It had never occurred to him before to be thrashed for his ugliness; and although he deeply felt the injustice, yet he, from that day, imagined that his appearance was a serious misfortune.
Increasing years, of course, greatly modified this impression, but the effect was never wholly effaced. From the constant dinning in his ears that he was ugly, he had learned to accept it as a fact, about which there could be no dispute, but which no more troubled him than the consciousness that he was not six feet high. He became hardened to the conviction. Sneers or slights affected him no more. He was ugly, and knew it. To tell him of it was to tell him of that to which he had long made up his mind, and about which he had no vestige of vanity.
It is remarkable how conceited plain people are of their persons. You hear the fact mentioned and commented on in society, as if it were surprising; and you catch yourself "wondering" at some illustration of it, as if experience had not furnished you with numberless examples of the same kind. But the explanation seems to me singularly simple. You have only to take the reverse of the medal, and observe that beauty is not half so solicitous of admiration as deformity, and the solution of the question must present itself. Conceit—at least that which shows itself to our ridicule, is an eager solicitation of our admiration. Now, beauty being that which calls forth spontaneous admiration, needs not to be solicitous; and the more unequivocal the beauty, the less coquettish the woman. When, however, a woman's beauty is so equivocal that some deny it, while others admit it, the necessity for confirmation makes her solicitous of every one's praise; and she exhibits coquetry and conceit—due proportion being allowed for the differences in amount of love of approbation inherent in different individuals (a condition which influences the whole of this argument). Carry this further, and arrive at positive plainness, and you have this result: the amour propre of the victim naturally softens the harsh outlines of the face. He sees himself in a more becoming mirror. However, the fact may have been forced upon him, that he is ill-looking, he never knows the extent of his ugliness, and he is aware that people differ immensely in their estimates of him; he has—fatal circumstance! even been admired. Now, admiration is such a balm to the wounded self-love, that he craves for more—he is eager to solicit an extension of it, and hence that desire to attract closer attention to him manifested by audacity of dress, certain that the closer he is observed, the more he must be admired. He feels he is not so ugly as people say; he knows some do not think so; he wants your confirmation of the discerning few. In a thousand different ways he solicits some of your admiration. You see his object, and smile at his conceit.
Now the effect of Julius St. John's education had been to cut out, root and branch, that needless desire to be admired for what he knew was not admirable. He had made up his mind to his ugliness. The benefit was immense. It saved him from the hundred tortures of self-love to which he must otherwise have been exposed—that Tantalus thirst for admiration which cannot be slaked; and it imparted a quiet dignity to his manner, which was not without its charm.
The deplorable circumstance was, that he had also imbibed a notion of the great importance of beauty in the eyes of women, which made him consider himself incapable of being loved. As a boy, maid-servants had refused to be kissed by him, because he was "a fright." As a young man, he had often been conscious that girls said they were engaged when he asked them to dance, because they would not dance with one so ugly. In the novels which he read the heroes were invariably handsome, and great stress was laid upon their beauty; while the villains and scoundrels were as invariably ill-favoured. The conversation of girls ran principally upon handsome men; and their ridicule was inexhaustible upon the unfortunates whom Nature had treated like a stepmother.
One trait will paint the whole man. They were one day talking about ugliness at the Hall, when Rose exclaimed: "After all beauty is but skin deep."
"True," he replied, "but opinion is no deeper."
That one word revealed to her the state of his mind on the subject. And although he often thought of Swift, Wilkes, Mirabeau, and other hideous men celebrated for their successes with women; he more often thought of the bright-eyed, hump-backed, gifted, witty, humble Pope, who so bitterly expiated his presumption in raising his thoughts to the lovely Mary Wortley Montague. If genius could not compensate for want of beauty, how should he, who had no genius, not even shining talents, succeed in making a woman pardon his ugliness?
That Julius was strangely in error you may easily suppose; but this was perhaps the only crotchet of his honest upright mind. A truer, manlier creature never breathed. He was carved from the finest clay of humanity; and, although possessing none of those distinguished talents which separate a few men from their contemporaries, and throw a lustre over perhaps weak and unworthy natures, yet of no one that I have ever known could I more truly say,—
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!