The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-05
KING PIPPN'S PALACE.

sound the alarm; but am constrained TO
state my fears that there is something the
matter with our old, and, generally, esteemed
friend the Dwarf. don't meet him in soci-
ety, that is to say, at the fairs as.I was wont
to do; and although l do not overlook the
fact that have ceased to attend fairs, and
that, indeed, there are very few fairs of the
old kind left to frequent, it is difficult to avoid
the unpleasant conviction that dwarfs, as a
race, are dying out. Very recently, in his
strange, eloquent romance, Lhomme qul rlt,
M. Victor Hugo has told us that the pigmy,
preferably monstrous and deformed,
whose pictured semblance is to
be found in 50 many works of the
old Italian and German masters, was, to
most intents and purposes, manufactured
article. That mysterious association of the
"Comprachicos," of whom NJ Hugo has told
. us so many strange things, pursued, among
their varied branches of industry, the art of
fabricating hunchbacked, abdominous, hydro
cephalous, and spindle-shanked dwarfs for
the European market: the purchasers being
the princes, potentates, and wealthy mobiles
of the continent. The Comprachicos would
seem to have borrowed the mystery of dwarf
making from the Chinese, who had an agreea-
BILE way of putting young child into pot OF
arbitrary form, from which the top and bottom
had been knocked out, and in the sides of
which were two holes, through which the
Juvenile patients arms protruded. The
merry consequence was that young masters
body, if he did not die during the process,
grew to be of the shape of the pot, and, so
far as the torso went, the order of amateurs
for a spherical dwarf, or an oval dwarf, or a
hexagonal dwarf, OF dwarf with knobs on
his chest, or an 'egg-and-tongue" pattern on
his shoulders, could be executed with promp-
titude and DESPATCH
But we have another informant, of per
haps greater weight and authority, who has
told us in what manner dwarfs, and handy,
and ricketty and crooked-spined children can
be manufactured without the aid either of
the Comprachicos or of the Chinese potters
The learned and amiable Cheselden has
dwelt minutely in his Anatomy on the wick
edly cruel and barbarous folly which marked
the system of nursing babies in his time, and
has shown how the practice of tightly
swaddling and unskilfully carrying infants
was calculated to cripple and deform
their limbs, and to stunt their growth. We
have grown wonderfully wiser since Chesel-
den's time although 1 have heard some cynics
mutter that the custom of growing children
in pipuns could not have been more detri-
mental to health or to the symmetry of the
human form than is the modern fashion
of tight lacing
Be all this as it may, still hold that the
dwarf-wel, the kind of dwarf who can be
seen for penny at q fair-oontinues, as the
Surely his falling off must be due to the sur
cease of the manufacture. Old manufactured
dwarfs are as difficult to light upon as Mort
lake tapestry or Chelsea china, simply,
1 suppose, because tapestry is
no longer woven at Mort
lake, and Chelsea produces no more
porcelain ware. TO an amateur of dwarfs it
is positively distressing to read the numerous
detailed accounts which the historians have
left us of bygone troglodytes. Passing by
such world-famous manikins as Sir Jeffery
Hudson and Count Borulawski, where can one
hope, in this degenerate age, to light on q
Madame Teresia, better known by the desig
nation of the Corsican Fairy, who came to
London in 1873, being then thirty years of
age, thirty-four inches high, and weighing
twenty-six pounds? ''She possessed much
vivacity and spirit, could speak Italian and
French with fiuency, and gave the most in
quisitive mind an agreeable entertainment"
England has produced a rival to Madame
Teresia in Miss Anne Shepherd, who was
three feet ten inches in height, and was
married, in Charles the First's time, to Rich
ard Gibson, Esq, page of the backstairs to
his majesty, and distinguished miniature
painter. Mr.. Gibson was just forty-six
inches high, and he and his bride We're
painted sin whole length" by Sir Peter Lely.
The little couple are said to have had nine
children, who all attained the usual standard
of mankind; and three of the boys, according
to the chronicles of the backstairs, enlisted
in the Life Guards
But what are even your Hudsons and your
Gibsons, your Corsican Fairies and your
Anne Shepherds to the dwarfs of antiquity?
Where am 1 to look for a parallel to the
homunculus who hourished in Egypt in the
time of the Emperor Theodosius, and who
was SO small of body that he resembled q par
fridge, yet had all the functions of man,
and would sing tuneably? Mark Antony is
said to have owned dwarf called Sisyphus,
who was not of the full height of two feet,
and was yet of lively wit. Had this Sissy
phus been doomed to roll stone it must
surely have been no bigger than schoolboy's
marble. Ravisius (who was Ravisius?) mar
rates that Augustus Caesar exhibited in his
plays one Lucius, young man born of honest
parents, who was twenty-three inches high
and weighed seventeen pounds; yet had he a
strong voice. In the time of Jamblchus, also
lived Alypius of Alexandria, a most excellent
logician, and famous philosopher, but so
small in body that he hardly exceeded cubit,
or one foot five inches and half in height
And, finally, Garden tells us-but who believes
Carden?-that he saw man of full age in
Italy, not above cubit high, and who was
carried about in q parrots cage. ''Ths."
remarks Wanley, in his ''Wonders of the
Little World, would have passed my belief
had not been told by gentleman of clear
reputation that he saw a man at Sienna.
about two years since, not exceeding the
same stature. Frencbman he was, Of the
county of Limosin, with a formal beard who
was likewise shown in cage for money, at
the end whereof was little hatch into which