Georgie was a child of the streets of Philadelphia who nearly died in the blizzard of 1857.
His savior, Mrs. Vendall, mistook the cherubic boy for a little lost girl, and brought him to her Institute for Girls.
Georgie managed to blend in, until Mrs. Vendall tried to marry him off to a Prince out west.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
Georgie’s first real memory was a snowstorm. He later learned that it was the worst snowstorm of the decade. Later still, he learned that the decade was the 1850s, and the specific date was January 18, 1857. Before the storm Georgie never knew or needed to know the day or the date, or even the year. Of the days of the week, for Georgie, there were only two: Sunday and the others. He had a nodding acquaintance with numbers and counting, but he couldn’t read or write. Until the storm, Georgie’s ignorance never bothered him; in fact, he was quite unaware of it.
Among other gifts, Mrs. Vendall gave Georgie January 18 as his birthday. Until then, he never had one.
Before the storm, Georgie lived in the bliss of innocence: he was simple, open, unaffected. He grew like Rousseau’s child of nature -- with one difference: Georgie lived in the city, in the heart of Philadelphia. Georgie didn’t reflect on his condition in life. He simply took things as they came. He was as unaware of his poverty as he was unaware of his ignorance. People looked upon the beautiful waif and gave him food, or sometimes clothes.
He was like a lily of the field, who neither toiled nor reaped, but each day received what was needful.
He had distant, vague memories of a frail young girl -- his mother -- and then, something sad, then nothing. That “something sad” was even more vague than the memory of his mother, but he never probed it. After that time, Georgie was alone. He ate, he slept, he wandered where he liked. Some angel must have protected him; his beauty and naivete left him easy prey, and yet the predators never touched him.
Georgie’s innocent, unconscious existence ended when a snowstorm of historic proportions hit Philadelphia, and caught Georgie unprepared. The place where he’d sneak in to sleep was locked. His clothes were warm, but they weren’t proof against the relentless cold of several feet of snow. And food! He hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Georgie walked with the wind at his back, his energy flagging, and at last, thinking to rest for a moment, sat next to a low wall, out of the wind. Suddenly, he fell asleep, like a stone dropping in a well.
He didn’t wake when strong arms plucked him from the snowdrift, and he half-dozed when those arms carried him into a warm house, and up a set of stairs. Dazed, he was aware when a young maid, not much taller than himself, wrapped him, as he trembled in his still-wet rags, in a thick blanket. A tall woman entered, carrying a dark liquid in a tiny glass. “Drink this,” she said, and poured it, a little at a time, between his lips. The taste was shudderingly terrible. Georgie started to squirm.
The woman, who’d seen it all before, told him sternly, “Don’t spit. Swallow. If you spit it out, I’ll make sure you drink two doses. Come on, now.”
Georgie swallowed, shuddering and shaking -- not from the cold, mind, but from the awful medicine. It had to be medicine, it tasted so bad. Instinctively he made the mistake of licking his lips, and got another taste of the disgusting liquid.
“What is that?” Georgie exclaimed.
“It’s a carminative of my own devising,” the woman explained. “And no more questions. You’ll have a bath, a meal, and a good night’s sleep, little lady, and then we’ll have a talk in the morning to decide what’s to become of you.”
“I’m not a lady!” Georgie protested.
The woman took his chin in her hand and studied his features for a moment, turning his head this way, then that. She was enchanted by the child's cherubic face and innocent expression and had no idea she was looking at a little boy. Aside from the grime that covered him, his fine hair, delicate features, and rosy cheeks bespoke an adorable young girl. “Not a lady? No, of course you're not. You're a waif, a ragamuffin, a tatterdemalion. You're a little lost damsel who's known nothing but the alleys and byways of life. Still, once you’re cleaned up and rested, we’ll see what you might come to be.” Then she addressed the little maid. “Aurora, you’ll see to the bath, the bed, the dinner? It should be something light but nourishing, with plenty of hot broth and tea.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the maid replied, with a slight curtsy. The woman left the room.
The cordial, in spite of its taste, had brightened Georgie’s eyes, and his habitual bonhommie returned. “Where am I?” he asked, “And who was that woman? And when can I eat? She said I could eat, I heard her.”
“Oh, my,” Aurora said. “You are a caution, aren’t you? Full of questions!”
Georgie felt a little offended. “I only want to know what’s become of me,” he explained in a small voice.
“You’re in Mrs. Vendall’s Institute,” Aurora replied as she turned the taps to fill an enormous claw-foot bathtub. She closed the bathroom door, and a pleasant cloud of steam rose from the tub. “Once the tub is full, you can get in and have a good soak. And make sure you dunk your head well. Use the pink liquid to wash your hair. I’ll comb out your nits when you’re done.”
“I don’t have nits,” Georgie protested.
The girl gave him a skeptical glance before she poured two cupfuls of a white crystalline powder into the bath water.
“What’s that?” Georgie asked. “Sugar?”
The girl laughed. “Sugar? No, it’s not sugar, you silly nit! It’s Brooklings Detersive Bathing Powder.”
“What’s it for?”
The girl drew an astonished breath and turned her incredulous eyes on the boy. “It makes you clean! It’s better than soap!” Her eyes narrowed and she asked, “Have you ever had a bath before?”
“I don’t know,” Georgie replied. “I’ve never been sat in a tub, if that’s what you mean. I have been wet all over, but I’ve never seen a powder like that.”
The girl rolled her eyes, and read the box’s label. “Brookling’s Detersive provides a deep and pleasant bathing experience. Its finely-grained crystals open and clear the pores and render the skin elastic and bright. Brookling’s Detersive Bathing Powder is the scientific means for maintaining the highest level of hygiene for the entire person. Brookling’s reduces blemishes and imperfections, and cures disease by removing its cause.”
“Are you sure it’s not sugar?” Georgie asked. “Did you ever taste it?”
The girl turned her eyes again to the label. She read off some of the ingredients: “Pearl ash, alumina milk, carbonate, verbena, …. This isn’t sugar.” She swished her hand through the water, dissolving the crystals and turning the water an opaque, milky pink.
“I’ll see that your bed is ready,” she told Georgie, “and I’ll tell the kitchen about you.” She sniffed and straightened up. “I’m only doing this because you’re in such a state, mind. I’m not here to wait upon you hand and foot.” She held her gaze on Georgie until he nodded. “You, leave your, eh, clothes on the floor here, and hop into the tub. And don’t forget to dunk your head.” At that she left the room.
