Volume 45, Number 4 · March 5, 1998
The Governor in Drag?
By Edmund S. Morgan
The Lord Cornbury Scandal: The Politics of Reputation in British America
by Patricia U. Bonomi
University of North Carolina Press, 290 pp., $29.95
In 1952 the New-York Historical Society purchased at auction a full-figure portrait, identified as Lord Cornbury, royal governor of New York and New Jersey from 1702 to 1708. The only remarkable thing about the portrait is that his lordship is dressed in women's clothing; and for this reason the painting has enjoyed a certain notoriety from the time it was first exhibited at London's South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert) in 1867. The identification of the sitter may have been made as early as 1796 and is rendered plausible by reports from New York in 1707 that Cornbury 'rarely fails of being dresst in Women's Cloaths every day' and in 1709 that 'My Lord Cornbury has and dos still make use of an unfortunate Custom of dressing himself in Womens Cloaths and of exposing himself in that Garb upon the Ramparts to the view of the public; in that dress he draws a World of Spectators about him and consequently as many Censures.'
Review, 2524 words
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