by Laman Blanchard.
Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.2 #11 (Dec 1842).
"Beauty is but skin-deep."— OLD PROVERB.
Among the very doubtful "portraits of gentlemen" which make their way by hundreds into our annual exhibitions—among the thousands yearly perpetrated, but happily for the public never exhibited at all,—no mortal eye has yet rested upon the portrait of "Matthew Starke, Esq." The fact is, it has never been painted. Artists of all degrees have concurred in experiencing one insuperable difficulty—they couldn't do it. Each portrait in succession was tolerably like its predecessor; but not one was like the Sitter. There was the picture; but the Original was omitted. Every R.A. committed the same fault—he left out Starke.
It is to be feared—and this is an instance of the fact—that the moral qualities are, in their high perfection, more rarely discovered than the intellectual. Talent is common enough, but where are we to look for sincerity? There are hosts of clever painters; but name the immortal one, possessed of the great daring, the unflinching love of truth, requisite to the realization on canvas of the unique countenance of Matthew? It was not from false education in art, from a want of genius, that they failed. It was simply from a lack of moral courage. They quailed before the primitive, rigorous, conscious ugliness, at once unmasked and unmatched, of that super-human face divine.
It was said of the fractious, quarrelsome old politician, John Lilburne, that if he alone were left alive, John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne would be against John. Adopting this hint, we may say that Matthew is extremely like Starke, and that Starke bears a strong resemblance to Matthew; but assuredly, if the owner of these two names were the only man left living in the world, the human countenance would be out of print.
It is proper that it should remain unpainted, nay, even undescribed. Burke bears testimony to the grand virtue which lurks in the obscurity of Milton's terrific image—"What seemed his head." The homage which the obscure can best pay is due to the peculiar ugliness of Matthew's visage; "what seems his face" requires no exact and literal portrait. Yet, on the other hand, the obscure can have little to do with what is so extremely plain!
His features, perhaps, examined separately, might not seem eminently endowed with a property of hideousness beyond that which is borne with so much complacency by numerous wearers of hats in this nether sphere. Each component part of it, no doubt, displays a decided tendency to deviate from the forms most commonly received as the beautiful; but it is not on this account that the snub noses of the world have any right to turn up at it disdainfully.
Mere feature, handsome or otherwise, often goes for nothing. Regularity in that respect no more, as a consequence, ensures beauty, than a general departure from it ensures ugliness. Who cares about the dimple in which no Cupid lurks—the blue eye, that affords not a glimpse of heaven! The arched brow, the small red mouth, and all the attractive items which connoisseurship can add, are nothing, as we know, if the soul of beauty—the something that mere form and colour alone can never convey, be left out of the catalogue. So with the real requisites for ugliness.
We hourly see people with some decided pretensions to it, in eyes, nose, or mouth, perhaps in all—in the form of the face, in the hair, or complexion—and yet they can make nothing of them; they totally fail in impressing the spectator with a sense of their unsightliness; and we take no more notice of their countenances than of the knocker at the street-door.
Yet how they try to attract us!—for ugliness is ever vainer than beauty, and works much harder to win attention. How assiduously they play off their artillery of repulsion! Who ever saw a man with a nose cut out of a crabstick that did not perk it out or twist it to and fro, the better to shew it off! If he have an eye which looks best when the lids are closed, and which nature indeed seems to have given him but to sleep with, he is sure to ogle with it incessantly; and if his mouth be of the frog-fashion, it is widened with a perpetual smile. Still this mere plainness of feature, however shewn Off, moves us not—it is a common thing. Its owner is a mere pretender to pure ugliness. The "skin of a mummy with the beard of a Jew," together with "the one eye rolling, like the bull's in Cox's museum," are sported in vain, if the nameless something, the essence of the hideous, be wanting.