Now that Georgie was housed, blanketed, warmed, and restored by the cordial, he took stock of his surroundings. He’d seen bathrooms before, but never one so clean, with nary a broken tile. The mirrors were whole and without crack or dust. He could feel the heat of the bathwater on his face. It was an inviting sensation. Georgie stepped out of the enveloping blanket. He peeled off his damp clothes -- rags, really -- and dropped them to the floor.
Faint with hunger, he nearly swooned, but managed to grip the tub’s edge until his head stopped spinning. Then he raised his leg high, over, and into the water and boosted his torso up until his stomach rested on the tub’s edge. At last, he slipped into the water and let out a long, pleased ohhhhhh.
Exhausted, he fell deeply asleep.
Aurora eventually returned, woke him, and made him wash his hair. After he dunked his head, she poured some shampoo into his hands, and as he lathered, he asked, “Do I have to use the whole bottle?” She didn’t bother to answer; she just screwed the top back on, set the bottle on its shelf, and left the boy alone once again.
After he clambered out of the tub, he saw that his rags were gone, and that Aurora had left a white muslin nightdress and a pale pink cotton robe for him to wear. Making a virtue of necessity, he slipped the nightdress over his head and tied the robe around him. He’d find his clothes in the morning.
Aurora returned with a chair, a bowl of vinegar, and a comb with long, fine teeth. She stood behind Georgie and methodically combed his head until she was satisfied that every nit was removed from Georgie’s head and lying dead in the vinegar bowl.
“What is your name?” Aurora asked.
“Georgie,” he replied.
“My aunt lives in Georgia,” Aurora commented. “She says it’s a lovely state to be in.”
She led Georgie to a small but well appointed room. A hot meal sat ready on a little table. It consisted of a large bowl of a dense, strong broth, a huge pot of tea, soft rolls with butter, and chunks of a bland white cheese. Aurora sat and watched him eat. Her eyes widened when the boy lifted the bowl of broth to his lips and drank off the liquid in series of loud gulps, followed by a satisfied gasp for air, and finally by loud, cheerful burp.
“Oh, my,” Aurora said. “You’re like a wild creature.”
“In what way?” Georgie asked, puzzled. When she didn’t answer, he made short work of the cheese and bread. He finished his meal by eating slices of butter off his knife, washed down by cup after cup of tea.
When he finished, when all the food was gone, he smiled a glorious smile at the little maid, who astonished by his capacity and speed, offered to bring up a load of firewood, “if you’re still hungry.”
Georgie didn’t understand her mild sarcasm, so he didn’t answer.
Aurora stood up, placed herself behind Georgie’s chair, and began brushing his hair. “Why haven’t you let your hair grow?” she asked. “Did you sell it?”
Georgie replied, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t-- oh, never mind.” After all the knots were brushed out, Aurora told him, “You’re going to have to do this every day yourself, if you want your hair to shine.” Then, after setting down the brush, she said, “I’ll plait your hair, but the plaits will be short.”
Georgie had never heard the word plait before, so he told her, “That’s fine.” Soon he understood that "plait" was a fancy word for braid. To Aurora’s irritation, Georgie’s head began to nod with sleep, but she managed to finish all the same.
“I’ll leave you now,” Aurora told him. “There is your bed. I’ll come to wake you in the morning.”
My bed, Georgie said to himself. I’ve never slept in a bed before.
He climbed atop the pile of mattresses and, still wearing the robe, wormed his way under the heavy covers.
Then, the little boy, who knew nothing about God or religion, asked himself, I wonder should I say a prayer? How would I begin? He felt as though he ought to thank someone for his unexpected luck and this undeserved luxury. As noble as his intentions were, his fatigue was far greater, and no sooner had he asked about a prayer, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
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.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
Georgie — or Georgia, as he was now known — knew that his subterfuge wouldn’t last forever. One day, his voice would change. One day, whiskers would appear on his face. Occasionally he had nightmares where he’d see himself as he was now: to all appearances, a young, pretty girl. In these dreams he was wearing a dress made of light cotton with a cute design: dark blue roses on a pale blue background. The hem of the dress didn’t reach the floor: like many designs for young girls, it was short enough to show her ankles and feet.
In this nightmare, Georgia would abruptly grow and mature at an accelerated, jumpy, visible pace. His feet grew and swelled and burst out of his shoes. His limbs lengthened, the seams on the sides of his dress and his sleeves split; coarse hairs appeared on his face, arms, and legs, and soon he presented the grotesque picture of a bulky, uncouth boy draped in the tatters of a young girl’s clothes.
Georgia was always able to shake off the disturbing effect of those dreams, but he knew very well that eventually his days of free room and board would come to an end. To make matters worse, he had long since developed a real affection for Mrs. Vendall and everyone at the institute: the staff, the girls, the teachers. Out of his affection grew a deep sense of guilt: he knew he was cheating Mrs. Vendall. To put it plainly, he was stealing from her. At some point, each girl in Mrs. Vendall's care would be placed: she’d go out from the institute and enter life in a domestic or commercial situation, and Mrs. Vendall would pocket a fee. Many girls were actually married off — but we’ll hear more of that later. The point was, Mrs. Vendall expected a return for her investment in each girl, and Georgia would end up denying his benefactor the recompense for all the trouble and expense she’d undertaken on his behalf.
In any case, Georgia didn’t idly wait for the axe to fall. He had formulated something like a plan. It wasn’t very detailed or well-thought-out: it basically amounted to running away. Some versions of his “plan” featured a pair of pants and other male clothes. As Georgia’s sewing skills improved, he gave some thought as to how he might make himself a set of man’s clothes, but the entire activity, from beginning to end, would be difficult to hide.
Frankly, if Georgia did run away, it wouldn’t be the first time one of Mrs. Vendall’s investments had gone awry. Every year or two, a girl would run off with some household money. Over the years a handful of girls turned out to be unteachable, intractable, and had to be let go. Certainly Mrs. Vendall had come to feel a special affection for Georgia, and his disappearance would be a blow, but still, it would be a blow Mrs. Vendall would recover from.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t how things fell out. Georgia temporized: the future, when his disguise would fail, always seemed comfortably far off. His voice hadn’t cracked; there weren’t any stray hairs on his chest or legs.
Georgia wasn’t the only one watching for signs of maturity: after the boy turned thirteen — or as near thirteen as anyone could guess — he became an object of special interest to Mrs. Vendall. Three of Georgia’s personal qualities emerged to set him apart from all the other girls, and Mrs. Vendall discovered that the boy was uniquely qualified for an unusual position that none of the other girls would be able to fill: Princess of the Far West.
The first of Georgia’s particular qualities was his activity. The second was his willingness — and sometimes eagerness — to get dirty. The third was his letters.
