The Man Who Laughs Read online

  "Up Park, in Sussex, a square house, with two symmetrical belfried pavilions on each side of the great courtyard, belongs to the Right Honourable Forde, Baron Grey of Werke, Viscount Glendale and Earl of Tankerville.

  "Newnham Paddox, in Warwickshire, which has two quadrangular fish-ponds and a gabled archway with a large window of four panes, belongs to the Earl of Denbigh, who is also Count von Rheinfelden, in Germany.

  "Wytham Abbey, in Berkshire, with its French garden in which there are four curiously trimmed arbours, and its great embattled towers, supported by two bastions, belongs to Montague, Earl of Abingdon, who also owns Rycote, of which he is Baron, and the principal door of which bears the device Virtus ariete fortior.

  "William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling-places, of which Chatsworth (two-storied, and of the finest order of Grecian architecture) is one.

  "The Viscount of Kinalmeaky, who is Earl of Cork, in Ireland, is owner of Burlington House, Piccadilly, with its extensive gardens, reaching to the fields outside London; he is also owner of Chiswick, where there are nine magnificent lodges; he also owns Londesborough, Hellish is a new house by the side of an old palace.

  "The Duke of Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two Gothic buildings, and a Florentine one; he has also Badminton, in Gloucestershire, a residence from which a number of avenues branch out like rays from a star. The most noble and puissant Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is also Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Viscount Grosmont, and Baron Herbert of Chepstow, Ragland, and Crower, Baron Beaufort of Caldecott Castle, and Baron de Bottetourt.

  "John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsover, with its majestic square keeps; his also is Haughton, in Nottinghamshire, where a round pyramid, made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in the centre of a basin of water.

  "William, Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the finest water-jet in England, and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall, on the façade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at the point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest.

  "Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, derives his title from the castle of Clancharlie, built in 912 by Edward the Elder, as a defence against the Danes. Besides Hunkerville House, in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards, one at Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith, Hell-Kesters (where there is a miraculous well ), Phillinmore, with its turf bogs, Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac, Vinecaunton, on the Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen boroughs and villages with reeves, and the whole of Penneth chase, all of which brings his lordship forty thousand pounds a year.

  "The 172 peers enjoying their dignities under James II possess among them altogether a revenue of a million two hundred seventy-two thousand pounds sterling a year, which is the eleventh part of the revenue of England." In the margin, opposite the last name (that of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie), there was a note in the handwriting of Ursus: Rebel; in exile; houses, lands, and chattels sequestrated. It is well.

  IV

  Ursus admired Homo. One admires one's like. It is a law.

  To be always raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition of Ursus. He was the malcontent of creation. By nature he was a man ever in opposition. He took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to no one and to nothing. The bee did not atone, by its honey-making, for its sting; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow fever and black vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus criticised Providence a good deal. "Evidently," he would say, "the devil works by a spring, and the wrong that God does is having let go the trigger." He approved of none but princes, and he had his own peculiar way of expressing his approbation. One day, when James II made a gift to the Virgin in a Catholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp, Ursus, passing that way with Homo, who was more indifferent to such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd, and exclaimed--"It is certain that the blessed Virgin wants a lamp much more than those barefooted children there require shoes."

  Such proofs of his loyalty, and such evidences of his respect for established powers, probably contributed in no small degree to make the magistrates tolerate his vagabond life and his low alliance with a wolf. Sometimes of an evening, through the weakness of friendship, he allowed Homo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the caravan. The wolf was incapable of an abuse of confidence, and behaved in society, that is to say among men, with the discretion of a poodle. All the same, if bad-tempered officials had to be dealt with, difficulties might have arisen; so Ursus kept the honest wolf chained up as much as possible.

  From a political point of view his writing about gold, not very intelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable, was but a smear, and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James II, and under the "respectable" reign of William and Mary, his caravan might have been seen peacefully going; its rounds of the little English country towns. He traveled freely from one end of Great Britain to the other, selling his philtres and phials, and sustaining, with the assistance of his wolf, his quack mummeries; and he passed with ease through the meshes of the nets which the police at that period had spread all over England in order to sift wandering gangs, and especially to stop the progress of the Comprachicos.

  This was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus lived with tarsus, a tête-à-tête, into which the wolf gently thrust his nose. If Ursus could have had his way, he would have been a Caribee; that being impossible, he preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modified savage, accepted by civilisation. He wanders most, is most alone; hence his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long suffocated him with the sense of being tamed. He passed his life in passing on his way. The sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets, thorns, and holes in the rock. His home was the forest. He did not feel himself much' out of his element in the murmur of crowded streets, which is like enough to the bluster of trees. The crowd to some extent satisfies our taste for the desert. What he disliked in his van was its having a door and windows, and thus resembling a house. He would have realised his ideal had he been able to put a cave on four wheels and travel in a den.

