A Princess in the Age of Science: 2 / 6

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

When Georgie woke the next morning, Aurora was already dressed and standing at the end of his bed. “I was just about to wake you,” she said. “I’ve laid out some clothes for you to wear. You’ll take breakfast with Mrs. Vendall. Can you dress yourself?”

“Of course,” Georgie said. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“Be quick, then,” Aurora told him. “I’ll meet you in the hall. I have to start with my dusting.”

Aurora had drawn back the curtains, and Georgie had his first view of the room in daylight. He dangled his legs over the side of the bed and looked around him. He didn’t have much time to study the details of his newfound abode — he was surprised by a sudden sensation, and put his hand on his lower belly. He sat in wordless surprise as his stomach swelled and tightened, like a balloon being inflated. A deep rumble sounded from his innards. Started by the sound, Georgie dashed across the hall into the empty bathroom and hastily closed the door.

The inner pressure lifted for a moment, but only for a moment: Georgie bent forward and leaned his hands on the sink. He let out a soft groan, and that groan triggered the egress of an immense quantity of gas, which sailed out the young boy’s nether end. His small, lithe frame created a high-pitched squeal that an orchestral musician might have mistaken for a sustained single note, played on a soprano tuba.

Astonished and relieved, Georgie, gasped and blinked at his reflection in the mirror. He’d never seen his own image so clearly and vividly. He had never been so clean. His hair was still braided, and the braids were curved and pinned to his head. Unaccustomed as he was to studying his own appearance — and framed with curving braids even less — he was confounded by the feminine face gazing back at him. A single wisp of his light-brown hair escaped from his braids and hung over his pale, white forehead. His chin was small, his cheekbones high, his eyes large and dark, and his eyelashes long and curved. He beheld for the first time the waif that his casual benefactors saw: the face that touched strangers’ hearts and moved them to give the boy food and clothes over the years. In other words, they mistook him for a innocent, cherubic girl.

If he’d seen the face on another person, someone other than himself, he’d say it was the face of angel. And yet, it wasn’t someone else’s face — it was his own. Before he had a moment to grapple with this self-revelation, there came another great build-up of pressure down below, quickly followed by another rush of wind: this time a delicate whoosh, as if someone slowly and gently squeezed a set of bellows.

After that gust had passed, Aurora knocked on the door and told him to hurry. When Georgie emerged from the bathroom, he saw the girl busy in the hallway with a long-handled feather duster, cleaning the corners of the ceiling.

Back in his room, he was taken aback when he discovered that Aurora had laid out a full set of girl’s clothes for him to wear! What a thing! And his own clothes were nowhere in sight. He stuck his head out the door and asked, “Don’t you have any boy’s clothes I can wear?”

Aurora looked at him as if he were the village idiot. “Of course not! This is an institute for young women, what do you think?”

Georgie closed the door and looked at the clothes. His stomach growled, this time from hunger. Breakfast first, he told himself. If — for the first time in his life — a breakfast was ready and waiting for him, he would have dressed like a circus clown if that was the requirement for dining. Besides, there was apparently no alternative, at least in the moment, so he put the clothes on one by one. Aurora had helpfully stacked them in the order that they went on. First came a pair of long drawers, something like white cotton pants. Then a chemise, stockings, petticoats, and finally the dress. The dress was a pale russet-color print overlaid by fine red crisscrossed lines, red piping, and red ribbons at the waist and chest. Aurora walked in while Georgie was leaping around the room, struggling to reach the buttons on the back of the dress. “I can’t get behind myself! It keeps getting away from me!” he explained.

The girl sighed with resignation. She put a hand on his shoulder to stop his ineffective antics. She turned him around and did up the buttons with surprising speed. Then she demanded, “Why didn’t you take out your plaits?”

Without waiting for an answer she pushed him into a chair. Standing behind him, she unpinned and unwound the braids. Quickly and almost roughly she brushed the braids out, leaving Georgie’s fine, light-brown hair with regular ripples from roots to tips. “That’s the best we can do for now,” she said. “Now come.”

He began to stand, until stopped once again by Aurora’s hand. “You haven’t put on your shoes!” she exclaimed. “Where is your head today?”

“I never wore shoes,” he explained in a soft, low voice. Aurora huffed in indignation, but she was touched. “You’ve never worn shoes before?” Georgie shook his head no. Aurora knelt and slipped a pair of shiny black flats on his feet.