We’ll explore each quality in turn.
Georgia was active and industrious. The other girls were obedient for the most part, but they needed constant direction. Georgia, on the other hand, roamed the house, exploring every corner, talking to everyone, and if he found something that needed doing, he did it. He helped the cooks in the kitchen, he assisted the maids at their cleaning. He sorted, he organized, he found lost objects. Georgia was never at a loss for something to do.
Georgia not only didn’t mind getting dirty, he seemed to relish it. He attacked the worst jobs with gusto: he never shied away from work that was physically difficult or distasteful. He carried the coal scuttle in. He lugged the kitchen slops outside and tipped them into the sewer. More than once he chased down a rat in the kitchen or cellar, and after stunning the vermin with a broomhandle, he carried it outside by the tail, where he finished it off.
The only lesson Georgia had trouble with, was how to keep her clothes clean. It was this quality (or lack of quality) that first gave Mrs. Vendall the idea that Georgia might be best suited as a mail-order bride to a certain man of success in the Far West.
Now we must talk about Georgia’s letters: after much work and application, Georgia developed a clear, fine, feminine hand: what she wrote was elegant to look at and easy to read. She wrote with facility, grace, and economy.
Often the girls were asked to write letters. The younger girls assumed these were simple exercises, not written to any real person or anyone in particular, and sometimes this was so. In other cases, it was something of a trial.
In the case in question, Mrs. Vendall chose a dozen girls, all of them near or above Georgia’s age, and asked each of them to write a “pen-pal” letter to a man named Winston Prince. She gave them a few details: his age (24), his profession (mining engineer and geologist), and his location (Feldspar, Arizona).
All of the girls wrote good letters. Three of them wrote letters that were quite fine and highly polished. Georgia’s letter, on the other hand, was simply exceptional. It was the only letter that was truly personal. He did something none of the other girls did: he expressed a genuine, unfeigned interest in Prince’s work. The idea that a person could study rocks and make a good living at it astonished him, and he was full of questions. His interest prompted him to dip into the encyclopedia and consult an almanac before sitting down to write.
Mrs. Vendall was so impressed by the aptness and liveliness in Georgia’s production that she wrote a letter of her own to Mr. Prince. She sent both letters along with a recent photograph of Georgia.
Prince ran a mining operation in Arizona. The mine was doing well enough before Prince arrived, but Prince, armed as he was with geological insight, found several promising new placer deposits. He also began mining for a vein, a vein that paid handsomely on its promise. He also increased the output and quality of the mine’s refinery. Prince understood machinery, and he also brought with him his own method, based on electrolysis, of separating gold and silver. Most of the mined gold in that area was admixed with silver, and though precious, a purer gold brought a higher price than the amalgam.
Prince was happy and successful, but he was lonely. He had twice tried the expedient of a mail-order bride. Neither woman lived up to his hopes, and ended up marrying elsewhere. Prince came to realize that what he wanted was not simply a woman, however pretty she may be. He wanted a companion: someone he would grow to love just as she would grow to love him. Someone he could talk to: an intelligent woman with active interests of her own, and whose mind wasn’t bounded by the four walls of domestic life.
Prince read Mrs. Vendall’s letter with some skepticism. He rather liked Georgia’s face in the photo, though she was clearly only a child. But her letter—! After he finished reading, he turned it over and read it again. Then he read it a third time. In his bed than night, he fell asleep composing a reply. When he woke the next morning, he knew that the hole in his life was Georgia-shaped.
He wrote to Mrs. Vendall, expressing his desire to correspond with Georgia. From the very outset the agreement and expectation was clear: that Georgia and Prince would be “pen pals” until Georgia developed into a young woman. Once that happened, and if there was mutual interest, Georgia would travel to Feldspar so that a final decision would be made.
The “final decision” was, of course, about marriage.
Georgia knew none of this. Mrs. Vendall had been down this road many times in the past, and knew it was better to wait until the girl, of her own accord, found an interest and sense of connection for the man she was writing to.
Soon the correspondence was rapid-fire back and forth. Georgia consumed Prince’s letters as if they were novels. In Georgia’s estimation, Prince’s life was a nonstop adventure, and every element of it full of interest. Prince in his turn came to learn every detail of life in Mrs. Vendall’s institute. Living as he did among rough, uncultured men, he missed the wholesome domestic situation, the sense of belonging — in a word, he missed having family — and he often laughed aloud at Georgia’s natural, often unconscious, humor.
At first Georgia was taken aback by the small, tame expressions of affection on Prince’s part, but he reminded himself that he was playing the part of girl, so he responded in kind.
Everything was going great guns, on wide, well-oiled wheels of steel, except for one obvious problem: Georgia wasn’t developing. Mrs. Vendall could never send a child to Mr. Prince. Georgia needed to bloom!
We’ve already noted that Mrs. Vendall had a special medicinal preparation of her own: a closely-guarded secret. She meant to file a patent once she settled on a final version of the formula. For the past five or six years, she’d been dosing her younger girls with her “Female Excellizer” when she judged they were ready to enter womanhood. It had been noted by many that her institute was full of “early bloomers” but this was imputed to Mrs. Vendall’s skill in choosing her charges.
The formula seemed to favor the hormonal and physical changes that bring a girl from childhood to maidenhood. Perhaps Mrs. Vendall was presumptious in taking such liberties with her charges, but she had yet to see a negative result. On the contrary, all of the girls who had undergone these treatments were healthy, happy, and productive members of society. In fact, all the girls were proud of their early entry into the world of adults.
Georgia was the formula’s first failure. Even double doses of the Female Excellizer had no visible effect.
Mrs. Vendall needed help, so she turned to another “specialist”: her friend Absalom Lapsar. Lapsar, like Mrs. Vendall, was not a doctor, but he had highly developed scientific interests, particularly in the field of elevating home remedies and folk medicine to a more concentrated, essential form. He hoped to create a universal panacea, and had reason to believe that he was well on the way.
She described her conundrum to Lapsar, who listened attentively. When she finished speaking, he said, “I’m quite interested to hear this — did you know that I’ve developed a similar preparation? One aimed at assisting and abbreviating the process of female sexual maturity?” He got up, unlocked a cabinet, and withdrew a narrow white bottle whose label read “LN, batch #132.”
“This is Lapsar’s Nostrum — at least, that’s what I call it for now. I’ve given it with good effect to the young girls of the families who consult me. The results have been gratifying, I have to say.”
Mrs. Vendall couldn’t help but ask, “What’s in it? At least, what are the active ingredients?”
Lapsar replied with a sly smile. “Would be so good as to tell me your list of ingredients?”
