January 29, 1690

29 January 1690 fixes the moment when Gwynplaine’s childhood abandonment and concealed identity are set out in a formal declaration. The date anchors the account of how the heir to Lord Clancharlie’s titles and estates was removed from his inheritance and raised as a fairground performer; later, Gwynplaine interprets the lasting mark on his face as both a personal torment and an image of wider oppression.

The Date in the Declaration

The date is read aloud by the sheriff from a weathered, torn parchment laid among papers on a stone table. The declaration says that a ten-year-old child had been left on the coast of Portland in circumstances intended to expose him to hunger, cold, and isolation. Its precise dating turns the abandonment from an indistinct episode in the past into a documented act assigned to a particular day.

The parchment also places the child’s earlier sale at age two. It states that the sale was ordered by King James II after the death of the child’s father, and records a payment of ten pounds sterling to the king, together with concessions and immunities. Thus the date marks the discovery not only of where the boy was left, but of a longer sequence of decisions that had separated him from his birthright.

Identity and Consequences

The declaration identifies the child as Lord Fermain Clancharlie, the only legitimate son of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie and Ann Bradshaw. It names him as heir to his father’s estates and titles, giving the abandonment a political and legal consequence: the child left on the coast was not an unknown waif but the displaced successor to a peerage.

It further states that he had been made a mountebank and trained to perform at markets and fairs. This account connects the child’s removal to Gwynplaine’s later public identity. His face appears to laugh continuously, while his thoughts and feelings do not; he cannot simply remove that expression, and even distress intensifies its effect. His tall, well-made figure contrasts with the facial alteration that makes spectators laugh and, after the initial response, recoil from him.

From Personal Record to Public Meaning

The date’s force lies in the contrast between the official specificity of the parchment and the life it describes. The declaration names the child, his parents, his inheritance, and the circumstances of his removal, while the face that makes him recognizable to crowds conceals the history behind it. The record restores a legal identity to someone whom the account says was sold, disfigured, and trained for public entertainment.

Later, addressing the peers, Gwynplaine presents the expression on his face as something imposed by a king and reads it as an emblem of a people made to suffer while appearing to smile. He connects his own altered features with the deformation of justice, truth, and reason under power. The date therefore serves as the documentary hinge between a particular child’s abandonment and Gwynplaine’s broader public interpretation of his face as evidence of political cruelty.