It is upon this that Matthew rests his claim to superiority. He regards the most irregular and ill-contrived features without an emotion of envy, without a fear of rivalship. He allows to this man his naturally frightful leer, and to that, his carefully cultivated grin; he permits some of his contemporaries to gaze admiringly at that point of their own faces where the port-wine most brightly blushes, and others to elevate the point last alluded to, as if in eternal scorn of the eyes that goggle above; and then he turns to the mirror, and gazes, with a calm, settled conviction, that these merely ordinary people can never stand in his way—that all such customary indications of plainness are contemptible as matters of competition—that he has but to shew his face and triumph.
He beholds there the one charm which the others want—he finds in it the Sentiment of Ugliness! Upon that he reposes. Other faces have but the show, the form, the outside, the fag-end, of what is, in him, the fulness and the spirit. His little rivals, like shallow persons who fancy that the opposite of wrong must be right, conceive that they, being the opposites of beauty, must be frights. He laughs at them—and in this very act, which renders him doubly hideous, marvellously heightens his success. They may as well be handsome outright as lack what he has—the mens divinior, the poetry of plainness.
As with his visage, so with the motions of his body and the management of his limbs. Other fellows, with shoulders higher and rounder than Matthew's, contrive, by some deficiency of bearing, to make no impression with them—their humps have no weight, and cut but a small figure in men's eyes. He carries his quietly, as not seeking to fix attention, and men turn to look after him, as they would after Atlas. Again, there are pedestrians, who, with legs ingeniously mis-shaped, strut through life without attracting a glance. Now, Matthew Starke turns every duck-like movement of his to a graceful account; he always puts his worst leg foremost, and with his splay-foot steps at once into due estimation. He studies no awkwardness of gait. He can be ungraceful with perfect ease. Such are the masterpieces of nature. His walk is a work of genius. In short, the ugliness of some men, like beauty universally, is but skin-deep; but Matthew's is thorough-bred, deep-seated, and intense.
Like poetry, ugliness must be born with us, or we have it not; and it is needless to say that Matthew, from his very cradle, screamed out aloud the strongest promise of future eminence. His uncouth contortions of limb and feature evinced a natural gift that way. For once, the "standing order of the house," with respect to infants, that they are to be universally voted lovely, and singularly like both parents, was suspended. ‘The most obliging and obsequious visitor, caudle in hand, would have been choked in the attempt to say the boy was beautiful. The most spiteful of acquaintances, however secretly disposed to sneer at the good looks of the much-esteemed mother, could not venture such a flight of malignity as to say the dear babe was like her. Double the nurse's wages, and still she never would have gone so far as that.
The mutely-gazing father found, perhaps, some consolation—for in strange corners does consolation lurk—in the fact that he had not a friend or an acquaintance in the world to whom his son bore the remotest resemblance. And even had he, who detected in him no image of his own aspect, even had he, in the excess of his affection, been moved to trace in the little innocent's face some tokens of the maternal visage, it is probable that the maternal heart, put to such an extreme trial, would have resented the kindness as a cruelty, with,—"I don't see why the resemblance should be all on one side; he has as much right to be like you as me."
But nothing of the kind was ever whispered; and so upon that particular occasion, "for that night only," a creature was born into the world, of whom not a gossip high or low, partial relative, flattering caudle-drinker, or hired handmaid angling for a new ribbon,
could muster impudence enough to say, "What a sweet infant! What a lovely babe! Oh, do let me have him! What a beauty!"
For once, the spirit of lying bit its tongue in a desperate effort to hold it; and even toadyism took its little holiday, having not a syllable to say. Thus may ugliness in an infant be the parent of virtue in the elders. But people, nevertheless, were not silent out-of-doors. The one exclamation that rang throughout the village was, "Did you ever!" and everybody wanting words to describe the new comer, began to seek for any images which might offer a faint suggestion of resemblance to the unhandsome prodigy; some standing upon their doorsteps to investigate their knockers, others searching by their fire-sides for horrid faces in the burning coals, or tracing likenesses on stained walls; many recalling the masks in the last pantomime, and a few remembering that Grimaldi contrived to put on a look of that sort now and then, in his happiest moments. But not a speculator of them all ever dreamed of looking upon living shoulders for anything like a likeness "done in that style;" and the infantine peculiarity was merely voted quite peculiar, through the unanimous despair of finding his parallel.
