SILHOUETTES OF STRANGE WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 130, 2 June 1923, Page 19

SILHOUETTES OF STRANGE WOMEN.

. b "PRINCESS CARABOO." US V (By V. HETHLET.) p a XI. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Dr. Wilkinson, of Bath, was well n known as a kindly and humane man. It was quite natural, therefore, that his ser- a rant should call him out of his study one n wet evening, when a young woman was H toifhd, cold and dripping, upon his door- tl step—and a young woman, moreover, who li could speak not one word of English. She o was a strangely picturesque figure, this tl young foreigner, pretty and slim and tl appealing, with great dark eyes, an olive _ skin, and with vivid feathers and flowers t ; twisted into her long black hair. She wore a „ single, brightly coloured garment, and b strings of barbaric beads round her neck, p together with a chain of twisted gold. She c polnted to this continually, repeating the words : "Jessee Manduee." Dr. Wilkinson was vastly Intrigued. This was something unusual in the quiet life of fashionable Bath. He took the girl into ' his house, provided her with food and clothes, and tried to soothe her timidity t and discover her name and race. But signs ii were her only known language, although h she talked Incessantly in an unintelligible b tongue, which sounded rather like Hindu. Ii By signs, then, the doctor at last dis- I covered that the girl was called Caraboo, i, and that she was a Princess in her own t land, the island of Javasu, where Jessee t Manduee, her father, reigned as king. Dr. p Wilkinson also gathered, by degrees, that r the pretty princess had been captured by pirates, carried across the seas, and had _ finally jumped overboard and swum ashore _. when they came in sight of land—arriving finally, by this means, at Bath, and the house of the goodhearted doctor. News of this interesting stranger spread " rapidly, for Doctor Wilkinson had many friends in Bath and Bristol, and they all. came to visit the savage princess. She would not wear the sophisticated clothes which the doctor provided; she would eat nothing except fruit and fish, and these must be fresh and raw. Once a week, she went up Into a little room under the roof and worshipped the sun, which she called Allah Tallah. The doctor discovered that she could write and provided her with pens and paper. Sitting upon a mat, she covered sheet after sheet with fine script, which seemed oddly European in formation and yet conformed to no known language. Dr. Wilkinson and his friends from Bristol and Bath pored over the pages, and could make nothing of them; then they were sent to the most learned scholars of both Oxford and Cambridge—with the same result. The girl's beauty and sweetness of expression, her gentleness and timidity, drew people to see her from all over the district, i Several wealthy ladles of Bristol wished to : adopt her, and gave her money and trinkets. I She was grateful, but she made no attempt to learn to speak English, or to communicate except by signs. Caraboo had one fashion. She loved to fence, with the weapons in Dr. Wilkinson's I collection, using sword and dagger after I the mediaeval fashion, one in each hand. j After the princess had been a wonder for I considerably more than nine days, sudj denly and without warning, she disappeared —and when a hue and cry was raised to I discover her whereabouts, a good deal more i was discovered than either Dr. Wilkinson 'or his friends had desired. For it was. proved beyond the possibility of doubt tfat Caraboo was an impostor—probably one of the cleverest frauds on record, as her past history showed as well as her latest adventure. Her real name was Mary Baser, and she j had been born in 1792 at the little Devoni shire village of Withorldge, her father and I mother being respectable labouring people. j From childhood, the girl had been wild and strange. Her mother taught her to card | nnd spin -wool, and, ln the summer, she I was employed by a neighbouring farmer to weed the fields, but, from the first, Marx I cared only for boyish occupations, wandering half naked through the woods, and I swimming like a flsh in every pond and ; stream. | What remains as so extraordinary Is that, !in spite of thus running wild, the girl somehow acquired a knowledge of human ! nature and human habits which enabled I her to play many parts—and play them I well—ln the years which followed. Mrs. Baker soon despaired of Mary as a : useful member of society. As the girl would not help her in the house or garden, her mother got a place for her as domestic servant ln Exeter, but she ran away after a few days and embarked upon a series of the most amazing adventures. ] Mary Baker must really have been one | of the greatest amateur actresses the world , has ever known. She rarely begged outright, that would have been inartistic. ! She depended rather upon her prettlness ' * and her pathos to excite pity and gain help, food and money. In this way, she was assisted during her wanderings by many private persons, by the Stranger's Frlsnd3 Society, and by the chaplain of a London hospital, where she was carried when seized with fever. This chaplain found her a situation as servant, which she accepted gratefully—and left very soon after. For Mary had come to the conclusion that life in service was too dull to be endured—at any rate as a girl. She put on man's dress, and actually took the place of a footman In her own native village of Witherlage, at a large i house near to her father's cottage. Here : she remained for a long time, without being i discovered by her parents, for the future i Princess Caraboo possessed the extraordln- ■ ary art of so altering her features at will - as to be utterly unrecognisable. - After several years of a footman's life Mary was sent one winter's day on a II message to a village some miles away ana 'I™ overtaken by a terrible snowstorm. Overwhelmed in a drift, she was n»any -I frozen to death, and only rescued just in • | time by some country people, who took her |to their cottage. In their efforts to revive

her, her sex was discovered —and once more Mary ran away ln search ot further adventures. She found them this time in Scotland, where she played the part of a pretty "war-widow," saying that her husband had been killed in the Napoleonic wars, and giving her name as Mrs. Mackrlnkam. She held various situations, provided by people who took pity on her apparent helplessness, and sympathised, as patriotic Scots, with her assumed nationality. For—and here is where her cleverness Is so amazing—this Devonshire girl who had never before, been across the border, managed to speak with such an unimpeachable Scottish accent that she deceived all who met her. After a year or two Mary wearied of Scotland, and set off towarda the south again, tramping the roads, sleeping under hedges or in hay-ricks, but often obtaining comfortable shelter by means of those appealing eyes of hers. It was In this way that she reached Bath, and suddenly formed the scheme of impersonating the Cannibal Princess, Caraboo, a scheme which succeeded so well that, even after her exposture as a fraud, many people refused to believe that Mary Baker and Caraboo were one and the same person. Her part, as we have seen, was sustained amazingly well. The language which she talked was not mere gibberish— so many scholars affirmed —but something which had definite words, aud phrases and sounds, though they must have been of her own invention. And the same must be said of her written language; it could not have been obviously rubbish, since It deceived the learned students of the two universities. How this girl obtained the requisite knowledge Is a marvel, since she had had practically no education, and since she set out to deceive not Ignorant and easily duped people, but a society of clever and wellread men and women. When the imposture was discovered Princess Caraboo vanished, and so did Mrs. Mackrlnkan, Mary Baker, and all the other aliases which she assumed. After she left Bath in the character of the savage Princess, no more was ever heard of her. That she played many future parts we can I scarcely doubt, for Mary had surely om many lives—and as many roles—as a cat. But as Caraboo, the lovely savage, Bhe flutters into the limelight for one brief moment and then disappears.