The Smile Was Not His

Begin before the smile.

There was once a boy who belonged to a house.

Not a traveling wagon.

Not a fairground.

Not a stage.

A house.

A name.

A father.

Rooms where people knew who he was before he entered them.

He was born Gwynplaine, son of Lord Clancharlie, into the strange accident of being noble before he was old enough to understand what nobility meant.

Then politics entered the nursery.

As politics often does,

without knocking.

His father had become dangerous to a king.

And kings have always had a particular talent for making their enemies disappear.

Sometimes the enemy himself is not enough.

Sometimes punishment travels downward.

Into the children.

Into the future.

Into the face of a boy.

· · ·

Gwynplaine was taken.

Sold into the hands of the Comprachicos.

Men who dealt in children the way other men dealt in livestock.

They did not only steal them.

They altered them.

A body could be made profitable.

A child could be reshaped into astonishment.

A strange limb.

A twisted spine.

A face that made people stop.

And stopping, they knew,

could be turned into money.

The world has always found ways

to charge admission

to another person's suffering.

· · ·

Someone took a blade to the boy's mouth.

Someone pulled the corners.

Someone decided that this child

would laugh forever.

Then the wound healed.

The man who had done it disappeared.

The smile remained.

That is the terrible thing about certain injuries.

The hand that gives them to you moves on.

You are left carrying the evidence.

· · ·

Imagine growing up

and discovering that your face has become public property.

People look at it

and immediately know how they are supposed to feel.

They laugh.

You cannot correct them.

They see joy.

You may be terrified.

They see amusement.

You may be grieving.

They see a joke.

You may be begging to be understood.

But the face arrives first.

And the face has already spoken.

· · ·

Then they abandoned him.

A winter shore.

A ship disappearing.

A boy walking into the snow

with a smile no one had given him permission to remove.

Behind him,

the sea.

Ahead,

nothing.

The wind moved across the white fields.

The world was very large.

And he was very small.

Perhaps that was the first night Gwynplaine understood something he would spend the rest of his life proving:

A person can be perfectly visible

and still be abandoned.

· · ·

He walked.

What else could he do?

Snow entered his shoes.

The cold entered everything.

And somewhere in that enormous white silence,

he found a woman frozen in death.

At her breast,

an infant.

Alive.

The child could not see.

Gwynplaine picked her up.

This is the part of the story

I always return to.

The boy whose own father had been taken from him.

The boy whose face had been destroyed.

The boy the world had abandoned in the snow.

Stopped.

And carried someone else.

He had been given cruelty.

He answered with care.

Perhaps goodness is not always something we inherit.

Perhaps sometimes

it is simply the one thing

we refuse to pass on.

· · ·

The baby's name would become Dea.

The boy would become Gwynplaine again.

And eventually they found Ursus.

An old philosopher.

A showman.

A man who spoke as if humanity disappointed him

while quietly spending his life helping the people

humanity had discarded.

He took them in.

Along with his wolf.

And they became a family.

Not the kind found in portraits.

The kind found afterward.

A philosopher.

A wolf.

A blind girl.

A boy who looked as though he were laughing at the world.

All of them,

in one small traveling wagon.

All of them belonging nowhere.

Which is sometimes another way

of belonging completely

to one another.

· · ·

Years passed.

The boy grew into a man.

The blind infant grew into Dea.

And Gwynplaine became famous.

Not for what he said.

Not for what he had survived.

For his face.

The smile.

People came from towns away.

They filled the tents.

They paid their coins.

The moment came.

Gwynplaine revealed himself.

And the room erupted.

Laughter.

Always laughter.

Imagine hearing thousands of people laugh

at the same wound.

Night after night.

Imagine that the thing which hurt you most

became the reason strangers remembered you.

Imagine becoming famous

for the one thing

you would have given anything

not to have.

· · ·

But the crowd was not entirely cruel.

That would have been easier.

Some laughed because they did not understand.

Some were horrified.

Some pitied him.

Some adored him.

That is how society often escapes responsibility.

Everyone feels something.

No one changes anything.

The coins are still collected.

The tent is still full.

And the man with the wound

still has to return tomorrow night.

· · ·

The audience called him

The Man Who Laughs.

And perhaps after enough years,

even the name becomes dangerous.

People begin naming you

after what they can see.

The poor man.

The beautiful woman.

The funny friend.

The monster.

The failure.

The strong one.

The smiling one.

Eventually,

the world becomes so certain of your role

that you begin to disappear inside it.

Gwynplaine had been turned into an expression.

The expression became a profession.

And the profession slowly covered the person.

· · ·

Only Dea did not see the smile.

She was blind.

And so she knew him.