What materially heightened the character of Master Matthews ugliness, was an unfortunate contrast into which he was brought, with the grace and beauty of his brother, Master Alfred, born two years before. It was Master Alfred's lot never to have been called a boy at all—but a little cherub; and he was not designated the son of his parents, but their precious pet. He was never allowed to cry, lest he should spoil his beautiful face; while Matt, having no face to spoil, was permitted to cry for whatever he wanted, without getting it. The consequence was, that everybody pronounced the elder to be a sweet-tempered darling, and the younger to be a hideous, squalling little brute. Everybody declared at the same time, that one would come to the hulks, while the other would; as high-sheriff of the county, be riding in a coach and six.
But it so happens that the silver spoons which are supposed to be found in some mouths on their first appearance in this world, often turn out to be Sheffield ware; while the wooden ladles lurking in mouths of a different kind prove to be lignum vite.
Let us see how this principle applies to the case of the two Starkes. The scanty resources of the family were lavished upon the elder, and his education formed a large item in the account; but as he was such a handsome boy, he was kept half his time at home, and when at school small pains were bestowed upon him, because the master had never known a handsome boy turn out a scholar. Nor was he popular with his schoolfellows. Because he was so very good-looking, they called him conceited; and cowardly, because he once took a kick from a boy less than himself, rather than fight at the risk of getting a punch that might possibly damage the symmetry of his nose. They also charged him with meanness, inasmuch as he never gave away a crumb of the plum-cake which his aunt sent him weekly, with strict orders to eat every bit, as it was good for his complexion.
Just as the Adonis had entered his sixteenth year, his father died. Parental opinion of the external characteristics of the two sons was indicated in his last words. As the film came over his eyes, and he was asked, perhaps for the interest of science, by one of those obliging persons who will chatter to dying people, whether he could yet discern any earthly object? "Yes," he articulated, "I can yet see—see my eldest son, beautifully! yes; and my younger—plain—very plain!"
The father dying poor, before he had succeeded in obtaining the premiership, or any other situation, for his favourite son, the aunt became the pet's patron, and sent him to Cambridge. There, however, the reliance which he placed on the favourable influences of a fine face led to a neglect of the due cultivation of the inside of his head; and he had the misfortune of missing the first honours of the university in consequence of being plucked.
When the time came for determining upon a profession, an entrance into the navy was all but effected for him—only it so happened that a great naval authority declared at once that the lad hadn't the cut of a sailor's jib; but that such a face would make its fortune at the Horse Guards. His good aunt would have purchased him a commission in the army, but that she could never bear to see his nice face disfigured with nasty moustaches.
Then he might have been taken into partnership by his uncle, the rich corn-factor; but unluckily it was discovered that a handsome face would not tell in the Corn Market—no_such thing having ever been seen there. Moreover, his distant relation, the sporting baronet in Berkshire, would have had him down there all the year, to help him at the proper season in riding after the hounds; only he was deucedly afraid, as the young fellow was so handsome, that one or two of his daughters would fall in love with him.
At last his generous patron, the good aunt, died, leaving all her property to another member of the family, in the conviction that nobody with such a face could be long without a fortune. After waiting some time to afford various young heiresses proper opportunities of proposing an elopement with him, he in a fit of hunger, which if protracted might be injurious to his contour, accepted a situation at a magnificent silk-and-muslin emporium in the city, where the looking-glass on every side is unexceptionably polished, and the cravats of the gazers are immaculately white.
