. He felt, when looking at Peter Cooper pokin’ at his picture, like a lover seein’ another fellow makin’ love to his best girl, and he resented it accordin’ly. Goin’ over to where Cooper stood, Bryan seized the umbrella and took it from the philanthropist. Uncle Peter, in his turn, was now both astonished and indignant. Philanthropist as he was, he didn’t like anybody takin’ liberties with his umbrella. So the two men had quite a scene and a quarrel, and the next week Bryan took away his pictures, all on account of a cotton umbrella.
Bryan at last got rid of his collection by presentin’ it, just before his death, to the New York Historical Society.
And for many years alike durin’ his life in Europe and America, this Bryan who was a bachelor, employed in his service a French valet, to whom he was very much attached, and who was very faithful to him, though, for a valet, quite reserved in his manners. Most valets are terribly loquacious, but this one held his tongue. Most valets are fussy, but this one avoided effusion. And he seldom or never entered his master’s private apartments save from absolute necessity. He was not in his master’s bed-room once a week on an average, and entered and left it as quickly as possible. Mr. Bryan did not require of this valet any offices about his person. The valets chief duties were to keep the suite of rooms occupied by Mr. B. in good order, and to prepare his breakfast in first class style. These obligations the model French valet carried out to perfection, and was regarded by his master as simply invaluable.
He passed a good deal of his time around the Bryan art gallery, where he became quite a favorite with the ladies who patronized the place, and to whom a real live French valet was an object of interest, second only to a real live French count. Most valets, French or English, would have got conceited on the strength of such feminine pettin’, or would have tried to take advantage of it; but this gem of a valet did nothin’ of the sort–rather avoided the women, and seemed more bored than blessed–a line of conduct which, of course, only made the women more interested in Felix–as he was called–than before.
And yet this chap, apparently so indifferent to the sex, was one day caught entertainin’ in his room a mysterious woman, at least his master one day heard a woman singin’ in the room occupied by Felix, but on enterin’ the room found nobody but Felix there. The woman in some unexpected way had disappeared. Bryan naturally asked where the woman he had heard singin’ had gone to, and when Felix assured him that no woman had ever entered his room Bryan naturally got mad, and words ensued, which resulted in Bryan’s dischargin’ Felix on the spot, a step which he regretted when it was too late, and always after. But for years and years it worried Bryan in his leisure moments to account for the mysterious disappearance of that singin’ woman. How on earth had she got away with herself? There was only one window to this Felix’s room, and that was four stories from the ground. There was but one door, through which he himself entered and left, and there was but one closet in the room, and that was wide open.
How in the deuce, then, had the woman whose voice he had so distinctly heard singin’ in his valet’s room just the moment before he entered disappeared; vanished utterly and so suddenly? The old gentleman died with this mystery unsolved.
The French valet Felix’s exit from the service of Mr. Bryan was thus immediately preceded by a mysterious disappearance, just as his original entrance into Mr. Bryant’s service had been likewise preceded by another mysterious disappearance.
Mr. Bryan had originally come across Felix in Dresden, where he had been visitin’ the art galleries. At the time of Mr. Bryan’s visit to Dresden, an English widow, supposed to be rich, had been attractin’ the attention of the Dresdenites by always bein’ attended, when in the house, by a stylish dressin’ maid, and when in the street by an equally stylish man servant, the maid and the man servant lookin’ somewhat like each other, so it was said, but never havin’ been seen together at any time. In the house anyone visitin’ the widow never, by any possibility, caught a glimpse of the man servant, and in the streets, no one ever saw the maid servant, and this rather singular little fact began gradually to give rise to a good deal of talk and speculation, when one day both the man servant and the maid servant left the service of the English Widow, who, thereupon, herself left Dresden, leavin’ also a lot of unpaid bills behind her, and the next day after all these disappearances the French valet, Felix, entered the service of Mr. Bryan.
All these various facts I have been tellin’ may seem trivial and disconnected, and they would be so were it not for the fact that the man servant of the English widow, in Dresden, the maid servant, the French valet, Felix, in the service of Mr. Bryan in Europe and American and the bill collector, “Tom,” in New York, were all one and the same person, and a woman at that, yes, a really good and true woman, who had adopted this hybrid, mixed, male-female sort of a life, and belonged to both sexes, for the sake of supportin’ her aged parents–one of the very noblest motives that can actuate humanity.
