Pray for Casanova

# Pray for Casanova
By Tomás B.
Published: 2026-03-27
I am fascinated by the beautiful who become deformed. Some become bitter, more bitter than those born less pulchritudinous. Most learn to cope with the loss. Some were blind to how much their beauty helped them, the halo of their hotness an invisible bumper softening life. But most cultivated this aspect to some degree. They knew what was up. But none were fully prepared for the anti-halo: the revulsion, the active disgust. They became monsters. This is what it means to be marred.

In 1715 England, none were more beautiful than Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose mind was as fine as her complexion. And she was a hero too in later life, advocating for inoculation after learning of it during her adventures in the Ottoman Empire. But in 1715, she learned what it is to lose beauty, as at the height of her bloom she contracted smallpox and was, consequently, pockmarked. Shortly after, she wrote *Town Eclogues: Saturday; The Small-Pox*, whose tragic protagonist remarks:

> FLAVIA. THE wretched FLAVIA on her couch reclin'd, Thus breath'd the anguish of a wounded mind ; A glass revers'd in her right hand she bore, For now she shun'd the face she sought before.

She ends the poem with some pain-touched humor:

> 'Adieu ! ye parks ! — in some obscure recess, 'Where gentle streams will weep at my distress, 'Where no false friend will in my grief take part, 'And mourn my ruin with a joyful heart ; 'There let me live in some deserted place, 'There hide in shades this lost inglorious face. 'Ye, operas, circles, I no more must view ! 'My toilette, patches, all the world adieu!

Syphilis was another thief of pulchritude. John Wilmot was widely regarded as the handsomest man of his generation. And like with Byron, it must have been easy to be jealous of him. Not only was he hotter than anyone else, he was cleverer, too - the greatest satirist of his time. He died at 33 while looking like a very old, disabled man. It is believed complications from syphilis were the cause of death. In *The Disabled Debauchee*, he expresses no regret for his rakish ways and encourages new troops to join the battle:

> Nor let the sight of honorable scars, Which my too forward valor did procure, Frighten new-listed soldiers from the wars: Past joys have more than paid what I endure.

> Should any youth (worth being drunk) prove nice, And from his fair inviter meanly shrink, ’Twill please the ghost of my departed vice If, at my counsel, he repent and drink.

> Or should some cold-complexioned sot forbid, With his dull morals, our bold night-alarms, I’ll fire his blood by telling what I did When I was strong and able to bear arms.

One wonders if the modern fuckboy could have made it in Wilmot's era. Truly, we are in a fallen time. To be a fuckboy then was to court demons and inevitably succumb. It is easy to see why the modern rake is not a poet, as he does not risk much of anything. No chance of marred complexion or hordes of illegit

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