WORRY OF UGLY NOSE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

WORRY OF UGLY NOSE

YOUTH'S TRAGIC LIFE CLEVER SCHOLAR'S TORTURES "PEOPLE LAUGH AT ME" Tho tragic life of a modern Cyrano de Bcrgerac—a man tortared by tho consciousness of his ugly nose—was revealed at Southend, Essex recently. A 20-year-old public schoolboy was bound over for two years for housebreaking and burglary, on condition that ho attended hospital for medical treatment. Ilis counsel stated that ho was a clever scholar and was studying for ecclesiastical work. But ho was so worried about his nose that ho was ashamed to go into tho street, used to lock himself in the bathroom trying to alter his noso with surgical appliances, and had left his homo and studies to live in common lodging houses. While there lie had started his housebreaking. A correspondent of tho Sunday Express, who saw this young roan, says that, except for his nose, which is flat, he is a good-looking, well-built boy, with a strikingly forceful, strong-willed personality. in short, sometimes pathetically bitter, sentences, ho related tho pitiful story of a brilliant mind that was first wounded, then shadowed, then dominated bv a nose.

Tho youth did not realise what he was revealing. He insists that ho is simply an unfortunate man cursed with a physical deformity and doomed to lifelong torment. Ho does not see that his de-

formity is hi 3 mental attitude. He is, however, quite willing to put himself in tho hands of a specialist and is trying to arrange to enter a home. The Fear oi Laughter " I have never seen a doctor/' the youth said. " Why should I? An ordinary doctor cannot change the shape of a nose. I have read in books about plastic surgery, and it has been the only dream of my life to save up enough money to go to a plastic surgeon. I was earning £5 a week once, but I did not go on with the job. I could not bear to know that tho peoplo were looking at me and laughing. " If I walk along a street everybody I meet stares at me. Then I feel them turn round and hear them laugh. If 1 pass a group of girls they burst out laughing. Everywhere I go I hear laughter. It began when I was a child in the playgrourtd. Other children called me " Flatnose.' It went on at college. Some of them laughed at mo. " I made friends who did not say anything. But I knew they were laughing behind my back. I never went out with them in the evenings. I did not want to. I do not want company. If I go out it is at night by myself to the pictures where it is dark and nobody can see me. I grew to hate my nose more and more. Sometimes it was worse than others. I fought against it. " I have fought with myself for hours I have tried to make a joke of it, but then peoplo thought I did not care and made their own jokes. Perhaps they did not mean to be cruel. If any one had tried to help me I would have been glad, but, excepting my family, nobody did. My schoql teachers took no notice. I did not ask anyone for help, because I knew what they would have said: * Don't think about it so much. Go away and do some more work.'

Effort to Commit Suicide I did work. I havo worked day and night, and sometimes all through the night, to try and take my mind off it. I tried to commit suicide, because I cannot see how life is worth living like this. " I have done everything I can think of. ' There are people worse off than you,' I have said to myself. Btifc there are moro people better oJT. There is bad and there is worse, but worse does not make bad better." There was repressed fury in the sharp bittcn-off words. The correspondent talked of people who had been completely ugly to look at and yet had been successful and a s happy as the rest of humanity. " Then they did not mind. They w«sro not, sensitive," the youth said savagely. Tho correspondent adds: " I tried every obvious argument against the folly of his obsession. He answered them all with a bitterness or stubbornness that left mo helpless. For an hour I sat facing him. If my attention had not been drawn to it, I shou'j/jnofc havo noticed his nose."