Gwynplaine’s abandonment on the coast of Portland is the defining rupture in his childhood: at ten, he was left by the Comprachicos and later received into a poor caravan at Weymouth. The novel presents this past event as the origin of the life and public identity through which he becomes known as the Laughing Man, while leaving the precise circumstances of his rescue unstated.

The Abandonment

A placard composed by Ursus gives the event a specific date and age: Gwynplaine was deserted at ten on the night of 29 January 1690, on the coast of Portland. Its account names the Comprachicos as those who left him. The more compressed narrative identification connects this abandoned child with the boy later received into a poor caravan at Weymouth, but does not describe the journey between the coast and the caravan or explain how he was found.

From Abandoned Child to Public Figure

The event precedes Gwynplaine’s life as a travelling performer. As an adult, he appears on a platform as a mountebank and earns his living through the effect his face has on spectators. The placard turns that history into a public introduction: the deserted child has grown up and is now known as the Laughing Man. That announcement gives the audience a simple story of survival and transformation, even though it cannot convey the distance between the child’s abandonment and the performer’s inward life.

The Face and Its Meaning

The account of Gwynplaine’s face raises the possibility that its fixed expression was deliberately made rather than produced by nature alone. The narrative describes his outward appearance as an inescapable, automatic laugh, one that intensifies rather than reflects whatever he feels. It does not establish in these passages exactly who altered his face or precisely when the alteration occurred; the abandonment and the visible disfigurement are linked by the surrounding story, but should not be collapsed into a single described act.

Retrospective and Political Significance

The novel discloses the abandonment retrospectively, after Gwynplaine’s actions and public performance have already drawn attention to him. This ordering shifts the reader’s understanding of the performer: his public name rests on a childhood marked by desertion, while the comic appearance that earns a living does not disclose his private thoughts. Later, addressing the peers, Gwynplaine interprets the fixed laugh as a mark imposed by royal power and as a symbol of suffering shared by the people. That speech gives the history of his face a political meaning, but it is Gwynplaine’s later interpretation, not a fuller account of the abandonment itself.