There is something almost unbearable about that irony.

The world had eyes.

Thousands of them.

They all saw his face.

None of them saw him.

Dea had none.

And somehow,

she was the only person

who understood where Gwynplaine ended

and the smile began.

· · ·

She knew his voice.

The sound of him entering a room.

The hesitation in his hands.

The warmth beside her.

The silence when something had hurt him.

She loved what sight had missed.

Perhaps this is why Hugo made her blind.

Not because blindness is beautiful.

But because sight can be lazy.

We see the face.

We decide the story.

We see the clothes.

We decide the character.

We see the wound.

We invent the crime.

The eyes are very good at collecting information.

They are not always very good

at understanding it.

· · ·

Dea loved him.

And Gwynplaine loved her.

But even love could not completely silence

what the world had taught him about himself.

There was a beautiful woman,

the Duchess Josiana,

who desired him precisely because he was strange.

She had lived too long among beautiful things.

Beauty had become boring.

And Gwynplaine,

half beautiful, half terrible,

graceful in body and grotesque in face,

became interesting.

There is another kind of cruelty in that.

Some people reject you for being different.

Others desire you

because of it.

Neither is necessarily seeing you.

To be hated for what you are not

is painful.

To be wanted for what you are not

is simply another form

of loneliness.

· · ·

Then the past returned.

Not gently.

The past never does.

A name surfaced.

Documents.

Confessions.

A dead history suddenly remembering

that Gwynplaine existed.

The wandering performer.

The man the crowd had paid to laugh at.

The child abandoned in the snow.

Was not what anyone believed.

He was Lord Fermain Clancharlie.

The rightful heir.

A nobleman.

An aristocrat.

The son of the house

from which he had been stolen.

· · ·

Imagine the cruelty of being told,

after spending your entire life as an outcast:

You belonged at the top.

All those years,

the hunger,

the roads,

the laughter,

the wagons,

the crowds,

and somewhere behind it all

was a house with your name on it.

But Hugo's story does not allow the revelation

to become a fairy tale.

Because what is a title

to someone who has already learned

what titles do to people?

What is nobility

to a man who has spent his life among those

noblemen never have to see?

· · ·

They took him from the wagon.

From Ursus.

From Dea.

They dressed him differently.

Washed away the dust.

Gave him rooms.

Servants.

Land.

A name that opened doors.

Then they brought him into the House of Lords.

The same society

that had once turned his suffering into spectacle

now told him:

You belong with us.

It is one of Hugo's darkest jokes.

The world changes its manners

the moment it discovers your blood.

Not your goodness.

Not your suffering.

Not your character.

Your blood.

Yesterday,

a clown.

Today,

a lord.

The man has not changed.

Only the information

surrounding him has.

· · ·

And Gwynplaine looked around the great hall.

Perhaps he saw the entire country

inside one room.

The rich.

The titled.

The inherited.

The people whose names had opened doors

before they were born.

And he remembered the other world.

The roads.

The poor.

The abandoned.

The people the great halls never mentioned

unless they became inconvenient.

He had lived below.

Now they had placed him above.

And perhaps for the first time,

the world had accidentally created

the one thing it did not want in that room:

Someone who knew both sides.

· · ·

So he spoke.

This is where the story becomes something larger

than the smile.

Gwynplaine stood before the powerful

and spoke about suffering.

About poverty.

About the forgotten.

About the human beings beneath the machinery

of titles and wealth.

He had been one of them.

He knew what the cold felt like.

He knew what abandonment looked like.

He knew how easily a crowd

could enjoy another person's pain

when there was enough distance

between the seats and the stage.

And he tried to tell them.

· · ·

They laughed.

Of course they did.

What else could they do?

His face was still smiling.

The words were serious.

The mouth was not.

He stood before them

and spoke of misery.

His face appeared to be enjoying itself.

He pleaded.

The grin answered first.

The room saw the smile.

And the smile destroyed the speech.

Perhaps that is the entire novel

in one image.

A man tells the truth.

But he does not look

like the kind of person

the world has decided

is allowed to tell it.

So the truth becomes comedy.

· · ·

And there is something frighteningly familiar about that.

Society does not always silence people.

Sometimes it does something quieter.

It decides who is worth listening to.

It hears the same sentence

from two different mouths

and calls one wisdom

and the other madness.

One man speaks badly dressed,

he is dangerous.

Another repeats him from a balcony,

he is a philosopher.

A beautiful face speaks,

we listen.

A strange face speaks,

we remember the face.

Perhaps Gwynplaine's tragedy was never

that no one could hear him.

They could.

They simply heard the smile louder.

· · ·

And suddenly,

his title meant very little.