Mrs. Vendall struggled between her desire to know, her desire to help Georgia, and her desire to eventually profit from an exclusive patent on her own Excellizer.
At last she told her colleague, “I don’t want to give the girl too much of a good thing, or two remedies that could contradict themselves and make the girl ill.”
Lapsar understood perfectly, so he suggested, “Why don’t you take this bottle with you? If your preparation, however excellent, isn’t providing the results you wish, you could suspend those doses and replace them with my Nostrum.”
“And if your Nostrum has no effect?”
Lapsar’s smile broadened. “It hasn’t failed me yet.”
Mrs. Vendall’s frown tightened. “Mine hadn’t either.”
She took the bottle from his hand and nodded thanks.
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
That evening, Georgia reported to Mrs. Vendall’s office as she did every day now, to be dosed. Mrs. Vendall looked at the boy’s flat chest, and felt her hope deflate in her own breast.
“Have you seen any… changes… in your body, dear? Have you noticed anything different? Felt anything different?”
Georgia’s alarm plainly showed in his face. “No, ma’am — no changes. Nothing at all.” He couldn’t help but wonder Did Mrs. Vendall see any changes in him? Is that why she asked?
Neither guessed that the “changes” that he feared and she desired were poles apart.
Mrs. Vendall sighed. This was the first time her concoction had failed her. By now, Georgia should not only have plunged into puberty, but very nearly emerged on the other side of it. This was the experience of every other girl Mrs. Vendall had dosed. Why hadn’t it worked on Georgia?
She turned to her side table and picked up a clean spoon. Out of habit, her hand very nearly picked up her own Female Excellerizer in its squat, brown bottle. She frowned to herself and took instead the tall, slim white bottle of Laspar’s Nostrum.
“A different medicine, ma’am?” Georgia asked.
“Yes, my dear. A little something different.”
“What do these medicines do?” Georgia inquired. “I’m not sick, am I? I don’t feel sick.”
“No, no, you’re not sick. You’re not sick at all. You can think of these as… as vitamins. As a tonic to help you grow, like the other girls.” She wiggled the cork to loosen it, then pulled it free with a soft pop! Then she hesitated. “Have you ever felt anything… moving inside you… responding to the tonic I’ve been giving you?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied, honestly. “Do you think I have worms?”
Mrs. Vendall, distracted, didn’t hear the question. She sniffed at the bottle, picking up hints of saffron and ginger along with other scents she couldn’t yet identify. She poured some into the spoon, dipped her finger in, and tasted. Oil of caraway, surely… rhubarb? The ginger, yes, she was right about that… and one strong taste: scammony, yes, that too. If she went on tasting and sniffing, Mrs. Vendall was sure she could identify all the ingredients, but of course the quantities and the preparation… those were things that only Laspar knew.
She poured a spoonful and ladled it into Georgia’s mouth. His face contorted with distaste. “Ugh! Soap? Oh, that’s nasty! Why is there soap in there?”
Soap! Of course. Marseille soap, to be specific. To Georgia she replied, “It’s a common ingredient for remedies of this type.”
Georgia was still opening and closing her lips, like a wide-mouthed frog, and rubbing his tongue against the roof of his mouth, to try to rid himself of the taste. “Ma’am… ma’am? Can we go back to the other one? This one’s awful.”
“Ah… no,” she replied. “In fact, let’s try another spoonful.”
Georgia left the office, descended the stairs, followed the hallway, and climbed the other stairs. Along the entire route his jaw and tongue were working, striving to rid himself of the dreadful taste. Had anyone seen him, they might have the impression he was practicing for a funny-face competition.
By the time he reached the bathroom to rinse his mouth, it was a lost cause. The worst of the taste had faded into his cheeks and the back of his throat. He sniffed the bar of marseille soap that sat in a dish by the sink. The odor was the same as the taste.
“Soap!” he groaned in disgust.
Both Georgia and Mrs. Vendall were ignorant of the struggle going on deep within Georgia’s body. It was an epic battle on a small scale: it was a skirmish on the cellular level. At the same time, it was a global conflict, a war being fought in every part of Georgia’s body. Mrs. Vendall was convinced that something in the child’s physiology was actively resisting the onset of puberty. She had no idea that it was the physical essence of who Georgia was: it was his masculine nature on the march, ready to dominate, intent on converting that young, ambiguous body into something harder, stronger, hairier.
At the same time, Mrs. Vendall’s concoction was more powerful than even she was able to guess. It created a feminine influence that seeped into Georgia’s hormones and gently but irresistably called the child’s body to blossom as a girl.
Her instinct to double-dose with Female Excellerizer put Georgia in a deadlock: his masculine identity lacked the power to overcome the feminine; his feminine identity lacked the warmth and energy to coax the masculine into surrender.
Laspar’s Nostrum entered as a new element in the stalemate. It was, in military terms, a flanking maneuver. While the two elemental developmental impulses were locked in a frontal, head-on, hormonal standoff, Laspar’s Nostrum seeped around the edges of the engagement and moved into territory not yet occupied by either party.
Mrs. Vendall’s concoction was ingenious: somehow she created a formula that unleashed a girl’s endocrine system, creating a flood of hormones that floated through the bloodstream to every organ of the body. The doses kept Mrs. Vendall’s foot on the glandular accelerator, and she didn’t stop until her girls were fully developed, in every sense of the word.
It was true, what she told Absalom Lapsar: the Female Excellerizer had never failed before. Georgia’s unresponsiveness bewildered and disappointed poor Mrs. Vendall.
While Mrs. Vendall’s medicine worked from the most fundamental interior elements of sexual development, Lapsar’s formula targeted the opposite end of the process: in some improbable way, it favored the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, and left the interior, hormonal reality to play catch-up to the external reality. In particular, the Nostrum quickened the growth of the breasts and the disposition of adipose tissue, creating an overall “womanly” appearance.
After only three weeks, Mrs. Vendall consulted with Laspar a second time, this time to report that the Nostrum had no observable effect. Laspar was dumbfounded. It was the first time his product had failed to arrive at the desired result.
After listening to Mrs. Vendall’s report, and after asking a few questions to be sure she’d used the preparation correctly, Laspar told her, “Here’s what I recommend: try one more week with my Nostrum, and if you don’t see any result, then it’s time to move the battle to another level.”
“What on earth do you mean?” Mrs. Vendall asked.
“You and I both have used medical means to push the girl into puberty. Our methods were infallible to us before now. Am I correct?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Vendall agreed.
“One inescapable fact remains: something — something deep and essential — is blocking our progress. There is an obstacle in the girl herself.”
“What sort of obstacle?”