Taking the boy by the hand, she rushed him down the hall. Georgie, unaccustomed to what seemed hobbles on his feet, tripped and fell twice before they reached the head of the stairs. Aurora slowed her pace, but didn’t let the boy dawdle.

Georgie would have dawdled if he could — there was so much to see, so much to be amazed at, in what seemed to Georgie an immense and elaborate house.

Down the stairs Aurora led him, through another hallway, and up a second staircase. At one point during their climb, Georgie stopped, tugging on Aurora’s hand to halt her. She turned, puzzled and annoyed, but her face showed concern when Georgie groaned and put his free hand on his stomach.

“What is it?” the girl inquired, and in answer Georgie let out a ripping blast of wind — not quite as loud as a thuderclap, and yet it came with a snap! so loud it caused Aurora to jump several inches and nearly tumble down the stairs. She let go of Georgie’s hand, and put her hand on her heart. With her other hand, she grasped the banister to prevent her fall.

After blinking several times in astonishment, Aurora moved her hand from her heart to her nose. “Don’t you have something to say?” she asked, offended.

Georgie looked at the girl, then looked around the at the stairs, the vaulted ceiling, the rugs on the floor below. He was mystified. It never occurred to him that she might have any objection or concern for his winds. Until this point in his life, a fart, a sneeze, and all other involuntary actions happened out of doors and were not generally cause for comment. And therefore, after searching for “something to say” the boy hit on this happy phrase: “I think this is the loveliest house I have ever seen.”

Aurora growled in frustration. “Not that! About your — about your whooperup!”

When Georgie’s contracted brow showed his ignorance of the word, she grabbed his hand again. She led him to the top of the stairs and knocked on a door. A woman’s voice called “Enter.”

Aurora showed Georgie in, then left, shutting the door behind her.

Mrs. Vendall, as it happened, was the same woman who gave Georgie the bitter cordial the night before. She sat down at a small table, laden with food, and gestured Georgie to another chair. The woman watched with some interest as Georgie sat himself. The boy wasn’t wearing what any woman of that time would consider a full skirt, but there was a great deal more volume below his waist than the boy knew how to manage.

At first he considered hiking up the skirt, but quickly saw that this would only add to the bulk around his middle.

Then he tried flattening the mass behind him. This tactic caused it to billow out before him.

He glanced at Mrs. Vendall, who was seated and composed, but her posture and clothes didn’t give him a clue.

At last, the woman told him, “Just sit down.”

To Georgie’s surprise, it was the winning move. “Seems like the dress figured out where to go by itself!” he commented, pleased with the small success.

Georgie meant to reach for a piece of toast, but when he lifted his right hand, Mrs. Vendall seized it, and held her other hand open. Georgie was quite hungry, and very nearly reached for the toast with his free hand, but he caught her look and rested his left hand in her right. Mrs. Vendall bent her head to intone a long, extemporaneous prayer, in which Georgie featured prominently, as a “waif,” a “wastrel,” and “a brand plucked from the burning.”

After a weighty “Amen,” she let go of his hands and took hold of the serving tools. She loaded both Georgie’s plate as well as her own, used a pair of tongs to give him a single slice of toast, and poured them both a generous cup of tea. After consuming some mouthfuls in silence, Mrs Vendall said to Georgie, “Aurora informs me that your name is Georgia.”

“Georgie,” the boy corrected.

Without missing a beat, and still under the misconception that young Georgie was a girl, the woman said, “If you wish to remain within these walls, under my tutelage and protection, you will be known as Georgia.” Without waiting a reply, she went on to ask Georgie’s last name.

“I don’t have one,” the boy replied. “I never needed one.”

“Nonsense! Everyone has a last name. What was your mother’s full name?”

Georgie swallowed a half-chewed lump of toast. It stuck in his throat. He took a big sip of tea to painfully dislodge the block.

“I never even knew her part name,” Georgie said.

“Fascinating,” Mrs. Vendall commented, and peppered the boy with questions relating to his birth, life, and any possible documentary evidence of his identity. In the end she concluded that “Georgia” was as innocent as she was undocumented: most likely born to a poor, frightened girl, and raised more by chance than design.

