Famous Imposters 25

Famous Imposters 25

As to record, there are quite sufficient cases to convince any reader

as to the fact that, allowing for all possible error and wastage,

there have been a sufficient number undetected at the time of their

happening, and only made known by after-confession and by the force of

ulterior circumstances. Whatever opinion we may form of the women who

carried out the venture, there is neither occasion nor need to doubt

the fact they were so carried out. The consideration of a few cases

culled from the records of this class of successful imposture will

make this plain. It would be useless, if not impossible, to make full

lists of the names of women who have passed themselves off as men in

the fighting world--soldiers and sailors, with side interests such as

piracy, duelling, highway robbery, etc. Amongst the female soldiers

are the names of Christian Davis (known as Mother Ross), Hannah Snell,

Phœbe Hessel. Amongst the sailors those of Mary Talbot, Ann Mills,

Hannah Whitney, Charles Waddell. In the ranks of the pirates are Mary

Reid and Ann Bonney. In many of these cases are underlying romances, as

of women making search for lost or absconding husbands, or of lovers

making endeavours to regain the lost paradise of life together.

 

If there were nothing else in these little histories, their perusal in

detail would well repay attention as affording proof of the boundless

devotion of woman’s love. No matter how badly the man may have treated

the woman, no matter how heartlessly or badly he may have behaved

towards her, her affection was proof against all. Indeed it makes

one believe that there is some subtle self-sustaining, self-ennobling

quality in womanhood which her initial self-surrender makes a constant

force towards good. Even a nature which took new strength from the

turmoil of battle, from the harrowing suspense of perpetual vigil, from

the strain of physical weakness bravely borne, from pain and want and

hunger, instead of hardening into obstinate indifference, seems to have

softened as to sentiment, and been made gentle as to memory, as though

the sense of wrong had been purged by the forces of affliction. All

this, though the stress of campaigning may have blunted some of the

conventional susceptibility of womanhood. For the after life of some of

these warlike heroines showed that they had lost none of the love of

admiration which marks their sex, none of their satisfaction in posing

as characters other than their own. Several of them found pleasure in a

new excitement different from that of battle, in the art of the stage.

Whenever any of them made any effort to settle down in life after their

excitement in the life of the camp or the sea, such did so at some

place, and in some way congenial to herself and consistent with the

life which she was leaving.

 

 

B. HANNAH SNELL

 

Hannah Snell is a good instance of how the life of a woman who was not

by nature averse from adventure was moulded by chance in the direction

which suited her individuality. Of course, liking for a militant life,

whether in conventional or exceptional form, presupposes a natural

boldness of spirit, resolution, and physical hardihood--all of which

this woman possessed in an eminent degree.

 

She was born at Worcester in 1723, one of the family of a hosier who

had three sons and six daughters. In 1740, when her father and mother

were dead, she went to live at Wapping with a sister who had married a

ship carpenter named Gray. There she married a Dutch sailor, who before

her baby was born, had squandered such little property as her father

had left her, and then deserted her. She went back to her sister, in

whose house the baby died. In 1743, she made up her mind to search for

her husband. To this end she put on man’s clothes and a man’s name

(that of her brother-in-law) and enlisted in General Guise’s regiment.

At Carlisle, whither the regiment was sent she learned something of

a soldier’s duties. In doing so she was selected by her sergeant, a

man called Davis, to help him in carrying out a criminal love affair.

In order to be able to warn the girl she pretended acquiescence. In

revenge the sergeant reported her for an alleged neglect of some

duty for which according to the barbarous system of the time she was

sentenced to 600 lashes; of these she had actually received 500 when

on the intervention of some of the officers the remaining hundred

were foregone. After this, fearing further aggression on the part of

the revengeful petty officer she deserted. She walked all the way to

Portsmouth--a journey which occupied a whole month--where she again

enlisted as a marine in Fraser’s regiment, which was shortly ordered

on foreign service to the East Indies. There was a storm on the way

out, during which she worked manfully at the pumps. When the ship had

passed Gibraltar there was another bad storm in which she was wrecked.

