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.
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.
FROM A HOTEL SPONGE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I feel it my duty to publicly express my disapproval of
the recent ruling of certain hotel proprietors of this city, and to
publicly protest against their hasty and ill-advised agreement that
hereafter they will discourage, in every way possible, the visits of
outsiders who make use of their lobbies and halls.
I am myself one of the best-known non-resident patrons of the hotels in
this city, or, in the vulgar language of the innkeepers themselves--a
hotel _sponge_. That is to say, I do not register at these hotels as a
guest, but I do make it a point to drop into one or two of them every
afternoon and evening, and I think I may say, without undue egotism,
that you will seldom see a more debonair and smart-looking man than I
appear upon these occasions. I am, I believe, as my tailor says, “an
ornament to any assembly,” and my presence in a hotel lobby or corridor
is sufficient to stamp that hotel as a proper place in the minds of all
those who are sufficiently acquainted with the hall-marks of the _haut
ton_ to recognize a gentleman when they see one.
I have been a familiar figure about a certain hotel on Thirty-fourth
Street for the last ten years, and though the tide of fashion which
once flowed through those corridors is now somewhat diminished, having
set in a northerly direction, yet that hotel continues to hold its own
with the visitors from out of town. And do you know why this is so, Mr.
_Idler_? Do you know why it is that this hostelry is still enabled to
present an appearance of smartness and exclusiveness? I presume that
you do not, and so I shall tell you. It is simply that I have chosen
to continue to appear there. Though the social leaders whose names
are known across the continent desert the place for the newer and no
less pretentious hotels farther up-town, this place, by reason of my
loyalty, has suffered no loss of standing. I, Sir, am to the hotels of
New York what John Drew is to the American stage. I am that rosy-faced,
perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through
the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who
confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a
place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion.
If it were not for me and for the other members of my class, how long
do you suppose these hotels could go on charging the enormous prices
they now charge for food and lodging? How long do you suppose they
could induce the thrifty countryman to part with such sums of his
hard-earned money if he were not provided with the inspiring spectacle
which I present when arrayed in my full regalia? Not one month, Sir.
In less than a fortnight the word would go forth to all parts of the
United States that these hotels had lost caste and were becoming back
numbers.
It is to me, and to others like me, that the great modern hotels of
this city owe their prosperity; indeed, I might say, their very
existence. It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels
merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can
not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of
the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were
so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority
of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a
proper setting. Do you suppose, Sir, that the expensive furniture, the
music, the luxurious reading and smoking-rooms, the glittering bars
and the comfortable armchairs of the modern, up-to-date New York hotel
were necessary to obtain the custom and patronage of the provincial
visitors, or even necessary to hold that patronage? No, Sir! But _I_
am necessary to hold the business of these people, and the luxuries
are necessary to hold me. All this is so plain, so perfectly apparent
to any observing person, that it seems almost incredible that these
managers should dare to risk our indignation. Drive us out, indeed!
They will be very lucky if we do not withdraw altogether of our own
accord, after such a gratuitous insult. A strike of waiters, Sir, would
not prove one-half so demoralizing as a strike of the _atmosphere
creators_, or, to use the insulting term of the hotel men, the “hotel
sponges.”
Can you imagine, Sir, trying to paint a forest scene without a tree in
sight? That task would be as easy as trying to conduct an aristocratic
hotel without an aristocrat in sight. “But,” you say, “you fellows
are not really aristocrats--you are only imitation aristocrats.” In
so saying, Sir, you fall into the same error into which these hotel
men have fallen. We are aristocrats. We are the ideal aristocrats,
and let me tell you, Sir, we are much more convincing than those whom
you would doubtless call the real aristocrats. I have not lived as a
man-about-town for the last ten years without coming to know these
dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats of yours very well indeed. I assure you
that you would be much surprised and disappointed should you see
them, as I have seen them, at our leading hotels. They would no more
correspond to the countryman’s idea of an aristocrat than an Indian
Chief would fulfil the romantic maiden’s ideal of a ruler of men.
Sir, where I am urbane, they are ill at ease. Where I am clad in the
very pink of fashion, they are often dowdy, not to say shabby. Where
I appear indifferent and slightly bored, they are often irritable,
easily upset and worried-looking. Oscar Wilde once said that he was
very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can imagine that
his disappointment was not deeper than that of the rural visitor who
happens to stumble upon a member of what is known as our best society.