Although the two were quite alone in his workshop, Laspar involuntarily looked around him, as if to make sure no one overheard. Leaning forward, he asked her in a confidential tone, “Have you ever heard the term… psychosomatic?”
“I may have,” Mrs. Vendall replied, trying to not betray her excitement. She felt the frisson of something new; the moment of a scientific revelation.
“On the Continent, there are… investigators of the human condition and of our ethereal spirit. They have come to a solid convinction: that the mind and the spirit can affect the form and health of our bodies far more than hitherto suspected.”
A thrill ran through Mrs. Vendall’s body, and made gooseflesh of her arms. “And what is to be done, then?” she managed to ask.
Laspar opened a small drawer and retrieved a visiting card, which he set on the table and pushed toward Mrs. Vendall. She read:
Mrs. Vendall was puzzled. “He treats people with magnets?”
Laspar laughed condescendingly. “No, my dear. He uses magnetism. To be specific: animal magnetism.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Vendall said, finding her footing, “That’s something like Mesmerism, isn’t it? Does it actually work?”
Laspar looked offended and began to pull the visiting card back. She stopped his hand. “I’m sorry, Absalom. I’m not familiar with this new science.”
He nodded and let go of the card, which she quickly pocketed.
“He, like us, has a number of lotions and potions of his own invention, but primarily he uses animal magnetism to arrive at the heart of the matter. In this case, he’ll be able to divine whether your Georgia’s issue is physical or mental — and he’ll find a way to remove the obstacle. He arrived from Paris only six months ago, and he comes highly recommended.”
Bourbaki’s establishment was along Mrs. Vendall’s way home, so she ventured to knock, and found the man at home. She liked him immediately. He was congenial, charismatic, and full of both knowledge and good feeling. He spoke with an accent: not quite French, not German either, but in any case, something cultivated, something foreign.
Tentatively at first, and then more openly as she felt Bourbaki’s interest, Mrs. Vendall described Georgia’s condition and her failed treatments. Bourbaki listened attentively, without interrupting once. When Mrs. Vendall had finished talking, he told her, “I’ve no doubt that your friend Laspar has ‘hit the nail’ as you say. You will see, Mrs. Vendall, the science of magnetism will soon reveal all.”
He asked several questions about Georgia’s habits, feeding, activities, whether her sleep or her bowels were prone to disturbances, and various other inquiries of a medical type. Then he asked whether Mrs. Vendall was carrying a photograph of the girl. By chance, Mrs. Vendall happened to have a copy of the image she’d sent with the letter to Mr. Prince.
“Perhaps I can detect something of the girl’s magnetic state,” the man explained. He studied the picture closely, then cupped his hands around it.
“No,” he said after a few moments. “The only thing I can feel, all I can sense, is that this girl has a secret of some sort. There is a story in her… in her beginnings. Did she come to you as a foundling?”
Mrs. Vendall recounted the story of how she’d found the child asleep in a snowdrift. Mr. Bourbaki was enchanted. “This bodes well!” he told her. “Georgia’s beginnings are practically magical!” And he laughed. Mrs. Vendall found this non sequiter a bit odd, but in the end she laughed along as well.
Bourbaki rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “You can bring the girl tomorrow at 10 am. She may need one treatment, or a series of treatments. That remains to be seen. But have no fear… under my hands, Georgia will blossom and grow.”
His phrase under my hands struck Mrs. Vendall oddly, but she didn’t dwell on it. She had a question she meant to ask before Bourbaki showed her to his door. “Mr. Laspar told me that you also formulate remedies. Is that true?”
“Oh, yes!” the little man exclaimed brightly, as if he’d forgotten that fact himself. “Yes, I have a handful — five remedies, each with a particular application. I’m glad you mentioned them: I have one in particular that might meet Georgia’s specific case. It’s a liniment with the same aim as your Excellerizer and Mr. Laspar’s Nostrum.”
Mrs. Vendall stiffened. She wasn’t sure how to express a certain reservation, but Mr. Bourbaki understood immediately. “Have no fear, Mrs. Vendall! Have no fear! I won’t touch the girl. If I determine that the liniment will help her, she will carry the bottle home, and apply the liniment herself, in the privacy of her room. I’ll limit myself to giving her instructions.”
Reassured, Mrs. Vendall shook hands with Mr. Bourbaki, confirmed the time for Georgia’s appointment tomorrow, and left.
Mr. Bourbaki watched the woman as she walked along the sidewalk.
“Let’s hope little Georgia is as lovely as her picture promises,” he murmured to himself. “And let us hope this gorgon doesn’t guard her too closely.”
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
When “Doctor” Bourbaki met Georgia, he was entranced by the child’s angelic face and fine, light-brown hair. Georgia was dressed in a white muslin summer dress, which further enhanced the cherubic impression.
Mrs. Vendall was once again struck oddly by the sight of Bourbaki rubbing his hands together. It nettled her to see his evident glee and satisfaction. Deep in her unconscious, she was more than “nettled” — she was repulsed. That deeper part of herself perceived that the man was a monster, a predator. However, the manners, the propriety of the age kept her from effectively recognizing it. The fact hadn’t yet bubbled up to her conscious mind and formulated itself in words. She felt something… call it a twinge. Although she didn’t betray — or even feel — any uneasiness, she somehow found it impossible to leave Georgia alone with the man. It was an unconscious check.
Georgia had no clear idea of why Mrs. Vendall brought her along on the visit to Bourbaki. The man seemed pleasant enough — even likeable. So when Bourbaki proposed to try “a magnetic experiment” with Georgia, the child accepted, after having looked to Mrs. Vendall, who nodded.
Bourbaki led them to a large, open room. In the middle of the room were two empty chairs, facing each other. A third chair stood close to the door, about six yards from the other two. Bourbaki looked at Mrs. Vendall and gestured to the chair near the door. “Please sit here, and try to not speak.” He led Georgia to the center of the room and seated the child in one chair. He sat in the other, so they were face to face.
“Close your eyes,” he told the child, “and pay attention to your breathing. In… and out. In… and out. Just so.” As Georgia slowly inhaled and exhaled, Bourbaki synchronized his breathing to Georgia’s. Then, gently rocking forward and back to the same rhythm, he began passing his hands up and down Georgia’s body, from toes to head, without touching, keeping several inches away, as though Bourbaki’s palms and outstretched fingers were gliding over an invisible magnetic field that enclosed Georgia.