  He did not smile, as we have already said, but he used to laugh; sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh. There is consent in a smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.

  His great business was to hate the human race. He was implacable in that hate. Having made it clear that human life is a dreadful thing; having observed the superposition of evils, kings on the people, war on kings, the plague on war, famine on the plague, folly on everything, having proved a certain measure of chastisement in the mere fact of existence, having recognised that death is a deliverance, when they brought him a sick man he cured him; he had cordials and beverages to prolong the lives of the old. He put lame cripples on their legs again, and hurled this sarcasm at them, "There, you are on your paws once more, may you walk along in this valley of tears!" When he saw a poor man dying of hunger, he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling out, "Live on, you wretch! eat! last a long time! It is not I who would shorten your penal servitude." After which, he would rub his hands and say, "I do men all the harm I can."

  Through the little window at the back, passers-by could read on the ceiling of the van these words, written within, but visible from without, inscribed with charcoal, in big letters----

  URSUS, PHILOSOPHER.

  [1] A translator as a rule has no right to interfere with the text of the Author. I hope, however, that I may be excused for having ventured to correct some manifest slips which M. Hugo has made in preparing for Ursus the description of the rights and privileges of the English peerage. I have not, indeed, corrected al
l mistakes. Thus, for example, in the very first sentences of this passage about the peerage, it is stated that the baron wears only a cap, and that the viscount is the lowest rank of peer entitled to a coronet. This was true up to the end of Charles the Second's reign. It is not true now, and it was not true at the time when Ursus wrote. Yet it was a statement which he might reasonably have supposed to be true, and therefore I have let it remain. I have even ventured to pass anachronisms of the opposite kind--where Ursus speaks of that as existing which had not yet come to pass. Thus there will be found among his list of great peers, at the period of the Revolution, some titles, as those of Lords Grantham, Lonsdale, Scarborough, Kent, and Coningsby, which were not created till afterward--when the century was at its close, or even when the next century had commenced. These are errors of detail which do not interfere with the general truth of the picture.

  With other statements, which never were at any time true, I have been less tender. Thus I have struck out the statement that, on the top of Devonshire House, there was a lion which turned its tail on the king's palace. Again, where the writer states that daily in the King's palace there were eighty-six tables spread, each with five hundred dishes--I have ventured to give the true statement that there were five hundred dishes in all. And so with some other details. With a few passages I have had a little difficulty in deciding how to deal. Thus Victor Hugo makes his hero write-- "Toute fille de lord est lady. Les autres filles anglaises sont miss." With regard to the first of these statements it is well known that every daughter of a peer does not bear the title of lady; it is only the daughters of a duke, a marquis, or an earl, who are so honored. Still, in the general obfuscation of intellect which titular niceties are apt to produce, Ursus might be supposed likely to designate as lady every peer's daughter whomsoever. On the other hand, the daughters of commoners were not called miss in those days, and I have made bold to give the title which Ursus must have known. Let me add that most of the details as to THE ONLY THINGS NECESSARY TO KNOW are borrowed from Chamberlayne's well-known work, The Present State of England, and that I am a little surprised at the omission by M. Victor Hugo and his hero Ursus of one curious touch which will be found in Chamberlayne's chapter on the peerage--"No viscount is to wash with a marquis, but at his pleasure."--TRANSLATOR.

  [2] As much as to say, the other daughters are provided for as best may be (Note by Ursus on the margin of the wall.)

  [3] This sentence is probably derived from the following passage in Chamberlayne's book, but in the French version it has suffered some alteration in the process of translation: "The magnificent and abundant plenty of the king's tables hath caused amazement in foreigners, when they have been informed that in King Charles I's reign, before the troubled when his Majesty had the purveyance, there were daily in his court eighty-six tables well furnished each meal, whereof the king's table had twenty-eight dishes, the queen's twenty-four; four other tables, sixteen dishes each; three other, ten dishes each; twelve other had seven dishes each; seventeen other tables had each of them five dishes; three other had four each; thirty-two other tables had each three dishes; and thirteen other had each two dishes;--in all about five hundred dishes each meal, with bread, beer, wine, and all other things necessary. All which was provided most by the several purveyors, who, by summons legally and regularly authorized, did receive those provision at a moderate price such as had been formally agreed upon in the several counties of England."

  The next sentence has been allowed to stand as in the original, but it is probably based on the following from Chamberlayne: "The king's court or house where the king resideth, is accounted a place so sacred that if any man presume to strike another within the palace where the king's royal person resideth, and by such stroke only draw blood, his right hand shall be stricken off, and he committed to perpetual imprisonment and fined."--TRANSLATOR.

