Lady Barbarity: A Romance

by J. C. Snaith

This it was that moved him to the scheme. In a moment was he reconciled.

“Tall!” cries he. “Well, it’s worth trying anyhow. And at least there’s room in a woman’s what-do-you-call-’ems to stow a pistol and a bit of ammunition?”

I assured him that there was.

Thereupon Emblem and I set about at once to prepare him for this disguise. The more I considered it, the more positive did I grow of its success. Our present mode seemed to have been invented to assist our audacious plan. Every lady of pretension must have her powder, her patch, and her great head-dress. The hooped skirt was then the fashion too. I placed the most elegant one I had at his disposal. That is to say, the biggest, for the larger they were the more “tonnish” they were considered. Indeed, the petticoat I procured him was of such capacity that it fitted over his masculine clothes with ease, and abolished the necessity for underlinen, as his shirt and breeches fulfilled its duties admirably. We got him into this rich silk dress, with convolvulvi and mignonette brocaded on it, in the shortest space of time. The bodice, though, was a different affair. He had to remove his coat and vest ere we might venture to put it on at all. Then he had to be dragged into it by main force, till it seemed that a miracle alone had saved the seams from bursting.

“Huh!” he sighed, “I cannot breathe. This is less humane than hanging.”

“But not so ignominious,” says I.

“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” says he. “For surely ’tis of the very depth of degradation for a lusty man like me to be put in petticoats, and made a woman of.”

“Wretch!” says I. Mrs. Polly Emblem, being employed at that moment in pinning a gold brooch into the collar of his bodice, by misadventure stuck it cleverly in his throat.

We made him a bust with a pad of wool. His hair was a matter for nice consideration. He wore it long, and of a yellow colour; and, although of a coarse male quality, it was profuse enough to occupy his shoulders. Emblem, however, was a past mistress in the manipulation of a head-dress. It shook me with laughter, yet thrilled me with pleasure too, to witness the degree of mastery with which she seized that ungovernable mane, that was no more curly than is a grey rat’s tail, and twisted it to her own devices. She packed it up with pins and divers arts known only to the coiffeuse, enclosed it in one of my commodes, and made the whole of such a height and imperial proportion that even I would not have disdained to wear it publicly.

There now remained the question of his tell-tale hands and feet. But the difficulties they presented were very well got over. His form being cast in so slight a mould, it was not strange that they were of quite a delicate character; and when a pair of long mittens had been stretched across his hands to hide their natural roughness, there remained small chance of detection on their account.