After two minutes of these passes and synchronized breathing, Georgia suddenly fell silent. Seeing that change, Bourbaki leaned back in his chair and watched the child, who now appeared to be asleep: eyes closed, breathing slow and regular. As we have said, Georgia’s eyes were still shut, so when Bourbaki raised his left arm and Georgia did the same, Mrs. Vendall felt a thrill of wonder pass through her. Bourbaki lowered his arm, and so did Georgia.
Bourbaki touched his nose. Georgia did the same. Bourbaki raised both arms and tilted his head back. So did the child. Mrs. Vendall watched, stupified, as Georgia, whose eyes were clearly closed, mirrored every movement Bourbaki made, without seeing at all.
At last, Bourbaki said some words in a low voice, and Georgia returned to a normal sitting pose. The man rose from his chair and approached Mrs. Vendall, leaving a relaxed Georgia behind.
“As you can see,” he told Mrs. Vendall, “The child is now in a magnetized state, a sympathetic state. We will leave her in this state for five minutes by my watch. Then I will rouse her and you may take her home.”
“And what will be the effect of this state?” Mrs. Vendall asked.
“Today we have only confirmed her magnetic susceptibility. Next time, we will begin to call forth her feminine principle, and in the following sessions we will align that principle with each layer of her magnetic strata.”
Mrs. Vendall wasn’t sure what to make of this explanation, so she shifted to more familiar ground. “And what of your liniment? Might I take some with me, for the girl?”
“Not quite yet,” Bourbaki cautioned. “First we must do the magnetic preparation. Once she is in a suitable state, we can begin to apply the liniment. As she is now, it would be less than useless.”
“Hmm,” Mrs. Vendall mused. “Can you tell me any of the ingredients in this liniment of yours?”
“Certainly,” he replied. “I’m sure that once you touch and smell it, you’ll guess the ingredients in any case: it consists of the nine oils, with the addition of small amounts of camphor and ammonia spirits — quite small amounts.”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Vendall asked, surprised by Bourbaki’s candor.
“Yes and no,” he replied, with a slight smile. “I dare say, with the help of your nose and some experimentation, you could arrive at the exact formulation, but there is a final step, whose proper execution is known only to me. My liniment is activated — that is to say, it is not merely an excellent liniment; it is electro-galvanic, which gives it a potency and influence far greater than the simple physical preparation.”
Mrs. Vendall blinked several times. She didn’t want to confess to being ignorant, but at the same time, his explanation evoked her natural skepticism.
“Well, then, we shall see!” she declared.
“Yes, we shall,” he agreed, and went to wake the resting Georgia.
On the walk home, Mrs. Vendall asked Georgia, “How are you feeling?”
Georgia smiled and answered, “I feel like I’ve had the best sleep of my life!”
Georgia had always been a happy, good natured child, but after his first “magnetic” session, he was positively radiant and beaming. Not overmuch, though: Georgia’s newfound cheeriness was altogether natural and welcome. In fact, it was infectious. The whole institute gradually began to feel the effect. Everyone smiled more, was more compassionate and sharing. The change was nothing short of remarkable.
The next session with Bourbaki lasted ten minutes. The third session lasted twenty. After the fourth session, which lasted a full thirty minutes, Bourbaki entrusted Mrs. Vendall with his electro-galvanic liniment. The liniment was a soft brown paste with a pungent odor. Thankfully, there wasn’t much of it: only three ounces or so. It came in a small, unlabeled glass jar.
“The girl is to apply it herself before retiring. A very thin application of the liniment is enough: as thin a coat as possible. At the same time, it must cover the entire area from knees to neck, from elbow to elbow, and as far around back as she is able to reach comfortably. The liniment should be applied nightly until the jar is empty.”
“And what about her…” Mrs. Vendall blushed. “What about her…”
“Ah, yes!” Bourbaki exclaimed, “Yes — her intimate area must definitely be treated. A thin layer, the same as elsewhere. Once the liniment is absorbed into the skin, she may dress for bed and retire.
“The next morning,” he said, as he fetched a quart bottle of water from a cabinet, “she must wet a piece of cotton with this radium-infused water, and use it to clean the same area which she treated with liniment on the night before.”
“Radium?” Mrs. Vendall asked.
“It’s a new element, a recent discovery,” Bourbaki informed her. “This bottle in particular comes from a Tyrolean spa whose waters are impregnated by nature with radium’s salutary effects. Now tell me, have you seen any results from little Georgia’s sessions?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Vendall agreed. “Her mood has quite infectiously improved — not that her disposition needed improvement, and yet… improved.”
Bourbaki nodded.
“However, her physical development remains at a standstill.”
Bourbaki smiled and nodded. “This will come! In less than a month, all will be as it should be. I will soon discover the obstacle! Once the hidden impediment is removed, you shall see!”
Mrs. Vendall sighed and said a silent I hope so!
Like many predators of his type, Mr. Bourbaki was opportunistic. He knew when to bide his time, and at last, after three weeks of daily magnetic sessions, it seemed that his chance had finally come. Mrs. Vendall arrived with Georgia, but having some urgent business, she left the child alone with Bourbaki. He promised to accompany Georgia back to the institute after the session.
This time, rather than seat Georgia in a chair, as before, he brought the child into a smaller room, and had him lie on a couch. Quickly he induced the magnetic state, and Georgia lay helpless and trusting in a trancelike state. Knowing Georgia’s susceptibility, Bourbaki felt quite ready to pleasure himself at the child’s expense, confident that he could erase the incident from Georgia’s memory.
Bourbaki’s hands trembled with anticipation, and under his breath he murmured, “Now your secrets will be mine.”
Even though he spoke more to himself than to his intended victim, Georgia responded, in a small, far-off voice. The child said, “No one knows my secret.”
Puzzled and curious, Bourbaki asked, “What secret is that, child?”
Still in a trance, Georgia spoke calmly and evenly. “That I’m not a girl at all. I’m a boy. I’ve always been a boy.”
“What!” Bourbaki exclaimed, shocked to the core.
“No one knows,” Georgia concluded. “No one will ever know.”
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux
During this entire time, during this chemical/hormonal warfare that was being waged on Georgia’s current and future gender, something else was going on: something wonderful, scandalous, and dangerous.
Two or three times a week, letters continued to flow between Wilson Prince and Georgia. Georgia, on his part, found Prince’s life and work utterly fascinating. The frontier, the desert, the mine, the refinery — had a romance and freedom that was (at least in Georgia's youthful estimation) very nearly a fairy tale. Georgia could almost touch and taste the dust of the Far West and feel the burning desert sun on his skin. In Prince’s letters, Georgia found love. It wasn’t love for Mr. Prince, though: this new love was a love of the mind. Georgia was enthralled by Geology. Aside from what he could glean from the encyclopedia, the child was unable to find any written material on the subject. And so, he peppered his letters with questions, with half-formed and malformed concepts that Prince was happy to correct and direct. Prince was a great teacher, and Georgia, an apt pupil.
