Part 4

Of course the fact that you and I have no positive proof of his having been born does not argue that he is not a living man. Every day we meet men who are unquestionably as real as ourselves (providing we do not lean to the theory of Bishop Berkeley, that we can be sure of no existence but our own), yet we know little or nothing of the origin of these men. They may have been born, or they may not. If you were to ask them, they would probably insist that they were born at one time or another. They believe this because they can not account for their existence upon any other hypothesis. But they believe it on hearsay evidence. Not one of them really remembers anything at all about it. People sometimes grow up to learn that they are changelings; that they are not at all the people they had thought they were. Is it not possible, then, that here and there may live a man who was never born at all? I should not be so bold as to deny the possibility. There have always been legends of men who can not die--men who live on in spite of age and accident. I see no reason why one man should not escape birth if another may escape death. I do not, therefore, insist that Mr. Chesterton prove himself to have been born. It is only that I find it hard to believe that he really exists in the flesh.

Now, Mr. Chesterton, in all his works, dwells upon the subject of madness or insanity. Does this prove that Mr. Chesterton is mad? By no means. As he himself has said, the man who is really mad seldom suspects that he is unbalanced; it is the man who fears madness who finds madness a fascinating subject. Sir, Mr. Chesterton is not mad, but I think he fears madness. It is almost impossible to find one of his essays in which there is no mention of madness. I think it fair to assume that he writes of madness because he has a fear--not necessarily a terror, you understand, but still a fear--that some day he may be afflicted with this malady. Mr. Chesterton also writes a whole book upon the subject of being alive. Are we to assume, because of this, that he _is_ alive? By no means. It is quite possible that he only fears he may some day come alive; that he may some day cease to be the whimsical creation of some author’s fancy and become a real man of flesh and blood.

Do you see no reason why he should fear such a metamorphosis? Surely you must. From time immemorial, men have shuddered at the thought of becoming a spirit, an infinite being composed chiefly of memory; a purely intellectual organism having nothing material in its make-up. Now if men are disturbed, as they are, at the prospect of becoming ideas, why should not ideas be disturbed at the prospect of becoming men? Is it likely that an idea, immune from all the evils of mortal existence, superior to the weaknesses of the flesh and possessing, at least, a potential immortality, would be pleased with the prospect of becoming mere man? Would an idea willingly abandon the clear atmosphere of a purely intellectual plane for the muggy mists and murky fogs of London? Assuredly not.

Lucretius, ridiculing the theory of reincarnation in his work, _De Rerum Natura_, drew a ludicrous picture of disembodied spirits eagerly awaiting their turn to enter a vacant human tenement. Lucretius was thoroughly appreciative of the absurdity of his picture. He knew that no disembodied spirit would be so foolish as to desire imprisonment in a mortal frame. And as it is with spirits, so we may suppose it to be with ideas. It is one thing to be put into a book; it is quite another to be put into a body. No matter how often an idea may be put into a book, it can not be confined therein. It is still free to travel where it lists. It can leap from London to Overroads in the twinkling of an eye--or it can be in both places at one and the same time. It may appear to a dozen different men in a dozen different aspects. It possesses the Protean faculty of being all things to all men. But confine that idea in a human body; transform that idea into a human being--and what is the result? Why, the result is an immediate loss of liberty. The man, who was formerly an idea, can no longer flit about with lightning-like rapidity. If he wishes to travel from Overroads to London, he must go by train or motor-car. He can by no ingenuity contrive to be in both places at the same time. He must wear the same face wherever or in whatever company he may be. Whether the body which he inhabits is known to its neighbors as Smith or Chesterton, the result is the same--he has lost his liberty. And what has he gained? He has gained the ability to prove his mortal existence--the right to say that he has been born.

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.

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.