Chapter VIII: The Disadvantages of Ugliness

The next day Julius was meditatively fishing in the mill-pool adjoining the village school, and trying to decipher the character of Rose, who alternately fascinated and repulsed him by her vivacity.

I have said that he was utterly destitute of all personal beauty. This is so common an occurrence, that it would scarcely be worth mentioning in any other case: beauty being the quality which, of all others, men can best dispense with. A charm when possessed, its absence is not an evil. In Julius's case, however, it happened to be important, from the importance he attributed to it, and the excessive importance given to it by him thus originated.

His nurse was a very irascible woman, and whenever she was angry, taunted him with being such "an ugly, little fright." As she never called him ugly but when she punished him, he early began to associate something peculiarly disagreeable with ugliness. This would have soon passed away at school, had not the boys early discovered that his ugliness was a sore point with him; accordingly, endless were the jests and sneers which, with the brutal recklessness of boyhood, they flung at him on that score. The climax of all, was on one cold winter morning, when the shivering boy crept up to the fire, and was immediately repulsed by a savage kick from one of the elder boys there warming himself. Crying with the pain, he demanded why he was kicked. The _why_ really was a simple movement of wanton brutality and love of power, usual enough among boys; but the tyrant chose to say, "Because you're such a beast!"

"No, I'm not," he sobbed.

"Yes, you are, though!"

"You've no business to kick me; I didn't do anything to you."

"I shall kick you as much as I like; you're so d--d ugly!"

It had never occurred to him before to be thrashed for his ugliness; and although he deeply felt the injustice, yet he, from that day, imagined that his appearance was a serious misfortune.

Increasing years, of course, greatly modified this impression, but the effect was never wholly effaced. From the constant dinning in his ears that he was ugly, he had learned to accept it as a fact, about which there could be no dispute, but which no more troubled him than the consciousness that he was not six feet high. He became hardened to the conviction. Sneers or slights affected him no more. He was ugly, and knew it. To tell him of it was to tell him of that to which he had long made up his mind, and about which he had no vestige of vanity.

It is remarkable how conceited plain people are of their persons. You hear the fact mentioned and commented on in society, as if it were surprising; and you catch yourself "wondering" at some illustration of it, as if experience had not furnished you with numberless examples of the same kind. But the explanation seems to me singularly simple. You have only to take the reverse of the medal, and observe that beauty is not half so solicitous of admiration as deformity, and the solution of the question must present itself. Conceit--at least that which shows itself to our ridicule, is an eager solicitation of our admiration. Now, beauty being that which calls forth spontaneous admiration, needs not to be solicitous; and the more unequivocal the beauty, the less coquettish the woman. When, however, a woman's beauty is so equivocal that some deny it, while others admit it, the necessity for confirmation makes her solicitous of every one's praise; and she exhibits coquetry and conceit--due proportion being allowed for the differences in amount of love of approbation inherent in different individuals (a condition which influences the whole of this argument). Carry this further, and arrive at positive plainness, and you have this result: the _amour propre_ of the victim naturally softens the harsh outlines of the face. He sees himself in a more becoming mirror. However, the fact may have been forced upon him, that he is ill-looking, he never knows the extent of his ugliness, and he is aware that people differ immensely in their estimates of him; he has--fatal circumstance! even been admired. Now, admiration is such a balm to the wounded self-love, that he craves for more--he is eager to solicit an extension of it, and hence that desire to attract closer attention to him manifested by audacity of dress, certain that the closer he is observed, the more he must be admired. He feels he is not so ugly as people say; he knows some do not think so; he wants your confirmation of the discerning few. In a thousand different ways he solicits some of your admiration. You see his object, and smile at his conceit.

Now the effect of Julius St. John's education had been to cut out, root and branch, that needless desire to be admired for what he knew was not admirable. He had made up his mind to his ugliness. The benefit was immense. It saved him from the hundred tortures of self-love to which he must otherwise have been exposed--that Tantalus thirst for admiration which cannot be slaked; and it imparted a quiet dignity to his manner, which was not without its charm.

