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Palmer by Harriet Burden, wife of legendary art dealer Felix Lord, consists of small architectural works cluttered with various figures and texts. The work has no discipline or focus and seems to be an odd blend of pretentiousness and naïveté. One can only wonder why these pieces were deemed worthy of exhibition. III
    Time had made the feelings worse, not better. Despite Rachel’s prompting that I return to the fray, I knew that youth was the desired commodity and that, despite the Guerrilla Girls, it was still better to have a penis. IV I was over the hill and had never had a penis. It was too late for me to go as myself. I had disappeared for good, and the ease with which I had done so had made it clear to me how shallow my relations had been with all of them. They had come to the memorial service, or at least some of them had. By the time he died, Felix’s heyday had passed. He had become historical, the dealer to P. and L. and T. of days gone by. His wife was ahistorical, but what if I could return as another person? I began to make up stories of ingenious disguise. Like a latter-day Holmes, I would dissolve into my costumes and fool even the children and Rachel with my clever personas. I drew images of possible Harrys: Superman Harry with cape; homeless, sexually ambiguous Harry hauling bottles; old man dandy Harry with short, neat white beard; Harry as male cross-dresser (quite convincing); Harry grinning with modest-size-in-the-Hellenic-tradition male genitalia. And I took some inspiration from the past:
[An] His[toric]al and Phy[s]ic[al] Dissertation on the Case of Catherine Vizzani, containing the Adventures of a Young Woman, born at Rome, who for eight years passed in the Habit of a Man, was killed for an Amour with a young Lady; and being found on Dissection, a true Virgin, narrowly escaped being treated as a Saint by the Populace. With some curious and anatomical Remarks on the Nature and Existence of the Hymen. By Giovanni Bianchi, Professor of Anatomy at Sienna, the Surgeon who dissected her. To which are added, certain needful Remarks by the English Editor. (London: Meyer, 1751)
    Not long after Professor Bianchi’s treatise was published in England, translated and edited by John Cleland, the notorious author of Fanny Hill , Charles d’Eon de Beaumont, French diplomat, spy, and captain of the dragoons, began to appear in public wearing women’s clothing. He explained that he had been raised as a boy but was in fact a woman. She published a memoir called La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Madmoiselle d’Eon. At her death, she was discovered to have male genitalia.
     
    There was also the remarkable case of Dr. James Barry, who entered medical school at the University of Edinburgh in 1809, passed his examination for the Royal College of Surgeons in England in 1813, became a surgeon in the military, traveled from post to post, and rose through the ranks. When his career ended, he was inspector general in charge of military hospitals in Canada. He died in London in 1865 from dysentery. It was then discovered that he had been a she. Barred from medicine by her sex, she had changed it.

    Billie Tipton, successful jazz musician, born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in 1914, was denied a spot in her high school band because she was a girl, began performing as a man, and then moved entirely into a masculine life, had a long-term relationship with one Kitty Oakes, a former stripper, and adopted three sons with her. None of them knew until his death in 1989 that anatomically Billie had been a woman.
     
    There are many stories and as many reasons for leaving the feminine behind and adopting the masculine, or dropping either one for the other, as was convenient. There were women who followed their husbands to war and fought to be near them, and women who fought purely from patriotic fervor and, after the battle, returned to being women. There were women who posed as men to inherit their fathers’ fortunes and women