But as for poor pug-nosed melancholy Matt, he had to crawl out of the cradle, and scramble into his first pair of trousers by himself. The little victim might have quoted the pathetic lines of Haynes Bayly:—
"How blessed are the beautiful! love watches o'er their birth!
Oh Beauty! in my nursery, I learn'd to know thy worth;
For even there I often felt forsaken and forlorn,
And wish'd—for others wish'd it too—I never had been born."
He was not sent to school, for want of funds; yet after a few years Matt began to prosper. A schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, after looking at him steadily, and watching his motions for an hour, offered to teach him for nothing—on the bare calculation, it seems, that the young scarecrow would quietly yield him a profit, by frightening half the other boys out of their appetite.
Matt soon crept on, not only in the knowledge of books, but of boys; for having no interest or pleasure in contemplating his own face, he early began to study the faces of others. He had one considerable advantage over the rest of the world—he was never at a loss to know what another was thinking of him while viewing his countenance.
A story is related of a certain eminent person, who had the unfortunate habit of uttering his most secret thoughts aloud, that when an amiable young lady had charmed him with some expressions of maidenly simplicity and affection, he took both her hands, and looking into her face, thought, but in reality said also, as follows:—"You are a charming little lady, a dear delightful girl—but exceedingly plain!"
Now if all mankind, looking into the face of Matthew, had been as unintentionally candid as poor Lord, he could not have more correctly ascertained their opinions. As "true self-love and social" are the same, so self-knowledge in his case was identical with the knowledge of others. He freely allowed all the boys to stare, or to steal sidelong looks, or to glance in an opposite direction with irrepressible aversion as he passed—to express wonder, terror, dislike, even disgust. All he did, was ever to wear the same look; never to render his face ten times more odious by frowning or scowling at the affront; still less to render it a hundred times more odious by trying to smile and ogle his companions out of their sensations. And so at length, as the lads always saw the same face bending over the lesson, or patiently watching in the playground the game which others were enjoying, they got quite used to it ; and being used to it, they didn't mind it so much, and at last not at all; and when they had ceased to mind it, they got quite to like it; and in short, long before he left school, this son of Medusa, the youthful Gorgon, had become a universal favourite. He never went out of his way to win liking, yet he won it. He never had a crumb of plum-cake to give away, but he might have surfeited on the gifts of others if he would have accepted them.
When his father died, his mother bowed over the weeping Matt her fine oval mourning face, wondered who on earth it was that the poor boy took after, and gave him a seemingly excellent piece of advice. Matt having said that he should now look up to his aunt for support, the fond mother solemnly warned him never, by any chance, to "look up to his aunt," if he expected the smallest favour from that lady.
Yet look up to her he did, in a manner the most imploringly, when he went on an errand for his brother, to beg the advance of twenty guineas, which it was supposed the good lady would readily give to get rid of her petitioner; and whether it was the confusion attendant upon her fright, or pity for the hideous pleader, or a sense of the zeal with which he urged the suit of his handsome brother, is not certain—but she gave him, in addition, twenty for himself: So grateful was the lad, that he mentally promised himself never to go near her again.
With this sum he bought books, and paid eighteenpence to a poor old usher, to whom no face was frightful but poverty's, for a Latin lesson now and then. But as he grew in years and knowledge, he grew also in ugliness. The ordinary rule, that plain children make comely adults, did not apply in his case. What began in the positive degree ended in the superlative; so that his uncle, the factor, on sending for the lad to London, to see what could be done with him (a Caliban might be wanted at the theatres, or the painters might give him a salary to sit), was perfectly transfixed in amazement at the improvement which had taken place as he grew worse. The ugly had become the sublime—the grotesque had swollen into the grand, There was now a meaning in the monstrosity—an expression, a spirit, where there was but a vacant griffin's face before.
"Yes," said the scrutinizing relative, "I discern something more than ordinary in you. Come with me."
