SubscribeWe are inclined sometimes to wring our hands much more profusely over the situation of another than the mental attitude of that other, towards his own condition, would seem to warrant. People do not grieve so much sometimes over their own state as we imagine. They suffer, but they bear it manfully. They are distressed, but it is about other things as a rule than their actual state at the moment. We see, as we grieve for them, the whole detail of their blighted career, a vast confused imagery of mishaps covering years, much as we read a double decade of tragedy in a ten-hour novel. The victim, meanwhile, for the single day or morrow, is not actually anguished. He meets his unfolding fate by the minute and the hour as it comes.
...We see, as we grieve for them, the whole detail of their blighted career, a vast confused imagery of mishaps covering years, much as we read a double decade of tragedy in a ten-hour novel. The victim, meanwhile, for the single day or morrow, is not actually anguished. He meets his unfolding fate by the minute and the hour as it comes...From the Victorian Web — John Merrick, the Elephant Man:
Ugly on the outside but sterling within, Merrick seemed the perfect fairy-tale Beast.May we all be so measured.
Actually, he was a naive and ill man whose final years were not filled simply with ease and friendly callers. His disease [now thought to be Proteus Syndrome] was worsening, its crippling effect becoming more painful. For hours he would sit staring into space, despondently and rhythmically tapping at his pillow or the arm of his chair with his distorted right hand. Officially, however, Merrick gave his contemporary well-wishers what they wanted -- gratitude and a sentimental feeling that theirs was a good world:
"Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you."
"If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the occan with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind's the standard of the man."
...Both verses [from Isaac Watts' poem False Greatness] capped a statement of thanks to his benefactors that was appended to an account of him published in the British Medical Journal.
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posted by inconsequentialist at 8:03 AM on November 13, 2007