The Unlikely Swimmer of the San Juans
A stylish newcomer to the island society set shocks locals at the natatorium with a startling reveal about her supposed physical disability.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There is the funniest thing that has happened among our fashionable girls for decades, which was at one of the fashionable bathing establishments which are patronized now by wealth and leisure. This is the time for learning to swim, too. I know of one girl who has relinquished all ambition in that line, and it is about her that I set out to write. She was a stranger in town until a few months ago, when she was introduced into our best society by a family whose backing is all powerful. She was quite pretty and a keep stylish, but she had a queerly limping gait, as though one of her feet was terribly crippled. And yet she danced with abandon and grace, rode on horseback, played lawn tennis, and never alluded, even to remotely, to any pedal disablement. Well, I was in the natatorium when she was one of a merry party of girls. We all wore stockings, belted blouses and loose trousers, with natty elastic caps drawn tightly over our heads to keep the hair from wetting. 'I expect to make an exceedingly fine swimmer,' said the giddy creature to me, in a tone of quiet but perfect conviction. 'Oh, I don't exactly know,' she murmured, 'it is not that I fail to tell to you more too, just what to mean of you. I have never tried it, but I tell you I will distance in in the art of swimming.' The water was up to the chin of the tallest girl, and so there was no danger. She took three dives to come to the surface, and then she turned to see a troubled pool indeed, for she had to assume an idle posture for her hands and then her head to keep from the surface. Then, three dives to come to the surface she plunged into the water, and then she rose to the surface a troubled pool indeed, for she had assumed an idle posture and then her head, to keep from the surface. Then, she tried to swim to the platform. She was the first who started to swim. The law was already enacted now for bathing; limp was at an end. She reached the platform and walked up to the edge, but her gait was not a limp anymore, it was quite graceful and light. She had played the cripple so long that she had forgotten how to walk naturally.
“She had played the cripple so long that she had forgotten how to walk naturally.”
While framed in the gossipy, exclusionary tone of 1880s 'society columns,' this story highlights the lengths to which individuals—including those masking disabilities or performing identities—would go to navigate rigid social hierarchies. The 'performance' of a disability to secure sympathy or status in an elite social circle remains a compelling, if bizarre, echo of our contemporary obsession with social performance and digital-age 'faking it.'
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