The great house.

The inheritance.

The halls.

The power.

He had spent his life being told

he was not enough

for the world.

Now the world offered itself to him.

And he understood

that he did not want it.

There are moments when a person finally reaches

the door they spent years dreaming about

and discovers

they only wanted to go home.

· · ·

Home was not the house he had lost.

Perhaps it never had been.

Home was a wagon.

An old man complaining about humanity.

A wolf.

A blind girl.

A small family assembled

from everyone the world had failed to keep.

And Dea.

Always Dea.

The one person

who had never needed him

to explain his face.

· · ·

But tragedy is rarely kind enough

to wait for understanding.

By the time Gwynplaine returned,

Dea had already begun leaving.

She had believed him gone.

The body is sometimes very fragile

when the heart has been waiting too long.

He found her.

At last.

The man who had crossed from snow

to fairgrounds,

from fairgrounds to palaces,

from palaces back toward love.

He came home.

And she was there.

For a moment,

perhaps the world became simple again.

· · ·

She knew him.

Of course she did.

Not by the face.

Never by the face.

By everything else.

The person had returned.

The smile had nothing to do with it.

· · ·

Then Dea died.

And this is where the story finally becomes

as quiet as the beginning.

A boy had once walked alone through snow.

A man now stood alone

beside the sea.

There had been so much laughter between those two moments.

Crowds.

Stages.

Palaces.

People pointing.

People applauding.

People deciding who he was.

And at the end,

none of them remained.

· · ·

Perhaps that is the saddest thing about fame.

So many people can know your face

and still leave you alone

with your grief.

Gwynplaine had been watched

all his life.

But watching

is not staying.

· · ·

The sea was waiting.

It had been waiting since the beginning.

Since the night the ship disappeared

and left a smiling child in the snow.

Everything returns,

sometimes,

to its first darkness.

And Gwynplaine went into the water.

The smile went with him.

It had followed him everywhere.

Through childhood.

Through love.

Through laughter.

Through poverty.

Through nobility.

Through the House of Lords.

Through every attempt

to become someone other than

the face the world had given him.

The sea was the first thing

that did not ask him to explain it.

· · ·

Years later,

the smile survived.

That may be the strangest part.

The man died.

The image lived.

A silent film found the face.

The world remembered it.

Artists borrowed it.

Then another figure inherited the grin.

The Joker.

And somewhere along the way,

the original story became smaller.

People remembered the madness.

The creepiness.

The monstrous smile.

They forgot

that before the monster,

there had been a child.

Before the famous face,

there had been a father.

Before the laugh,

there had been a wound.

· · ·

The shirt says:

The Smile Hid the Man

Gwynplaine, 1869

Because that was Hugo's cruelty.

The world never needed Gwynplaine

to become a monster.

It had something more useful for him.

It made him an image.

And an image is easier than a person.

An image does not complicate you.

It does not ask to be understood.

You can laugh at it.

Fear it.

Print it.

Wear it.

Turn it into another story.

All without asking

what happened

to the human being underneath.

· · ·

Look at the smile.

It is famous now.

Perhaps more famous

than Gwynplaine himself.

You know the shape.

The mouth.

The teeth.

The darkness around the eyes.

But this time,

stay a little longer.

Imagine the snow.

Imagine the child.

Imagine the father

who lost him.

Imagine the blind girl

who waited for him.

Imagine the crowds laughing.

Then imagine the same man

standing before the most powerful people in the country,

trying to speak about suffering,

and hearing laughter again.

· · ·

Perhaps the smile did not merely hide the man.

Perhaps it revealed the world.

A society can be measured

by what it finds amusing.

By whom it refuses to see.

By how easily it turns pain

into entertainment.

Gwynplaine spent his entire life

unable to remove his smile.

The people around him

were free to remove theirs.

They rarely did.

· · ·

And perhaps that is the final cruelty.

Everyone thought Gwynplaine was the strange one.

The grotesque one.

The unnatural one.

But he had been made that way

by human hands.

The crowds that laughed at him

had chosen their laughter themselves.

Only one of those things

was called monstrous.

· · ·

Look at the face again.

The smile was not his.

The wound was not his.

The name he became famous by

was not entirely his.

Even his nobility had been stolen

and returned

like something misplaced.

But somewhere beneath all of it,

beneath the blade,

the laughter,

the title,

the image,

there was still the boy

walking through snow

with a blind child in his arms.

He had every reason

to become cruel.

He did not.

Perhaps that was the one thing

no one could carve

into him.

And perhaps,

in the end,

that was the man.

This is the story behind the The Man Who Laughs T-Shirt — available now in the SepiaLore archive.