Famous Cripples.

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13523, 6 October 1916, Page 2

Famous Cripples.

SOME INTEEESTING OASES. Lord Byron had a club foot and was acutely conscious of the fact to his last day. Yet he was a fine boxer, having taken lessons from one of the famous "bruisers" of his time; he was also a splendid dancer, and, as everybody knows, he swam the Helespont, the Dardanelles, in emulation of one of his Greek heroes, Leander.

Sir Walter Scott was also a cripple, yet in spite of Ms disability was a most active man. One night in his early boyhood he was chased round the room by his motner, who wished to pack him off to bed. In the morning he was affected with fever, and after three, days it was found that he : had lost the use of his right leg. He never wholly recovered the use of i this limb and always walked lame j with a heavy step. Yet he was very | active as he grew up, fighting and climbing with the other boys. It is probable that his early affliction, however, had much to do with the special direction his genius took, for it threw him much in the company of his elders and with old Scottisli books. He never mentions his lameness, like Byron, and it does not seem to have worried an essentially nealthy-minded man. Alexander Pope is another notable cripple. His weakness was so great that he had always to wear stays, and in later life he hardly stirred abroad except in a sedan chair with the blinds down. His mind, or rather his morals, were as crooked as his back, and it was said he could not drink a cup of tea without intrigue. His unfortunate deformity seems to have embittered his pen, which was the most sarcastic and biting of his age, and his satire is his best work. Frank Smedley, the author of those fascinating and onsce hugely popular novels, "Prank Fairleigh" ' and "Lewis Arundel," was a lifelong cripple, never putting foot to ground and often in excruciating pain. Yet, although he cannot bo compared with a literary giant like Pope, his life was a benediction to all around him., He was. the most cheerful of men, and anyone reading hi* books and knowing nothing of the fact that they were written in "a recumbant position," would conclude that their author rode to hounds at least thrice a week, was perhaps a gentleman jockey, and the first and foremost in all field sports and games. Samuel Johnson was not a cripple in the strict sense, but his large, unwieldly form, his face seamed with scrofula, his purblind, peering eyes, his spasmodic movements like one afflicted with St. Vitus's dance, make him a remarkable physical curiosity in the gallery of literature. Yet there is not a more interesting and truly human portrait in the National Gallery than that of Johnson by his -friend, Sir Joshua Eeynolds. He has painted all his defects, and yet it is a lovable picture, because one seems to see behind the deformities of the body the true nobility and wisdom of the mind.

Mrs Browning would perhaps better be described as an invalid rather than a cripple, yet her sufferings, which kept her for years reclining on her couch, were due to an (accident which happened in her sixteenth year. She was one day trying to saddle her pony in a field when she fell with the saddle upon her and incurred an injury to her spine. She wrote her immortal "Sonnets from the Portuguese," which were not from the Portuguese at all but straight from her own passionate heart, whilst tied to her eoufeh. Yet this crippled invalid found strength to "run away" with the man she loved—Robert Browning. Her marriage did her every sort of good, for, although never robust, she was greatly better and able to get about. Amongst famous cripples who were not distinctly literary are counted Flaxman, the famous sculptor; Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated potter; Tallyrand, the clever diplomat, whom the Empress Josephine denounced as "that cursed cripple"; and our own lamented and deeply respected Lord Kelvin, the great scientific inventor.