Omaha daily bee., 1910-05-14
OCEAN STEAMSHIPS
UGLY MEN WHO WERE FAMOUS
Their PIainness Proved No Bar TO
Their Success as Heart
winners.

mo woman worthy of the name" wrote
one of the lovelest women in London So
ciety recently. really cares a brass farth-
ing whether the man she honors with her
hand is handsome or ugly SO long as he
possesses the manly qualities of brains
physical strength. honor and so on which
make powerful appeal to our sex"
And certainly history supports this rather
unconventional view, for the many of the
plainest men of whom we have any record
have not only won pretty and we'll lowered
brides, but have been able to pick and
choose among the fairest, to the confusion
of their more we'll favored rivals.
Was there ever a palmer wooer, we won
der, than John Wilkes, the famous cham
plon of popular liberties and one of the
most dissolute roues of his day? So ugly
was Wilkes that the very children ran
away shrieking at sight of him. in the
streets, and yet such was the spell he cast
over women that ladies of beauty and
fashion We'd with each other for his notice,
while men Of handsome exterior and all
courtly graces looked enviously and i'm
potently on"
Give me quarter of an hours start"
he used to boast, ''and / will win any lady s
land" And he could have done it too.
There were few beauties however fair or
highly placed, whose hands could not have
been his for the asking, and in the very
early EOS he won for his wife one of the
loveliest heiresses of the time a lady who
refused more than one coronet to be his
bride.
Beauty and the Beast they call u.s."
Wilkes once said to a friend, land really
/ cannot find fault with the description"
Brougham, the ~ eat lord chancellor, was
a man of almost repellant ugliness. with
out a solitary compensatlng grace or man
ner. Conscious of his unattractiveness he
Stunned ladies' society as he might have
Stunned the plague. And what was the re-
suit? The ladies, the most lovely and
aristocratic in the land simply mobbed the
ugly lawyer" and were as proud to win
a smile from him as an offer of a coronet
| from any other man.
When any one asked, Where is Brou-
| CHAMP the invarlable answer was, Where
the ladies are thickest." And, sure enough
there he was; and the more he repealed his
| fair prosecutors, the more they clustered
round him.
| Another famous '1ady killer was Jean
| Paul Marat, one of the leading and most
infamous figures in the French revolution
Beyond any question" wrote a contem-
porary, IN. Msrat is the ugliest man In
the whole of France-and not merely ugly
but positively repulslve in person, habits
and manners"
And yet in his early years he was be
yond rivalry the most popular physician
in Paris. His consulting rooms were
crowded daily by the loveliest women II
the French capital, pushing and posting
to get a word with or perhaps win a smil,
from him That he turned a deaf ear anC
cold shoulder to their allurements only
stimulated their ardor until their atten
tions became so embarrassing that at on,
time he seriously medtated flight
Even when he contracted a loathsom'
skin disease while hiding in the sewers o
Paris, he was devotedly nursed by one o
the loveiest of his many admirers, whom
he married one fine day in the presenc,
of the sun"
! If possible a still more repulsive man wa
Potemkin, the former private soldier VIII
enslavcd the fancy of Catherine the Grea
and by her favor was made virtually cza
of Russia. Dreadful and ropulsive," wa
the description of Kim by one who knew
him. He has an unwieldy figure ant
knCckknees. is swarthy of skin, coarse il
feature and has lost one eye He Otter
passes whole days in his room half dressed
unCombed, unwashed, biting his nails an,
scratching his untidy head" And yet
says DuIand, the empress is quite Graz.
over him. as is proved by her passionate
bttcrs, in which she addresses him as m!
lord my king my inestmable treas
ure.' "
But perhaps the most remarkable of al
these cases of womans infatuation 70
ugly men was that of w. Hamilton,
Scotsman of a century and a half ago
Hamilton was not only preternaturall,
ugly but he was terribly deformed. Hi
legs we are told, were drawn up to hi
ears, his arms were twisted backward, ant
almost every member was ont of Joint"
In spite of these terrible physical dl aw
backs Hamilton easily outstripped all tn
gallants in his district In the favor of tn
ladies', HE might have married any q
them for the asking-indeed It is said sew
eral of them actually asked him." says
chronicler. But he remained proof agSins
all their wlles until after his eightietl
birthday. and then he married a girl OF 2
himself being carried to the altar on men
shn I