Putnam patriot., 1909-07-09
OF UGLY MEN
Case of I9hn Wilkes, the Faro,.
 London Alderman.
HE WEDDED A NOTED BEAUTY
And He Was So HoraeIy That n;.
 Looks Frightened the Children in ,.. streets-RaiIIy, With Face Lik.
 Horse. Won Famous French 5esu..

Horse. Won Famous French 5eau..
 There was perhaps as much frn.h
 ts boasfing in the staterent of Iohn l Wilkes. the fa nous London aldarasn md champion of British eI,..ta-x Ugly as I am. if I can have hut | quarter of an hours start I viii eae i the better of any man, however soa
 booking. in the graees of any womsa~ Of Wilkes abnormal ucliness thare was never q question. for is it nof ra- corded that the very children ln tba
 street ran away affriehted at the sighr If him?" And yet his powers of fast.
 nation were so great that ladies of beauty and fashion vied with each other for his notice. while men of handsome exterior and all courtIy I yraces looked enviously on.. There were. if is said. few beauties 1f the day whose hand Wilkes might not have confidently hoped to win. and
 when he led Mary Mead to the altar | he made a wife of one of the richest
 and most lovely women of her time.
 Beauty and the Beast they call us. | Wilkes once said to his friend Pattar and I cannot honestly find fault with | he description"
 1 Jean Paul Marat, whose. name will always be associated with the evil | history of the French revolution. was notoriously the ugllest man of his day | In Paris. When this reputation reach ed his ears Marat Is said to have re. l marked. Put why limit my suprema- ey to Paris?" And indeed the restric- ton was much too modest And yet in his earlier years when
 he was the nest popular of court doe tors. his very ugiiness seemed to exer- efse such a fascination over aristeerat- 1 l. ladies that they crowded his consult 1 ing rooms in erder tn catch a glimpse ] If and to exchange words with him
 under the fiimsiest pretexts of imag- mary ailments The studied indiffer- enee with which he treated alike their charms and their fattery only made them the more insistent until he de eiared to friend that he would hare to fly from Paris to escape the perse- I cution of his fair admirers. Bailly. mayor of Paris at the time of the reign Of terror is said to have had face almost exactly like that of
 q horse His appearance was, in fact so abnormal, so monstrous, that chil- dren shrieked and women fainted at the very sight of him. and yet his wife was one of the most lovely women in the whole of France-so lovely that as a girl she was known as '.the beautiful angel.'
 That there is powerful fascination for some women in extreme ugliness is proved by innumerable cases in which women who have been richly lowered with physical charms have fallen mad | ly in love with men of almost repulsive appearance.
 X London paper records remark able case of this kind in 1877. when Lady Mary K married MT. Mudford. a London attorney
 Lady Mary was girl of peerless charms. the nest beautiful of all the court ladies and the favorite toast of the world of aristocrats. She might for her birth and fortune were almost equal to her beauty-have chosen her husband from among dukes. and even more than one royal prince sought her | hand in vain.
 To the Consternation of society, she married Mir Mudford, not only "a pet tifogging attorney" but man of al- most unnatural ugliness of face and with deformed hand and foot. Sin
 sular, too, as it may appear, her mar ried life was one of unclouded happi- ness. and to her dying day, nearly forty years later, she never seemed to have moments regret for her choice of husband.
 Still more remarkable was the story told of a most beautiful heiress with an attachment for one of the freaks of a travelling show, and she per sisted i'll marrying him in spite of all the efforts of her friends and relations This singular object of her affections masqueraded under the title of the man monkey. or the ugliest man in the world" and he had an excellent claim to the title Exchange