One of the commonest forms of imposture--so common that it seems rooted
in a phase of human nature--is that of women who disguise themselves
as men. It is not to be wondered at that such attempts are made; or
that they were made more often formerly when social advancement had not
enlarged the scope of work available for women. The legal and economic
disabilities of the gentler sex stood then so fixedly in the way of
working opportunity that women desirous of making an honest livelihood
took desperate chances to achieve their object. We have read of very
many cases in the past; and even now the hum-drum of life is broken by
the fact or the echo of some startling revelation of the kind. Only
very lately the death of a person who had for many years occupied a
worthy though humble position in London caused a post-mortem sensation
by the discovery that the deceased individual, though looked on for
about a quarter of a century as a man, a widower, and the father of
a grown-up daughter, was in reality a woman. She was actually buried
under the name of the man she had professed to be, Harry Lloyd.
It is not to be wondered at that in more strenuous times, when the
spirit of adventure was less curbed, and initial difficulties were
less deadened by convention, cases of concealment of sex were far more
numerous and more easily prolonged. In an age of foreign wars, many
existing barriers against success in this respect were removed by
general laxity of social conditions. Perhaps I may be allowed to say at
the outset that, for my own part, my mind refuses absolutely to accept
that which is generally alleged in each case, that the male comrades
of women concealing their proper sex were, all through, ignorant of
the true facts. Human nature is opposed to such a supposition, and
experience bears out the shrewdness of nature. On occasions, or even
for a time, it is possible to make such successful concealments. But
when we are told that a woman has gone through a whole campaign or a
prolonged voyage in all the overcrowded intimacy of tent and bivouac
or of cabin and forecastle, without such a secret being suspected or
discovered, the narrator makes an overlarge draft on human credulity.
That such comrades, and many of them, forbore to give away the
secret, no matter how it had come into their possession, we may well
believe. Comradeship is a strong factor in such matters, and it has
its own loyalty, which is never stronger than when the various persons
interested are held together by the knowledge of a common danger.
But even to this there is a contra; the whole spirit of romance, even
when it binds man to woman and woman to man, stands side by side with
love, affection, passion--call it what you will--which opportunity can
fan into flame. Never more so than in the strenuous days of fighting,
when day and night are full of varying fears--when the mad turmoil of
working hours and loneliness of the night forge new fetters for the
binding together of the sexes.
In real life, when a man or a woman tries to escape from capture or
the fear of it in the guise of the opposite sex, it is a never-ending
struggle to sustain the rôle successfully. If this is so, when the
whole of the energies of mind and body are devoted in singleness
of purpose to the task, how then can the imposture be successfully
prolonged when the mind is eternally occupied with the pressing
things of the passing moments? There must infallibly be moments of
self-betrayal; and there is sufficient curiosity in the average person
to insure that the opportunities of such moments are not lost. Be this
as it may, we must in the first instance stick to matters of fact; the
record is our sheet-anchor. After all, when we learn of a case where
an imposture of the kind has been successfully carried out, it is time
enough to argue with convincing perspicacity that it should not have
been possible.
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.