On his side, Prince continued to be charmed by Georgia’s naive curiosity, and was happy to feed the hungry mind. Also, as we’ve previously noted, Georgia’s letters, limited though they were to life in Mrs. Vendall’s institute, were full of an unconscious good humor and an eye for incident. They also betrayed a soul of kindness and true concern for others.
Wilson Prince had fallen in love. Deeply, fully, hopelessly. He lived for the day that Georgia would finally step off the train in Feldspar and become his wife. He carried Georgia’s photograph with him always: in a pocket over his heart.
And yet, as we all know, there was an obstacle — an apparently irremovable obstacle.
It was a secret obstacle, until Georgia confessed it to Elias Bourbaki: “I’m not a girl at all. I’m a boy. I’ve always been a boy.”
Bourbaki had no reason to doubt or disbelieve. The child was in a deep mesmeric state, and quite unable to lie. And yet — Georgia’s angelic appearance gave the lie to his confession, so Bourbaki asked more questions, requested explanations. All of Georgia’s answers rang true.
Bourbaki was thunderstruck. He had meant to take advantage of a young girl in a vulnerable state. In this, thankfully, he was thwarted. In spite of his carnal intentions, he never considered, not even for a moment, conducting a physical examination to confirm Georgia’s statement. Bourbaki never touched his own privates with his own naked hand; he was not about to touch those of another man or boy.
But now he found himself in a quandary: he had discovered the “block” that hindered Georgia’s development. He now knew with perfect clarity why Mrs. Vendall’s Female Excellerizer and Laspar’s Nostrum (to say nothing of Bourbaki’s own liniment) failed: they were like waves striking a rocky shore. The doses could be doubled or tripled or quadrupled: it would make no difference. There was no real hope of success.
What else had Georgia told him? “No one knows. No one will ever know.”
“No one will ever know,” Bourbaki repeated to himself. He blushed, feeling for once his shame and guilt. Did he dare tell Mrs. Vendall the truth? Could he somehow reveal Georgia’s secret without compromising his own reputation?
Leaving Georgia to repose in her magnetic trance, Bourbaki sat, chin in hand, turning the problem over and over in his head. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a way to explain what he’d discovered without revealing his predatory desires. Mrs. Vendall had seen enough of Georgia’s sessions to know that a person in a trance doesn’t blurt anything out: they needed prompting. Very specific prompting, in fact.
After much thought, Bourbaki decided to let Georgia’s confession remain a secret. After all, Georgia himself would have no recollection of having spoken. After a few more sessions, Bourbaki could declare himself beaten; he could tell Mrs. Vendall that — despite his grandiose promises, he was unable to get to the bottom of Georgia’s issue. She’d have to believe him. After all, Laspar had failed. Mrs. Vendall herself had failed. And if she ever came to know Georgia's true gender, Bourbaki would appear both innocent and ignorant of the fact.
Decided but distracted, Bourbaki roused Georgia from his trance, and went to retrieve his coat. After all, he had to accompany the child back to Mrs. Vendall’s institute.
Bourbaki was so preoccupied that he didn’t notice Georgia’s interest in the electrical experiments and apparatus that littered this part of the workspace. In particular, Georgia’s eye was drawn by a strange glass jar. The jar was eight inches high and twelve inches in diameter. The jar itself was empty, but it was lined inside and out with metal foil. A metal rod topped by a small metal ball projected up through the center of the lid.
“What’s in this strange container?” Georgia asked, as her hand approached the ball. She assumed (incorrectly) that the rod was a handle, and she meant to grasp it.
The next few moments were indelibly seared in Bourbaki’s memory as if in slow motion. He saw himself, coat half on, arm thrown forward as if he could somehow stop the child, his mouth open in a long, drawn-out NOOOOOO! He watched in helpless horror, unable to intervene as Georgia’s upraised arm and hand grew closer and closer to the device.
Georgia had never seen a Leyden jar, and knew virtually nothing about electricity. The strange device was a kind of high-voltage battery. Bourbaki himself was not quite sure how much electrical power was stored in the strange bottle, but knew it had to be a considerable amount. When the tips of Georgia’s fingers came close enough for a spark to jump from the metal ball atop the jar, the worst happened.
The electric shock jolted the child more than a foot off the ground and threw her backward through the air a full twenty feet, across the room, to land with a terrifying crash in a pile of chairs and shelves.
Bourbaki, sickened with grief and fear, ran to check the poor victim. Georgia was alive, thank God: unconscious, but alive. The child’s pulse was rapid and his breathing was shallow. No bones seemed broken.
The man cursed his depravity — he’d gone to the trouble of making quite sure that he and Georgia would be alone, absolutely alone and undisturbed, during this “session” — and for that reason, there was no one to call for help. In spite of its futility, Bourbaki found himself shouting, “Help! HELP! Oh, God, help me!”
He ran into the street and grabbed a random boy by the arm. He put some coins in the lad’s hand, and told him he’d have as much as again if he brought a doctor immediately.
The doctor, who lived nearby, arrived in minutes. He made the most complete and thorough examination that could be done upon a fully dressed person, using the medical knowledge of that time. That said, he quite accurately concluded that Georgia had suffered a brain contusion — what today we’d call a concussion — and that this in itself required close observation. On hearing how the concussion was delivered, he grilled Bourbaki with inquisitorial severity. He strongly suspected Bourbaki’s darker motives, but he refrained from delivering his suspicions. Under the circumstances, his first and greatest concern was his patient’s well-being. To that end, wanted to get the child home, safe, and in their own bed without delay.
The doctor knew very little about electricity, but had twice in his career cared for victims of lightning strikes. The treatment for shock was the same as for concussion: bed rest and observation.
Georgia was small and light. The doctor was large and strong. He swaddled the child in a warm blanket and carried Georgia through the streets to Mrs. Vendall’s institute in a matter of minutes. Once there, he informed Mrs. Vendall of the facts of the case. Then, in a manner both patriarchial and condescending, he did his best to make Mrs. Vendall feel guilty and responsible. Several times he repeated the phrase, “How you could leave a child alone with such a man is beyond me!”
A glance at his patient, who lay inert on the bed, reminded him of his duty of care. Changing to a more professional tone, he instructed Mrs. Vendall to keep Georgia in bed, warm, dry, and comfortable. If possible, the patient should be spoonfed beef tea.
“It may be some days before she awakens,” the doctor cautioned. “I will visit twice a day until that happens, and after that… we shall see.”
