A QUESTION OF GENDER NOT GRAMMATICAL!
Every month there seems to be a new inn or restaurant or combination thereof opening within city limits, and we are often amused by the extremities to which proprietors will go for the sake of drawing custom to their doors. Good food and a soft bed are not the end of it; music and games and even the promise of intrigue seem to wheedle the curiosity as much as the aroma of hearty cooking apprehends the nose.
It is unexpected, then, when a tavern shuns unasked-for attention, which is exactly the case as of late with one such business hard by the waterfront. The owners are closemouthed about an interesting matter that took place there on Saturday, despite which, people have been dropping by, in hope of seeing the child who exchanged genders during the course of a single bath.
We are told that for months the child—a scrawny little waif, a boy, whose parentage is either missing or suspect—has regularly appeared at the tavern’s back door and that the lady of the house, just as regularly, took pity on the hungry face and fed it, never actually allowing the creature into her clean kitchen.
After involvement with a recent exploit of Portland’s own Moosepath League, reported in this journal last week, it was decided that the child should be taken in by the tavern owners, but that he should first receive a good scrubbing, as this detail had been avoided for six years or so—that is, the child’s entire life.
What was the surprise of our Mrs. Taverner—whose real name we will not reveal—when she stripped off the little boy’s garments and found a little girl hiding beneath! No one, including the proprietress—who has six children herself and is not easily fooled—had suspected that they were feeding a lass and not a lad, and even the child herself seemed unsure about it all. An explanation for the deception has not been entirely propounded, and much fanciful conjecture has been rife upon the street, though the tavern family discourages the same under their own roof.
We have visited the house ourselves, but the owners are keen to keep the business quiet, and we were impressed that the child’s welfare (not to say, state of mind) would not benefit by further publicity and speculation, so the name of the business or its people will not be learned in this article.
It seemed too interesting, however, to let go altogether, and we put it before our readers, wondering if someone out there is privy to a proper explanation and promising that we will apprise the same with any forthcoming whys or wherefores.
There is no mention about the disclosure of Mailon/Melanie Ring’s true gender in the private journals of the Moosepath League’s charter members, and one writer, at least, has tried to make from this fact a case for Victorian prudishness. We are talking, however, about a six-year-old girl who had been directed by her father to “be a boy” since before she could remember, and there is, besides, evidence that Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were simply never informed or that, having been informed, they either misconstrued the details or thought them immaterial. It is well to understand that what may seem prudery in our modern times was often simple prudence, a respect for privacy, and the sense that other people’s affairs were not necessarily suitable for even the pages of a personal diary.
Years later Eagleton would write about Emma Craft, who traveled with the charter members for three days before her disguise as a young man was found out—by another party. (Several compilers have made note of how often events early and late in the league’s history reflected one another, though those events more often than not came to very different ends.)
But for our present discussion it is enough to presume that among the members of the Moosepath League, Sundry Moss was probably the sole possessor of this knowledge concerning the “former Mailon Ring.” At the time of the Dutten Pond incident, Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump still thought of Melanie Ring as the skinny little boy who had aided their escape from Danforth Street at the very beginning of their search for Mrs. Roberto. As for Mr. Moss, he would be heard to say (years later) that Melanie was “more niggle than inches,” meaning, it has been supposed, that the room she occupied in his own heart and conscience was greater than her size might seem to warrant to the world at large.