The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

By Sir Frederick Treves

In the Mile End Road, opposite to the London Hospital, there was (and possibly still is) a line of small shops. Among them was a vacant greengrocer's which was to let. The whole of the front of the shop, with the exception of the door, was hidden by a hanging sheet of canvas on which was the announcement that the Elephant Man was to be seen within and that the price of admission was twopence. Painted on the canvas in primitive colours was a life-size portrait of the Elephant Man. This very crude production depicted a frightful creature that could only have been possible in a nightmare. It was the figure of a man with the characteristics of an elephant. The transfiguration was not far advanced. There was still more of the man than of the beast. This fact - that it was still human - was the most repellent attribute of the creature. There was nothing about it of the pitiableness of the misshapened or the deformed, nothing of the grotesqueness of the freak, but merely the loathsome insinuation of a man being changed into an animal. Some palm trees in the background of the picture suggested a jungle and might have led the imaginative to assume that it was in this wild that the perverted object had roamed. - Taken from "The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences" written by Sir Frederick Treves

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B0DBLG5HZX
• ISBN13: 9798334516526
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 110 Pages
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.3" x 5.5"