“You need a last name,” Mrs. Vendall informed him, and gazed out the window for inspiration. “Georgia Snow… Georgia Snowdrift. Snowflake, Blizzard, Winter. Georgia Winter? No, hardly! Georgia Winters? Worse yet. I have it: Georgia Wintersmith. There’s your name. And your birthday? January 18 will do.”

“When might that be?” Georgie asked.

“Yesterday, when you were plucked from a snowdrift.”

“I’m much obliged,” Georgie replied, “but Georgia can’t be my name. I’ve been Georgie since… well, since ever.”

“Do you know where you are?” Mrs Vendall asked in a kindly tone. When the boy shook his head no, she explained: “This is the Vendall Institute for Young Women. Here we teach girls to read and write and keep accounts. We instruct them in all the domestic arts and some of the commercial and even agricultural arts, so that when they come of age, they are able to find their way in the world. Does that sound promising to you, Georgia? Would you like to stay here and develop your possibilities?”

“Would I be able to eat and sleep here?” he asked.

Mrs. Vendall laughed. “This will be your home, but only if you undertake to follow my instructions and my rules. I will treat you fairly, but my rules are not to be broken. As long as you follow my path, you may stay, and yes, you would eat and sleep here, and you’d be given clothes to wear, appropriate to your station and the season. In fact, you will learn to cook, clean, and how to cut and sew your own clothes.”

“I’m sure I’ll never undertake to cut my clothes, ma’am, but all otherwise, I would like to stay.”

Once that was settled, the conversation became a bit freer, and Mrs. Vendall asked Georgie whether he had any complaints about his treatment so far, or about his accommodations, or whether he had any particular ailments or difficulties she should be aware of.

“There is something,” Georgie confessed. “All this morning I’ve been troubled by wind.”

“Wind?” Mrs. Vendall asked. “Well of course you have. I gave you a carminative yesterday. Don’t you remember?”

“A car—?”

“Carminative. It’s medicine to relieve intestinal distress.” Seeing Georgie’s confusion, she leaned forward and in a confidential tone informed him, “It makes you break wind. It helps to expel the noxious contents trapped in your intestines.”

“It did that for sure,” Georgie admitted. “Will that be a daily occurrence in this house?”

Mrs. Vendall’s face went through a series of contortions until she finally let go and laughed out loud.

“Mercy!” she cried, once she’d caught her breath. She dried her eyes and said, “Lord love you, my angel, but no — it won’t ha— hap— ha—” and she broke off in laughter once again.

Georgie — or Georgia, as he came to be known — was (in a sense) born yesterday, but he was nobody’s fool. During that fateful breakfast he came to understand that his tenure in Mrs. Vendall’s institute was contingent on his being a girl. And so, he answered to the name Georgia Wintersmith. He applied himself to his lessons, and quickly learned to read. With considerable effort and practice he came to write with a fine feminine hand. In time he was able to calculate sums, make change, and keep a double-entry ledger.

Over the years, his voice, vocabulary, and diction improved. Cooking, cleaning, and the various sewing arts were no longer mysteries to him.

Helped by the prudery of that time, Georgia had very little difficulty in hiding his condition. After all, there was only one small part of him that could give him away, and that was enveloped in a quantity of skirts that were meant to hide even the faintest suggestion of what lay beneath.

During his years at the institute, Georgia often forgot that he even was a boy. Or, perhaps not forgot — it was a topic that rarely arose on any given day.

Mrs. Vendall continued in her misconception: she hadn't the slightest clue as to Georgie's true gender. Georgie did his best to fit in and do as the other girls did. For that reason, it wasn’t until Georgia turned fourteen that Mrs. Vendall began to feel any sort of concern. She’d been dosing the boy with Female Excellizer, a formulation of her own. It helped all of her girls become “early bloomers,” which in turn made it easier for Mrs. Vendall to find places for her charges, and make some return on her investment.

In the three months before his birthday, Mrs. Vendall had doubled up the doses, to no effect.

She was considering tripling or quadrupling the dose on poor unsuspecting Georgia. Her mind ran over the ingredients: asafoetida, baobab, scammony, rhubarb, and the rest… she had no worries about them, but the amount of rectified wine in three or four doses would be enough to make the child tipsy, and Mrs. Vendall’s conscience resisted such a thing.

She decided to bring Georgia to visit a specialist, a very particular specialist: one who’d studied in France, and brought home a powerful, modern science with him.