  * * *

  II

  THE COMPRACHICOS

  I

  WHO NOW KNOWS the word Comprachicos, and who knows its meaning?

  The Comprachicos or Comprapequeños were a hideous and nondescript association of wanderers, famous in the 17th century, forgotten in the 18th, unheard of in the 19th. The Comprachicos are like the "succession powder," an ancient social characteristic detail. They are part of old human ugliness. To the great eye of history, which sees everything collectively, the Comprachicos belong to the colossal fact of slavery. Joseph sold by his brethren is a chapter in their story. The Comprachicos have left their traces in the penal laws of Spain and England. You find here and there in the dark confusion of English laws the impress of this horrible truth, like the footprint of a savage in a forest.

  Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequeños, is a compound Spanish word signifying Child-buyers.

  The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and sold them. They did not steal them. The kidnapping of children is another branch of industry. And what did they make of these children?

  Monsters.

  Why monsters?

  To laugh at.

  The populace must needs laugh; and kings too. The mountebank is wanted in the streets; the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool.

  The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of the attention of the philosopher. What are we sketching in these few preliminary pages A chapter in the most terrible of books; a book which might be entitled--The Farming of the Unhappy by the Happy.

  II

  A child destined to be a plaything for men--such a thing has existed; such a thing exists even now. In simple and savage times such a thing constituted an especial trade. The 17th century, called the great century, was of those times. It was a century very Byzantine in tone. It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity; a curious variety of civilisation. A tiger with a simper. Madame de Sévigné minces on the subject of the fagot and the wheel. That century traded a good deal in children. Flattering historians have concealed the sore, but have divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.

  In order that a human toy should succeed, he must be taken early. The dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play with childhood. But a well-formed child is not very amusing; a hunchback is better fun.

  Hence grew an art. There were trainers who took a man and made him an abortion; they took a face and made a muzzle; they stunted growth; they kneaded the features. The artificial production of teratological cases had its rules. It was quite a science; what one can imagine as the antithesis of orthopedy. Where God had put a look, their art put a squint; where God had made harmony, they made discord; where God had made the perfect picture, they re-established the sketch; and, in the eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch which was perfect. They debased animals as well; they invented piebald horses. Turenne rode a piebald horse. In our own days do they not dye dogs blue and green? Nature is our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to God's work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The Court buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey. It was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in retrogression. At the same time they tried to make a man of the monkey. Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page. Frances Sutton, Baroness of Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons, had tea served by a baboon clad in gold brocade, which her ladyship called My Black. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, used to go and take her seat in Parliament in a coach with armorial bearings, behind which stood, their muzzles stuck up in the air, three Cape monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal Pole witnessed, had her stockings put on by an orang-outang. These monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men brutalised and bestialised. This promiscuousness of man and beast, desired by the great, was especially prominent in the case of the dwarf and the dog. The dwarf never quitted the dog, which was always bigger than himself. The dog was the pair of the dwarf; it was as if they were coupled with a collar. This juxtaposition is authenticat
ed by a mass of domestic records; notably by the portrait of Jeffrey Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henri IV, and wife of Charles I.

  To degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of his state was completed by disfigurement. Certain vivisectors of that period succeeded marvellously well in effacing from the human face the divine effigy. Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen-Street College, and judicial visitor of the chemists' shops of London, wrote a book in Latin on this pseudo-surgery, the processes of which he describes. If we are to believe Justus of Carrickfergus, the inventor of this branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore; an Irish word signifying Great

  The dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose elegy--or ghost--springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidelberg, was a remarkable specimen of this science, very varied in its applications. It fashioned heinous the law of whose existence was hideously simple: it them to suffer, and commanded them to amuse.

  III

  The manufacture of monsters was practiced on a large scale, and comprised various branches.

  The Sultan required them, so did the Pope; the one to guard his women, the other to say his prayers. These were of a peculiar kind, incapable of reproduction. Scarcely human beings, they were useful to voluptuousness and to religion. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel utilised the same species of monsters; fierce in the former case, mild in the latter.

  They knew how to produce things in those days which are not produced now; they had talents which we lack, and it is not without reason that some good folk cry out that the decline has come. We no longer know how to sculpture living human flesh; this is consequent on the loss of the art of torture. Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but are so no longer; the art has become so simplified that it will soon disappear altogether. In cutting the limbs of living men, in opening their bellies and in dragging out their entrails, phenomena were grasped on the moment and discoveries made. We are obliged to renounce these experiments now, and are thus deprived of the progress which surgery made by aid of the executioner.