The deplorable circumstance was, that he had also imbibed a notion of the great importance of beauty in the eyes of women, which made him consider himself incapable of being loved. As a boy, maid-servants had refused to be kissed by him, because he was "a fright." As a young man, he had often been conscious that girls said they were engaged when he asked them to dance, because they would not dance with one so ugly. In the novels which he read the heroes were invariably handsome, and great stress was laid upon their beauty; while the villains and scoundrels were as invariably ill-favoured. The conversation of girls ran principally upon handsome men; and their ridicule was inexhaustible upon the unfortunates whom Nature had treated like a stepmother.

One trait will paint the whole man. They were one day talking about ugliness at the Hall, when Rose exclaimed: "After all beauty is but _skin deep_."

"True," he replied, "but opinion is no deeper."

That one word revealed to her the state of his mind on the subject. And although he often thought of Swift, Wilkes, Mirabeau, and other hideous men celebrated for their successes with women; he more often thought of the bright-eyed, hump-backed, gifted, witty, humble Pope, who so bitterly expiated his presumption in raising his thoughts to the lovely Mary Wortley Montague. If genius could not compensate for want of beauty, how should he, who had no genius, not even shining talents, succeed in making a woman pardon his ugliness?

That Julius was strangely in error you may easily suppose; but this was perhaps the only crotchet of his honest upright mind. A truer, manlier creature never breathed. He was carved from the finest clay of humanity; and, although possessing none of those distinguished talents which separate a few men from their contemporaries, and throw a lustre over perhaps weak and unworthy natures, yet of no one that I have ever known could I more truly say,--

His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!

To know him was to love him; it was more, it was to revere him. There was something ennobling in his intercourse. You felt that all he did and said sprang from the purest truth. He was utterly unaffected, and won your confidence by the simple truthfulness of his whole being. There was perhaps as little of what is supposed to captivate women in his person and manner as in any man I ever knew; but, at the same time, I never knew a man so calculated to make a wife adore him. In a word--he could not flirt, but he could love.

The reader will be at no loss to discover the reason of certain doubts and hesitations on his part respecting Rose, with whom he was greatly charmed, and of whom he was also greatly afraid. The very vivacity which allured, alarmed him. She was so bright, so brilliant, that he was afraid to trust his heart in her keeping, lest she should be as giddy as she was gay; and, above all, lest she should scorn the mediocrity of such a man as he knew himself to be. His first impulse was always to seek her society, to sun himself in her eyes, to let his soul hold unrestrained communion with hers; but, when he came to reflect on the delicious hours he had spent by her side, he trembled lest they should be only luring him into an abyss from which there would be no escape.

Early in life he had suffered bitterly from such a deception. He fell in love with a beautiful and lively cousin of his, who, perhaps from coquetry, perhaps from thoughtlessness, certainly exhibited such signs of returning his affection, that he one day ventured to overcome his timidity, and declared his passion. She only laughed at him; and that very evening he heard her answer her mother's remonstrances on the giddiness of her conduct towards him by saying, "But, dear mama, who could have supposed that he was serious; the idea of a woman marrying _him_."

"He is an excellent creature," said the mother.

"Perhaps so, but you must confess he is very ugly."

Julius heard no more; it was a girl of sixteen in all her thoughtlessness who spoke, but those words were never effaced from his memory.

The truth is, Rose was as saucy as youth, beauty, and uncontrollable spirits could make her, and the general impression she made on men was, that of being too _flirty_ and giddy for love.