Hannah Snell found her way to Madeira and thence to the Cape of Good

Hope. Her ship joined in the taking of Arcacopong on the Coromandel

Coast; in which action Hannah fought so bravely that she was praised

by her officers. Later on she assisted in the siege of Pondicherry

which lasted nearly three months before it had to be abandoned. In the

final attempt she served on picket duty and had to ford, under fire,

a river breast high. During the struggle she received six bullets

in the right leg, five in the left leg, and one in the abdomen. Her

fear was not of death but discovery of her sex through the last-named

wound. By the friendly aid of a black woman, however, she avoided this

danger. She managed to extract the bullet herself, with her finger and

thumb, and the wound made a good cure. This wound caused her a delay

of some weeks during which her ship had to leave for Bombay and was

delayed five weeks by a leak. Poor Hannah was again unfortunate in her

officers; one of them to whom she had refused to sing had her put in

irons and given a dozen lashes. In 1749 she went to Lisbon, where she

learned by chance that her husband had met at Genoa the death penalty

by drowning, for a murder which he had committed. Discovery of her sex

and her identity would have been doubly dangerous now; but happily she

was able to conceal her alarm and so escaped detection. She got back to

London through Spithead and once more found shelter in the house of her

sister who at once recognised her in spite of her disguise. Her fine

singing voice, which had already caused her to be flogged, now stood

her in good stead. She applied for and obtained an engagement at the

Royalty theatre, Wellclose square; and appeared with success as _Bill

Bobstay_ a sailor and _Firelock_ a soldier. She remained on the stage

for some months, always wearing male dress. The government of the day

gave her, on account of the hardships she had endured, a pension of £20

per annum. Later on she took a public-house at Wapping. The sign of her

hostelry became noted. On one side of it was painted in effigy _The

British Tar_ and on the other _The Valiant Marine_, and underneath _The

Widow in masquerade_, or the _Female Warrior_.

 

As Hannah appeared during her adventurous career as both soldier and

sailor she affords, in herself, an illustrious example of female

courage as well as female duplicity in both of the services.

 

 

C. LA MAUPIN

 

The majority of the readers of the English-speaking race who enjoy

Théophile Gautier’s fascinating romance _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ are

not aware that the heroine was a real person. The novelist has of

course made such alterations as are required to translate crude fact

into more elegant fiction, and to obliterate so far as can be done the

criminal or partly-criminal aspect of the lady’s venturous career. But

such is one of the chief duties of an artist in fiction. Though he

may be an historian, in a sense, he is not limited to the occasional

bareness of truth. His object is not that his work shall be true but

rather what the French call _vraisemblable_. In narrative, as in most

arts, crudeness is rather a fault than a virtue, so that the writer

who looks for excellence in his work has without losing force, to fill

up the blanks left by the necessary excision of fact by subtleties of

thought and graces of description, so that the fulness or rotundity

of the natural curves shall always be maintained. In truth the story

of _La Maupin_ is so laden with passages of excitement and interest

that any writer on the subject has only to make an agreeable choice

of episodes sufficiently dramatic, and consistent with each other,

to form a cohesive narrative. Such a work has in it possibilities of

great success--if only the author has the genius of a Théophile Gautier

to set it forth. The real difficulty which such an one would have

to contend against would be to remove the sordidness, the reckless

passion, the unscrupulousness, the criminal intent which lies behind

such a character.

 

The Mademoiselle de Maupin of real life was a singer at the Opera in

Paris at the end of the seventeenth century. She was the daughter

of a man of somewhat humble extraction engaged in secretarial work

with the Count d’Armagnac; and whilst only a girl married a man named

Maupin employed in the province. With him she had lived only a few

months when she ran away with a maitre d’armes (_anglicè_, a fencing

master) named Serane. If this individual had no other good quality in

matters human or divine, he was at least a good teacher of the sword.

His professional arts were used in the service of his inamorata, who

became herself an excellent swordsman even in an age when swordsmanship

had an important place in social life. It may have been the sexual

equality implied by the name which gave the young woman the idea, but

thenceforth she became a man in appearance;--in reality, in so far as

such a metamorphosis can be accomplished by courage, recklessness,

hardihood, unscrupulousness, and a willing obedience to all the ideas

which passion and sensuality can originate and a greed of notoriety

carry into execution.

 

In a professional tour from Paris to Marseilles, in which she as an

actress took the part of a man, she gained the affections of the

flighty daughter of a rich merchant of Marseilles; and, as a man, ran

away with her. Being pursued, they sought refuge in a convent--a place

which at that age it was manifestly easier to get into than to get

out of. Here the two remained for a few days, during which, by the

aid of histrionic and other arts, the actress obviated the necessary

suspicions of her foolish companion and kept danger away. All the while

La Maupin was conscious that an irate and rich father was in hot search

for his missing daughter, and she knew that any talk about the venture

would infallibly lose her the girl’s fortune, besides getting herself

within the grip of the law. So she decided on a bold scheme of escape

from the convent, whereby she might obliterate her tracks. A nun of

the convent had died and her body was awaiting burial. In the night La

Maupin exchanged the body of the dead nun for the living one of her own

victim. Having thus got her companion out of the convent, she set the

building on fire to cover up everything, and escaped in secret to a

neighbouring village, taking with her by force the girl, who naturally

enough was disillusioned and began to have scruples as to the wisdom

of her conduct. In the village they remained hidden for a few weeks,

during which time the repentance of the poor girl became a fixed

quantity. An attempt, well supported, was made to arrest the ostensible

man; but this was foiled by the female swordsman who killed one of the

would-