And from that hour Matthew Starke was the successful climber who "upward turns his face;" nor be it said of him that he ever looked scornfully down upon the degrees by which he ascended. He never suffered his passions to appear in his countenance. Acute, self-possessed, and trustworthy, he contrived to hold every inch of ground as he won it; and he was contented to win slowly, and after an obstinate fight. The corn-factor saw something more and more in his face every day. "My nephew," he would say, introducing him. "An honest fellow, sir, though now in Mark-lane—knows how to speak English." "Yes," would be the half-audible comment—"plain English."
"My nephew managed that transaction—did it all nobly." "It was very handsome, and like himself," would be the reply.
But Matthew never winced, never needlessly added to the natural distortion of his features. He walked, or rather moved, mysteriously about in society, knowing, as by intuition, all men's feelings towards him, and effectually working a change in them. After the shock of the first meeting, everybody saw "something" in his face; an interest was thus created; use reconciled them to the grim terror, and a strange sort of attachment ensued. If he repulsed the spectator in the morning, he as surely attracted him before night. "I shall trust this man with my affairs—he is not thinking about himself," said one, and a fine commission came into his hands. "This is a delightful acquaintance!" cried a mover in the great world, with great connexions—"there is no conceit about him." "A sensible, moral person, no doubt," thought a third, a steady man, versed in the ways of society; "all your handsome fellows are rakes and fools."
Men of business liked him, because his personal appearance convinced them that he could never be anything but a man of business. The intellectual patronized him, to shew their contempt for vulgar prejudices, and to vindicate the superiority of mind over matter. Three-fourths of the men about town courted his acquaintance, as one so much uglier than themselves—an invaluable foil to their own graces, natural and acquired. Husbands introduced him to their wives, to shew them what sort of a partner might have fallen to their lot; and wives presented him to their daughters, quite satisfied that, even were he as rich as Rothschild, he could never play Romeo.
Thus the ugliest man in the community obtained, as soon as the first shock was over, the key that admitted him to all its avenues. He found that though an open homage was offered up to beauty, the secret tribute was paid to ugliness. Everybody felt safe with him—and at the same time, everybody, however plain, felt handsomer in his presence. Self-interest and personal vanity were alike gratified in his company.
"Oh, sovereign beauty!" he exclaimed, in the midst of his successes—"oh, sovereign beauty! till now I never knew thee." The regal principle he alluded to was the beauty of ugliness.
He bore, all this time, a striking resemblance to some of the strange devices on coach-panels and plate, but the likeness was less and less recognised. Such is the power of custom, and so entirely did first impressions wear out, that a lady who had screamed when he crawled into the drawing-room, three months before, wondered, one night, why Mr. Starke never danced; and when a stranger remarked that the quiet gentleman eating sandwiches was a horrid fright, the prettiest young person of the party exclaimed, with a small tone of surprise,"Do you think so?"
In the midst of his town-prospects, an invitation reached him from his distant relative, the Berkshire baronet. "This Mark-lane monster," thought Sir Joseph, "will be of use down here. If he is so knowing about corn in London, he may help to set my acres in order. Nothing was to be done with his handsome brother; but my girls are not in danger now. It's only like asking the Saracen's head or the Bull-in-mouth."
And so Sir Joseph wrote, and Matthew quitted town for Crop Hall. The baronet shrunk back at the sight of him, as though his deceased wife had escaped from the family vault; the dogs barked vociferously, the men-servants retreated; but the housekeeper, who was religiously disposed, stood her ground, rejoiced that an orang-outang had at last turned Christian. The young ladies, especially, retired in confusion to rest, and dreamed of "gorgons and monsters and chimeras dire." All, however, recovered in a day or two from their affright; the mysterious visitor "was not so black as he was painted." In three weeks, he was, to all the household, a sweet gentleman; and in three months, the eldest daughter found him, though not perhaps regularly handsome, an irresistible suitor; and as Sir Joseph's son-in-law, he became to all the county—the Deformed Transformed!