Departures of note

François-Timoléon de Choisy, an abbé and member of the Académie Française, is chiefly remembered for his posthumously published memoirs, which describe his frequent use of women's clothing in both private and public life. According to his own account, his mother dressed him in girls' clothing until he was eighteen, and he later resumed wearing women's dress on the advice of Madame de La Fayette. He wrote that he continued this practice until publicly criticised by the duc de Montausier, after which he withdrew to the provinces, where his memoirs describe further episodes of cross-dressing. Historians have questioned the reliability of these accounts, noting implausibilities and a lack of contemporary corroboration.

Born in Paris in 1644, de Choisy was attached to the household of the Duke of Orléans through his father, while his mother was close to Anne of Austria. Made an abbé in childhood, he inherited a substantial sum after his mother's death, allowing him to live without regular employment. Financial difficulties later drove him to reside at his benefice in Sainte-Seine, Burgundy, where he met Bussy-Rabutin. In 1676, he travelled to Rome with the cardinal de Bouillon, and a serious illness reportedly led to his religious conversion. In 1685, he accompanied the Chevalier de Chaumont on a diplomatic mission to Siam, an experience he later wrote about.

De Choisy was admitted to the Académie Française in 1687. His works include the four-volume Quatre dialogues sur l'immortalité de l'âme (1684), written with the Abbé Dangeau, and the eleven-volume Histoire de l'Eglise (1703–1723). His Mémoires, published posthumously in 1727, are valued for their detailed portraits of contemporaries, though their historical accuracy is debated. Some of his letters survive in the correspondence of Bussy-Rabutin, and he is said to have burned some of his more indiscreet writings, though a considerable amount of unpublished material remained. This material was later used, without authorisation, in an anonymous 1735 work and in the Vie de M. l'abbé de Choisy (1742), which was edited again in 1870 as Aventures de l'abbé de Choisy. The Scottish philosopher David Hume owned copies of de Choisy's Mémoires and his account of Siam.