The person’s real name was Jeanne Duvois, and her parents were poor people in one of the rural districts of France. A stray Englishman passin’ through this section of country brought with him his valet, and, becomin’ slightly acquainted with this “gentleman’s gentleman,” the young Jeanne got the notion into her head, and a true notion it was, that if she could only get rid of her sex, only get rid of the fact of bein’ a woman, she would have a much better chance for earnin’ much more money. She brooded over this queer but true idea, and one day an Englishwoman came her way who wanted to combine show with economy, and who finally made an arrangement with Jeanne to serve as a whole household in herself, a maid servant indoors and a man servant out. This half woman and half man business was a sort of step to gettin’ to be altogether a man, and Jeanne accepted it, for the sake of the wages promised her, all of which wages she forwarded religiously to her father and mother, who lived on it in comfort.
Havin’ thus, in her mistress, a woman who was, for her own sake, anxious to have her appear occasionally as a man, and do so thoroughly, Jeanne enjoyed unusual facilities for “male impersonation,” and soon got all the outward marks of a man. She was naturally quick-witted, observed keenly, and learned rapidly. What bothered her most was her too smooth chin, and this was all very well in her role as maid servant, but it wanted some hair on it as a man servant, so she took to shavin’, and at last got matters to such a fine point that although she hadn’t absolutely too much hair on her face to pass for a rough-looking serving maid, she had yet enough to pass, when in men’s clothes, for a man. But with all her care, this beard business would have sooner or later betrayed her, had she not when enterin’ into Mr Bryan’s service, made up her mind to figure wholly and solely as a man, and so let her beard grow, though, of course, she always shaved herself.
Mr. Bryan had met her in the streets of Dresden one day when she was the man servant dischargin’ some errands for the English widow, and had made her a proposition to enter into his permanent service at much higher wages for only bein’ a man then she was receivin’ then for bein’ a man and woman both.
She felt it her duty, for her parents’ sake, to accept this proposition, and so gave the English widow notice. The widow fumed and fussed but Jeanne was firm; the widow vamoosed and the combined maid and man servant became Felix, the French valet of the American, Bryan.
Mr. Bryan never for a moment suspected the real state of the case, or the sex of his valet, while, as Felix, the valet was really as modest as any moralist could require of Jeanne. It was in one of her moments of forgetfulness, when, oblivious of her assumed sex as a man, she permitted herself to sing as a woman, that Mr. Bryan had overheard her singin’, and the real cause of the mysterious disappearance of that singin’ woman is now fully explained to the reader.
But she could not explain it to Mr. Bryan himself. Her modesty revolted, and, besides, she did not know how he would receive the explanation, or confession. So she took occasion to leave Mr. Bryan, and, havin’ by this time got used to her male life, determined to stick to bein’ a man, and became a bill-collector.
At last her parents, to whom she had been so good, for whose sake she had literally unsexed herself, died, blessin’ her, and then receivin’ the news of both their deaths within a few hours of each other, the bereaved daughter made another change in her varied life, and this time the strangest transformation of ‘em all. For Tom, the rather jolly bill-collector, dunnin’ the men and arguin’ with the women; Felix, the skillful, faithful, but reserved French valet; the dapper man servant and the rather rough housemaid in the service of the English widow, and the poor French peasant girl, with her two old parents; all these five in one now became none–or a nun. Jeanne Duvois, after a life of the strangest experiences, took the religious vows, and is still, I believe, livin’ in a devout meditation in a cloister.
[Editor’s notes: All the above was adapted from anecdotes related in a book that came out a year earlier: Cronin, David Edward. The Evolution of a Life, Described in the Memoirs of Major Seth Eyland. New York: S. W. Green’s Son, 1884.
Etta Lewis, referenced in the first paragraph, was a young woman accused of being a forger and deadbeat in several places in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. She disguised herself as a man, and was hired to work in a corset factory. Her notoriety was brief.
“Bryan” was Thomas Jefferson Bryan (1800-1870), who acquired the paintings in the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art. Officially, the reason why Bryan removed his collection from the Cooper Institute was that he did not like the lighting. But the version of the story by “Seth Eyland” rings truer.
Bryan’s collection was donated to the New York Historical Society in 1867. In 1968, a hundred and one years later, a court decided that the Society could sell items from the collection; which it did, since medieval art was not central to the Society’s mission.
Eyland/Cronin never named the woman cross-dresser; so where the name “Jeanne Duvois” came from is a mystery–likely a fabrication, since the column added no other new information above that found in Eyland’s book. Also, Eyland’s version recounts that it was he who heard her singing, and discovered her gender; it was not Bryan who heard her singing.
Though the above story can fuel much speculation into this case of gender identity, without an account from her/him/they, it can only remain…speculation.]
