It is easy enough to see why an idea should fear to become a man. And when we consider such an idea as Chesterton, the matter is even clearer. Whimsicalities and contradictions which may have been useful and even ornamental in the fictitious Chesterton—in Chesterton the idea—might, Sir, prove most embarrassing to Chesterton the British Subject. You can not prosecute an idea for treason, nor sue it for damages. You can not even confine an idea in a mad-house for being crazy. Most ideas are crazy; none more so perhaps than the one which I am presenting to you now. It is true that a few ideas have been confined in a mad-house, but of those few which have been shut up with the persons claiming them, the great majority have been quite sane. Just as many sane men are devoted to crazy ideas, so many sane ideas are devoted to crazy men; so devoted to them that they will follow them anywhere—even to a mad-house.
If my idea that Mr. Chesterton is an idea is correct, I am sure I do not know whose idea he may be; but he is just such a crazy idea as might belong to a sane man and should therefore be safe in sticking to his originator. If Mr. Chesterton is an idea and is thinking of becoming a man, I should strongly advise him against adopting any such course. I like him much better as an idea. He is so much more plausible that way.
I am, Sir,
A. Visionary.
FROM A HUNCHBACK
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: I had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, to be born a hunchback. This, in itself, Sir, is an affliction sufficient to render my life a hard one and to embitter such happiness as I may snatch from the hands of fate; but it is an affliction for which, as far as I know, nobody is to blame, and one, therefore, which I must bear with such patience and fortitude as I can command. But I bear in common with other cripples a far greater burden than mere physical disability, and that is the contempt and pity of my fellow men.
I find that some men regard me with contempt alone, some with contempt and pity intermingled, and some with simple pity—and of the three I think the last is, perhaps, the hardest to endure with equanimity, since it is the most sincere feeling of superiority which prompts it. I do not ask the pity of my fellows; I consider myself in much better case than many men who have straight backs and smooth shoulders; and certainly I can not see why I should deserve the contempt of any one merely because I happen to have been born with a body unlike that of the majority of men. Yet I find the hump upon my back a hindrance in every venture that I undertake.
A few years ago when I was younger and more sanguine than I am now, when I still had faith in the innate fairness of human nature and in the spirituality of the love of women, I fell in love. Fortunately, as I thought then, I had not come into the world naked if I had come crooked, for I possessed a comfortable balance at the bank; a sum of money in point of fact which was far in excess of the financial resources of any of the other young men of my acquaintance. Counting upon the good times which my supply of ready money seemed likely to afford them, a number of the more prominent young men of my native town had taken the trouble to cultivate my society during their college days when they were often short of money and found it convenient to have a friend who could always be relied on to help out in a pinch and who was not at all inclined to play the dun if payments were somewhat slow. Having, as I say, availed themselves of my generosity and cultivated my company in those lean years of study, these young men, upon entering into the world of business and society, could not, with a good grace, begin to ignore me altogether, and they therefore made it a point to look me up now and then and to invite me about with them to such functions and entertainments as I might enjoy, and at the same time, enter into unhandicapped by my physical deformity.
I could not, of course, play tennis, golf or any game of that sort. I was, in truth, deterred from entering into any such sport more by my natural horror of appearing ridiculous than by reason of an actual lack of the strength necessary to swing a racket or handle a club. The fact is, I am not especially weak physically, having always taken great care of my health and having practised with some success such physical exercises as might be practised in the privacy of my own chambers or such as would not be likely to excite comment. But no matter how muscular a man may be, he can not but appear absurd when he goes about carrying a golf club nearly as tall as himself or rushing about a tennis net like a lame camel.