Doubtless you fancy that I and the others of my kind concern ourselves
with aping the dress and manners of these society people. If so, you
were never more mistaken in your life. It is they who copy and imitate
us. They go where we go, they wear what we wear, they eat what we
eat and they drink what we drink. Only, as is always the case with
imitators, they fall far short of their models. How is it possible
that any man can appear the perfect gentleman of leisure unless,
indeed, his life is actually a life of ease and pleasure? We have no
cares and no responsibilities. They have a thousand. We have no social
duties to distract our attention. They are constantly consulting their
watches. And, lastly, Sir, we have art, and they have none.
I can not imagine what has led these misguided innkeepers to think
that they can do without us. But I can tell you, they will soon regret
their recent action, whatever motives may have moved them to take it,
for they will find very shortly that their hotels are not nearly so
necessary to us as we are to their hotels. I am, Sir,
PERCIVAL PIGEONBREAST.
FROM SARAH SHELFWORN
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have to complain of an abuse which is daily growing
greater and which, if not checked, will soon assume the proportions of
a national menace. It is my purpose, Sir, to call to your attention
and to the attention of all earnest thinking people, a pernicious
influence exercised by a certain portion of our daily press--by those
vulgar flaunting publications known as “yellow journals”. Now do not
misunderstand me, Mr. _Idler_; this letter is no ill-considered general
attack upon the press; no incoherent or fanatical outcry against the
publication of disagreeable facts. It is, on the contrary, a protest
against a certain idealism which pervades the pages of these newspapers
and which unduly excites the imagination of our young men. I do not
refer to stories of crime, extravagance or anything of that sort--but
to the publication of pictures of beautiful women.
You may ask, what possible harm can come of the publication of these
pleasing portraits? Well, Sir, I will tell you; but in order that you
may understand my point of view, I must first tell you something of
myself and explain somewhat, my own experience.
I, Sir, am a school-teacher--an instructor in English literature--and
since the school where I am employed is a public high school, it is
hardly necessary to add, I am a woman. Or perhaps it would be more
truthful to say I _was_ a woman once upon a time. When I was young
and fairly pretty, there was no more womanly woman than I in all this
section of the country, but let me tell you, Sir, ten years of teaching
school is an experience calculated to unsex any person, man or woman.
We veteran school-teachers constitute what a magazine writer recently
referred to as “an indeterminate sex.” We have left in us nothing of
the masculine or feminine nature. We think, feel, argue and reason
like one another and like nobody else in the world--we are neuter
throughout. It is, perhaps, for this reason that I can now look back
upon my wasted life with only a passing regret, and that I can, without
any feeling of outraged modesty or womanly reserve, lay bare to you the
dreams of my girlhood and the thoughts of my maturity.
To begin, then, I have always lived in the little town where I am
now teaching, though to be sure, since I became a teacher, I have
traveled more or less during my vacations. I have visited many places
in Europe and America at one time or another. I have made a pilgrimage
to Stratford-on-Avon six times in as many years, and it is perhaps for
this reason that I have never found time to read any of Shakespeare’s
works beyond the four or five plays which we read in class. Be that as
it may, when I was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, I was a bright,
merry-hearted young creature who had not a care in the world, nor a
thought for anything but pleasure. Not that I was without sentiment,
for truth to tell, I was as sentimental as any, and let me tell you,
Sir, one girl of eighteen has more sentiment in her composition than
all of the old men in the world. I say “old men,” because I have
observed that whereas sentiment comes to a woman early in life, so
that she is soon done with it, men seldom become sentimental until
they have passed middle age. And that is why, Sir, you will observe
in the restaurants and cafés of your city, young men with old women
and old men with young women. Like is naturally attracted to like. The
old man loves the young woman for her romanticism which is akin to his
own, and the young woman loves the old man because he is not ashamed
to admit his infatuation and glories in his subjection to her charms.
The young man, upon the other hand, is attracted to the older woman by
her knowledge of the world, her masculine view-point, her independence
of mind, her air of good-fellowship, and her frank acceptance of a
temporary affection. The old woman finds in the young man the only
sensible, sober and sane being that wears trousers.
As I say, Sir, I was as sentimental as any; I had my girlish dreams of
home and fireside, of husband and little ones, but I was not obsessed
with this pleasant dreaming. I took all that for granted as my natural
birthright, and a career which was guaranteed to me by virtue of my
very womanhood. I was cheerful, a capable housekeeper, possessed of a
clear complexion, good eyes, sound teeth, a fair figure--in short, I
was passably good-looking. Why should not I be married in due time,
as my mother was before me, and as the girls of my native village had
always been? I was not hump-backed, bow-legged, nor squint-eyed. I
was neither a shrew nor a prude. I could manage a house and (I had no
doubt) I could manage a husband; how could I fail to get him?