After the doctor left, Mrs. Vendall decided that Georgia’s bedroom was warm enough that she dared change Georgia’s day clothes for a more comfortable night dress.
As you may imagine, when she uncovered the chief indicator of Georgia’s true gender, it came as a great shock. Mrs. Vendall fell backward into a conveniently-located chair and sat for several minutes in silent consternation. She hardly knew what to think.
When at last she came to herself again, she finished changing Georgia’s clothes. She called to have a camp bed brought into the room, and sent word to the kitchen to send up her dinner, to be followed by beef tea for Georgia.
A series of reactions played through her, like a carousel of emotions. She was angry; she’d been deceived; she was full of pity; she was vengeful. She had certainly been used by the artful little creature. What made all of it worse, no matter which emotion she happened to inhabit at the moment, was that she had developed strong feelings for Georgia: quite maternal feelings, as if the child were her very own. Georgia was unique; Georgia had been plucked from the jaws of frozen death, and promised to be a truly excellent young lady.
Then it came upon her like a blast of thunder: What was to become of Wilson Prince? What would Mrs. Vendall tell the man?
Mrs. Vendall remained in Georgia’s room for four days. The child’s color improved. His pulse was strong. He managed to swallow broth even when unconscious.
The doctor assured Mrs. Vendall that “All of this promises well” although “he would make no guarantees.”
During Georgia’s coma, Mrs. Vendall had determined that as soon as the child was strong enough to walk, talk, and feed himself, that she would thrust him out into the street to fend for himself.
And yet, as angry as she felt as she imagined this casting out, once the child opened his angelic eyes on the fourth day, her heart melted in her, and she began to cry, sobbing great thankful tears of pure joy.
For the next three days, Georgia didn’t speak, and didn’t appear to understand or know anything.
On the eighth day, he managed to croak the words, “Mrs. Vendall,” which broke the woman’s heart all over again.
In the four weeks that followed, Georgia made what was nothing less than a miraculous recovery, at first needing assistance to walk a short distance, and later able to manage the stairs and hallways quite on his own.
At two weeks into his recovery, Georgia made a startling confession. Nothing in Mrs. Vendall’s scientific studies could have prepared her for Georgia’s revelation, but soon her own eyes verified the truth of the matter.
She had decided to put off confronting Georgia about his deception until after he’d fully recovered. She still wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do… Whether to keep the boy in the institute? Whether to allow the masquerade to continue? Whether to shift him over to a boy’s role in maintaining the place? Her heart and her head battled over the possibilities.
One evening, after she’d helped Georgia on his nightly indoor walk, after helping him into his bed, she could see there was something disturbing the child. After some gentle questioning, Georgia confessed, his face white with fear and confusion, his eyes wide with fear. In a soft voice, almost too quiet to hear, the boy whispered, ”I’m turning into a girl!”
And it was true. At least, externally so. Georgia’s breasts had begun to bud, and his scant body fat was moving from his waist to his hips and derriere. “And my thing is getting smaller!” he confided, nearly in tears.
Later, Mrs. Vendall reflected: Georgia had been exposed to mesmerism, to radioactivity, and to a high-voltage electrical shock. All this, after months of treatments of the Female Excellerizer, Laspar’s Nostrum, and Bourbaki’s as-yet-unnamed liniment. It was as improbable as being struck by lightning and winning the lottery in the same moment.
Certainly, if all those things had happened to Georgia a hundred years later, he would have almost certainly become some sort of superhero: able to see through walls, or read minds, or run faster than light itself. However, he lived in the Victorian age, and such things didn’t happen back then. In those days, miracles and wonders were of an entirely different sort.
The hormonal battle inside Georgia had wound up the spring of his sexual development, and the final touch — the blast of electrical energy — caused it to cut loose. It was as if a dam had broken, and the pent-up flood coursed through his entire being. During the next three months Georgia’s breasts grew into a pair of firm, substantial spheres. His hips kept pace, and with the aid of some corsetry, Georgia soon had an enviable figure: a tiny waist, an ample bust, and generous hips.
The more secret change — that of his genitals, moved at the same inexorable pace. If anyone was more astonished than Georgia herself, it was Mrs. Vendall. She relied on Georgia’s reports until he claimed that his penis had shrunken away to nothing. With many apologies, and a beet-red face, the woman undertook an examination and found that — externally at least — there was no trace left of Georgie’s manhood. In its place was a lovely feminine flower — identical, to all appearance, to that of any girl in the institute.
Georgia wept, inconsolable, for days.
She — for by now, she was quite assuredly a she — was revived by a letter from Mr. Prince. Fascinated once again by the life and studies of her pen-pal, Georgia dried her own tears. Then she took the box of his letters and read them all from the beginning.
Gradually, Georgia took her place once again with the other girls of the institute. She was still as helpful as before, though her air was somewhat subdued. Mrs. Vendall remained the sole custodian of Georgia’s secret, even though it was a secret that mattered no longer.
Mrs. Vendall suspected that Georgia — on account of her singular gestation into girlhood — might be infertile. She wrote to Mr. Prince to see whether this could be an issue. He responded, “I won’t say that it wouldn’t be a disappointment. It’s many years that I longed to see little Princes and Princesses of my own making, but if God doesn’t will it, I would be obliged to accept my destiny.
“And yet, I have to wonder what in Georgia’s history would lead you to foster such a suspicion as this?”
Over time, Mrs. Vendall broached the idea of Georgia making a trip to meet Mr. Prince. At first the girl was excited, but as she came to realize that the object of the trip was marriage, she was embarrassed, alarmed, and afraid.
In time, she came to understand that she had little choice in the matter, and when Mrs. Vendall set a date for her trip, Georgia acquiesced. She was sure that once Mr. Prince met her, his ideas of matrimony would fly out the window.
The trip was arduous, long, and uncomfortable. Mr. Prince’s money bought Georgia the best arrangements available at that time, but even so, it took three weeks to move from Philadelphia to Feldspar, Arizona.
Mr. Prince was waiting at the station, his heart racing. He scanned the passengers as they stepped from the train, and as soon as Georgia appeared, he ran to greet her.
She was, as you can imagine, even lovelier than any photo he had seen of her. He put his hands on her tiny waist, and looked into her angelic eyes.
“Mr Prince?” she asked. In his hungry ears her voice sounded like heavenly bells pealing.
He opened his mouth to answer, then — unable to resist — he kissed her on her soft lips, and Georgia kissed him back. She hadn’t meant to. In fact, she was quite determined NOT to kiss him, but somehow in the moment, kissing him was all she wanted to do.