PECULIAR PEOPLE.
In this title, be it distinctly understood, no reference is intended to
those anti-Æsculapian persons who, from time to time, sacrifice to
Moloch among the Essex marshes. It is not necessary to journey even as
far as Plumstead in search of peculiarity, since the most manifold and
ever-varying types of it lie at one's very doors. And here, at the
outset, without quite endorsing the maxim that genius is always
eccentric, let it be confessed that a slight deviation from the beaten
track is generally apt to be interesting. When we see the photograph of
some distinguished artist, musician, or poet, and find the features very
like those of the pork butcher in the next street, or the footman over
the way, we are conscious of a feeling of disappointment almost
amounting to a personal grievance. Mr. Carlyle and Algernon Swinburne
satisfy us. They look as we feel graphic writers and erotic poets ought
to look. Not so the literary females who affect the compartment labelled
"For ladies only," in the reading room of the British Museum or on the
Metropolitan Railway. They are mostly like one's maiden aunts, and
savour far less of the authoress than some of the charming girls who
studiously avoid their exclusive locale, and evidently use their reading
ticket only to cover with an appearance of propriety a most unmistakable
flirtation. This they carry on sotto voce with ardent admirers of the
male sex, who, though regular frequenters of the reading room, are no
more literary than themselves. One might pick out a good many peculiar
people from that learned retreat--that poor scholar's club room; but let
us rather avoid any such byways of life, and select our peculiars from
the broad highway. Hunting there, Diogenes-wise, with one's modest
lantern, in search--not of honest--but eccentric individuals.
And first of all, having duly attended to the ladies at the outset, let
there be "Place for the Clergy." There is my dear friend the Rev. Gray
Kidds, the best fellow breathing, but, from a Diogenes point of view,
decidedly eccentric. Gray Kidds is one of those individuals whose
peculiarity it is never to have been a boy. Kidds at fifteen had
whiskers as voluminous as he now has at six-and-twenty, and as he
gambolled heavily amongst his more puerile schoolfellows, visitors to
the playground used to ask the assistant masters who that man was
playing with the boys. They evidently had an uneasy notion that a
private lunatic asylum formed a branch of the educational establishment,
and that Gray Kidds was a harmless patient allowed to join the boys in
their sports. Gray Kidds was and is literally harmless. He grew up
through school and college, innocently avoiding all those evils which
proved the ruin of many who were deemed far wiser than himself. He
warbled feebly on the flute, and was adored as a curate, not only for
his tootle-tooings, but for his diligent presence at mothers' meetings,
and conscientious labours among the poor. A preacher Kidds never
pretended to be; but he had the singular merit of brevity, and crowded
more harmless heresies into ten minutes' pulpit oratory than Colenso or
Voysey could have done in double the time. The young ladies made a dead
set at him, of course, for Kidds was in every respect eligible; and he
let them stroke him like a big pet lamb, but there matters ended. Kidds
never committed himself. He is now the incumbent of a pretty church in
the suburbs, built for him by his aunt, and, strange to say, the church
fills. Whether it is that his brevity is attractive, or his transparent
goodness compensates for his other peculiarities, certainly he has a
congregation; and if you polled that congregation, the one point on
which all would agree, in addition to his eligibility or innocence,
would be that the Rev. Gray Kidds was "so funny."
And now, for our second type of peculiarity, let us beat back for one
moment to the fair sex again. Mrs. Ghoul is the reverse of spirituelle;
but she is something more--she is spiritualistic. She devoutly believes
that the spirits of deceased ancestors come at her bidding, and tilt the
table, move furniture insanely about, or write idiotic messages
automatically. She is perfectly serious. She does "devoutly" believe
this. It is her creed. It is a comfort to her. It is extremely difficult
to reconcile such a source of comfort with any respect for one's
departed relatives, but that is Mrs. Ghoul's peculiarity and
qualification for a niche amongst our originals.
Miss Deedy, on the other hand, is ecclesiastical to the backbone. Miss
Deedy ruins her already feeble health with early mattins (she insists on
the double t) and frequent fasts. Beyond an innocuous flirtation with
the curate at decorations, or a choral meeting, Miss Deedy has as few
sins as most of us to answer for; but, from her frequent penances, she
might be a monster of iniquity. She is known to confess, and is
suspected of wearing sackcloth. Balls and theatres she eschews as
"worldly," and yet she is only just out of her teens. She would like to
be a nun, she says, if the habits were prettier, and they allowed long
curls down the back, and Gainsboroughs above the brow. As it is, Miss
Deedy occupies a somewhat abnormal position, dangling, like Mahomet's
coffin, between the Church and the world. That, again, is Miss Deedy's
peculiarity.
Miss Wiggles is a "sensitive." That is a new vocation struck out by the
prolific ingenuity of the female mind. Commonplace doctors would simply
call her "hysterical;" but she calls herself magnetic. She is stout and
inclined to a large appetite, particularly affecting roast pork with
plenty of seasoning; but she passes readily into "the superior
condition" under the manipulations of a male operator. She makes
nothing, save notoriety, by her clairvoyance and other peculiarities;
but she _is_ very peculiar, though the type of a larger class than is
perhaps imagined in this highly sensational age of ours.
Peculiar boys, too--what lots of them there are! What is called
affectation in a girl prevails to quite as large an extent in the shape
of endless peculiarities among boys. A certain Dick (his name is
Adolphus, but he is universally, and for no assignable reason, known as
Dick) rejoices in endorsing Darwinism by looking and acting like a human
gorilla. Dick is no fool, but assumes that virtue though he has it not.
To see him mumbling his food at meals, or making mops and mows at the
wall, you would think him qualified for Earlswood; but if it comes to
polishing off a lesson briskly or being mulct of his pudding or
pocket-money, Master Dick accomplishes the polishing process with a
rapidity that gives the lie to his Darwinian assumption.
Well, they are a source of infinite fun, these eccentrics--the comets of
our social system. They have, no doubt, an object in their
eccentricity, a method in their madness, which we prosaic planetary
folks cannot fathom. At all events, they amuse us and don't harm
themselves. They are uniformly happy and contented with themselves. Of
them assuredly is true, and without the limitation he appends, Horace's
affirmation, _Dulce est desipere_, which Mr. Theodore Martin translates,
"'Tis pleasing at times to be slightly insane."