by Peter Ford
Nevertheless Professor Montagu’s final insights into the case match the facts as they emerge. He makes the point that if Merrick had really suffered the life of total deprivation Treves assumes, then the nature of his character would remain wholly inexplicable. From the descriptions of Joseph’s character he deduces that he must have received a mother’s loving care at least during the first few years of life, and that he must from time to time have later been shown a degree of supportive kindness by others. His mother’s love, it so happens, was only withdrawn from him by her death when he was almost eleven, and after his father rejected him, his uncle, Charles Merrick, offered him the support it was in his power to give, while the showmen who managed his exhibition in England, despite Treves’s description of them as vampires, showed a characteristic protective concern.
Certain so-called freaks have, in any case, demonstrated patience and good nature as integral parts of their characters. Perhaps there are at times other compensatory processes at work. Tom Norman certainly claimed that all the freaks with whom he had dealings were ‘with but very few exceptions, as happy as the days are long, and were very contented with their lot in life’. At one time he included among his client showpieces the Scottish giantess, Mary Campbell,
… who used to sing ‘Annie Laurie’, and drank Scotch whisky and keep time with the next. But she was a dear old soul, good as gold. She lent me all her savings once, about £80, without asking, or a murmur. She was with me five years.
When William Hone interviewed M. Seurat, ‘The Living Skeleton’, in 1825 at the Chinese Saloon in Pall Mall, he found him neither unhappy nor miserable, despite the extreme emaciation of his frame. Seurat, in fact, had gone so far as to write a letter to the press to answer an expression of moral indignation about his being put on show at all. His present situation was, he said, ‘more happy than I ever yet enjoyed during my whole life, and is entirely conformable to my desires’. He had hopes that the proceeds of his exhibition would shortly allow him to return to France to live out his life at ease. It turned out that poor Seurat was to die soon and leave his bones in London, where they went to join those of the Irish giant, Charles Byrne (also called O’Brien), and the Sicilian dwarf, Caroline Crachami, in the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons. With Seurat, however, it was the unembittered quality of his patience and gentleness that caught Hone’s attention. These clearly have parallels in the later example of Joseph Merrick.
The story of the Elephant Man and the Victorian surgeon, Frederick Treves, who took over the management of his destiny when every other path was closed, never ceases to act as a sounding board for many resonances. So long as it continues to catch the imagination, then each generation will read into it its own mixtures of insight and prejudice. As with the relationship between Prospero and Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the emphases may seem to shift subtly in time as new social parables are read in or drawn out. The monstrous whelp Caliban begins to shade into the figure of the Noble Savage, an ambiguous representation of man in a state of sexual innocence. The omnipotent magician Prospero, who can control the elements and hence the lives of men, is revealed to have feet of clay and to carry responsibility for the things that go wrong as well as those that may be put right. Interestingly enough, the fact that Treves tended to see Merrick, if only subconsciously, as a late manifestation of the Noble Savage is given away here and there by a piece of phrasing, as when he describes Joseph as ‘an elemental being, so primitive’ or ‘this primitive creature’. Is it possible that Treves was himself driven by that underlying sense of guilt the doctor so often feels when he becomes aware he must inevitably fail a certain patient over providing a cure?
It is perhaps one interpretation of the story to see Treves as a fundamentally exploiting figure sheltering behind an attitude of moral righteousness, while Merrick becomes the tame freak on whom society can safely lavish attention and so assuage its guilt at the vast inequalities of wealth created by the Industrial Revolution. This was a basis of interpretation Bernard Pomerance used for his distinctive play The Elephant Man that enjoyed much success in its productions on the Broadway and London stages. But interpretation implies a partial view of the facts, however valid or illuminating that view may be. The actual story of the Elephant Man remains constantly rich beyond the devices of fiction in its startling contrasts and turns of fate. The greatest presumption of all would be to think it possible to know or guess what it was truly like to have lived the life of Joseph Carey Merrick.
The closing and most valid image of Joseph to summon up is that of a squat figure, extraordinary in outline, limping without hurry in the starlight across Bedstead Square and into the gardens of the London Hospital. The freedom to walk there unobserved and take into his lungs the cool night air together with the scent of the spring flowers, became one with the hard-won freedom and dignity of his spirit under the stars: and so the limits to the span of his existence, the various griefs and injuries his life sustained, even the hideousness of his flesh, were transformed eventually into matters of small importance.
APPENDIX ONE
The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick
I first saw the light on the 5th of August, 1860, I was born in Lee Street, Wharf Street, Leicester. The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant’s feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity.
