But though, as I say, I was not in demand for such games as these, I did play an excellent hand at whist, could thrum the guitar a bit, play accompaniments upon the piano, sing a little in a fairly good baritone voice and carry on a conversation light or heavy as the occasion seemed to require. Of course, I did not dance, but I often sat at the piano and furnished music for the others, thus making myself useful and at the same time diplomatically avoiding drawing notice to the fact that I was disqualified as a dancer. Although I always had a secret longing for theatricals and knew myself to be possessed of histrionic ability in no mean degree, I never joined our local amateur dramatic club. I think perhaps I might have done so had not some tactless member of the club once sent me an invitation to take part in a performance of Richard the Third, which so incensed me that I never again so much as attended a play given by that organization.
It was during this time, when I was almost enjoying life like an ordinary man, owing to the careful manner in which my acquaintances concealed their dislike and contempt for my crooked back, that I met and fell in love with a girl who seemed to me, at the time, a charming and sweet-souled young woman. I saw a great deal of her, owing to the fact that we were both of musical tastes and often played and sang together, and it was not long before I came to the conclusion that if I were ever to marry I might as well be about it then as any time, and especially since I had the necessary mate at hand, so to speak. To think was to act with me in those days, and I put the matter to her bluntly the very first time I saw her after forming my resolution in this respect. You may not believe me, but I swear to you that I am telling the truth when I say that I had grown so accustomed to having my friends ignore my infirmity that I had quite forgotten to take it into account in the case of the young woman. In fact, I would have considered it an unjust aspersion of her character to think her capable of holding such a thing against me, our relations having been always of the most spiritual.
You can imagine, then, the shock it gave me when I saw the horror growing in her eyes which I had so often surprised in the eyes of strangers! You can fancy, perhaps, the physical and mental anguish I suffered in that moment when I realized that even to her I was not as other men—that she had played with me as one might play with a child, and that she would no sooner think of becoming my wife than she would think of wedding with an educated baboon. And yet, Sir, within the space of two years I saw that same young woman stand at the altar with a senile and decrepit old roué who had never possessed the tenth part of my own intellectuality and who had absolutely nothing to recommend him but a fortune, somewhat smaller than my own, and a straight back. I am told that she is not happy with him, and small wonder, since he is never at home save when he is too drunk to be elsewhere; but even so, I doubt if she has ever regretted her answer to me, so strong is the prejudice of the normal person against all forms of physical deformity. The fact that her husband is more crooked in his morals than I am in my back would, I dare say, have no weight whatever with her.
I have heard people say that women are often attracted by men of odd and unusual personal appearance and that many women find an almost irresistible fascination in cripples and the like, but I have never encountered anything in my personal experience to incline me to this view. It is an idea upon which Victor Hugo dilates in his romance, The Man Who Laughs, where the duchess becomes enamored of a monster. But I am of the opinion that Hugo treated this matter more truthfully and realistically in The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame, where the white soul and brave heart of Quasimodo count for nothing with Esmerelda when weighed against the physical attractions of the philandering captain, who is a thoroughly bad lot. I have heard it asserted that Lord Byron owed much of his popularity with the ladies to his club foot, but this I take to be the sheerest nonsense. The fascination which Lord Byron exercised upon the women was not, I am convinced, due to his physical deformity, but to what we may call his mental and moral deformity. And this, Sir, brings us to the milk in the cocoanut and the point of this letter. I wish to ask you, and to ask your readers, what I have so often asked myself: Why is it that men and women find physical deformity so hateful while they so often find mental and moral deformity attractive?
Shakespeare, learned in the ways of human nature, laid particular stress upon the physical shortcomings of Richard the Third, well knowing that no amount of mere wickedness would serve to turn the audience against him so strongly as a hump upon his back. The villain of the play, if he be handsome and brave, will often oust the hero from his rightful place in the esteem of the audience, so that presently the pit, the galleries and the boxes are united as one man in wishing him success in his villainy, or at least in wishing him immunity from his well-deserved punishment. Instead of hissing him, the spectators are moved to applaud him. And for this reason the playwrights and the novelists have, until late years when the worship of virtue is no longer considered an essential part of art, caused the villain to appear a coward or burdened him with some physical deformity. And the devil of it all is, Sir, that most of the villains in real life are like the villains of the stage who oust the hero. Charles Lamb once said that it is a mistake to assume that all bullies are cowards; and in my opinion it is an even greater mistake to assume that a villain can not be attractive. If villains had no charm, villainy would soon cease through want of success.
In the case of Byron, since I seem to have chosen him for an example, the women were attracted on the one hand by his reputation as a genius and upon the other hand by his reputation as a rake. Byron, though a cripple, was an unusually handsome man of the poetic type, and I think we may safely assume that the aversion which may have been created by his club foot was more than offset by the fact that he was otherwise of pleasing appearance and was known to be an athlete. Now, of course, it would be impossible to say whether more women were fascinated by his genius or by his rakishness, but on a venture I would be willing to wager that nine out of ten of the women who knew him would rather have read his love letters than his poetry. Genius is a thing apart from love, and, say what they will, I believe that the mistress of such a man is more like to be jealous of her lover’s genius than proud of it, and especially so where she can not flatter herself that it has been inspired by love of her. She is interested in a poem in which she can find herself, not because it is poetry, but because she is in it. Therefore I incline to the belief that Byron’s conquests were due to his reputation as a rake, rather than to his reputation as a poet. But given the combination of a poet, a rake, a handsome man and a lord, it would be unnatural if women did not love him.
But Byron’s case is not the only one I have in mind. It is a common thing for murderers in jail to receive flowers and sentimental letters from women. Women, too, who have never so much as set eyes upon them and who know them only by the stories of their crimes in the newspapers. The maddest of religious fanatics can always count upon a goodly number of women as converts. The taint of insanity itself seems to be less repulsive to women than physical deformity. And the men are little better than the women. A man will often knowingly wed with a fool because she has a pretty face, or vote a rogue into office because he thinks him clever. The juries of men which try women murderers are ready to grow maudlin over them if the women happen to be good-looking.
It is a problem, Sir, which I can not solve, turn and twist it as I may. Sometimes I think that we who are deformed in body are granted the only straight minds to be found among men, by way of compensation. And at such times, Sir, I am inclined to thank God that He has seen fit to put the hump upon the back and not upon the mind or soul of
Harold Hishoulder.