“PERFECT NOSE” COMPETITION

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 12

“PERFECT NOSE” COMPETITION

The Feature Which Makes or Mars a Face

f' 1 JT is fitting that thi? country -which produced Edmond ."Rostand should promote a competition t'o discover the possessors of the ‘most' perfect’ and - - -the--‘most beautiful’ maMculine noses, if only for the reason that Cyrano de Bergerac, with an org.m the anti-thesis-of perfect or -beautiful, has become, since Bostand resurrected him, as synonymous to most of us for hugeness of nose as ipunch,,” writes “J.W.” in the Birmingham Post. “The truth appears to be that the ;• '.-nose cannot seemingly be takon seriously. To poets, as to most of us,, it is, " and always has been, life’s fundamental jest. “The fraction of a curve amiss, And the Comic Spirit claims it. A smut, • a speck on it, and all one’s efforts r. v -p ?.'■ present a careful, wellwrought front; ,rr are negatived. Its mark in literature, S? 7 is the comic mark, its place in jife A the comedian’s.

“It’s virtues are concealed, its capacity for mischief immense and irresponsible. Sidney Smith, indeed, observing that ‘it was put in man’s face originally as a constant reminder of the humour of things,’ expressed a HiiMiiiiiiiiiiiimniiiiiiiiiiHiiiiaiaimiiiiMiiiiiimuiiiiiiiiriimi MiaaauaniimnianaaH«iaMwnaia>m»M»‘nlaiaiiiiaawMm»iaaaan

| point of view with something more •than mere wit to commend it. “Yet if the nose per se is not to be taken seriously, its potentialities are grave enough if one agrees with Pascal that the face of the world really would have been altered had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter. The nose, after all, does make or mar a face. Its power in ,this respect is absolute. “It counts for everything in first impressions, too. If Arietta ,the tanner’s daughter in eleventh-century Falaise, had had a crooked nose, Bobert, ’Duke of Normandy, would probably have passed her by as she sat bathing her pretty feet in the local river, ■in which case "William I would not have been horn, there would have been no Norman invasion of England, no British Empire even, and a host of less important things besides. Matters far less reasonable than noses, a 'ter all, have changed a nation’s s ti_ Try more than once. < AVe shall laugh at them, however, as g ■©iterations before us have laughed. I 'or humour of the nose after-all is perennial- He is a pocu- wight indeed in who.w it cannot raise the semblance! of a