The measurement round my head is 36 inches, there is a large substance of flesh at the back as large as a breakfast cup, the other part in a manner of speaking is like hills and valleys, all lumped together, while the face is such a sight that no one could describe it. The right hand is almost the size and shape of an Elephant’s foreleg, measuring 12 inches round the wrist and 5 inches round one of the fingers; the other hand and arm is no larger than that of a girl ten years of age, although it is well proportioned. My feet and legs are covered with thick lumpy skin, also my body, like that of an Elephant, and almost the same colour, in fact, no one would believe until they saw it, that such a thing could exist. It was not perceived much at birth, but began to develop itself when at the age of 5 years.
I went to school like other children until I was about 11 or 12 years of age, when the greatest misfortune of my life occurred, namely – the death of my mother, peace to her, she was a good mother to me; after she died my father broke up his home and went to lodgings; unfortunately for me he married his landlady; henceforth I never had one moment’s comfort, she having children of her own, and I not being so handsome as they, together with my deformity, she was the means of making my life a perfect misery; lame and deformed as I was, I ran, or rather walked away from home two or three times, but suppose father had some spark of parental feeling left, so he induced me to return home again. The best friend I had in those days was my father’s brother, Mr Merrick, Hair Dresser, Church Gate, Leicester.
When about 13 years old, nothing would satisfy my stepmother until she got me out to work; I obtained employment at Messrs Freeman’s, Cigar Manufacturers, and worked there about two years, but my right hand got too heavy for making cigars, so I had to leave them.
I was sent about the town to see if I could procure work, but being lame and deformed no one would employ me; when I went home for my meals, my step-mother used to say I had not been to seek for work. I was taunted and sneered at so that I would not go home to my meals, and used to stay in the streets with an hungry belly rather than return for anything to eat, what few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark – ‘That’s more than you have earned.’
Being unable to get employment my father got me a pedlar’s license to hawk the town, but being deformed, people would not come to the door to buy my wares. In consequence of my ill luck my life was again made a misery t
o me, so that I again ran away and went hawking on my own account, but my deformity had grown to such an extent, so that I could not move about the town without having a crowd of people gather round me. I then went into the infirmary at Leicester, where I remained for two or three years, when I had to undergo an operation on my face, having three or four ounces of flesh cut away; so thought I, I’ll get my living by being exhibited about the country. Knowing Mr Sam Torr, Gladstone Vaults, Wharf Street, Leicester, went in for Novelties, I wrote to him, he came to see me, and soon arranged matters, recommending me to Mr Ellis, Bee-hive Inn, Nottingham, from whom I received the greatest kindness and attention.
In making my first appearance before the public, who have treated me well – in fact I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. I must now bid my kind readers adieu.
Was I so tall, could reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with a span;
I would be measured by the soul,
The mind’s the standard of the man.
APPENDIX TWO
The Elephant Man, amplified from an account published in the British Medical Journal
In November, 1886, a letter appeared in The Times from Mr Carr Gomm, chairman of the London Hospital, drawing attention to the sad case of Joseph Merrick. The letter attracted the notice of the charitable public, and through their very generous subscriptions the Hospital authorities were enabled to admit Merrick as a permanent inmate.
JOSEPH MERRICK is the subject of a very terrible congenital deformity, of so extreme a degree that he cannot venture into the streets, nor indeed into the garden of the Hospital. He cannot travel in any public conveyance nor mix with his fellow men. But for the kindness of his now numerous friends he would be cut off from all the common enjoyment of life.
Merrick is now about 27 years of age and was born of respectable parents in Leicester. Neither his father nor mother nor any of his relatives were in any way deformed. When quite a child his appearance was not sufficiently marked to attract any special attention, but by the time he had reached adult life the deformity of the face and limbs had attained to so extreme a degree that the unfortunate man was unable to follow any employment and physically prevented from learning any trade. His mother died when he was young, and his father, having married again, practically cast him off. There was nothing for him to do but to exhibit himself as a deformity in a penny show. Some features in the conformation of his head and limbs suggested the title of ‘The Elephant Man’, and as such Merrick was exhibited. He was dragged about from town to town and from fair to fair, and lived a life that was little better than a dismal slavery.
He was not treated with actual unkindness, but lived a life of almost solitary confinement, broken only when he appeared before a gaping and terrified audience as a hideous example of deformity.
