Behind Your Mask

After first seeing the film "The Elephant Man," I was moved to write a song for Joseph (who was called "John" in the film and Broadway play of the same name.) I was haunted by the idea of a living, suffering being with a gentle soul and longing for human contact, forced to wear a concealing mask whenever he was in public. You might say he spent his life behind a mask, until Frederick Treves brought him to the London Hospital and introduced him to society.

Even then, Joseph could only go outside at night, concealed in his iconic hat, mask and cloak. When he went to Drury Lane Theater, he needed to be shielded from the public gaze. That required elaborate arrangements --smuggling him into the theater by the royal entrance and seating him in a private box behind three nurses in evening dress.

Visits to the countryside required more elaborate preparation. Joseph was conveyed in a cab with drawn blinds to a second-class railway car on a separate siding from the main train. He boarded there and then the car was coupled to the rear of the train for his journey to Northamptonshire, for a wonderful holiday on a private estate owned by Lady Louisa Knightley. Only then could he roam freely in the woods by daylight, savoring the fresh breeze and warm sunlight, the sights and sounds of animals and brooks. He wrote excited letters to Treves and other friends, pressing flowers and leaves between the pages. Those three extended holidays gave him a taste of freedom the rest of us take for granted.

In my work at an elder home, I am reminded of Joseph. The residents, some of whom are unsightly and frozen in wheelchairs, don't wear actual masks, but their mental state keeps them confused and foggy most of the time. They are like living statues. Yet if you sit face to face, touch their hands and speak their names, they respond, often quite eloquently. As with Joseph, people underestimate how much these elders understand, think, and feel. I wish I could spend hours with each one of them as Treves did with Joseph, drawing them out and encouraging them to express their thoughts, but the busy schedule only allows for a few brief moments with each person.

A few years back, the celebrated neurologist, Oliver Sacks, wrote a book which was made into a film, called "Awakenings," about his patients with equine encephalopathy - many of them had spent decades in a frozen trance. The use of L-dopa seemed to miraculously bring them back "to life," but they were convinced it was still the roaring twenties. People emerged as individuals with passions and memories - for a short time anyway. The drug had mixed success and some had to be taken off it. But the point of the film and this long blog is to reflect on how many people live behind some kind of mask, real or metaphorical. It only takes the human touch and a moment of contact to awaken them.

BEHIND YOUR MASK (for Joseph Merrick)

I saw a photograph of you the other day

Far beyond my strangest dreams

A sidehow of the age, a showpiece on an English stage

where horror mixed with love like a bitter wine.

Behind your mask you were a dreamer

A suffering heart

Behind your mask, you had the courage to be a man

And I wish I could have known you

I wish that I could have seen behind your mask

where you lived and dreamed.

I heard the story of your life the other day

Far beyond my strangest dreams.

Building a cathedral in your room, lonely man

Living with your poetry and portraits of fine ladies

You longed to be the hero of their hearts

Behind your mask, you were a dreamer.

M Siu Wai Stroshane c 1982

Joseph Merrick & Leila Maturin

If you were on your way down a busy street and saw the famous, almost iconic figure of the Elephant Man in his sweeping black cloak, hat and concealing mask, how would you react?
Would you:

a) cringe and look away
b) stare
c) hurry away

I think we might do all three if caught off guard. Joseph's disfigurements, due to a rare disorder called Proteus syndrome, were so severe that some women would actually faint at the sight of him (although we're talking Victorian times and corsets so tight they could hardly breathe. Fainting was fashionable.) Someone who looks as strange as the little Elephant Man did would make us all uncomfortable, perhaps even queasy.

Now imagine that a friend of yours asks you to meet his friend named Joseph, who has lived a life of loneliness, shunned by most of mankind and convinced he's a monster. Joseph is gentle, softspoken, loves to read poetry, and speaks about all kinds of interesting things. All you would have to do is shake his hand, smile, and say hello. Your friend says this will make an enormous difference in the young man's perception of himself.

So you muster your courage and go to Joseph's small basement apartment because you want to do your friend a favor. At the first sight of Joseph, you might gasp, avert your eyes or suddenly feel dizzy. He really does look awful. But then you look into his eyes and see a living, suffering human being. You realize he is terrified of what you're going to do or say.

You discover it's not as hard as you thought to take his hand and say "I'm pleased to meet you." And you mean it, because you can see the pain in his expressive brown eyes and you want to let him know you care.

That's exactly what a young woman named Leila Maturin did when Frederick Treves asked her to meet Joseph Merrick. Her warm smile and friendly greeting shocked him so much he dissolved into tears, unable to believe a woman had just touched his hand and looked into his eyes without screaming.

If we come face to face with someone whose appearance frightens us, whose disability embarrasses us, think of Leila Maturin's simple act. Her smile changed Merrick's life. After that day, he began to see himself as human, as someone who was worth knowing. At the end of his short life, he was surrounded by people who had discovered how lovable he was behind that strange mask.

If we take the time to see behind each other's masks, we might find the same.

"Words For Elephant Man": poetry by Kenneth Sherman

“Words For Elephant Man” by Kenneth Sherman: a review

“Hauntingly beautiful!”