Julius was fishing that day with no sport but in the chase of his own fantastic thoughts; which every philosophic fisherman must admit is part of the great pleasure in throwing out the line. People wonder what amusement can be found in fishing, and Dr. Johnson's definition is thought triumphant; but if they will allow one of the most unskilful anglers that ever handled a rod to answer, I would say, that when you have good sport, it is a pleasant excitement, and when you catch nothing, it is a most dulcet mode of meditating. You sit in the boat or stand on the bank: the river runs gently and equably before you; the float wanders with it; and the current of your thoughts is undisturbed.

No sport did Julius have that day; not a single "run;" but as a compensation he was joined by Rose herself, who had been to visit Mrs. Fletcher, the schoolmistress, to encourage the children.

"How is it," said Rose, "Mr. Ashley is not with you? Does he not indulge in this gentle sport? or is he too tender-hearted? for it is monstrously cruel you know!"

"Marmaduke is not calm enough in his temperament for anything so sedate as fishing; and I doubt whether he would think much of any sporting less exciting than a tiger hunt, or perhaps a boar hunt. What do you think of him?"

"I don't think at all of him. In one evening I am not able to form an opinion of any one; at least," checking herself, "not often. He didn't say anything remarkably brilliant, did he?"

"Brilliant! No."

"The only part of his conversation I remember is what he related of you and your side of bacon. I liked his manner of telling that. It was in a tone of real friendship."

"Yes, Marmaduke has a regard for me. But don't you think him superbly handsome?"

"I don't like handsome men."

This was said with perfect unaffectedness; but he raised his eyes quickly, and gave her just such a look as she remembered him to have given her once before, when they were talking of Leopardi, and it embarrassed her. Indeed, said to an ugly man, this had an equivocal sound: it was either a sarcasm or a declaration.

"You are singular, then," was his quiet reply.

"Why singular, in preferring brains to beauty? Are we women really, do you think, the children we are said to be, and only fit to be amused with dolls? That is not like your usual respect for our sex!"

"Come, come, you do not state the case fairly. The question is not, whether you or your sex prefer beauty to brains, but whether you prefer beauty to ugliness? It is curious to notice how this question is always confused in this way, by mixing up with it an element that does not properly belong to it. People say, 'Oh, a clever plain man before a handsome fool!' and then argue, as if all the plain men were necessarily clever, and all the handsome men imperatively fools."

"Well, I'm sure, handsome men generally are--not, perhaps, fools--but certainly not clever; they think of nothing but their beauty. Their beauty--the frights!"

"I cannot agree with you. Running over the list of great men you will find the proportion greatly in favour of handsome men; which, when you come to reflect how few handsome men there are compared to the thousands of ugly men, is the more striking. The reason I take to be this: these men, from their very intellectual greatness, must have had great beauty of expression, so that with features a little better than ordinary they would rank among the handsome. It may be said, indeed, that very fine organizations include genius and beauty."

"Oh!" she replied, laughing, "if I once get into an argument with you, you'll make out anything. But I won't be browbeaten by logic: 'hang up philosophy!' as Benedict says. I'm as difficult to be reasoned out of my convictions as if I were a logician myself. I _don't_ like handsome men, I have said it; nor shall you reason me into liking them."

"Very well, very well. I certainly have no cause to wish it."

"Except the love of victory in argument, eh?"

"The victory must be on my side; it is gained already. If two men equal in talent and goodness, but greatly unequal in appearance, were placed before you, the handsomer must excite the preference, and that is all our cause of battle amounts to."

"Oh, men, men! how you _will_ argue!"

At this moment they were joined by Marmaduke, who was all anxiety about the private theatricals; not for themselves, but because he saw in them an excellent excuse for being constantly at the Hall, and in Violet's society.

With his usual impetuosity Marmaduke had already settled that Violet should be his wife. Love at first sight, which may be a fiction with regard to the colder children of the north, is no fiction with regard to such passionate natures as his; and he was in love with Violet, without seeking to disguise it. Indeed, he spoke in such raptures of her to Rose, that she smiled and looked significantly at Julius, who returned her glance, and confirmed her suspicions.