Early in 1886 Mr Treves, one of the surgeons of the London Hospital, saw him as he was being exhibited in a room off the Whitechapel Road. The poor fellow was then crouching behind an old curtain endeavouring to warm himself over a brick which was heated by a gas jet. As soon as a sufficient number of pennies had been collected by the manager at the door, poor Merrick appeared in front of the curtain and exhibited himself in all his deformity. Merrick had a share in the proceeds of the exhibition, and by the exercise of great economy he had amassed nearly £50. The police, however, began to interfere and the exhibition was prohibited as against public decency. Unable to earn his livelihood by exhibiting himself any longer in England, he was persuaded to go over to Belgium, where he was taken in hand by an Austrian who acted as his manager. In Belgium, however, the exhibition was very soon prohibited by the police, and the miserable man and his manager were hunted from place to place. As soon as the Austrian saw that the exhibition was pretty well played out, he decamped with poor Merrick’s very hardly saved capital of £50 and left him alone and absolutely destitute in a foreign country. Fortunately, however, he had something to pawn, by which he raised sufficient money to pay his passage back to England, for he felt that the only friend he had in the world was Mr Treves, of the London Hospital. He, therefore, though with much difficulty, made his way to London. At every station and landing place the curious crowd so thronged and dogged his steps that it was not an easy matter for him to get about. Indeed, at the quay great objections were raised to his being taken on board the steamer. When he reached the Hospital he had only the clothes in which he stood. For some time Merrick occupied a little ward in the attics, while every attempt was made to find him a permanent resting place. He had the greatest horror of the workhouse, and there seemed little to recommend the frequent suggestion that he should be placed in a blind asylum. The Royal Hospital for Incurables and the British Home for Incurables both declined to take him even if sufficient funds were forthcoming to pay for his maintenance for life. The subscription that was the result of Mr Carr Gomm’s letter enabled the Hospital authorities to accept Merrick as a permanent resident. A room was built for him on the ground floor in a remote wing of the Institution. This room was comfortably furnished as a bedroom and sitting room, and to it was added a bathroom, for to Merrick a bath is not merely a luxury but, from the nature of his affliction, a daily necessity.
In this small room the elephant man spends his life, surrounded by innumerable tokens of the kindness of his friends. One of the first ladies to visit him, and certainly the first lady he had ever shaken hands with, was Mrs Maturin of Dublin. Mrs Kendal has been one of his kindest friends. She has supplied him with books, with pictures, with a musical box, and with numerous ornaments for his room, and had him taught basket-making as an amusement. He also owes to Mrs Kendal a very especial treat – a carefully planned and carefully disguised visit to a theatre.
Lady Knightley, in the summer of 1887, very kindly arranged a holiday for him, and with a little ingenuity Merrick found himself smuggled into a quiet cottage, in a remote part of the country far from the haunts of men, where he was made exceedingly happy.
The Hon. Mrs Gerald Wellesley became a frequent visitor, and gave him also a handsome musical box. Lady Dorothy Nevill presented him with a silver watch of which he is very properly proud. Among his other kind friends may be mentioned the Hon. Mrs Jeune, to whom he indirectly owes his country holiday.
The great event in Merrick’s life was a visit from T.R.H. the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, in 1887. The Princess was exceedingly gracious, and not only did she give Merrick some flowers (most piously preserved), but she also sent him her photograph with her autograph attached. At the following Christmas Merrick was delighted to receive from Her Royal Highness three Christmas cards, with a kind message in the Princess’ hand-writing on the back of each. Of the royal visit, of the portrait of the Princess, and of her Christmas cards, Merrick is never weary of talking.
The following abstract of the Medical Aspects of the case is obtained from Mr Treves’ account published in the Pathological Society’s Transactions, Vol. xxxvi, p. 494.
The elephant man is short, and lame through old disease of the left hip-joint. The deformity concerns the integuments and the bones. The subcutaneous tissue is greatly increased in amount in certain regions, with the result that the integument is raised prominently above the surrounding skin. This tissue is very loose, so that it can be raised from the deeper parts in great folds. In the right pectoral region, at the posterior aspect of the right axilla, and over the back, the affected skin forms heavy and remarkable pendulous flaps.
The skin is also subject to papillomatous growths, represented in some parts, as in the right clavicular region, by a mere roughening of the integument. Over the right side of the chest, the front of the abdomen, the back of the neck, and the right popliteal space, the growth is small; on the other hand great masses of papillomata cover the back and the gluteal region. The eyelids, the ears, the entire left arm, nearly the whole of the front of the abdomen, the right and the left thigh, the left leg and the back of the right leg, are free from disea
se.
The deformities of the osseous system are yet more remarkable. The cranial bones are deformed and overgrown, so that the circumference of the patient’s head equals that of his waist. This deformity is better shown by the engravings than by any verbal description. Bony exostoses spring from the frontal bone, the posterior part of the parietals, and the occipital. Irregular elevations lie between these bosses, and all these deformities are very unsymmetrical. The right superior maxillary bone is greatly and irregularly enlarged. The right side of the hard palate and the right upper teeth occupy a lower level than the corresponding parts of the left side. The nose is turned to the left and the lips are very prominent. The mouth cannot be shut.
All the bones of the right upper extremity, excepting the clavicle and scapula, and the bones of both feet, are enormously hypertrophied, without exostoses.
The patient prefers to sleep in a sitting posture with the head resting upon the knees.
The deformity is in no way allied to elephantiasis.
The following is added by Merrick himself.