Although these words are overused, they really apply to this collection of poems. This is a journey through Joseph's short, painful life, told in the first-person with dark wit, longing and keen observations of the 19th-century conditions around him.


Unsentimental yet deeply moving, "Words For Elephant Man" take us into Merrick's world of fairgrounds, the grim workhouse from which he was desperate to escape, the society ladies who awakened his awareness as a man, and Frederick Treves, the doctor who secured for him a permanent home at the London Hospital.

Unlike the movie and the play, these poems are historically accurate, being based on the superbly- researched biography, "The True History of the Elephant Man (Howell & Ford, 1980.)

A real tour de force for anyone who admires Joseph Merrick, as well as for readers new to his story, "Words For Elephant Man" should be on every library shelf. Highly recommended for all!

The Real Nurse Ireland

In the "Elephant Man" movie, Treves has painstakingly rescued "John" Merrick from his cruel owner, Bytes, and furtively admitted him to the hospital, tucking him away in an attic isolation ward for food, care and rest. The sharp-eyed hospital governor spots him carrying Merrick's breakfast and summons him away for questioning just as a student nurse happens by. Treves hands her the bowl of porridge and gently reassures her, "Don't worry, he won't hurt you." It's hardly sufficient preparation for Merrick's shocking appearance. At the sight of him, she screams, drops the bowl and runs away, sobbing. This was partly based on Treves' memoirs but he did not name the nurse. In the film, her name is Nora Ireland.

As it turns out, Joseph did have a Nurse Ireland taking care of him, but her real name was Emma Gertrude. She was a 29 year old nursing student the day he was admitted to the London Hospital after being rescued from the train station, broken and starving. From the Royal London Archives, archivist Jonathan Evans gives us this fascinating story about her.

Notice the interesting dates in her life:
Emma Gertrude Ireland (1857 – 1898), has a poignant life story. She entered the London Hospital School of Nursing in March 1886 at the age of 29, having previously worked at St. Pancras Infirmary. She became Sister in Blizard Ward [then a surgical ward at The London] in 1888 .

Emma had been on duty in Cotton ward when Joseph Merrick was first admitted to the London in 1886.
Sshe was the last nurse to see Joseph Merrick alive on the morning of Friday April 11th, 1890.

Emma Ireland knew Joseph from his first day at the LH to his last. Surely she must have learned his speech well and had interesting conversations with him, perhaps confiding her dreams of serving humanity in other places. Three months after Joseph's death, she left the London Hospital and traveled to Hong Kong to care for plague victims. She herself died of the plague in 1898. Here is the notice in the press about her:

1898 Plague in Hong Kong—Two nursing sisters have died from the plague in Hong Kong. A plague patient in delirium coughed in the face of Miss Elizabeth Frances Higgin (Sister Frances) on April 2oth; on the 25th she became ill, and was found suffering from bubonic plague, the worst form of the disease. She died on April 29th. The sister who attended her, Miss Emma Gertrude Ireland (Sister Gertrude), was admitted to the hospital May 2d. The next morning the typical bacilli were found; she died May 5th. Both these sisters served through the plague epidemic of 1894.

Among other British army, navy, and other civilians, the two women were awarded the Hong Kong Plague medal, the highest army medal awarded to civilians. One side was an allegorical scene of a nurse and soldier tending a Chinese man lying on a bed supported by two sawhorses. There is a pail of whitewash between the soldier’s legs. Death flies above the victim, poised to thrust his fatal blow. The Chinese characters from Hong Kong are present on the right side and the date “1894” is present at the bottom.

She was truly a devoted nurse, who gave her life to serving humanity

"The Elephant Man"play review

For a moment, Paradise!"
That's the phrase spoken by one of the main characters in the play's most tender and heartrending scene. This is the tragic story of Joseph Merrick (called "John" Merrick here) by award-winning playwright Bernard Pomerance.

A prominent young surgeon (Frederick Treves) comes across the Elephant Man earning a living in the sideshows (which Joseph did fairly successfully in real life until he was robbed and abandoned by a callous manager. This is shown in the play as well.)  Treves presents Merrick to his fellow physicians in a lecture scene, again based on a real event.
As Treves displays slides of Joseph, a normal actor begins to twist and contort himself in an approximation of Merrick, and remains that way through the rest of the play. The audience is asked to suspend belief and perceive the actor  as Merrick, based on the other characters' horrified response to him. It's not always easy to keep that in mind, but Pomerance makes the point that beneath his deformities, Joseph was a human being like the rest of us, with normal feelings, dreams and desires.

At the center of the play is Treves' relationship with Merrick as he changes from a somewhat overbearing protector and savior of the impoverished young man, to a self-doubting, spiritually adrift scientist in an age that seems bent on self-destruction. Merrick, on the other hand, believes steadfastly in God and constructs a beautiful church as a symbol of his faith. The cynical Treves sees it only as a futile groping towards nothingness.

The real warmth of the play takes place in the fictional friendship between an actress, Mrs. Kendal, and Joseph. Treves has asked her to befriend him, which she does. Alas, she does, too successfully, leading to the moment of forbidden "paradise." What happens after that must be experienced firsthand.  Every month the play is being performed somewhere in the world. Don't miss a chance to see it if it comes your way!