The strange saga - basis of the Broadway play - of one of the most
deformed of all men and the Victorian society that first exploited,
then succored him. Howell and Ford tell the story straight, with
only an occasional dramatic flourish and without attempting to draw
out a moral. (They do note that "Like the relationship between
Prospero and Caliban. . . the emphasis may seem to shift subtly in
time, as new social parables are read in or drawn out.") The simple
story itself is compelling. Joseph Merrick's great deformity was
said to have come from his pregnant mother's being frightened by a
runaway circus elephant. By his teens his rare skin disease had so
deformed his body that he would have spent his life in the
Leicester Union Workhouse had he not been picked up as a freak for
a traveling exhibition. During the showing in London one Frederick
Treves, a promising young surgeon, first saw the "elephant man";
and it was to Treves that the elephant man turned after a nasty
experience on the Continent. The surgeon arranged for Merrick to be
cared for by London Hospital, and in an appeal for funds the
hospital management stressed Merrick's high moral character. In
Victorian society, as Howell and Ford note, "To be utterly
deserving of charity it was essential to be utterly virtuous."
Merrick, apparently, was, or nearly so. In any case, the highest of
Victorian society responded: actress Madge Kendal and Princess
Alexandra became friends of Merrick, visiting him in his hospital
quarters and sending mementos and gifts. And many of the elephant
man's dreams were granted: he saw a West End play from a private
box, and spent a few days on a private estate communing with nature
(and collecting violets). Howell and Ford marvel at such
philanthropy, remarking "It is chastening to reflect on how
society's attempt at the management of the acutely deprived and
disabled in our own day would compare. . . ." Throughout, a strange
and touching story. (Kirkus Reviews)
Joseph Carey Merrick, born in England on August 5, 1952, is better
known as The Elephant Man. Through horrible physical deformities
which were almost impossible to describe, he spent much of his life
exhibited as a fairground freak until even nineteenth-century
sensibilities could take no more. Hounded, persecuted and starving,
he ended up at London's Liverpool Street Station where he was
rescued, housed and fed by the distinguished surgeon Frederick
Treves. To Treves' surprise, he discovered during the course of
their friendship that lurking beneath the mass of Merrick's
corrupting flesh lived a spirit that was as courageous as it had
been tortured, and a nature as gentle and dignified as it had been
deprived and tormented. The subject of several books, a Broadway
hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular
mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing new
details, are the true and unromantic facts of his life. This is an
extraordinary and moving story, set among the brutal realities of
the Victorian world, telling of a tragic individual and his
survival against overwhelming odds.
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